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By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have discovered the largest organic molecule containing sulfur — a key ingredient for life — ever identified in interstellar space. The researchers call the discovery a “missing link” in scientists’ understanding of the cosmic origins of life’s chemistry. Sulfur is the 10th most abundant element in the universe

By Amarachi Orie, CNN (CNN) — As the sea ice melts due to climate change, the trend of polar bears getting thinner and having fewer cubs has been well documented in areas such as Baffin Bay, a stretch of ocean between Greenland and Canada’s Baffin Island, and Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada. A population of

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists have discovered a 1,400-year-old Zapotec tomb in southern Mexico, adorned with complex carvings, which has been called “the most significant archaeological discovery of the last decade.” Located in San Pablo Huitzo, in the state of Oaxaca, the tomb was built by the Zapotec culture in around the year

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan yearned for the American dream while growing up in southern India in the 1960s: specifically, a Chevrolet Impala, a muscle car he learned about from his father, a tire salesman. Ramanathan made it to the United States in his 20s, but he never bought his gas

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — NASA’s Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off 40 years ago with an unusual crew. In addition to six astronauts, the mission took flight with a teacher on board. Christa McAuliffe, the first educator selected for a new Teacher in Space Project, said in a news conference before the flight that

CNN By Kristen Rogers, CNN (CNN) — At the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists created the Doomsday Clock as a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to destroying the world. On Tuesday, nearly eight decades later, the clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest the timepiece has ever been

CNN By Kristen Rogers, CNN (CNN) — At the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists created the Doomsday Clock as a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to destroying the world. On Tuesday, nearly eight decades later, the clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest the timepiece has ever been

By Kristen Rogers, CNN (CNN) — At the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists created the Doomsday Clock as a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to destroying the world. On Tuesday, nearly eight decades later, the clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest the timepiece has ever been to

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — When four astronauts set off on their historic trip around the moon in NASA’s 16.5-foot-wide Orion spacecraft, they knew they’d be testing a known flaw with their spacecraft — one that had some experts urging the space agency not to fly the mission with humans on board. NASA remains

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The frigid temperatures, massive snow and deadly ice storm taking shape east of the Rockies might seem to conflict with life on a rapidly warming planet. But all of these things still happen, even with climate change, and some of them could be even more severe than before when

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Space junk falling out of orbit and crashing toward Earth is a growing threat. Indeed, old satellites and spacecraft parts reenter our planet’s atmosphere more than three times a day. When these objects burn through the atmosphere, they can release harmful substances, and if they reach Earth’s surface, they

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — As an electricity crunch drives bills higher around the country, big tech companies building power-hungry data centers are increasingly offering to pay for more of the energy they consume, so everyday people don’t get stuck with the bill. At least, that is the message from seven large tech companies

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — The outline of a hand made with red pigment on the wall of a cave in Indonesia at least 67,800 years ago may be the world’s oldest rock art, according to a new study. The faded hand stencil, along with other spectacular cave paintings on the island of Sulawesi,

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Longtime NASA astronaut Suni Williams announced her retirement Tuesday — officially making the unexpectedly long Boeing Starliner test flight her final foray to orbit as a member of the astronaut corps. Williams, who has set multiple spaceflight records since joining the agency in 1998, did not give insight into

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The world has entered “an era of global water bankruptcy” with irreversible consequences, according to a new United Nations report. Regions across the world are afflicted by severe water problems: Kabul may be on course to be the first modern city to run out of water. Mexico City is

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Astronomers have long searched for clues that a hidden companion star sits out of view near the red supergiant star Betelgeuse. Now, they’ve uncovered a new piece of evidence: a trail like the wake behind a boat, cutting through Betelgeuse’s upper atmosphere, likely forged by the unseen companion. Betelgeuse’s

CNN, ANTONIO J. OSUNA-MASCARÓ, CURRENT BIOLOGY By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — How does a cow scratch an itch on its back? An Austrian cow named Veronika has a solution that could change how we view livestock. For the past decade, Veronika has been observed by her owner occasionally picking up sticks with her mouth,

