Wetenschap

Nature, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10484-w

Author Correction: Multi-omic profiling reveals age-related immune dynamics in healthy adults

Nature, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01160-0

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Nature, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01208-1

Nature correspondent Alexandra Witze tells us about being in NASA’s scientific nerve centre.

Nature, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-01063-0

The past is a foreign country.

Nature, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00195-7

When I found out that I was no longer eligible for an early-career grant, I took a moment to pause and reflect on my family life and my work.

Alzheimer’s isn’t just one problem—it’s a tangled mix of biology, aging, and overall health. That’s why drugs targeting a single factor have fallen short, even as new treatments show modest benefits. Scientists are now pushing toward multi-pronged strategies, from gene editing to brain-cell rejuvenation and gut health interventions. The goal: stop treating Alzheimer’s as one disease and start tackling it as a complex system.

A common eye-health nutrient, zeaxanthin, may also help the body fight cancer more effectively. Scientists discovered it strengthens T cells and enhances the impact of immunotherapy treatments. Found in everyday vegetables and supplements, it’s safe, accessible, and shows strong potential as a cancer therapy booster. Human trials are the next step.

Scientists have proposed a surprising new way to detect gravitational waves—by observing how they change the light emitted by atoms. These waves can subtly shift photon frequencies in different directions, leaving behind a detectable signature. The effect doesn’t change how much light atoms emit, which is why it’s gone unnoticed until now. If confirmed, this approach could lead to ultra-compact detectors using cold-atom systems.

A strange new kind of superconductivity has been uncovered in uranium ditelluride (UTe2), where electricity flows with zero resistance—but only under extremely strong magnetic fields that should normally destroy it. Even more surprising, the superconductivity disappears at first and then dramatically reappears at even higher fields, earning it the nickname the “Lazarus phase.”

Perovskite solar cells shouldn’t work as well as they do—but they do. Scientists have now discovered that defects inside the material actually help, creating networks that separate and guide electric charges efficiently. Using a novel imaging method, they revealed hidden structures acting like charge “highways.” This insight could unlock even more powerful, low-cost solar cells.

An experiment in Germany offers the first evidence of a long-predicted pairing between a nucleus of carbon-11 and η’ meson (eta prime meson), shedding light on how the strongest force in nature helps generate mass.

The post Physicists Detect Elusive Nuclear State appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Paleontologists have examined 289-million-year-old specimens of the early reptile Captorhinus aguti that preserve a covering of three-dimensional skin, a complete shoulder girdle and ribcage with cartilages, and protein remnants that predate the previous oldest-known example by nearly 100 million years.

The post Permian Fossil is Earliest Evidence of Rib-Powered Breathing appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

New evidence from Germany suggests Neanderthals captured European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) around 125,000 years ago, likely valuing their shells as tools rather than their modest meat yield.

The post Neanderthals Hunted Pond Turtles, But Not for Dinner appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

New images from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveal two young stars surrounded by planet-forming disks, Tau 042021 (left) and Oph 163131 (right), offering a rare edge-on glimpse into how worlds like our own may take shape.

The post Webb Captures Striking Edge-On Views of Two Planet Nurseries appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Pohlsepia mazonensis, a cephalopod species first described in 2000 from a 300-million-year-old specimen and featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest octopus, has been reclassified as a distant relative of nautiluses, reshaping paleontologists’ timeline for when octopuses first evolved.

The post ‘Oldest Fossil Octopus’ Wasn’t One After All appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Study links mutations in ribosome genes to traits such as height and weight

Species proliferated after evolving bioluminescence, possibly because mates could find each other more easily

Unusual radio signals could be long-sought smoking gun of galactic mergers

To impede metastasis, researchers seek to develop novel treatments that disrupt tumor cell clusters

Decades of observations tracked the fraying of once-friendly relations among Ugandan chimpanzees

In 2018, the first Lancet Series on preconception health, led by Judith Stephenson, argued that the health and nutrition of both men and women before conception is important not only for pregnancy outcomes but also for the lifelong health of their children. We called for a campaign built on a three-pronged approach that recognised the biological, individual, and public health dimensions of preconception, taking a life course view. 8 years on, that call has been only partially answered. The Series helped to broaden the concept of preconception health, beyond a narrow focus on women's health before pregnancy, to encompass the health and wellbeing of women, men, and couples before conception.

