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Nature, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10263-7

Markovnikov hydroamination of terminal alkenes via phosphine redox catalysis

Nature, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00567-z

Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.

Nature, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00568-y

Librarians can be key research partners who help to scour the literature, manage data and make science open.

Nature, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00566-0

Breakthroughs in computing are supercharging a field of science dedicated to building synthetic organisms from scratch.

Nature, Published online: 23 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00535-7

Women and children moving through Europe became victims of mass violence.

Far beneath the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,000 kilometers off Portugal’s coast, lies a colossal underwater canyon system that dwarfs even the Grand Canyon. Known as the King’s Trough Complex, this 500-kilometer stretch of trenches and deep basins formed not from rushing water, but from dramatic tectonic forces that once tore the seafloor apart.

A century after Erwin Schrödinger sketched out a bold vision for how we perceive color, scientists have finally filled in the missing pieces. A Los Alamos team used advanced geometry to show that hue, saturation, and lightness aren’t shaped by culture or experience — they’re built directly into the mathematical structure of how we see color. By defining a crucial missing element known as the “neutral axis,” the researchers repaired a long-standing flaw in Schrödinger’s model and even corrected tricky visual quirks like the way brightness can subtly shift perceived hue.

People whose sugar intake was restricted before birth and in early childhood had markedly lower rates of heart disease later in life. Compared to those never exposed to rationing, their risks of heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and cardiovascular death were cut by roughly 20–30%.

Scientists at Stanford Medicine have unveiled a bold new kind of “universal” vaccine that could one day protect against everything from COVID-19 and the flu to bacterial pneumonia and even common allergens. Instead of targeting a specific virus or bacterium, the nasal spray vaccine supercharges the lungs’ own immune defenses, keeping them on high alert for months. In mice, it slashed viral levels, prevented severe illness, and even blocked allergic reactions.

Babies born in the early 2000s were exposed in the womb to far more “forever chemicals” than researchers once realized, according to a new study. By using advanced chemical screening on umbilical cord blood, scientists detected 42 different PFAS compounds, including many that standard tests do not routinely check for. These long lasting chemicals are found in common products like nonstick cookware, food packaging, and stain resistant fabrics, and they can build up in the body over time.

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have for the first time identified the progenitor of a nearby supernova -- a red supergiant star cloaked in thick, dust-rich shrouds that made it invisible to previous observatories.

The post Webb Identifies Supernova Progenitor Star in NGC 1637 appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

New research recalibrates the age of the Jordan Valley’s Ubeidiya Formation to nearly two million years, putting it on par with the famous site of Dmanisi in Georgia.

The post Early Homo Reached Jordan Valley by at Least 1.9 Million Years Ago appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

A stunning new image from the SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) reveals the complex interplay of gas and dust expelled by two members of the stellar system AFGL 4106.

The post VLT Reveals Secrets of Old Stellar Couple appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Two species of myllokunmingiid fishes that lived in what is now China around 518 million years ago (Cambrian period) possessed two large lateral eyes and two smaller, centrally positioned eyes, according to new research led by Yunnan University paleontologists.

The post Earliest Known Vertebrates Had Four Camera-Type Eyes appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

For the first time, astronomers have mapped the vertical structure of Uranus’ ionosphere, uncovering unexpected temperature peaks, weakened ion densities, and puzzling dark regions shaped by the planet’s extreme magnetic field.

The post Webb Reveals Hidden Layers of Uranus’ Upper Atmosphere appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Two-billion-year-old rocks in China suggest mountain building from Earth’s first supercontinent led to a planetwide burst of erosion

New anatomical research reveals the one trick all ponies know

Women and children were executed in an elaborate prehistoric ritual

Agency acknowledges young investigators are losing out as result of multiyear funding policy imposed by White House

Jim O’Neill will need to build ties, say former agency leaders

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a catastrophe on every level, not least for health. 4 years on, there have been more than 47 000 Ukrainian civilian casualties. 5·6 million people have fled abroad and 3·8 million have been internally displaced, interrupting provision of health care. The deliberate targeting of health facilities and their associated infrastructure has been a core part of Russia's military strategy. 2591 such attacks have been recorded since February, 2022, and their frequency is growing—clear violations of international law that are becoming increasingly normalised.

