Science stories on Noozify — original reporting and curated links, ranked by the community.
A Science Advances paper argues that bacteria and archaea did not descend from one free-living ancestor but became free-living independently, each inventing structurally different enzymes to catalyze the same essential reaction. The shared genetic code would then predate the cell rather than arrive with it, with early metabolism running on a mix of metal and enzyme catalysis around hydrothermal vents. Lead author Natalia Mrnjavac frames it as two separate first attempts at living outside the vent.
Researchers fed glycerol to microbes already living in water from a former uranium mine, and within 130 days almost all of the dissolved uranium was gone — converted into a pentavalent form that chemistry textbooks treat as too short-lived to survive in the environment. Samples have now stayed stable for more than 25 years under atmospheric oxygen, which is what turns this from a curiosity into a remediation strategy.
CT scans of Tametara mirim, an exceptionally preserved Late Cretaceous fossil from Brazil, let researchers reconstruct the skull and brain of a snake that lived 80 million years ago. Its braincase points to a burrowing lifestyle, while related species show terrestrial and even marine adaptations — evidence that early snakes weren't following one evolutionary path but branching into many at once.
Cambridge and Copenhagen researchers show that local representation, proportional results, and a fixed parliament size can't all hold simultaneously past a certain number of competing parties — an Arrow's-theorem-style impossibility result. Their proposed workaround, "geographically ranked guaranteed proportionality," preserves the other two by giving up the first.
A quantum computer was supposed to be the only machine on Earth that could solve it. Then a physicist ran the numbers on his laptop — and got a better answer. The result is quietly reshaping one of tech's loudest debates.
An international team announced 31 quasars, including the two oldest observed yet, using the European Space Agency's Euclid telescope. The light from the oldest pair comes from when the universe was roughly 670 million years old.
Deep Fission, a Berkeley startup newly listed on Nasdaq, wants to use the water column and billions of tons of rock to replace the pressure vessel and containment dome. One hole would generate 15 megawatts; 100 on a single site could add up to 1.5 gigawatts.
A SpaceX rocket lifted off from Florida just as a Blue Origin rocket exploded, creating a dramatic split-screen moment in the ongoing commercial space race.
Researchers have catalogued previously unknown species and strains of Ebola and hantaviruses, deepening understanding of how these deadly pathogens evolve and spread.
Remains previously thought to belong to miniature armoured dinosaurs are actually baby ankylosaurs, offering scientists new insight into how these remarkable dinosaurs developed.
Between inflation, war, and global supply issues, the energy shortage persists. Hydrogen — the most abundant element in the universe — could be the clean fuel that changes everything.