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A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies

Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century

This is the last batch I have, so please send in your good wildlife photos. I know some of you out there are hoarding them. Don’t make me beg!

Fortunately, UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson has sent some photos of life in tide pools. Abby’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

The weather over New Year’s was stormy; most of these pictures were taken when the rain let up for a few hours.   There are generally fewer creatures visible at this time of year in any case-—the big surge in intertidal species happens in the spring in Northern California.   An exception was one particular species of nudibranch,  Phidiana hiltoni, of which there were dozens for some reason.

Genus Heptacarpus (some kind of shrimp). Not a great photo, but the color is true, and if you look closely you can see she’s carrying eggs:

Superfamily Mytiloidea (some kind of mussel). Tidepools make you very aware of how much we don’t know.  This mussel species moved into my local pools in 2022, and this ID is still the best I have for it:

Pisaster ochraceus (Ochre star) Admiring his reflection:

Pollicipes polymerus (Gooseneck barnacle). The red “lips” on this cluster (common this time of year) I’ve read variously are because of the shade they’re in, the cool weather, high hemoglobin levels, or all of the above:

A baby gooseneck barnacle:

Velutina velutina (velvet shell snail):

Family Ampithoidae (some kind of amphipod). Again not a great photo but the spectacular color is true. The next photo shows the whole animal:

Family Ampithoiuidae:

Phidiana hiltoni (nudibranch) This was the species there were dozens of, with very few other species putting in an appearance:

It cleared up just at sunset one day, for this nice view over Bodega Head:

Lately we’ve been reporting about a series of studies on the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), NASA’s flagship telescope mission for the 2040s. These studies have looked at the type of data they need to collect, and what the types of worlds they would expect to find would look like. Another one has been released in pre-print form on arXiv from the newly formed HWO Technology Maturation Project Office, which details the technology maturation needed for this powerful observatory and the “trade space” it will need to explore to be able to complete its stated mission.

Quantum technology has reached a turning point, echoing the early days of modern computing. Researchers say functional quantum systems now exist, but scaling them into truly powerful machines will require major advances in engineering and manufacturing. By comparing different quantum platforms, the study reveals both impressive progress and steep challenges ahead. History suggests the payoff could be enormous—but not immediate.

There’s a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the Moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4%), but non-negligible. And scientists are starting to prepare both for the bad (massive risks to satellites and huge meteors raining down on a large portion of the planet) and the good (a once in a lifetime chance to study the geology, seismology, and chemical makeup of our nearest neighbor). A new paper from Yifan He of Tsinghua University and co-authors, released in pre-print form on arXiv, looks at the bright side of all of the potential interesting science we can do if a collision does, indeed, happen.

Oh no! Another pop quiz. Take the challenge: 9 questions about space. Think you can get them all?

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Bright white rocks spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover are rewriting what we thought we knew about ancient Mars. These aluminum-rich clays, called kaolinite, usually form on Earth only after millions of years of heavy rainfall in warm, humid environments—conditions similar to tropical rainforests. Their presence on today’s cold, dry Mars suggests the planet once had abundant rain, flowing water, and possibly lush oases long ago. Even more puzzling, the rocks are scattered across the landscape with no obvious source nearby, hinting at dramatic ancient events like floods, river transport, or asteroid impacts.

An evolution-inspired framework for how quantum fuzziness gives rise to our classical world shows that even imperfect observers can eventually agree on an objective reality

Physicists have discovered that hidden magnetic order plays a key role in the pseudogap, a puzzling state of matter that appears just before certain materials become superconductors. Using an ultra-cold quantum simulator, the team found that even when magnetism seems disrupted, subtle and universal magnetic patterns persist beneath the surface. These patterns closely track the temperature at which the pseudogap forms, suggesting magnetism may help set the stage for superconductivity.

How long did it take to establish the water content within Jupiter’s Galilean moons, Io and Europa? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of scientists from the United States and France investigated the intricate processes responsible for the formation and evolution of Io and Europa. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of two of the most unique moons in the solar system, as Io and Europa are known as the most volcanically active body in the solar system and an ocean world estimated to contain twice the volume of Earth’s oceans, respectively.

Excavations at an opencast mine in Greece have uncovered two wooden objects more than 400,000 years old that appear to have been fashioned as tools by an unknown species of ancient human

Icy comets contain common crystals that can only be formed in extreme heat. But comets reside in the frigid outer reaches of the Solar System. How did these materials form, and how did they find their way into the Solar System's cold fringes?

For years, scientists noticed that magnetic fields could improve steel, but no one knew exactly why. New simulations reveal that magnetism changes how iron atoms behave, making it harder for carbon atoms to slip through the metal. This slows diffusion at the atomic level and alters steel’s internal structure. The insight could lead to more efficient, lower-energy ways to make stronger steel.

A woman's fertility can be partly gauged by levels of a hormone that reflects how many eggs she has. Now, scientists have built a strip that changes colour according to levels of this hormone, which is present in period blood, into a menstrual pad

JWST has created a map of dark matter that is twice as good as anything we have had before, and it may help unravel some of the deepest mysteries of the universe

The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature

When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from solid to liquid, an unusual in-between state emerges, where atomic positions loosen like a liquid but still keep some solid-like order. Scientists at the University of Vienna have now captured this elusive “hexatic” phase in real time by filming an ultra-thin silver iodide crystal as it melted inside a protective graphene sandwich.

Water exists across Mars in underground ice, soil moisture, and atmospheric vapour, yet most of it remains frustratingly beyond practical reach for future explorers. A new comparative study from the University of Strathclyde evaluates the technologies that could extract this vital resource from various Martian sources, assessing each method's energy demands, scalability, and suitability for the Red Planet's harsh conditions.

Stars change in brightness for all kinds of reasons, but all of them are interesting to astronomers at some level. So imagine their excitement when a star known as J0705+0612 (or, perhaps more politically incorrectly, ASASSN-24fw) dropped to around 2.5% of its original brightness for 8.5 months. Two new papers - one from Nadia Zakamska and her team at the Gemini Telescope South and one from Raquel Forés-Toribio at Ohio State and her co-authors - examine this star and have come to the same conclusion - it’s likely being caused by a circumsecondary disk.