Science

The Vela Junior supernova, also known as RX J0852.0-4622 or G266.2-1.2, exploded a few thousand years ago, leaving behind a glowing nebula, but scientists couldn’t answer just how far away it was and how big the explosion was. That has changed with the discovery of a still-forming star, Ve 7-27. Using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic

Mars being occulted by the moon. The bright star Regulus will be occulted by the full moon on Feb. 2 (Image credit: Getty Images) Stargazers in eastern North America will see something truly rare in the night sky this weekend: a very bright star being occulted by the full " Snow Moon ." After turning

Overture Films If there's one thing scarier than a classic horror movie, it's when Hollywood dares to try to remake them. In some cases, legendary big-screen nightmares have had their reputations tarnished by foolhardy attempts to replicate the terror of the original through remakes. Occasionally, that has paid off, with updated iterations matching or even

Two dimensional materials have drawn intense interest because their electronic and magnetic properties could power future technologies. Scientists have traditionally treated these two behaviors as separate. Engineers at Illinois Grainger Engineering have now shown that they are connected by the same underlying mathematics. In a study published in Physical Review X, researchers from The Grainger

It has been a full year since one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent U.S. history began ripping through West Texas. The highly infectious disease has continued to burn across multiple U.S. states, Mexico and Canada since Texas reported an outbreak in children in January 2025. The U.S. had been virtually free of the

More than 10,000 years ago, people living in the southwestern United States carried a wild ancestor of the modern potato across long distances. According to a study published January 21, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One, this movement likely helped the plant spread beyond its original habitat. The research was led by Lisbeth Louderback

This image is the sum of 86 observations added together, representing over three million seconds of Chandra observing time. It spans just about 60 light-years across, which is a veritable pinprick on the entire sky. The underlying image contains lower-, medium-, and higher-energy X-rays in red, green, and blue respectively. The annotations on the image

Dark matter keeps everything in the whole universe tethered together, acting like a cosmic glue. Although it plays such a pivotal role, scientists haven’t even scratched the surface of this mystifying force. Unlike normal matter — from the atoms within us to entire planets in space — dark matter doesn’t emit or absorb light, making

John insisted that the central idea of his work — that factors in an egg can reset a differentiated nucleus to run embryogenesis again — should not feel mysterious. After all, reprogramming happens at every fertilization, when the sperm nucleus is rewritten by the oocyte. What was surprising, and what John proved with rigor in

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer was the Book Club’s January read Dittmeier The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December – Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games – to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot , which won the Arthur C. Clarke