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Earth was bombarded by impactors in its first couple billion years. These impacts created a vast network of hydrothermal systems in the crust that could've spawned life. New research examines their extent.

To truly understand what an asteroid is made up of, we need to send a probe to it. Remote sensing from ground-based telescopes, or even orbiting observatories, and only do so much. A new white paper submitted to the UK Space Agency’s 2035 Space Frontiers programme, pitches just such a mission architecture. Called the REndezvous Mission for Orbital Reconstruction of Asteroids (REMORA), the plan calls for a swarm of autonomous CubeSats to tag, track, and characterize multiple near-Earth asteroids.

If you’re like us, you’ve been following the close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in the June dusk sky. Next week, the Moon enters the evening scene, and actually occults (passes in front of) the planet Venus in what promises to be one of the top skywatching events for 2026.

Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it - about the amount expected based on fusion patterns of the stars it was born in. However, if you look at a dense, cold, molecular cloud - the kind where those stars actually form - it seems like 99% of the sulfur that is expected to be there is missing. Scientists have puzzled over this “missing sulfur problem” for decades, though a leading theory is that the element hides on icy dust grains making it hard to detect. A new paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Centro de Astrobiologia describes a new computer simulation model that they aimed to support the interpretation of laboratory results and test our current understanding of sulfur evolution in interstellar ices.

Scientists have developed an artificial photosynthesis system that essentially regulates itself, eliminating the need for batteries used in many current designs. The key innovation is an electrolyzer that automatically adapts to changing sunlight by altering its electrical properties as it heats up. This keeps solar fuel production more stable while reducing cost and complexity.

Scientists discovered that rice behaves in a highly unusual way: it weakens under rapid compression but stays stronger when pressure is applied slowly. Using this effect, they engineered a new material that reacts differently to gentle movements and sudden impacts. The material can adapt its stiffness automatically, opening the door to safer soft robots and protective equipment that responds instantly to collisions.

Scientists discovered that rice behaves in a highly unusual way: it weakens under rapid compression but stays stronger when pressure is applied slowly. Using this effect, they engineered a new material that reacts differently to gentle movements and sudden impacts. The material can adapt its stiffness automatically, opening the door to safer soft robots and protective equipment that responds instantly to collisions.

NASA has selected the Artemis III crew for a high-stakes 2027 mission designed to test the future of lunar exploration. Astronauts will launch aboard Orion and perform unprecedented docking operations with lunar landers being developed by both Blue Origin and SpaceX. The mission will require a remarkable sequence of heavy-lift rocket launches and complex in-space maneuvers, helping pave the way for future Moon landings and eventually crewed missions to Mars.

Student Gunnar Hartmann wins Nature’s 2026 Scientist at Work photography competition for this shot of migrating northern bald ibis in Spain

JWST has revealed dramatic differences between the dawn and dusk regions of the scorching exoplanet WASP-121 b. Fierce winds appear to carry heat from the planet’s permanent dayside, making the evening side hotter and more expanded. Scientists also found signs that water is being broken apart by extreme temperatures and that mysterious mineral clouds may be shaping the cooler side’s atmosphere.

With Steven Spielberg’s new extraterrestrial film Disclosure Day just out, it’s the ideal time to watch Close Encounter of the Third Kind – perhaps the perfect UFO film, says film columnist Bethan Ackerley

A study of 4.5 million people suggests that ex-smokers who take up vaping are more at risk of dying from lung cancer than people who quit without the use of e-cigarettes

Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too heavily on familiar patterns, potentially missing evidence of something truly new.

Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too heavily on familiar patterns, potentially missing evidence of something truly new.

Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too heavily on familiar patterns, potentially missing evidence of something truly new.

University of Florida researchers are exploring how lasers could help astronauts build structures on the moon using materials already available there, including lunar soil transformed into glass. The work, led by Victoria M. Miller, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and researcher with the UF Astraeus Space Institute, recently completed a research phase focused on laser forming, a manufacturing process that bends materials without physical contact.

After decades of searches, cosmologists are within reach of finding cosmic dawn. A longtime observational cosmologist explains.

DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.04044

Astronomers may have found the missing link in the SMBH feeding process. New observations with the JWST show that a galaxy's circumnuclear disk, which feeds gas into its black hole, is connected to a much larger network of filaments. Cool gas flows through these filaments into the SMBH's sphere of influence.

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte's The Story of Birds offers an excellent and sometimes startling account of bird evolution, finds Michael Marshall