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Powerful solar activity released by the sun reached Earth Monday, causing colorful auroral displays and GPS issues for aircraft, according to the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center, or SWPC. A solar radiation storm, ranked at a level four out of five on a severity scale, was tracked

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — How does a cow scratch an itch on its back? An Austrian cow named Veronika has a solution that could change how we view livestock. For the past decade, Veronika has been observed by her owner occasionally picking up sticks with her mouth, maneuvering the ends to reach areas

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Artist, inventor and anatomist Leonardo da Vinci was the definition of a Renaissance man — and scientists are aiming to unlock the secrets of his genius on a genetic level. But there’s just one wrinkle: More than 500 years after his death in 1519, Leonardo’s DNA has proved virtually

By Jasmin Sykes, CNN (CNN) — Images of plants painted on pottery made up to 8,000 years ago may be the earliest example of humans’ mathematical thought, a study has found. Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined pottery produced by the Halafian people of northern Mesopotamia, who lived between 6200 BC and 5500

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Tyrannosaurus rex lived longer and took more time to reach its maximum size than previously thought, according to a new study. Scientists have long counted annual growth rings in fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex leg bones to calculate both their age at death and how fast they grew to adult size.

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — On the vast expanse of the Siberian steppe 14,000 years ago, a 2-month-old wolf pup gobbled down some woolly rhinoceros flesh. Moments later, its underground den collapsed, killing the pup and its sister. The wolf’s stomach contents, frozen in permafrost along with its corpse, have allowed scientists to sequence

CNN By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down early Thursday in the Pacific Ocean, ending a weeklong effort to get an unnamed crew member home to evaluate a medical issue. “NASA was ready. The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency,

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Four astronauts aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down early Thursday in the Pacific Ocean, ending a weeklong effort to get an unnamed crew member home to evaluate a medical issue. “NASA was ready. The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency, working

CNN By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Four astronauts are now en route home from the International Space Station, marking the first time NASA has brought a crew home prematurely amid a health concern. And their unprecedented early departure leaves behind a bare-bones staff to look after the outpost. Only three people remain on the

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Horses can detect fear in humans by smell, becoming more likely to startle and more wary of people who are scared, a new study has found. Researchers collected samples of odor compounds from the armpits of human study participants and then observed how the horses behaved when they were

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — Congress is poised to reject President Donald Trump’s “astounding” proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as NASA’s Earth science programs. Trump sought to slash spending in scientific research at NOAA and NASA, among other agencies. The administration’s budget request would have eliminated all of

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Four astronauts are now en route home from the International Space Station, marking the first time NASA has brought a crew home prematurely amid a health concern. And their unprecedented early departure leaves behind a bare-bones staff to look after the outpost. Only three people remain on the orbiting

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Particles from Earth’s atmosphere have been carried into space by solar wind and have been landing on the moon for billions of years, mixing into the lunar soil, according to a new study. The research sheds new light on a puzzle that has endured for over half a century

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — Dark-eyed junco songbirds have been serenading the University of California, Los Angeles campus for decades as they forage for food. The species from the sparrow family is not usually found in cities. But as the climate crisis affected their mountain forest habitats, they started taking up residence in Southern

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Four astronauts will return from the International Space Station more than a month ahead of schedule after an unnamed crew member experienced a medical issue. The incident marks the first time in history NASA has brought astronauts home from the space station early because of a medical issue. NASA

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — There were 23 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the United States last year, adding up to a total of $115 billion in damages, according to a new report from the climate research nonprofit Climate Central. The report, and establishment of the Billion-Dollar Disasters Database within Climate Central,

By Amarachi Orie, CNN (CNN) — Toddlers can pick up new words just by overhearing conversations. Now, new research suggests that some intelligent dogs can expand their vocabulary in just the same way. Children as young as 18 months old can learn labels for objects by listening to other people’s exchanges, according to a study

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Astronomers may have discovered a previously unknown type of astronomical object, nicknamed “Cloud-9,” that could shed light on dark matter, one of the biggest mysteries in the universe. Dark matter is an enigmatic substance that shapes the cosmos and provides it with structure. While it has never been directly

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump wants the US to sell Venezuela’s oil. But who would buy it? China has long been one of Venezuela’s biggest customers for oil. But its hunger for that oil is waning, as the country pulls off a stunningly fast transition to electric vehicles. That transition means

