Science News files daily announcements — new papers, funding decisions, findings — each dated and attributed to its source.
A July 16, 2026 study reports helium escaping from LHS 1140 b — the first atmospheric detection on a rocky world orbiting in its star's habitable zone, read through the planet's extended gas halo.
Per the discovery team's July 1, 2026 announcement, the exoplanet hunter designed to watch transits caught a completely different signal: a star's gravity briefly magnifying a distant star behind it.
The agency's June 11, 2026 advisory confirmed El Niño onset in the tropical Pacific and put the chance of a historically strong event at 63 percent, with global temperature consequences to follow.
A study published May 27, 2026 describes a 'superwicking' solar desalination surface that moves water uphill by capillarity and crystallizes salt in place instead of dumping concentrated brine.
A study published May 6, 2026 reports that Chandrayaan-2 radar detected water-ice signatures inside permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.
Per the Rubin Observatory team, early survey data released April 2, 2026 catalogued more than eleven thousand previously unknown asteroids, including hundreds of near-Earth objects.
University of Washington researchers announced March 11, 2026 that the young star Gaia20ehk shows the warm dust signature of two exoplanets — or planet-sized bodies — smashing into each other.
A study published January 23, 2026 in Nature Astronomy reports detection of the biggest interstellar organosulfur molecule yet, found in a cloud near the center of the Milky Way.
Texas A&M astronomers announced January 29, 2026 that the James Webb Space Telescope caught two galaxies merging when the universe was less than a billion years old — a scene models did not predict.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service's annual tally, released January 13, 2026, ranks last year just behind 2024 and 2023, with the polar south setting its own record.