Science•Jul 20, 2026AI Read 170,000 Bird Bones and Found That Evolution Moves in BurstsAn AI measurement system and a new statistical model reconstructed nearly 50 million years of songbird body evolution. The results link rare bursts of anatomical change with periods of climate instability, but they show historical association rather than proof that climate caused every shift.
Science•Jul 20, 2026A Coral World Presumed Dead for 60 Years Was Found Alive by Underwater DronesSonar, an underwater drone and deep-sea cameras have revealed living coral gardens 54 metres below the sea off Benin. The find overturns a decades-old assumption, but scientists have sampled only a small area and have not yet confirmed the coral species.
Science•Jul 18, 2026The Dinosaurs Were Even Unluckier Than We Thought: Their Killer Asteroid Was an Extreme RarityNickel isotopes preserved in the global clay layer left by the Chicxulub impact point to a rare CO carbonaceous chondrite as the object that struck Earth 66 million years ago. The finding narrows the asteroid’s identity and suggests atmospheric dust, rather than sulfur carried by the asteroid itself, played the larger role in the mass extinction.
Science•Jul 16, 2026Scientists Confirm a Striking New Monkey Species Hidden in the Congo RainforestGenetic, anatomical and acoustic evidence has confirmed Likweli—Colobus congoensis—as a distinct African monkey species, only the fifth described on the continent in 75 years. Its orange facial mask and tiny known range make the discovery visually remarkable and scientifically urgent: researchers believe the species may already be endangered.
Science•Jul 16, 2026A Meteorite That Struck a Home Preserved Brines and Organic Chemistry From an Ancient AsteroidA meteorite recovered immediately after crashing through a New Jersey home preserved unusually delicate evidence of ancient salty fluids, amino acids and other organic compounds. The pristine CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite offers a rare natural sample of how water reshaped primitive asteroids—but it is evidence of prebiotic chemistry, not extraterrestrial life.
Science•Jul 15, 2026Scientists Built a Material That Remembers Where to Send Heat, Even After the Power Is OffA programmable device can control the direction of thermal radiation and preserve its selected state without continuous power, opening a possible route to smarter cooling, infrared sensors and photonic memory.
Science•Jul 15, 2026A ‘Quantum Bath’ Keeps Distant Qubits Entangled Without Active ControlISTA physicists experimentally realized a two-decade-old proposal: a shared stream of correlated microwave photons can autonomously generate and stabilize entanglement between separated superconducting qubits. The proof of concept transfers only about 10% of the available entanglement, so scaling remains unproven.
Science•Jul 14, 2026AI Reads a Herculaneum Scroll Sealed for Nearly 2,000 YearsResearchers have virtually unwrapped and read an entire carbonized Herculaneum scroll without physically opening it. The combination of high-resolution X-ray imaging, geometry and machine learning could recover hundreds of texts long considered permanently lost.
