Science

Tens of thousands of years ago, a long-legged cat nicknamed the “American cheetah” prowled North America. But an analysis of the cat family tree reveals this cheetah’s closest living relatives are pumas, researchers report September 4 in Current Biology.That...

Replacing human subjects with AI surrogates, or digital twins, is on some social scientists’ wish lists. Human subjects are expensive, tire easily and can suffer psychological distress from some studies.But those wishes may take more time to be realized,...

The field of silicon photonics, which uses light rather than electricity to transmit and process data on semiconductor chips, has enabled optical systems to evolve from bulky setups to compact and advanced systems. Typically, however, these silicon-photonics chips are...

Community college students across the U.S. now have another opportunity to discover how their education can lead to fulfilling roles at the forefront of aerospace, science, engineering, and technology. The updated NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars (NCAS) student challenge...

Scientists watching the weather on Saturn have spotted a strange polygon surrounding the planet’s south pole — a feature that would have surprised them less had it appeared years ago, when the planet was under constant surveillance.The planet’s north...

The universe’s first rocky planets may have gotten their start astonishingly early — perhaps only 100 million years after the Big Bang.Explosions of some of the universe’s first massive stars could have created isolated pockets rich enough in dust...

Summer is prime iceberg season in Greenland’s glacier-fed fjords, and 2026 was no exception. Especially notable was the berg that broke from the Petermann Glacier along Greenland’s northwest coast in August. Roughly the size of St. Thomas in the...

There is something striking about the way the UK's summer temperature record is being broken. In a climate that isn't changing, new records should generally become progressively rarer, because every time a record falls, it raises the bar for...

For the first time in 14 years, doctors have updated guidelines for preventing migraine attacks.The new recommendations from the American Academy of Neurology and American Headache Society, published August 31 in Neurology, incorporate evidence on treatments that weren’t available...

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