Science news this week: An 'interstellar visitor' and the oldest ancient Egyptian genome ever sequenced
To kick off this week's science news, our solar system received an unexpected "interstellar visitor." On Tuesday (July 1), NASA and the International Astronomical Union confirmed the existence of a mysterious space object, most likely a comet, hurtling toward our little corner of the universe. The next day, NASA gave it an official name — 3I/ATLAS.
The interstellar object is zooming along at around 152,000 mph (245,000 km/h) in an unusually flat and straight trajectory that is unlike anything else in the solar system.
3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever recorded, and scientists are now scrambling to learn all they can about this rare object before it exits the solar system next year.
Researchers have successfully sequenced the genome of a man who lived in ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago. The DNA offers a rare window into the genetic history of ancient Egyptians, revealing that this individual had ties to both Mesopotamia and North Africa.
The man's body was recovered from a tomb in Nuwayrat, south of Cairo, in 1902, and is only the fourth ancient Egyptian genome to be sequenced — not to mention the oldest and most complete.
Discover more archeology news
—Roman army camp found in Netherlands, beyond the empire's frontier
—125,000-year-old 'fat factory' run by Neanderthals discovered in Germany
—300-year-old pirate-plundered shipwreck that once held 'eyewatering treasure' discovered off Madagascar
A purr is music to the ears of any cat lover. The low, gentle rumble is often a sign that our furry companions are relaxed and content. But is this cute volatilization unique to our feline friends?
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A new age of autonomous space exploration could soon be upon us — if the results of a recent artificial intelligence (AI) study are anything to go by. Researchers tested to see whether AI models like ChatGPT could hypothetically pilot a spacecraft using text prompts. ChatGPT performed surprisingly well and completed most of the challenges researchers set, though it didn't actually pilot anything.
Space exploration could change forever with the development of autonomous AI-controlled systems. Right now, speed-of-light limitations mean we can't directly control deep-space exploration spacecraft in real time, while human-piloted spacecraft have to cater to our inconvenient biological needs, restricting how far we can go.
Discover more space news
—Astrophotographer snaps 'once-in-a-lifetime' shot of solar flare photobombing the ISS
—'A completely new phenomenon': Astronomers spot a planet causing its star to constantly explode
—Farthest 'mini-halo' ever detected could improve our understanding of the early universe
—Wild orcas offer humans food. Could they be trying to make friends — or manipulate us?
—MIT's high-tech 'bubble wrap' turns air into safe drinking water — even in Death Valley
—New blood test detects cancers 3 years before typical diagnosis, study hints
—Watch mud volcano erupt beneath a crown of flames in Taiwan
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Brooke Rollins, the secretary of Agriculture, have suggested the U.S. could allow the bird flu virus to spread through some poultry farms to identify immunity in surviving birds. However, on Thursday (July 3), researchers warned that such an approach is dangerous and could potentially trigger a new pandemic.
A group of virologists, veterinarians and health security experts wrote an article, published in the journal Science, in which they argued it would be ineffective to let the virus spread in farms and risk bird flu crossing over into human populations.
"Essentially, the longer you allow a virus that has shown to be effective in infecting multiple hosts survive in an environment, the greater the chance you give it to spread, to mutate, and to try its luck at adaptation," perspective first-author Erin Sorrell, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Live Science. "Worse case scenario, the virus adapts and expands its host range to become transmissible in humans … Now we have a pandemic."
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best long reads, book excerpts and interviews published this week.
—'It's how I would imagine I would react if I saw a real-life giant dinosaur': What Jurassic World Rebirth's scientific advisor thinks of the movie (Interview)
—What are whole-body MRIs, and are they worth the hype? (Query)
—Mesopotamia quiz: Test your knowledge about the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent (Quiz)
And something for the skywatchers:
—2 'new stars' have exploded into the night sky at once — potentially for the first time in history
A facial reconstruction of a Stone Age woman has revealed what a prehistoric hunter-gatherer may have looked like in stunning detail. Researchers and artists created the reconstruction using the woman's skeleton, DNA and other scientific data.
The Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) hunter-gatherer, known as "Margaux woman," lived around 10,500 years ago in what is now Belgium. Researchers have found that she likely had blue or light-colored eyes, with a skin complexion that's slightly lighter than most other known Western Europeans from her time.
Want more science news? Follow our Live Science WhatsApp Channel for the latest discoveries as they happen. It's the best way to get our expert reporting on the go, but if you don't use WhatsApp, we're also on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Flipboard, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky and LinkedIn.
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What are dwarf planets — and how many are there?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In 2006, Pluto was famously demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet. It remains the most famous dwarf planet today, but there are others in our solar system, including potentially hundreds that haven't been discovered yet. But what, exactly, is a dwarf planet? And how many dwarf planets are there? A dwarf planet is a celestial body that is smaller than a planet but bigger than an asteroid or other small rock in the solar system. They're not planets because they only meet two of the three criteria for something in space to be considered a true planet. A planet is defined by three qualities: It orbits the sun, it's mostly round, and it's massive enough for its gravity to have mostly kicked large objects from its orbit. Pluto and some other known dwarf planets meet the first two criteria but not the third because they orbit in the Kuiper Belt, a region beyond Neptune filled with small icy debris. When Pluto was first discovered in 1930, it (and other similar objects in the Kuiper Belt) were so far away and faint that they were really hard to spot, even with the most powerful telescopes at the time. Indeed, the very qualities that make something a dwarf planet make those objects particularly hard to detect. Related: James Webb telescope discovers 'a new kind of climate' on Pluto, unlike anything else in our solar system "There are a few things that work against us spotting them," Mathew Yu, an astronomer at UCLA, told Live Science in an email. "They are far away from the sun. The reflected light from them is faint as a result. Some have low reflectivity, making light reflecting off them fainter." Plus, "they move slowly across the sky due to their large distance from the sun," he added. "They go around the sun once every hundreds of Earth years. So their relative motions to the background stars are small. For astronomers with a limited observing time, these objects become hard to detect." Astronomers got a lot better at finding objects in the Kuiper Belt in the 1990s and 2000s as telescope technology improved. And once they could see a bit better, they noticed there were a lot more rocks out there with orbits similar to Pluto's. Between 2002 and 2005, astronomers found seven more particularly large rocks: Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Eris and Salacia. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the group of astronomers that decides on official names and terms for things in space — decided in 2006 that a new category was needed to describe these objects that were pretty big but not big enough to clear their orbits as a true planet does. Thus, the name "dwarf planet" was born. With eight named large rocks in the Kuiper Belt, you might think that means there are eight dwarf planets. However, not all astronomers agree on the number. "Accepted numbers range between around 10 to a few hundred in the Kuiper Belt alone," Yu said. "Some estimate that there may be up to tens of thousands of them beyond the Kuiper Belt." The IAU has officially recognized only five dwarf planets: Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris in the Kuiper Belt, plus Ceres in the asteroid belt. We've sent space probes to only two of these: Pluto (visited by NASA's New Horizons) and Ceres (visited by NASA's Dawn), both of which flew by those bodies in 2015. Astronomers who observe dwarf planets, however, tend to recognize nine: the previous five, plus Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus and Gonggong. Gonggong was discovered in 2007 after the dwarf planet name change, but it wasn't confirmed until some new observations from NASA telescopes in 2016. The IAU is still considering proposals on these dwarfish bodies. RELATED STORIES —Watch newly discovered 'interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS shoot toward us in first livestream today (July 3) —'A completely new phenomenon': Astronomers spot a planet causing its star to constantly explode —James Webb telescope discovers tentacled 'jellyfish' galaxy swimming through deep space There are at least a handful more objects that have been proposed but need more observations to confirm their size and, therefore, dwarf planet status. And in June 2025, scientists proposed a new possible dwarf planet: 2017 OF201. Astronomers found this particularly faint object by searching through an old pile of data with new advanced algorithms. If you count all of the currently proposed dwarf planets plus the newcomer, that makes eighteen or more dwarf planets in the solar system — and that's just the ones we've seen. There are likely more out there, perhaps even hundreds or thousands, someday to be revealed as our telescopes keep getting better.
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Wildly Beautiful and Rare "Red Sprite" Flare Seen on Earth From Orbit
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