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — NASA said on Wednesday it was postponing a spacewalk at the International Space Station that was scheduled for Thursday, citing a “medical concern” with one of the crew members. The space agency did not name the astronaut involved but confirmed later the issue was related to a “single crew

By Andrew Freedman, Ella Nilsen, Samantha Waldenberg, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration is pulling the United States out of the bedrock treaty that underpins international cooperation on climate change, along with dozens of other global bodies, according to a memorandum released by the White House Wednesday evening and an accompanying social media post. Such

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Scientists have detected traces of plant toxins on Stone Age arrowheads that were used by hunter-gatherers in South Africa about 60,000 years ago. The find marks the oldest known poison arrows and indicates that such tools and sophisticated hunting strategies existed thousands of years early than previously thought, according

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Fossils unearthed in Morocco from a little-understood period of human evolution may help scientists resolve a long-standing mystery: Who came before us? Three jawbones, including one from a child, teeth, vertebrae and a femur were unearthed from a cave known as Grotte à Hominidés in Thomas Quarry in Casablanca,

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN London (CNN) — An almost complete battle trumpet dating back around 2,000 years to the Iron Age has been unearthed by in England. According to the archaeologists who found it, the carnyx, as it is known, was part of an “internationally significant” hoard of Iron Age objects found during a routine

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Burned bone fragments found in northern Malawi have revealed the oldest cremation pyre ever found in Africa — and unearthed new mysteries that may be hard to solve. By analyzing the bones and pyre sediments, researchers believe that hunter-gatherers cremated the body of a woman about 9,500 years ago,

By Lily Hautau, CNN (CNN) — The wolf moon, the first full moon of the year, will ring in 2026, gracing the sky this weekend, but the lunar event will make the Quadrantid meteor shower a bit harder to spot. The silvery orb will start to look large in the sky around New Year’s Eve

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration ordered an aging coal-fired power plant in Colorado to stay open on Tuesday, a day before it was set to be retired. The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright will keep the nearly 50-year-old Craig Generating Station Unit 1 in northwest Colorado operating until the end

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Bright full moons, dazzling meteor shower displays and remarkable total eclipses will give stargazers plenty of reasons to look to the sky in 2026. The new year kicks off with the full wolf moon on Saturday, the first of three supermoons this year. Jupiter, the largest planet in our

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Human evolution’s biggest mystery, which emerged 15 years ago from a 60,000-year-old pinkie finger bone, finally started to unravel in 2025. Analysis of DNA extracted from the fossil electrified the scientific community in 2010, when it revealed a previously unknown human population that had, in the distant past, encountered

By Maggie Koerth, CNN (CNN) — This year is not a particularly white Christmas. Across the United States, families are gathering to enjoy a walk on a warm, sunny day. The fingerprints of climate change are all over the 2025 holiday season, and we at CNN thought it would be a great time to find

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Researchers across the globe put on their sleuthing hats this year to provide answers to questions that have lingered from decades to centuries. The thought-provoking findings offer new ways of understanding the past. Archaeological exploration of historic sites yielded fresh insights. An analysis of a quarry containing unfinished statues

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — In the latest blow to the US offshore wind industry, the Trump administration announced Monday it is suspending the federal leases for all large offshore wind projects currently under construction, citing unspecified national security risks. It marks a major escalation in President Donald Trump’s attacks against offshore wind, a

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Residents of mid-Atlantic states like Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania who have spent years plagued by high electricity bills just got some bad news: Relief is not on the way. As CNN recently reported, utility customers in Maryland and Washington, DC, are some of the first in the country

By Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN (CNN) — Iraq, the historic “land between two rivers,” faces a crisis striking at its identity as the Tigris and Euphrates shrink dramatically amid severe drought and the increasing toll of upstream dams, helping create the country’s worst water shortages for decades. Once symbols of abundance, the two rivers, which both originate

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — Michaela Benthaus, a 33-year-old German aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, just became the first wheelchair user ever to travel past the Kármán Line — a common demarcation for outer space that lies 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. Her history-making trip aboard a Blue

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The Ursid meteor shower, which marks the final celestial event of the year, will peak between Sunday night and early Monday morning. Sky-gazers can expect to see five to 10 meteors per hour between midnight and 5 a.m. ET Monday, or between 9 p.m. PT Sunday and 2 a.m.