It is almost 60 years since the original Wilson and Jungner1 criteria for evaluating population screening programmes were published, with the tenets presented having stood the test of time. Liver disease is a curious case in which to apply these principles. Supporting the rationale for screening is the long-asymptomatic phase of disease and the very poor outcomes for late presentations. However, there is no consensus about who has a clinically relevant disease and who gets treatment, and the most accurate non-invasive testing approach undermines these justifications.

As you drive out of Geneva towards the airport, along the Rue de Lausanne, you pass a long, flat, ochre-brick building lying between the road and the lake: the World Trade Organization. Fenced off with formidable security, the headquarters of a body charged with administering a rules-based international trade order does not exude welcoming warmth. But it does give a hint of humanity by naming itself on the pillars erected around the building—the Centre William Rappard. Who was William Rappard? He was born in New York in 1883, but moved to Switzerland when he was 17 years old.

Attacks on hospitals and a communications blackout in Iran threaten access to essential care and complicate the humanitarian response. Sharmila Devi reports.

As trust in the US federal health agencies drops, states have been creating their own public health networks. Roxanne Nelson reports.

A handful of plankton fossils buried in a small chunk of rock show that the oceans were teeming with life before the Late Ordovician mass extinction, the second most severe on record

Working in secret for more than two years, a group of mathematicians has set out to resolve of the longest and most bitter battles in modern mathematics

Physicists have shown how time can effectively be reversed for some quantum systems, which would allow for new ways to harvest energy

The incompleteness theorem is accepted as part of the mathematical canon today, but columnist Jacob Aron says it was a bombshell when Kurt Gödel first introduced it. Gödel’s seminal work directly contradicted one of the great minds of mathematics and limited the field forever

Two extremely precise experiments agree with a previously shocking measurement of just how big the proton is, which may help future searches for new particles

Observations conducted with the Subaru Telescope and its first-generation wide-field camera, Suprime-Cam, have revealed new insights into the relationship between the color and size of Jupiter Trojan asteroids.

We thought it was evolution, but an experiment with pencils shows that tips like teeth and thorns may owe their rounded shape to mechanical wear. Most of us have been stung by a bee, bitten by an animal, or scratched by a thorny bush. But very few of us have probably taken a close look at nature's painful, pointed tips.

What if the Trojan horse had been pulled to pieces, revealing the ruse and fending off the invasion, just as it entered the gates of Troy? That's an apt description of a newly characterized bacterial defense system that chops up foreign DNA. Bacteria and the viruses that infect them, bacteriophages—phages for short—are ceaselessly at odds, with bacteria developing methods to protect themselves against phages that are constantly striving to overcome those safeguards.

Along the southern coastline, researchers dive deep to collect seaweed from kelp forests and rocky platforms, taking small samples and the location of each sample. Back in the lab, the specimens are preserved—some dried, others kept alive—so they can be studied, cultured and sequenced.

Tropical trees are better neighbors than trees in temperate forests, according to a study published in the journal Nature by researchers from 29 different institutions including the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and the ForestGEO global network of forest monitoring sites.

After looping around the moon, the Artemis II crew — and their capsule’s heat shield — are preparing for the mission’s final major test: coming home.

Shock waves from tiny black holes in the early universe could explain how antimatter became so rare while matter is common.

Solve the crossword from our May 2026 issue, in which we expand the way we see the universe.

By recording brain activity directly, scientists showed that imagining an object can revive parts of the neural pattern used to see it.

Conservationists now list the penguins and seals as “Endangered.” Climate change in Antarctica has led to plunging populations.