Science

Geology, paleontology, physics, space and the natural world

In Science, ECOnews reports on new discoveries in geology, paleontology, physics, space, health and the natural world. We explain the latest studies from universities and labs worldwide in plain language.

World map drawn in the Equal Earth projection, which shows countries at their true relative size

UN members voted 164 to 1 to encourage the Equal Earth projection, where Brazil looks nearly four times the size of Greenland, a shift Latin American geographers say gives their region new visibility

By ECONEWS

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October 15, 2026 at 12:32 PM

Uceda castle hill above the Jarama valley, site of the Islamic medina dig in Spain

Uceda, a small town in central Spain, wants volunteers to excavate its hilltop castle and a buried 30-acre Islamic medina, and the archaeologists running the dig offer six weekly spots with breakfast until October 20

By Adrian Villellas

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October 15, 2026 at 6:32 AM

Hull of the Mithridates warship on the seabed off Phanagoria in the Black Sea

Scientists studying a 2,000-year-old Mithridates warship sunk off Phanagoria in the Black Sea tested 22 nails and a 34-pound bronze ram, and found builders paid for copper over cheaper iron to keep it sailing

By ECONEWS

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October 14, 2026 at 6:29 PM

Lionfish resting on an Early Bronze Age amphora at the Kekova wreck, which archaeologists call the oldest known shipwreck, as a diver works a suction hose behind it

Divers off Turkey’s Kekova Island found a shipwreck that archaeologists date to 4,400 to 4,700 years ago and call the oldest known shipwreck, and some of its jars still hold a glossy residue

By ECONEWS

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October 14, 2026 at 8:23 AM

The three masts of the SS Richard Montgomery wreck rising from the Thames Estuary off Sheerness at low tide, with a danger sign warning of unexploded ammunition

The SS Richard Montgomery, a U.S. Liberty ship that sank off Sheerness in 1944, still holds about 1,400 tons of explosives, and salvors have cut away the three masts that marked it for 82 years

By ECONEWS

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October 14, 2026 at 8:03 AM

Fossil skeleton of the four-winged dinosaur Norellraptor barsboldi with close-up panels

A farmer in China’s Liaoning province found a four-winged dinosaur whose lineage evolved 57 bird-like traits in a different order than birds did, a sign its flight gear was built independently

By ECONEWS

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October 14, 2026 at 6:31 AM

The restored church pulpit in Ciachcin, Poland, and the 1884 parchment found inside it

Conservators restoring a church pulpit in Ciachcin, Poland, found a parchment the parish priest hid inside it in 1884, and it names the gilders, carpenters and apprentices history usually forgets

By Adrian Villellas

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October 13, 2026 at 6:29 PM

Facade of Dragomirna Monastery in Romania

Dragomirna Monastery in Romania has a Greek decree over 2,000 years old set into its porch floor honoring an architect from Byzantion, and scholars have long argued over which Black Sea city issued it

By Adrian Villellas

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October 13, 2026 at 3:02 PM

Mastcam-Z panorama of the Margin Unit on the inner edge of Jezero Crater on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover studied more than 185 rock targets along the inner rim of Jezero Crater and found they met water at least three times, the last as hot fluid that left fluorite veins

By ECONEWS

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October 13, 2026 at 8:44 AM

Artist's impression of a young star surrounded by a dusty protoplanetary disk

University of New Mexico scientists turned up to 70 percent of the iron oxide in dry, melted basalt into iron and water within 3 hours, a hint that Earth’s water may have formed this way

By ECONEWS

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October 12, 2026 at 5:02 PM

Lake Piva in Montenegro surrounded by mountains

Montenegro’s Lake Piva dropped about 98 feet in a drought, exposing houses and a mill from old Plužine, a town flooded 51 years ago, and its chronicler says he still dreams of his drowned home

By ECONEWS

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October 12, 2026 at 12:31 PM

Strangler fig roots growing over the stone galleries of Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia

Cambodia’s Ta Prohm temple, founded in 1186 and seen in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, was left to the jungle on purpose, and restorers have said its giant trees crack the walls while holding them up

By ECONEWS

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October 12, 2026 at 8:44 AM

Landsat image of Anak Krakatau volcano on September 5, 2026

Anak Krakatau eruption ran nonstop for 25 hours in September and sent lava down the island’s western flanks, and a plant expert says eruptions reset the ecosystem so life rebuilds from microbes and moss

By ECONEWS

—

October 11, 2026 at 6:29 PM

NASA concept illustration of a lunar base at the Moon's south pole

Two Harvard and Smithsonian astrophysicists ran the numbers on water on the Moon and found a million-person city would drain 1 billion tons of ice in about a century, even recycling 98 percent

By ECONEWS

—

October 11, 2026 at 2:58 PM

Astronaut James van Hoften holds the bee enclosure module full of honeybees aboard the space shuttle Challenger

A Tennessee student’s experiment put 3,400 honeybees aboard NASA’s Challenger in 1984, and within a week the bees in space built about 30 square inches of comb whose cells no longer tilted the same way

By ECONEWS

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October 11, 2026 at 10:16 AM

Aerial view of excavated stone foundations of a three-room complex at ancient Mieza in northern Greece

Archaeologists in northern Greece digging the royal gymnasium believed to be where Aristotle taught Alexander found two mosaic-floored banquet halls built for 20 couches, and their craftsmanship echoes the royal palace of Aigai

By ECONEWS

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October 11, 2026 at 6:31 AM

A large trevally and a school of small fish swimming over sand at the Dunsborough artificial reef

