By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A leopard-spotted rock that could prove whether life ever existed beyond Earth is sitting in a tube on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover grabbed up the sample, called Sapphire Canyon, from rocky outcrops on the edges of the Neretva Vallis, a valley sculpted by rivers that once flowed into an
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By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — The winner of a prestigious scientific photography competition has been disqualified after organizers concluded that his use of generative AI broke the rules. Ning Xu was named the winner of the annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition in September, but his video received a number of critical comments
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By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The Iran war was supposed to be a short, sharp strike that brought down the regime within a few weeks. Instead, the US finds itself enmeshed in a conflict that’s upending the world’s energy system. As oil and gas prices soar, there have been noticeable shifts toward clean energy,
Continue ReadingBy Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — A new genetic analysis has revealed potential clues to the longevity secrets of a giant tortoise named Jonathan, the world’s oldest land animal. Researchers say the findings could eventually inform treatments aimed at slowing age-related cellular decline in humans. Believed to be 194 years old, Jonathan is an Aldabra
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By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — AI executives are betting big on biology. They say their large language models that have already dramatically changed the fields of coding and software development and mathematics can upend biological research in the same way. But one company’s attempt to do so has already set off a wave of
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By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The Draconid meteor shower will briefly light up the sky Thursday night — and it won’t even keep onlookers out past midnight. The shower is expected to peak at 9 p.m. ET Thursday, but depending on viewers’ location, meteors will be visible into the wee hours of Friday morning,
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By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Margaret Hamilton, the groundbreaking researcher who helped create the field of software engineering and whose code helped land NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th century space race, has died. She was 90. Hamilton’s former employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, confirmed her death in a
Continue ReadingBy Jack Guy (CNN) — Forensic examination of human remains found around the funerary complexes of Ancient Egyptian kings has uncovered evidence that they belonged to servants who were sacrificed when the monarchs died, according to a new study. The remains of these servants, or retainers, were first excavated from the funerary complexes at Abydos,
Continue ReadingBy Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — An uninhabited volcanic island in the Southern Ocean used to be home to the largest penguin colony in the world — but not anymore. Scientists have discovered the staggering loss of more than half a million chinstrap penguins from the isolated outcrop. Chinstrap penguins, named for the narrow band
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By Issy Ronald, Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Henri B. Kagan and Kenso Soai have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in chemistry for designing revolutionary experiments that replicated chemical asymmetry, a feat only previously seen in nature. Their work has solved one of the field’s enduring mysteries and advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing, the award committee said
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