This week’s science news: China turns deserts into carbon sinks, Viking-era graves hold giants with brain surgery, the beginnings of the real world, and nature’s last-minute Valentine’s gift ideas
This week’s science news was full of surprising stories about ecological change. Topping the list was the discovery that China has planted so many trees around the Taklamakan Desert that it has turned one of the world’s largest and driest places into a carbon sink that absorbs more carbon dioxide than it emits. The effort […]
President Trump is bringing auto pollution and other greenhouse gases back into America’s skies. The health risks we all face from climate change include:
On February 12, 2026, the Trump administration took a major step in its efforts to unravel U.S. climate policy, moving to rescind the 2009 endangered status designation. The certification is a formal recognition that the six greenhouse gases that cause climate change, including carbon dioxide and methane from burning fossil fuels, endanger public health and […]
Newly visible city-sized ‘green comet’ will soon be ejected into interstellar space like 3I/ATLAS
An impressive “green comet” the size of a small city will be lighting up the night sky as it approaches Earth next week. Experts predict that the giant ice ball will soon be ejected from the solar system forever, destined to drift through interstellar space like the “alien” comet 3I/ATLAS. The new comet, named C/2024 […]
Did modern humans wipe out the Neanderthals? New evidence may finally provide answers.
About 37,000 years ago, Neanderthals clustered in small groups in what is now southern Spain. Their lives may have been transformed by the eruption of the Phlegraean Fields in Italy a few thousand years earlier, when the caldera’s massive explosion disrupted food chains across the Mediterranean region. They may have gone about their daily life: […]
Study finds Canada could reduce annual carbon emissions five times by planting trees on the edge of the boreal forest
Canada could remove more than five times its annual carbon emissions from the atmosphere by the end of the century by planting trees along the northern edge of the boreal forest, a new study suggests. In recent decades, forests have been slowly moving northward in response to climate change. In particular, the taiga region at […]
Archeopteryx, one of the world’s first primitive birds, has a series of strange features never seen before, a new study reveals
Researchers have discovered a series of interesting, never-before-seen features in the skull of Archeopteryx, an iconic dinosaur considered the fossil of an important transitional period in the evolution of birds, a new study reports. This characteristic, absent from flightless dinosaurs but common among living birds, may have allowed Archeopteryx to acquire, manipulate, and process food […]
NASA telescope discovers components of life ejected from comet 3I/ATLAS
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS ejected the building blocks of life as it passed Earth last year, according to new data from NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope. SPHEREx observed the rare interstellar visitor from its orbital position as it circled the sun and made its closest approach to Earth in December, before the comet began its long journey […]
Underground tunnel discovered in Stone Age tomb in Germany that may have been used for medieval cult rituals
Archaeologists excavating a Stone Age burial site in Germany have discovered a mysterious “earth tunnel”, probably built by someone in the Middle Ages to hide a ritual performed in secret thousands of years after the grave was dug. At the end of 2025, the German National Heritage Administration (LDA) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was […]
China has banned all fishing to save the Yangtze River. This “nuclear” option appears to be working.
China’s Yangtze River has shown signs of recovery since a 10-year commercial fishing ban was introduced in 2021. The number of large fish is increasing and endangered animals such as the Yangtze sturgeon (Sinosturia dabryanus) and the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) are also recovering, a new study finds. “These results show that restoring […]
Surprising research reveals that the oldest black hole in the universe may still exist
Immediately after the Big Bang, the newborn universe was a wild and hot place. In that cosmic soup, primordial black holes, the universe’s first black holes formed from pockets of extremely dense matter, could soon take shape. For many years, our understanding of these objects, especially small objects, was that they would eventually simply disappear […]