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A tiny, misplaced label may have slowly loosened a critical wire on the ship that hit Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, eventually causing a catastrophic failure

To make quantum computers more efficient and reliable, some of their basic components must be constantly reused – several quantum computer designs can now do just that

To make quantum computers more efficient and reliable, some of their basic components must be constantly reused – several quantum computer designs can now do just that

Tracking down black holes at the center of dwarf galaxies has proven difficult. In part that is because they have a tendency to “wander” and are not located at the galaxy’s center. There are plenty of galaxies that might contain such a black hole, but so far we’ve had insufficient data to confirm their existence. A new paper from Megan Sturm of Montana State University and her colleagues analyzed additional data from Chandra and Hubble on a set of 12 potential Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) galaxy candidates. They were only able to confirm three, which highlights the difficulty in isolating these massive wanderers.

The sun’s current 11-year activity cycle has already peaked—but extreme outbursts from our star may still be in store

Melatonin supplements have become a ubiquitous sleep aid, but research shows that benefits are modest, and the heart health effects of long-term use are unknown

The lovable Star Wars droid is helping to shed light on why some bird species are better at mimicking sounds than others

As holiday feasts and stress approach, an expert explains how to keep your gut healthy without skipping the stuffing.

Researchers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have confirmed an actively growing supermassive black hole within a galaxy just 570 million years after the Big Bang. Part of a class of small, very distant galaxies that have mystified astronomers, CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 represents a vital piece of this puzzle and challenges existing theories about the formation of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe. The discovery connects early black holes with the luminous quasars we observe today.

An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought

An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought

An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought

Few cosmic vistas can excite the imagination like

What are those colorful rings around the Moon?

Rather than being a recent cultural development, kissing may have been practised by other early humans like Neanderthals and our ape ancestors

Rather than being a recent cultural development, kissing may have been practised by other early humans like Neanderthals and our ape ancestors

To be fair, all scientific models are in some sense wrong

Galaxies grow massive through mergers with other galaxies. Massive galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda not only merge with other large galaxies, they also absorb their much smaller satellite dwarf galaxies. But these smaller galaxies can become quenched long before they're absorbed, and new research examines this process at Andromeda (M31).

If you enjoyed Beth Gardiner’s feature about big oil’s bet on plastics, here are more books curated by Scientific American

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2 min read

Curiosity Blog, Sols 4716-4722: Drilling Success at Nevado Sajama NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the “Nevado Sajama” drill hole, using its Left Navigation Camera on Nov. 13, 2025 — Sol 4718, or Martian day 4,718 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 19:46:43 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Written by Michelle Minitti, MAHLI Deputy Principal Investigator at Framework

Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 14, 2025

From Curiosity’s ridge-top perch among the boxwork unit, the highlight of the week was the successful drilling of the “Nevado Sajama” target. The data collected by APXS, ChemCam, and MAHLI from the rover workspace and its immediate vicinity gave the team confidence to proceed with sampling. APXS and ChemCam data from two targets cleared by the DRT — Nevado Sajama (before it was drilled) and “Tesoro del Pangal” — demonstrated that the chemistry of the workspace was in family with the many ridge-top targets analyzed during the boxwork unit campaign. MAHLI imaging revealed the presence of fine veins in both targets, and also confirmed the structural soundness of the drill target after the rover engineers tested the strength of Nevado Sajama by pressing down on it with the drill tip. The types of veins observed by MAHLI were investigated by ChemCam on broken bedrock faces that exposed both bright white and gray materials. These targets, “Arenas Blancas,” “Camarones,” and “Exaltación,” will provide more insight into the fluids that penetrated the boxwork ridges, perhaps contributing to their erosion resistance. DAN collected data for long stretches across the sols over which all these activities occurred, gaining data on the hydrogen (and by extrapolation, water) content of the ridge. Mastcam began and will continue to build a large mosaic of our location which will include both Nevado Sajama and the drill target “Valle de la Luna” within an adjacent hollow. 

The rover payload was not only focused on studying the ridge and drill target, but also added to the systematic environmental dataset Curiosity has built over the last 13 years. REMS and RAD regularly recorded Martian and space weather, respectively, throughout the week. Mastcam and Navcam measured dust loading in the atmosphere, and looked for clouds and dust devils while ChemCam and APXS took turns measuring different chemical components in the atmosphere. 

The drill activity itself completed on Sol 4718. This weekend, the first portions of the drilled material will be delivered to and analyzed by CheMin. The whole team is anxiously awaiting the CheMin results in order to compare them to the Valle de la Luna mineralogy derived from the hollow below us. We hope their comparison will provide us with new insights into how the boxwork unit came to be. 

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NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity at the base of Mount Sharp NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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Nov 18, 2025

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