Two artificial reefs off Western Australia grew from a dozen fish species to over 60

By ECONEWS

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October 10, 2026 at 5:02 PM

Engineers in a clean room lower the gold-colored MOXIE instrument into the Perseverance rover chassis

Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center modeled a Mars propellant plant turning Martian air and buried ice into 300 metric tons of methane and oxygen, and power generation was 59 percent of its landed mass

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 10, 2026 at 10:13 AM

Two coronagraph operators look up at a wall of monitors showing telemetry in a control room

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope held steady for eight hours and saw its first coronagraph starlight

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 9, 2026 at 7:49 AM

People inspect the timbers of a shipwreck section exposed on a Nantucket beach

Nantucket shipwreck uncovered by a nor’easter is not the 1884 Warren Sawyer after all

By Adrian Villellas

—

October 9, 2026 at 7:35 AM

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Science

UN members voted 164 to 1 to encourage the Equal Earth projection, where Brazil looks nearly four times the size of Greenland, a shift Latin American geographers say gives their region new visibility

Uceda, a small town in central Spain, wants volunteers to excavate its hilltop castle and a buried 30-acre Islamic medina, and the archaeologists running the dig offer six weekly spots with breakfast until October 20

Scientists studying a 2,000-year-old Mithridates warship sunk off Phanagoria in the Black Sea tested 22 nails and a 34-pound bronze ram, and found builders paid for copper over cheaper iron to keep it sailing

Divers off Turkey’s Kekova Island found a shipwreck that archaeologists date to 4,400 to 4,700 years ago and call the oldest known shipwreck, and some of its jars still hold a glossy residue

The SS Richard Montgomery, a U.S. Liberty ship that sank off Sheerness in 1944, still holds about 1,400 tons of explosives, and salvors have cut away the three masts that marked it for 82 years

A farmer in China’s Liaoning province found a four-winged dinosaur whose lineage evolved 57 bird-like traits in a different order than birds did, a sign its flight gear was built independently

Conservators restoring a church pulpit in Ciachcin, Poland, found a parchment the parish priest hid inside it in 1884, and it names the gilders, carpenters and apprentices history usually forgets

Dragomirna Monastery in Romania has a Greek decree over 2,000 years old set into its porch floor honoring an architect from Byzantion, and scholars have long argued over which Black Sea city issued it

NASA’s Perseverance rover studied more than 185 rock targets along the inner rim of Jezero Crater and found they met water at least three times, the last as hot fluid that left fluorite veins

University of New Mexico scientists turned up to 70 percent of the iron oxide in dry, melted basalt into iron and water within 3 hours, a hint that Earth’s water may have formed this way

Montenegro’s Lake Piva dropped about 98 feet in a drought, exposing houses and a mill from old Plužine, a town flooded 51 years ago, and its chronicler says he still dreams of his drowned home

Cambodia’s Ta Prohm temple, founded in 1186 and seen in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, was left to the jungle on purpose, and restorers have said its giant trees crack the walls while holding them up

Anak Krakatau eruption ran nonstop for 25 hours in September and sent lava down the island’s western flanks, and a plant expert says eruptions reset the ecosystem so life rebuilds from microbes and moss

Two Harvard and Smithsonian astrophysicists ran the numbers on water on the Moon and found a million-person city would drain 1 billion tons of ice in about a century, even recycling 98 percent

A Tennessee student’s experiment put 3,400 honeybees aboard NASA’s Challenger in 1984, and within a week the bees in space built about 30 square inches of comb whose cells no longer tilted the same way

Archaeologists in northern Greece digging the royal gymnasium believed to be where Aristotle taught Alexander found two mosaic-floored banquet halls built for 20 couches, and their craftsmanship echoes the royal palace of Aigai

Two artificial reefs off Western Australia grew from a dozen fish species to over 60

Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center modeled a Mars propellant plant turning Martian air and buried ice into 300 metric tons of methane and oxygen, and power generation was 59 percent of its landed mass

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope held steady for eight hours and saw its first coronagraph starlight

Nantucket shipwreck uncovered by a nor’easter is not the 1884 Warren Sawyer after all

In Romania’s Brașov County, brown bears number about 1,329 by a national genetic estimate, the highest density of any county, and one bear relocated from Poiana Brașov was back within 3 days

More than 40 Magellanic penguins born in captivity arrived by court order from Mar del Plata at a river island in Argentina’s Río Negro province, and at first they had not explored even a third of their new home

In Japan, researchers led by Tohoku University used an inexpensive blue pigment to turn carbon dioxide into methane with 79.5% Faradaic efficiency, and methane selectivity stayed above 60% for about 80 hours

At 8.2 feet on Oct. 13, the Lake Constance water level in Konstanz, Germany, fell below a 1947 record for the date, and it now sits 10 inches under last winter’s low

A simulated AMOC collapse in an unreviewed preprint cut wheat, corn and rice harvests in Germany and Ukraine by roughly 16 to 19 percent, and cereal prices could climb up to 40 percent in the worst case

A landslide in Alaska’s Tracy Arm fjord sent a tsunami 1,578 feet up the opposite wall, and a Science study found small tremors striking every 30 to 60 seconds in the hours before the collapse

A company won a mining license for a magnesium deposit it estimates at more than 50 million metric tons near Rășinari, in Romania’s Sibiu County, and the EU gets 97 percent of its magnesium from China

Leap seconds will end on May 20, 2027, under a rule the General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted in Versailles, France, and a new study finds Earth’s solid surface turning slightly rounder as polar ground rises

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