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News, research analysis and evidence-based explanation. 20 stories in this section.
An international team led by INAF astronomer Victor Almendros-Abad has identified 353 candidate brown dwarfs in the massive star cluster Westerlund 2, including objects as small as ten Jupiter masses, …
An ice core from Peru's highest tropical mountain provides a rare low-latitude record of atmospheric methane, helping separate tropical sources from the better-known polar history.
A fibre-network comparison of seven optical clocks in four countries reached uncertainties in the 10^-18 range, strengthening the case for an optical redefinition of the second.
A new IZA working paper pools 475 field-experimental estimates across 31 countries. It finds substantial discrimination in several categories, while publication-bias corrections and wide heterogeneity complicate any single global number.
PISA 2025 puts 39% of Dutch 15-year-olds below the OECD’s baseline reading level, adding another national case to a broad decline in adolescent literacy performance.
A study suggesting that wealthy people are more likely to behave unethically, such as stealing sweets from a child, has been recognized at the 2026 Ig Nobel prizes. Science editor …
Germany’s PISA 2025 results are its weakest on record across science, mathematics and reading, with socioeconomic background explaining an unusually large share of performance differences.
France’s 15-year-olds recorded their lowest PISA reading and mathematics scores since 2000, adding a major national case to a broader OECD decline in core academic performance.
In a first, physicists have directly observed gravity acting on a quantum object, testing Einstein's theory of general relativity at the quantum scale using ultracold atoms.
East Antarctica gained a record 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing the continent's long-term decline. Researchers found that tropical ocean warming altered atmospheric circulation and …
Biologists studying bacterial degradation of plant-based bioplastics have discovered an enzyme capable of dismantling both long-chain aliphatic polyesters and antibiotic compounds, a finding with potential implications for plastic waste management …
New analysis of the oldest known solar system solids suggests the protoplanetary disc had a magnetic field several times stronger than Earth's, indicating magnetism must be included in planet formation …
A shallow ML 3.1 earthquake near Galați followed an ML 4.1 intermediate-depth event in the Vrancea seismic zone, offering a clear example of how depth and magnitude describe different parts …
Federal models show why blast radius alone is a poor way to understand nuclear damage. Heat, debris, fires, radiation, fallout, hospital failure and communications loss combine into a cascading urban …
Researchers at UC San Diego have shown that RNA polymerase can accurately read an eight-letter genetic alphabet, doubling the four letters used by all known life. The finding advances efforts …
A new theoretical study demonstrates that the equivalence principle, the foundation of general relativity, remains valid for quantum particles, suggesting no fundamental conflict between quantum mechanics and gravity.
A leading Australian forensic scientist says the extreme conditions of the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster mean some bodies may never be recovered or identified, drawing on his experience with the Boxing …
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment in South Dakota has recorded a single particle interaction that cannot be explained by ordinary background noise, but researchers are cautious about claiming a dark matter discovery.
New research suggests a near-impermeable layer of dust ejected by the Chicxulub asteroid impact trapped radiation in Earth's atmosphere, causing extreme heat and wildfires that killed the dinosaurs within hours.
Researchers have identified more than 1,200 locations in the human genome associated with personality traits, offering the most detailed look yet at the biological underpinnings of traits like sociability, anxiety …
