Jan 3rd, 2026 - In The Uncanny X-Men, Magneto, supervillain and CEO of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, wants to destroy humanity – and in the first X-Men movie, aims at forcibly mutating all human beings so that normals no longer exist to discriminate against mutants. It turns out that Magneto really should have studied oncology, because if he had, he might have learned that magnetism could be an ultimate weapon against cancer. And then, instead of waging war on humanity, all nations would bow before him, the trillionaire controlling the medical establishment (that is, a different sort of ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . W henever you take a stroll, you take advantage of a key feature that separates us from our ape relatives—bipedalism, or walking upright on two legs.  Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Fossils with signs of this trait can point scientists to our earliest human ancestor, or the first member of the hominin group that includes modern and extinct humans. A possible candidate for this ancient relative: Two decades ago, scientists announced the identification of Sahelanthropus tchadensis , a hominin species from ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google January may feel quiet after the rush of the holidays, but the sky has other plans in 2026. The new year opens under a bright full Moon – the fourth supermoon in a row – rising on Saturday, January 3, 2026. At the same time, Earth will be moving through a shower of space rocks called meteoroids. Some of these will enter the Earth's atmosphere and become meteors that race across the sky, burning brightly. First meteor shower of the year Meteor showers happen when Earth passes through clouds of tiny space rocks. These rocks burn up as they hit Earth's ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google More than a century ago, Alfred Russel Wallace mapped a sharp biological divide through Indonesia. On one side of the "Wallace Line," Asia is home to leopards, monkeys, and deer. On the other side, Australasia is dominated by marsupials and cassowaries. Most species never jumped that gap on their own. Pigs did – but not because they're natural sailors. Pigs ferried across islands A new study shows that for tens of thousands of years, people ferried pigs across islands, seeding invasive lineages that now stretch from Southeast Asia to remote corners of Polynesia. ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Follow Earth on Google Horror movies are full of monsters you never quite see. Lately, the deep Pacific off British Columbia has its own version of that: a crucial worm that simply isn't showing up. The no-show is Osedax – nicknamed the "zombie worm" – a tiny, bizarre animal famous for drilling into whale bones and turning them into food for an entire community of deep-sea life. When scientists staged a decade-long experiment to invite Osedax to dinner, the table stayed set, but nobody came. If zombie worms are missing from places where they should thrive, it hints at bigger ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - The sun wanders the Milky Way alone; our star orbits the galaxy's distant center without any stellar siblings. But it wasn't always this way. The solar system was very likely born in a tremendous gas cloud that also birthed thousands of other stars , forming a large, loosely bound stellar family called an open cluster. These stars may have remained enshrouded in that nebula for 10 million years or more, until their combined stellar winds and light pushed away the surrounding nebulosity . No longer embedded in the gas, the cluster gradually disintegrated as its internal motions flung away ... [Read More]

Jan 2nd, 2026 - Microsoft's big focus for Windows is AI integration . Meanwhile, Valve has been not-so-quietly pilfering the entire PC gaming ecosystem from Microsoft, turning the Linux-based SteamOS into a real competitor to Windows. In a few years, gaming laptops may run SteamOS instead of Windows. And Microsoft has no one to blame but itself. Valve's big PC gaming push is bigger than the Steam Deck handheld , with a new Steam Machine living room PC. PC gaming — even PC games designed and written first and foremost for Windows — is now much bigger than Windows. Surprise, Microsoft: While you ... [Read More]

Jan 1st, 2026 - A newly revealed magnetic state in ruthenium dioxide could be the secret to faster, denser, and more reliable memory chips. Scientists from National Institute for Materials Science , Japan have confirmed that ultra-thin films of ruthenium dioxide (RuO 2 ) belong to a newly recognised and powerful class of magnetic materials called altermagnets . These materials combine the best of two magnetic worlds: they're stable against interference yet still allow fast, electrical readout—an ideal mix for future memory technology. Altermagnetism is a newly discovered type of magnetism where ... [Read More]