'I was not looking for this': Scientist accidentally finds shortcut to Mars that could slash travel time in half - A new study suggests early asteroid trajectory data could help design faster Mars missions, potentially cutting round-trip travel time to under a year.

2 hours ago

Mysterious green rocks in Pyrenees cave hint that prehistoric people were working copper there for 4,000 years -- Dozens of pieces of bright-green rock discovered in a cave in the Pyrenees may be evidence of copper smelting 7,000 years ago. -- Kristina Killgrove

2 hours ago

Estrogen in both the male and female brain shapes responses to trauma, study suggests -- Traumatic experiences can cause memory problems, and estrogen may be a key factor that shapes the brain's resilience against such stressors, a mouse study finds. -- Nicoletta Lanese

14 hours ago

NASA shares 12,000 new Artemis II photos -- NASA just uploaded more than 12,000 photos snapped by the Artemis II crew during their record-breaking flyby around the moon. Here are some of the most inspiring ones. -- Brandon Specktor

21 hours ago

3 cruise ship passengers are dead, and hantavirus is the suspected culprit: What to know -- Three people have died and three more have fallen ill on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean, and hantaviruses may be behind the cases. -- Nicoletta Lanese

22 hours ago

Centuries-old Christian Nubian murals inspire gorgeous fashion reconstructions -- Stunning clothes from medieval Christian Nubia have been re-created and put on models, whose performance brought onlookers to tears. -- Laura Geggel

1 day ago

Eta Aquariids to peak this week: How to see 'shooting stars' dropped by Halley's Comet -- The Eta Aquariids will peak May 5-6, with debris from Halley's Comet creating swift meteors, though bright moonlight will make them harder to see. -- Jamie Carter

1 day ago

Scientists identify 10,000 'impossible' exoplanet candidates, potentially tripling the number of known alien worlds -- A new study has identified a potentially record-breaking haul of transiting exoplanets, thanks to a machine learning algorithm that analyzed the light curves of more than 80 million previously overlooked stars. -- Harry Baker

2 days ago

Yellowstone's volcano may be fueled in a very different way than we thought -- Yellowstone eruptions may be driven by shifts in Earth's crust, rather than a deep well of magma, study finds. -- Sarah Wild

3 days ago

Surgery performed on a baby in the womb, a rogue chatbot deletes a company's database, why the universe could end much sooner than expected, and forecasters race to understand this year's rapid El Ni o. Science news this week - May 2, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend. By - Ben Turner - Published - 2 May 26

3 days ago

City birds appear to like men more than women, but experts have no idea why -- An analysis of 37 urban bird species found that men could get slightly closer to the avians than women could, suggesting that these animals recognize sex differences in humans. -- Kenna Hughes-Castleberry

3 days ago

May's Flower 'micromoon' will look extra small tonight, with a rare Blue Moon following -- May's full moon rises on May Day - May 1 - shortly after sunset, creating a dramatic spectacle for skywatchers. -- Jamie Carter

4 days ago

Poop-encrusted chamber pots from the Roman Empire reveal oldest known human cases of Crypto parasite -- Chamber pots from the frontier of the Roman Empire have provided the world's earliest evidence of humans infected with the Cryptosporidium parasite. -- Kristina Killgrove

4 days ago

'The detectors never stopped beeping!' Nearly 3,000 coins discovered in field are Norway's largest Viking hoard on record -- A Viking Age hoard of nearly 3,000 coins is the largest hoard of its kind ever found in Norway. -- Kristina Killgrove

4 days ago

'Two lives hang in the balance': Risky surgery in the womb saved baby from deadly disorder at just 25 weeks gestation -- To save a baby with a rare lung disorder, doctors performed a surgery while he remained half-in and half-out of the womb. -- Kamal Nahas

5 days ago

Google AI breakthrough means chatbots use six times less memory during conversations without compromising performance -- A compression algorithm like TurboQuant turns the data in the AI's working memory into a smaller, more efficient form. -- Fiona Jackson

5 days ago

A SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon -- Part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is likely to crash into the moon this summer, a new report finds. It poses no danger, but it does highlight a worrying trend. -- Brandon Specktor

4 days ago

Early data links Wegovy to risk of 'eye stroke' - here's what to know -- A rare form of vision loss has been linked to certain GLP-1s, but more so to Wegovy than to other weight-loss drugs in this class. Should you worry? -- Alex Hughes

5 days ago

'We can no longer ignore diseases in the deep human past': Malaria influenced early humans' migrations across Africa, study suggests -- Prehistoric humans in Africa may have avoided areas infested with malaria-spreading mosquitoes, a new study suggests. -- Tom Metcalfe

5 days ago

Heartbeats physically stop cardiac cancer from growing - and that could be key to thwarting other cancers, too -- Scientists have pinpointed a mechanism that may explain heart cancer's rarity and point to new cancer treatments. -- Sophie Berdugo

6 days ago