NASA’s Perseverance rover has confirmed complex organic carbon just beneath the surface of ancient Martian rocks, raising intriguing questions about the Red Planet’s potential to have supported life. The remarkable preservation of these compounds, along with similar discoveries thousands of miles away, suggests the building blocks of life may once have been widespread across Mars.

Organic carbon has been confirmed in two ancient Martian rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover, adding an important new piece to the puzzle of whether Mars once supported life. Even more surprising, the material was found just beneath the planet’s surface, where harsh conditions can destroy organic compounds.

The discovery builds on NASA’s September 2025 announcement that Perseverance had identif...

As they age, many individuals can struggle to remember recent events or what they meant to say next during a conversation, while also frequently losing or misplacing objects. In some cases, cognitive tests detect these memory impairments. In others, people notice and report a decline even though their test scores remain within the normal range.

The term mild cognitive impairment (MCI) refers to measurable difficulties with memory or other thinking skills in people who remain largely independent in daily life. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD), on the other hand, is a perceived decline despite normal performance on standard cognitive tests...

The Euclid Consortium and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released the first major batch of data from the Euclid space telescope. This release, which captures light from more than a billion objects and covers an area of sky equivalent to 9,500 full moons, lays the foundation for Europe’s dark universe detective’s largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos. Several German research facilities play crucial roles in the Euclid mission’s success.

The new data release, named DR1 Foundation, comprises some 13 months of observations and marks the ...

A new study led by researchers at Oxford Population Health shows that higher levels of proteins involved in activating and coordinating the immune system were associated with a lower risk of developing prostate cancer. The findings suggest that the body’s ability to recognize and respond to abnormal cells may play an important role in the early development of prostate cancer and could point to new approaches for preventing the disease.

The study, published in Nature Communications, is the largest and most comprehensive prospective and genetic analysis of circulating immune and inflammation-related proteins in relation to prostate cancer risk. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in U.K...