As artificial intelligence explodes in popularity, two of its pioneers have nabbed the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics. The prize goes to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced October 8. These computational tools, which […]

Dozens of fugitive stars were caught fleeing a dense star cluster in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The swarm of speeding stars could mean that such runaways had a bigger influence on cosmic evolution than previously thought, astronomers report October 9 in Nature. Massive stars are born in young clusters, packed so close […]

Cancer-destroying particle beams have been caught red-handed. Particle beams can deliver a burst of destructive energy directly to tumors – assuming the beam is in the right place. Now, using a radioactive beam, scientists have determined the location of the beam while treating tumors in mice. It is the first successful treatment of tumors with […]

One of the most distant quasars known appears to have shut down the formation of new stars in all galaxies in its vicinity. A quasar is a powerful source of light created by hot gas swirling around a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy. Intense radiation from a quasar, called VIK J2348-3054, […]

Contrary to a previous report, there is no evidence for an intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri, the Milky Way’s most massive and luminous globular star cluster, a new study finds. Instead, a hive of much smaller black holes dipping in and out of the tightly packed star cluster could explain the motion and distribution […]

Extreme Climate Survey Scientific news is collecting questions from readers about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Most “radiant cooling” designs involve roofs designed to receive and then emit the sun’s energy in infrared wavelengths that […]

One of the most compelling possible signs of extraterrestrial communication may have an astrophysical explanation. Called “Wow!” signal, the bright burst of radio waves has challenged our understanding since its discovery in the 1970s. Now, scientists using archived data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suggest a new possible source for the signal: a […]

A distant stellar nursery holds a cluster of newborn worlds the size of Jupiter, the smallest of which is surrounded by a disk of dust that may one day form moons. The detailed discovery, made thanks to the unprecedented sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope, could provide new insights into the formation of stars […]

Among the more than 500 species of bacteria that thrive in the human mouth, one seems to play by its own rules. Instead of reproducing by dividing into two, as most bacteria do, Corynebacterium matruchotii divides into 14 cells simultaneously, researchers report on Sept. 10. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This video shows […]