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — Along with its many other innovations, the Roman Empire revolutionized architecture with never-before-seen features, such as large-scale arches and dome roofs. And many of these structures still stand today despite being more than 2,000 years old. None of it would have been possible without the Romans’ infallible building material:

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Only a scattering of light penetrates the deep water, more than 300 feet beneath the ocean surface off the coast of Guam. It’s like twilight to the human eye, even in the middle of the day. This part of the ocean, known as the upper twilight zone, is one

By Jack Guy, CNN London (CNN) — An ancient woman thought to have hailed from sub-Saharan Africa and therefore to have been the first known Black Briton actually had fairer skin and was from southern England, researchers using new DNA sequencing have found. The remains of the individual, who became known as Beachy Head Woman,

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — An interstellar comet first spotted passing through our solar system in July is beginning its departure from our corner of the universe — but first it will fly by Earth, and scientists are capturing stunning new images during its approach. Known as 3I/ATLAS, the comet will make its closest

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A Blue Origin rocket will soon launch carrying an unconventional passenger in a history-making moment made possible by a high-profile former employee of the company’s biggest rival. Michaela Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, will be aboard the mission, known as NS-37, and become

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — Contrary to popular depictions of bee nests as large, intricate hives that hang from trees, the majority of bee species — about 90% — are actually solitary and build their nests in the ground or within rotting logs and the stems of plants. But researchers recently discovered what is

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A monthslong saga featuring tech billionaire Jared Isaacman — President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again pick to run NASA — has finally come to a close as the Senate confirmed his appointment in a 67-to-30 vote. Isaacman, a private astronaut and CEO of payments company Shift4, is now set to

By Andrew Freedman, CNN NEW ORLEANS (CNN) — Stress balls were the swag item of choice at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s booth Wednesday morning, during the world’s largest gathering of climate scientists. NCAR representatives came to this meeting — the convention of the American Geophysical Union — to talk about their research, which

By Chris Mooney, Yumi Asada (CNN) — Bathtubs and pools mislead us about the ocean: Its surface is anything but flat. Seas pile up in some spots, pushed by trade winds or pulled by gravity toward big things like ice sheets. Amid it all, at the western end of large ocean basins, the fastest surface

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Hundreds gathered to say goodbye when 700-year-old Pizol died. The funeral in Switzerland in 2019 was solemn. Mourners wore black; flowers were laid; a priest spoke. It was a symbolic moment: Pizol had been a glacier, but human-driven climate change had reduced it to some scattered chunks of ice.

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins off the coast of British Columbia have been observed cooperating with orcas, a traditional enemy that’s better known for taking out great white sharks than friendly interaction. Scientists say they have documented the dolphins and a local population of killer whales known as

By Chris Mooney Planet-warming pollution rates exploded after the end of World War II. James Watt’s steam engine launched the Industrial Revolution in 1769. Before that, for thousands of years, humans were clearing forested land for farming, releasing carbon from trees and plants into the atmosphere. The severity of global warming has long depended on

By Gina Park, CNN (CNN) — Avid sky-gazers spend all year anticipating the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Now, it’s finally here. This weekend, dozens of meteors, including some especially brilliant ones called fireballs, are expected to streak across the night sky in a dazzling display. The celestial event is widely considered one

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Nothing on the surface of this scrubby expanse of western Nevada desert, overlooked by towering, craggy mountains, gives even a hint of what lies beneath. But a few thousand feet underground is a hidden source of abundant clean energy — and it was discovered in an unusual way. Utah-headquartered

By Taylor Nicioli, CNN (CNN) — When an ancient ship was unearthed in Scandinavia over 100 years ago, archaeologists started to uncover bits and pieces of its history. On board the plank-built vessel was a hoard of weapons — swords, spears, shields and more — revealing a tale of warriors who attempted to attack the

