Science Breakthroughs

These bizarre new beetles look so stretchy scientists named them Luffy

Scientists named a new beetle genus Luffy because its long, stretchy body parts look like a rubber

Scientists went looking for giant trees in Taiwan and found a lost world

Scientists found East Asia's tallest tree: an 84.1-meter giant fir hidden in Taiwan's mountains.

Mechanical shortcut' rapidly carries organic particles into the deep ocean

Scientists found chlorophyll at 1,000m depth — where it should not survive.

Forest floors reveal overlooked seed dispersers: Slugs, beetles and crabs spread viable seeds

A single crab can disperse over 1,000 seeds in one night — the hidden gardeners of our forests.

Bringing it all into focus—computational microscope captures 25.2 billion pixels per second across a wide field of view

A new microscope captures 25.2 billion pixels per second—a world record for scientific cameras.

AI models atom movement to predict solid-state reaction pathways, including impurities, in minutes

AI predicts solid material reactions in minutes, not years.

Smart bioink shields delicate neural cells during precision 3D printing

Smart bioink lets scientists 3D-print brain tissue with 86% cell survival.

Underground fungal networks come into 3D view without disturbing plant roots

Scientists can now see underground fungal networks in 3D without disturbing them.

Rubin Observatory opens a deep window on a famous cosmic field

The world's largest digital camera just captured 500,000+ galaxies in a single image.

New quantum encryption method prevents ciphertext from being cloned

Quantum physics now keeps your data safe from being cloned or stolen.

Male sperm whales produce loudest communication sounds ever measured in any mammal

Male sperm whales produce the loudest mammal sounds ever recorded, exceeding 200 dB.

AI-enabled measurements of 'local brain aging' offer detailed insights on dementia and more

AI trained on 14,748 brain scans now reveals how different brain regions age at different speeds.

Marine microbes point to ancient seawater source beneath Antarctica's Blood Falls

Ancient seawater discovered trapped beneath Antarctic glacier for thousands of years.

Light controls nanoscale 'bubble' domains in a ferroelectric crystal

A crystal's electronic state changes most dramatically AFTER light is removed—a behavior

How to keep the Earth habitable when the sun dies

Scientists propose building a 2 million km space tether to shield Earth from the dying sun.

Pixel patterns harness diffraction for faster, more accurate nanoscale 3D printing

Researchers turned light diffraction—normally a problem—into a tool that makes nanoscale 3D

The Reverse Spiral: Why Ocean Models Have Been Getting the Bottom Wrong

Scientists correct a 100-year-old error in ocean current models.

Researchers develop a new catalyst to convert CO₂ into ethanol using electricity

Scientists created a catalyst that turns carbon dioxide into ethanol with 69% efficiency.

Alexander Rakhlin named director of the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center

75+ PhD students trained under his mentorship as the new SDSC director

Stomach stone hypothesis sheds light on the evolution of dinosaur digestive systems

Stones in dinosaur bellies reveal how different species digested food over 66 million years ago.