The goals of breast cancer screening are to detect breast cancers as early as possible to reduce both mortality and the morbidity of therapy. It is well established that mammography is less sensitive in women with dense breast tissue. These women have higher rates of interval cancers and more advanced stage diagnoses at detection,1 and they derive a smaller breast cancer mortality reduction from screening mammography compared with women with non-dense breasts.2

Nuclear proliferation. Artificial intelligence. Energy. Populism. Venezuela. Russia. Gaza. Ukraine. Iran. Sudan. These were some of the themes of this year's Munich Security Conference, the grown-up person's Davos. Where was health? Absent. The closest one got was a single roundtable on biosecurity. The Chief Executive Officer of the Gates Foundation was there, but speaking on the debt crisis. I know that some global health advocates were attending. But they were not on the main programme. Don’t you find that quite remarkable, given that only a few years ago over 18 million people worldwide died during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic? How quickly the memories of our supposedly smartest security brains fade.

Cut off from Venezuelan oil, Cuba is facing increasing pressure including on its ailing health system. Joe Parkin Daniels reports.

Proposals for huge cuts to NIH and CDC budgets have been rejected, to the relief of scientists. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.

Expert birdwatchers have changes in their brain structure compared with novices, which probably help them better identify birds and may even protect against age-related cognitive decline

An examination of bones has revealed one of the largest prehistoric mass killings known in Europe, with women, adolescents and children making up most of the 77 victims

How we feel about a night’s sleep can have a bigger impact on mood and grogginess than actual hours of rest. Here’s how to change your mindset to feel more energised

Temnothorax kinomurai, a parasitic ant species found in Japan, reproduces asexually and all of its young develop into queens that try to take over other ants’ colonies

Horses use their larynx to make two sounds simultaneously, so they are effectively singing and whistling at the same time

An archaeological study reveals how ancient hunter-gatherer groups lived—and survived—more than a thousand years ago in the transition zone between the Pampas and Patagonia in Argentina. The research, carried out by Martínez and colleagues, focuses on the Zoko Andi 1 site (ZA1), located on the lower basin of the Colorado River, a key location for understanding the daily life of these early settlers in the south. The work is published in the journal Latin American Antiquity.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), in collaboration with international partners, have shown that ocean temperature patterns help limit the global spread of droughts. Published in Communications Earth & Environment, the study analyzed climate data from 1901–2020 and found that synchronized droughts affected between 1.8% and 6.5% of global land, far lower than earlier claims that one-sixth of the planet could dry out at once.

New observations of Ganymede reveal a striking similarity between the auroras on the largest moon in the solar system and those on Earth. The international team of astrophysicists, led by researchers from the University of Liège, has produced new results indicating that, despite different conditions, the fundamental physical processes that generate auroras are common to different celestial bodies, and not just planets.

NLP offers powerful opportunities to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—including SDG2 (Zero Hunger). In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, mounting climate change impacts, and other crises in the 2020s, global food security has suffered and progress towards meeting SDG2 has lagged. Urgent action, backed by evidence-based policymaking, is needed to reverse this trend.

At Rice University, a research lab's signature keepsake has helped perfect a method for growing patterned diamond surfaces that could help decrease operating temperatures in electronics by 23 degrees Celsius. The paper is published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

A collapsed lava tube detected in 30-year-old radar data from Venus may be part of a much wider network of underground caves.

A land dispute may have led to the massacre 3,000 years ago, suggesting Europe’s transition to farming wasn’t always peaceful.

A new study suggests that inherited traits explain a small but measurable share of why some people relocate far from where they were born.

The TRPV4 protein’s dual nature, found in studies with mice, may complicate the hunt for human itch treatments

Editor in Chief Nancy Shute discusses how our reporters find unique stories, from vaccine beer to a particle collider’s retirement to the rise of AI scientists.