This week’s science news roundup begins with climate change drama then continues with (mostly) happier topics like dinosaurs, butterflies, and lizard tails in amber. Please add your contributions in a comment.
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Every year, Research!America does a poll that asks,”Can you name a living scientist?”In January 2026, 76% of respondents said “no.”Of those who said “yes,” 5% named a scientist who was, in fact, dead.www.researchamerica.org/blog/can-you…
— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) 2026-10-22T22:42:55.052Z
Latest Climate Report Warns of Major Upheaval to California Way of Life – NYTimes
In just a few decades, summers in California will not only be much hotter, but will also stretch for months longer. Floods will become more widespread and extreme. Exposure to wildfire smoke will kill thousands more people every year.
Those are the dire projections of California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, a report produced by California every few years that analyzes the impacts of changing weather patterns on the nation’s most-populous state … it illustrates in unsettling detail just how quickly the climate is being reshaped, and reveals what is likely to be major upheaval to long-established ways of life in California.
According to the report, average temperatures are likely to increase in California by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the century … More and more, warm weather will arrive in California earlier in the year and persist later, with summer conditions lasting for 135 days on average by the middle of the century, compared with an average of 90 days between 1981 and 2010 … warmer conditions will also mean a 40 percent reduction by midcentury in California’s snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which feeds the state’s reservoirs. What once fell as snow will instead fall as rain and immediately become runoff. This will lead to more severe droughts….
🔥 Heat drives lightning wildfiresA 3.3°C rise in temperature raised the chance of lightning starting a fire in northern forests by 44% to 69%. Drier, hotter weather mattered more than the lightning itself.🔗 doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aeb70b#Wildfire #ClimateChange #Science 🧪
— Prof Sam Illingworth (@samillingworth.com) 2026-10-24T09:42:28.706Z
Really big standing waves in the center of that flow! My brain as I watch this:Froude# = 1… oh I see a >1, yep another >1, hey <1, oh there we are >1 again… Also thinking of the folks who live there and are impacted by this flood event.⚒️🧪 #hydrology #sedimentology #geology #flood
— Lil Boo-kens 👻 (@paleosol.bsky.social) 2026-10-24T02:04:17.620Z
Heat Waves Killed an Estimated 50,000 in European Cities, a Likely Record – NY Times (gift article)
Severe heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities and towns this summer, according to peer-reviewed estimates released by scientists in London on Friday.
That is three times as many people as would have died had humankind not warmed the planet by burning oil, gas and coal, the researchers said. Their estimates suggest that this summer’s intense heat was Europe’s deadliest by far this century.
The findings, detailed in a pair of studies in the journal Nature Health, are based on a combination of factors that influence heat-related health risks in particular locations, including demographics, socioeconomic indicators and availability of health services.
A Saline Injection Could Offer Longer Relief From Carpal Tunnel Pain – Science Alert
Carpal tunnel syndrome … develops when a nerve supplying the hand becomes squeezed inside a narrow passage at the wrist. Pressure can disrupt the nerve’s signals, causing pain, tingling, numbness, and weakness.
Now, a small trial has found that injecting saline around the trapped nerve could ease symptoms for longer than a steroid injection.
Relief persisted for six months after the saline procedure, by which time the initial benefits of steroid injection alone had largely faded.
JAXA’s MMX mission will include the first wheeled rover to drive in ultra-low gravity – Aerospace America
The first surface rover to attempt wheeled locomotion on an ultra-low-gravity celestial body is slated to begin its voyage across the solar system next week, when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) probe.
The 4,200-kilogram spacecraft is scheduled to lift off at 4:41 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Oct. 20 (3:41 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 19), beginning a yearlong journey to the Martian system. If all goes as planned, MMX will arrive in late 2027 and use remote-sensing instruments to help determine whether the moons Phobos and Deimos are chunks of ejecta from an ancient collision with Mars, or if they are captured asteroids.
One of MMX’s main objectives is to acquire 10 grams of regolith from the surface of Phobos for return to Earth in 2031. This would be the first sample ever returned from the Mars system — unless China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return, also due back in 2031, arrives first.
This lizard’s ‘great escape’ was frozen in amber for 99 million years – Science
It’s a crime scene with no victim, no suspect, and no witnesses. All you have is a single severed tail embedded in sticky tree resin. And your only piece of evidence is 99 million years old.
That is the investigation Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, and his team faced when they inspected the semitransparent sliver of fossilized resin, or amber. They had bought the amber from an online seller, thinking the 8-millimeter-long thing inside it was a twig or a piece of insect.
Then, Ph.D. student Dolev Fabrikant inspected the fossil. “Oh, it has scales! This is a lizard tail,” he told Davranoglou.
