Breakthroughs across the sciences
The shape, called Chair44, was proposed by ChatGPT-6 Astra and closes a question posed by mathematicians in 2012. Its sole human author, Ioannis Tsiokos, says he has no mathematical training.
Powerful waves ripped through the Long Beach Peninsula ahead of the storm's expected landfall early Sunday. San Diego is under only its second Tropical Storm Watch in history, with 2 to 3 inches of rain forecast across parts of the Southwest.
Sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific have already topped 3°C above normal, and Berkeley Earth projects a peak near 4°C in November — which would make this the strongest El Niño ever recorded. Citigroup has estimated a super El Niño could cause up to $7 trillion in global economic losses over five years.
More than 400 responders and four aircraft are fighting the blaze, which was about half contained on Monday. It is one of 18 active wildfires across Colombia amid El Niño-driven drought and record temperatures.
Sea-surface temperatures could climb nearly 4C above average. Forecasters warn of drought across the Amazon, wildfires in South East Asia, and a 10% cut to Panama Canal traffic as rainfall drops.
Chemical analysis of fossilised tooth enamel puts the dinosaur at 97.3°F (36.3°C) — just below the human average of 98.6°F. The findings strengthen the case that T. rex was warm-blooded, with food needs far higher than cold-blooded estimates suggest.
Scientists named Leopardus tilcayo after DNA analysis distinguished it from all known relatives. The only confirmed living specimen is Tigrino, a 10-year-old male at a Bolivian wildlife sanctuary, but researchers believe others survive in the wild.
Researchers tracked 1,399 earthquakes at the Punggye-ri test site between 2008 and 2025, with magnitudes rising from around 1.0 to above 3.0 in recent years. The growing seismic signal, they warn, could make it harder to tell future nuclear explosions apart from natural earthquakes.
A rapid analysis by the World Weather Attribution service says warming-related changes to ice and frozen ground set off a chain of failures on Langtang-Lirung mountain. Rivers in Nepal and Tibet rose up to nine metres in 30 minutes, and thousands remain missing.
A new report warns that water from the Himalayas supports around 20% of India's economy — and the glaciers feeding it are disappearing faster than ever. India has already flagged 56 glacial lakes as very high risk, while only 21 of the region's 40,000 glaciers are being closely monitored.
The coprolite, found in Montana's Hell Creek Formation, also contains leg bones from a hesperornithiform — an aquatic diving bird closely related to the lineage that survived the mass extinction and gave rise to modern birds. The hesperornithiforms were not so lucky.
Wildfires have burned around 200,000 hectares of Indonesian Borneo since early July, the region's worst crisis in more than a decade. More than 12,000 of those sickened are children under five.
A single particle interaction recorded deep underground in South Dakota has a 0.5% chance of being caused by known background sources. That falls far short of proof, but researchers say it appeared in exactly the region where a dark matter signal would be expected.
A chunk of glacier more than a kilometre wide broke away near Langtang Lirung peak, sending rivers nine metres higher within half an hour. Scientists say the Himalayas are warming twice as fast as the global average, and catastrophic floods there are becoming more frequent.
Two fires broke out within twenty minutes of each other on Sunday, as beaches were packed for the August holiday. One is thought to have claimed a couple caught near the shore at Peristeria.
A magnitude 7.4 quake in the Molucca Sea killed one person in April. A magnitude 7.7 strike near Flores Island in August shook an estimated half a million people, though no casualties were confirmed.
More than 36 centimetres fell across Chiba prefecture in 24 hours, with hourly records broken in two cities. Japan's weather agency issued its highest alert for the region for the first time ever.
A shallow tremor near the city of Uto brought down part of an Aeon shopping mall in Kashima, where police said 'quite a few' people were presumed dead and many more remained trapped; at least 50 others were hospitalised across the prefecture.
A tsunami advisory was lifted within two hours and no fatalities were confirmed, but rail and airport closures across Kyushu continued as authorities warned of aftershocks over the coming days.
A blaze ignited near Cap Ferret on 23 July has forced more than 220,000 evacuations across the Gironde region — with a further 30,000 displaced in Landes and 60,000 in Spain, pushing the southern European total past 250,000.
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