News Desk

It sounds like the opening of a sci-fi film, but US scientists recently uploaded a copy of the brain of a living fly into a simulation. In San Francisco, biotechnology company Eon Systems created a virtual insect that knew how to walk, fly, groom and feed in its virtual environment. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, have taught a petri dish containing 200,000 human brain cells to play the iconic 90s shooter Doom. One experiment has pushed a brain into a computer; the other has plugged a computer into brain cells.

A new genetic study published in the journal Cell is filling in some important details about the earliest inhabitants of Palau, an island nation in the western Pacific Ocean consisting of approximately 340 islands.

Astronomers have identified a planet composed of molten lava, suggesting the existence of an entirely new category of liquid planet. The distant world, known as L98-59d, is about 1.6 times the size of Earth and orbits a small red star 35 light years away.

Around 4,000 years ago, one of the world’s oldest civilizations emerged: The Indus Valley Civilization, flourishing in what is now Pakistan, western India, eastern Iran and parts of Afghanistan. In addition to building sizable cities, its people created a written script that consists of hundreds of signs that remain undeciphered…Could recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) help with decipherment?

A new study may have solved a long-standing mystery about the Moon’s magnetism: Why do lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions show evidence of an intense magnetic field sometimes rivaling or exceeding that of Earth today? The research has been published in Nature Geoscience.

A new study published in Scientific Reports suggests that the therapeutic effects of psychedelic mushrooms likely rely on a complex interplay of multiple chemical compounds rather than just a single active ingredient.

The partnership between ravens and wolves goes back to Norse mythology – Odin’s birds scouted ahead and led prey to the god’s canines, a relationship that provided food for all. The myth has some roots in reality: when wolves have a successful hunt, ravens are often observed first on the scene – and new research published Thursday in the journal Science put the legend to the test.

A new study, published in JAMA Network Open, reports the outcome of a clinical trial out of Johns Hopkins University assessing the effectiveness of psilocybin as a treatment for smokers attempting to quit. The trial compared the effectiveness of one dose of the “magic mushroom” drug to months of the common nicotine patch, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy in both groups. The results might push psilocybin into the limelight as a more effective addiction treatment.

The comet formed in a cold and distant part of the early Milky Way up to 12 billion years ago, potentially putting it just under 2 billion years the age of the universe.

In a study published in the journal Iran, researcher Gad Barnea has uncovered new evidence suggesting that Zoroastrian religious practices were more prevalent and left a deeper imprint on surrounding communities than previously recognized.

In his new book, “The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well With the Rest of Life” (Hachette Book Group, 2025), Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, explores these complex interdependencies found across the natural world, including the numerous mutualisms humans engage in, such as our relationships with dogs and with the microbes in our guts.

Two researchers discuss how ancient DNA is used to track how people moved and lived during Britain’s Bronze Age. The new paper, produced with colleagues from the U.S. and across Europe, has highlighted some of the more complex interactions between ancient populations that took place in north-west Europe.

Comet 3I/ATLAS continues to make astonishing headlines, thanks to new findings from astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This new research reveals that 3I/ATLAS is packed with an unusually large amount of the organic molecule methanol—more than almost all known comets in our own solar system. The findings are posted on the arXiv preprint server.

When the Spanish first reached the Andes, they found something surprising: Many of the locals had long, pointy heads. They discovered that the Collagua, an indigenous group in Peru that was conquered by the Inca, had a practice of shaping the head starting in infancy, before the skull bones fused and soft spots disappeared.

A new study, led by paleoanthropologist Amélie Beaudet at the Université de Poitiers in France, has now digitally pieced together Little Foot’s face for the first time. The research was published in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.

Thousands of years ago, European communities used a variety of plant and animal products to create elaborate meals, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Lara González Carretero of the University of York, U.K. and colleagues.