By Ella Nilsen, Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The Environmental Protection Agency has altered and removed information from its website that connected climate change to the burning of fossil fuels. The changes come as the Trump administration tries to supercharge US oil and gas production and resurrect the coal industry. Now, the EPA’s webpage detailing

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — A field in eastern England has revealed evidence of the earliest known instance of humans creating and controlling fire, a significant find that archaeologists say illuminates a dramatic turning point in the human story. In Barnham, Suffolk, the discovery of baked earth that formed a hearth, heat-shattered flint axes

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Swirling underwater “storms” are aggressively melting the ice shelves of two vital Antarctic glaciers, with potentially “far-reaching implications” for global sea level rise, according to a recent study. Antarctica is like a fist with a skinny thumb stuck out toward South America. Pine Island Glacier is near the base

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — Humans are far more monogamous than our primate cousins, but less so than beavers, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Cambridge in England analyzed the proportion of full siblings versus half-siblings across several animal species, as well as various human populations throughout history. Species and societies

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — Voyager 1, NASA’s deep-space probe, could soon become the first spacecraft to reach a historic milestone. In November 2026, the probe will be one light-day from Earth. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is the farthest spacecraft from our planet, currently exploring interstellar space 15.8 billion miles away. The term

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The Hubble Space Telescope and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer have captured fresh images of an interstellar comet as the object nears its closest approach to Earth later this month. Comet 3I/ATLAS has intrigued astronomers because it originated outside of our solar system yet was discovered traveling through our

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Scientists say they have solved the mystery of the Burtele foot, a set of 3.4 million-year-old bones found in Ethiopia in 2009. The fossils, along with others unearthed more recently, have now been linked to a little-known species that was a contemporary of the celebrated Australopithecus afarensis skeleton Lucy.

By Maggie Koerth, CNN (CNN) — Sometimes, what goes up doesn’t come back down — instead, it becomes a problem. Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, millions of pieces orbit the Earth, from broken satellites to lost screws and tiny hunks of splintered paint. The International Space Station has to dodge it.

By Lily Hautau, CNN (CNN) — Standing in Arizona’s largest dry lakebed, Wilcox Playa, astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy steadied himself as freight trains thundered by, threatening to blur the shot that took months to prepare. The crowd around McCarthy watched one morning last month in tense silence as he attempted and failed during six passes of

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN (CNN) — A high-traffic “dinosaur freeway” may have once stretched across a shoreline in what is now Bolivia. Traveling along this busy route were theropods — three-toed, bipedal meat-eating dinosaurs, which left behind thousands of fossil footprints. Paleontologists have now described their tracks for the first time, offering a rare glimpse

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — The Black Death — one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, estimated to have killed up to half of Europe’s population — might have been set in motion by a volcanic eruption, a new study suggests. By looking at tree rings from across Europe to better understand 14th

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Stephanie Tate couldn’t figure it out. After three years of living in her new Illinois home, her winter energy costs last year suddenly spiked to $400 per month. She had three different technicians come to look at her HVAC system and furnace, but nothing was wrong with it. She

By Gina Park, CNN (CNN) — Keep your eyes high in the sky this week to see the last supermoon of the year. December’s full supermoon, also called the cold moon, will be at its fullest around 6:14 p.m. ET Thursday, according to EarthSky. “On Thursday, the moon will rise right around sunset time, and

By Jackie Wattles, CNN (CNN) — A rare spectacle played out on Capitol Hill as Jared Isaacman — the billionaire tech entrepreneur and Elon Musk ally who has been tapped to serve as NASA administrator — faced a second confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The two-hour hearing was livestreamed

By Andrew Freedman, CNN (CNN) — The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ended November 30, showcased the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence for storm forecasting. And experts say there is no turning back. This season, the National Hurricane Center supplemented its usual cadre of traditional models with AI-driven models, including one developed by Google

By Simone McCarthy, Mike Valerio, Fred He, John Liu, CNN Beijing (CNN) — A private Chinese space firm successfully sent its Zhuque-3 rocket to orbit but failed in its historic attempt to re-land the rocket booster Wednesday – the first such trial by a Chinese firm as the country’s growing commercial space sector races to

