Active radiant cooling is a promising strategy for outdoor thermal comfort, but there are practicality and safety concerns with the typically opaque and dark structures that are needed. A team of UCLA engineers and researchers has tested a new design that lowered the mean radiant temperatures 10 degrees during field studies. The scalable design, which combines water-cooled aluminum panels and see-through, infrared-reflective thin polymer film, brings an additional level of cooling beyond shade to help people who have to be outdoors on hot days while preserving a sense of safe and open space.

Scientists have detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves, using the US National Science Foundation-funded (NSF) LIGO Hanford and Livingston Observatories.

In biology textbooks and beyond, the human genome and DNA therein typically are taught in only one dimension. While it can be helpful for learners to begin with the linear presentation of how stretches of DNA form genes, this oversimplification undersells the significance of the genome’s 3D structure. Problems with this 3D structure are associated with many diseases including developmental disorders and cancer.

A mystery interstellar object discovered last week is likely to be the oldest comet ever seen – possibly predating our solar system by more than three billion years, researchers say. The "water ice-rich" visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood and the first to reach us from a completely different region of our Milky Way galaxy. It could be more than seven billion years old, according to University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins – who is discussing his findings at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting 2025 in Durham – and may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.