Space Debris Found Twice Within Days Amid ‘Growing Casualty Risk’ – NY Times (gift article)
The authorities in Indonesia are investigating what they say is space debris found on Monday in Indonesian Borneo at a palm oil plantation. Just days earlier, a sheriff’s office in Minnesota reported that state and federal agencies in the United States were examining what is “presumably a space object” found in a cornfield. […]
A European Space Agency assessment, published last month and based on 2025 data, found that there is a “growing casualty risk on the ground” from fragments re-entering the atmosphere.
Indonesians are no strangers to the issue. They have documented about three cases of space debris landing in their country in about five years, including this week’s incident.
Thomas Djamaluddin, a senior space science researcher at the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency, wrote in a post on social media on Monday that workers at the palm oil plantation, in the Sampit area of Borneo had discovered very large torn pieces of metal that morning. Accompanying his post were photos showing the objects, each about the size of a car.
Earth and Mars May Have Formed in Weirdly Different Ways – NY Times (gift article)
Earth and Mars had surprisingly different origin stories … Scientists effectively designed a new game that can forge virtual planets. They took an array of chemical clues found in the rocks of both worlds, and then ran them through a battery of statistical models and computer simulations, repeatedly trying to end up with an Earth and a Mars that resembled the real things.
Their results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that Mars was mostly pieced together from big, asteroid-like objects. Conversely, Earth’s existence largely relied on a swarm of self-assembling pebbles.
The new model adds an exciting piece to a planetary puzzle: How did Earth get its enduring supply of life-giving water eons ago? Experts think a mixture of comets and damp asteroids was largely responsible, but others have suggested that a cavalcade of icy pebbles arriving from the outer solar system may have added to the torrent. If Earth is mostly pebble-made, that supports this idea.
Startup Deploys AI-Engineered Virus on Human Patient – Futurism
When it comes to putting strange substances into your body in 2026, the sky’s the limit.
First there were black-market Russian peptides — and now there are AI-generated viruses, which one startup claims has been used to successfully treat a bacterial infection.
On Tuesday, the company called Radical Numerics published a technical paper on its website, explaining the process by which they trialed an AI-engineered viral treatment on a human subject.
Targeting bacteria with special viruses isn’t new — it’s called “phage therapy,” and it involves deploying viruses that specifically target harmful microscopic organisms. But the hunt for viruses capable of locking onto a particular infection is arduous, and Radical Numerics says it’s found a way to use AI to revolutionize the process.
Yet as the New York Times notes in its reporting, Radical Numerics’ research is really more like a blog post — not only was the study self-published, rather than being vetted by a scientific journal, but it hasn’t even been peer reviewed. Making matters even murkier, the company declined to share clinical information about the patient or the doctors involved with the NYT, citing the proprietary nature of a treatment it hopes to monetize.
‘This isn’t greenwashing’: thousands of butterflies surprise experts on restored West Sussex farmland – The Guardian
An “amazing” abundance of 5,290 butterflies, including rare small blues and dingy skippers, has appeared on land that was barren wheatfields just two years ago.
The speed with which nature has bounced back at Halnaker Hill farm in West Sussex has surprised experts after 133 hectares (330 acres) of intensively farmed land were turned into a commercial nature restoration project.
The farm’s relatively unproductive soils on the South Downs were cropped for wheat for 40 years, but after a final harvest in 2024 the arable land was sown with a special wildflower mix. Seven kilometres of hedgerows have been planted, seven hectares (17 acres) of new woodland created, three ponds dug and 54 hectares (133 acres) of herbal leys seeded, with carefully controlled mob-grazing on existing chalk grassland to improve its wildlife and biodiversity.
Halnaker Hill Natural Capital is a commercial nature restoration project that derives its income from selling biodiversity net gain (BNG) credits, which enable houses to be built in the wider region. Under BNG rules, developers are legally obliged to deliver an increase in nature on new housing estates or by buying credits for nature restoration elsewhere.
Sections of salt marsh were transplanted into the world’s largest wave machine to test their storm resilience. After 21 hours of pounding waves, erosion was minimal and plant damage moderate showing how these wetlands help protect coasts, even in severe conditions! 🧪www.nature.com/articles/s41…
— Brandon Moore, PhD (@rando.insalubrio.us) 2026-10-23T22:43:30.308Z
Researchers @yaleschoolofmed.bsky.social find #taurine may reduce #aging #inflammationmedicine.yale.edu/news-article…— moderate calorie restriction incr. taurine & decr. inflammation— paradoxically, aging incr. taurine & incr. inflammation— innate immune #macrophage has role in both effects
— Dr. Todd Ewing PhD. (@ewingt-phd.bsky.social) 2026-10-24T19:12:13.661Z
The recently described Infernogallus jamesi is the earliest known dinosaur to have fully adapted to a fruit-based diet. With a toothless, parrot-like beak and a skull built for soft food, it likely lived off of Cretaceous cherries and peaches! 🧪www.nature.com/articles/s41…
— Brandon Moore, PhD (@rando.insalubrio.us) 2026-10-24T11:16:36.907Z
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