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — Zillow, the nation’s largest real estate listing website, has removed extreme weather risk data meant to help buyers figure out if the biggest purchase of their life is particularly susceptible to floods, high winds or wildfires. Now, other major real estate listing websites are facing pressure to do the

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — Rows of worshippers, some with their faces raised toward the sky, others with their heads bowed, prayed for rain at a mosque in Tehran earlier this month. Theirs is an increasingly desperate plea. The city is grappling with a water crisis so severe the Iranian president has suggested people

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — The origins of domestic cats — centuries before they conquered the world’s sofas and internet memes — have long been murky. Now, ancient DNA is helping to fill in the blanks, and the findings shake up the traditional story. Archaeologists had thought that cats and humans began living with

By Brad Lendon, Nina Subkhanberdina, CNN (CNN) — A launch pad at Russia’s main space complex was damaged during Thursday’s launch of a mission carrying two Russians and an American to the International Space Station, Moscow’s space agency announced. The Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft successfully docked with the space station and the three crew members had

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — Tryptophan, the essential amino acid behind the Thanksgiving myth that eating turkey can make you sleepy, has been found to exist on Bennu, a small asteroid that swings by our planet about every six years. The discovery stems from an unprecedented sample collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which landed

By Laura Paddison, CNN (CNN) — The surging tide of microplastics is already an environmental and health threat, but as the world heats up — driving increasingly extreme weather — it’s transforming them into “more mobile, persistent, and hazardous pollutants,” according to a new study, which calls for urgent action. The connection between plastic and

By Katie Hunt, CNN (CNN) — Archaeologists say a 3D model of a centuries-old quarry of unfinished stone head statues on Easter Island offers new clues about how these monuments were made and the Polynesian society that brought them into being. Also known as Rapa Nui, the remote island is famed for the gargantuan sculptures

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — A female wild wolf living on the central coast of British Columbia was filmed pulling a crab trap out of the ocean to eat the bait — a never-before-seen behavior that could constitute the first documented use of tools by a wolf. The traps were set by the Heiltsuk

By Jack Guy, CNN (CNN) — New Zealand has announced plans to eradicate feral cats by 2050, as part of efforts to protect the country’s biodiversity. Speaking to Radio New Zealand on Thursday, conservation minister Tama Potaka said that feral cats are “stone cold killers” and would be added to the country’s Predator Free 2050

By Amanda Schupak, CNN (CNN) — The clever, adaptable urban raccoon may be evolving a shorter snout — a key physical trait of pets and other domesticated animals. The new finding describes what a biologist says could be the first account of domestication in its earliest stages. For Raffaela Lesch, an assistant professor at the

By Laura Paddison, Andrew Freedman, Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — The world struck a new climate deal at the COP30 summit in Brazil Saturday, which calls for a tripling of funding to help countries adapt to increasingly severe climate impacts. But countries failed to agree to a roadmap away from fossil fuels, after entrenched divisions

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — A series of about 5,200 holes stretching nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) across the Pisco Valley in the southern Peruvian Andes has baffled researchers for nearly a century. But a fresh look at the site, called Monte Sierpe, or “serpent mountain,” may help archaeologists to decipher why ancient people

By Ella Nilsen, Steve Contorno, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration is proposing to open federal waters off the entire coastline of California to drilling, as well as an area off the coast of Florida. Neither state’s waters have been open to new drilling for decades. President Donald Trump’s Interior Department released a five-year offshore

By Jacopo Prisco, CNN (CNN) — The universe’s expansion might not be accelerating but slowing down, a new study suggests. If confirmed, the finding would upend decades of established astronomical assumptions and rewrite our understanding of dark energy, the elusive force that counters the inward pull of gravity in our universe. Two separate teams of

By Ashley Strickland, CNN (CNN) — The latest images of an interstellar comet shared by NASA have captured how an array of spacecraft witnessed a flyby that was truly out of this world, revealing clues to the object’s composition. Astronomers first detected the rare comet, known as 3I/ATLAS, on July 1. It’s only the third

By Ella Nilsen, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration moved on Wednesday to roll back Biden-era protections for endangered species and their habitats. The Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service proposed restoring rules from the first Trump administration that stripped safeguards for plants and animals threatened by human development