Why memories get fuzzier with age—and what replaces them

memory
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Research from the University of East Anglia shows how our memories change with age and why specific details associated with past events can fade over time. The new study reveals that as people age, they not only remember fewer details from their past—but also struggle more when switching between different types of memories.

The work is published in the journal Psychology and Aging. It points to a shift in how we remember things as we age—where vivid, moment-specific recollections gradually give way to broader, more generalized knowledge.

Rather than portraying memory decline as a simple loss, the study offers a nuanced picture of aging cognition and sheds light on how memory evolves over a lifetime...

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Interplanetary spacecraft capture a coronal mass ejection component hidden from Earth

Interplanetary spacecraft capture a coronal mass ejection component hidden from Earth
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and coronagraph observations of the solar disk and corona highlighting the extended filament that produced the complex CME. Credit: Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aed9960

During a coronal mass ejection (CME), the sun hurls billions of tons of magnetized plasma into space. These eruptions are among the most powerful events in the solar system, and when they are aimed toward Earth, they can seriously threaten the satellites and power grids we depend on. For now, it remains notoriously difficult to predict how these eruptions evolve over time—and, in turn, whether they might be heading toward us.

Taking observations from an extensive network of spacecraft across the solar system, a team led by Adrienn Luspay-Kuti at Johns Hopkins University h...

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Hybrid energy system: One roof for electricity, heating and cooling

Hybrid Energy System: One Roof for Electricity, Heating and Cooling
Prototype of the hybrid sun–universe energy harvester for the simultaneous generation of electricity, heating, and cooling. Credit: Gan Huang, KIT

Photovoltaic panels generate electricity, solar thermal collectors provide heat, while cooling is usually supplied by air conditioning systems that themselves consume electricity. As a result, buildings require different technologies competing for the limited space available on roofs and facades.

A solution developed by a team led by Dr. Gan Huang at KIT’s Institute of Microstructure Technology, by contrast, simultaneously provides cooling, electricity and heating from a single surface. This hybrid PDRC-solar system combines photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies with passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC)...

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Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form

The Orion Nebula with pink and purple gas and brown dust.
The Orion Nebula, captured in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

You may have heard the phrase “we are made of star-stuff.” This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of the first stars. But how does this star-stuff evolve into the chemistry of rocks, plants and people?

As an astrochemist and radio astronomer, I study the places in the universe where stars are born as interstellar laboratories. I’m interested in how simple ingredients come together to form bigger and bigger molecules, including those that are building blocks of life...

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