Science News

Large language model AIs might seem smart on a surface level but they struggle to actually understand the real world and model it accurately, a new study finds.

These leathery turtles spend most of their lives buried motionless in river mud, but burst into action to catch their unsuspecting prey.

The near-complete database reflects a spirit of trust and collaboration among the country’s scientific community — but will it last?

From delicate dandelions to mighty oak trees, millions of plants use seeds to reproduce. But where did the first seeds come from?

Stress can shape how memories are formed, a study in mice suggests. The findings could point the way to future treatments for PTSD and anxiety.

The Lafayette meteorite was discovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931, with no clear indication of how it got there. A new analysis of the rock reveals evidence of liquid water on Mars 742 million years ago.

Immune cells produced during severe COVID-19 infection may shrink tumors. The unexpected mechanism offers a new therapeutic possibility for advanced and treatment-resistant cancers.

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Researchers have analyzed mummified remains pulled from Siberia's permafrost in 2020 and determined they belong to a 3-week-old saber-toothed kitten that died at least 35,000 years ago.

Until now, Antarctica was the only continent on Earth without any known amber fossils. But sediment cores taken from below the seafloor have revealed a tiny piece of fossilized resin holding fragments of an ancient rainforest that covered the South Pole during the Cretaceous period.

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The sacrifice of at least 42 children in Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, was an effort to calm the anger of the Aztec rain god during a devastating drought, researchers have revealed.

The world's biggest coral — an organism made up of about a billion polyps — is about three times bigger than the previous record-holder and was discovered by chance during an expedition off the Solomon Islands.

After discussing the quirks in 3D modeling software, where a laser beam is treated as a solid object that can cast a shadow, scientists decided to experiment in real life — and found that laser beams can indeed cast a shadow under the right conditions.

Argentina's El Ojo is said to harbor UFOs and the ghosts of ancient deities, but as far as scientists can tell, the island is simply a fluke of nature that formed through erosion and water currents.

Fast radio bursts — powerful and poorly understood cosmic eruptions — tend to occur in massive galaxies that host long-dead stars known as magnetars, a new study suggests.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have detected possible signs of gases released by volcanic activity on a distant exoplanet.

It's rare to find gladiator memorabilia from Roman Britain, but archaeologists by Hadrian's Wall have just found a 2,000-year-old knife handle depicting a left-handed fighter.

Historical texts that mentioned details about the battle site helped researchers match the images to the lost town of al-Qadisiyyah.

The James Webb Space Telescope's discovery of unusually bright and massive galaxies soon after the Big Bang has cast doubt on the standard model of galaxy evolution and bolstered a rival theory for how physics may work on large scales, according to a team of astronomers.