Science news this week: Life on Mars, weird water and a curious human cousin

This week, we've taken one tantalizing step closer to finding out if there really was life on Mars, after NASA's Perseverance rover uncovered the highest concentration of organic molecules on the Red Planet to date.

The data comes from mudstones in Jezero crater, which once hosted a deep lake. Last year, researchers described a piece of rock with patterns resembling those left by microorganisms on Earth as one of the clearest signs yet of past Martian microbes.

Now, scientists have confirmed the widespread presence of complex carbon-based molecules in this area of the crater, which they suggest indicate the presence of fossilized microbes.

Going even further back in history, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed how early galaxies lived fast and died young, offering a possible preview of our own galaxy's death.

Elsewhere in space, JWST captured the formation of a distant star, 1,280 light-years away in the constellation Orion, while the Euclid space telescope snapped the most detailed photo of the Milky Way ever taken.

Weird human cousin gets even weirder

'A weird result from an already weird hominin': Archaeologists discover all Homo naledi skeletons found in South African cave are female

two skulls of ancient human relative Homo naledi — The largest (left) and the smallest (right) skulls of *Homo naledi* found in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. All specimens of *H. naledi* have been shown to be female. (Image credit: Rising Star Program)

Homo naledi surprised scientists once again this week. Found in a South African cave in 2013, the small-brained, two-legged relative to modern humans is thought to have lived around 300,000 years ago. Since its initial discovery, the enigmatic hominin has shocked scientists with a string of baffling revelations. In 2023, researchers found evidence that H. naledi may have used fire in the cave. This early hominin may also have buried its dead. Now, archaeologists have analyzed genetic material in the enamel of nearly two dozen skeletons at the site and found that they are all female.

"The bottom line is this is a weird result from an already weird hominin," Elizabeth Sawchuk, curator of human evolution at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.

Discover more archaeology news

—Hanging lamp in the form of a sandaled right foot: A 1,600-year-old bronze lamp with multilayered Christian symbolism

—Early Homo sapiens may have lived in rainforests, new clues suggest — and it could overturn our understanding of human evolution

—Some of the last surviving Neanderthals were remarkably diverse ‪—‬ suggesting inbreeding didn't doom them

Life's Little Mysteries

How did the Romans build such straight roads?

A group of people walking through a forested tunnel — The remarkably straight Stane Street in southern England was built by the Romans. (Image credit: Tim Stocker Photography via Getty Images)

The Romans are known for their transport systems that enabled travel and trade across their enormous empire. Many of these centuries-old streets had a reputation for being extremely straight. Nowadays, building straight roads requires advanced surveying using GPS networks and lasers, as well as careful engineering to flatten the terrain. So how did the Romans do it about 2,000 years before these things were invented?

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Water might be 2 liquids

Water might secretly be a mix of 2 different liquids, scientists say

A series of ball-and-stick shaped transparent molecules against a blue background — An illustration of a water molecule. New research adds credence to a controversial theory that water actually switches between two chemical structures. (Image credit: Yaroslav Kushta via Getty Images)

Most of us discount water as the most basic of beverages, but if you look at it at a molecular level, water is actually rather exciting. Think about it: While most liquids are denser in their solid form, water ice floats. That's weird. Water also resists temperature changes better than similar liquids do, and its viscosity decreases under certain pressures.

Some scientists have hypothesized that these weird behaviors come about because water consists of not one, but two liquids ‪—‬ a dense one and a less-dense one that constantly switch places. Now, with the help of AI, we have proof of this weirdness.

Discover more weird news

—We've spent decades looking for the wrong type of alien radio signals, new paper claims — and there's an easy way to fix it

—'Weirdos of the sperm whale world' appear to be evolving 2 different dialects, audio recordings suggest

—China's Einstein Probe detected a mysterious cosmic explosion — and scientists have no idea what caused it

Also in science news this week

—The US just approved bemotrizinol, a sunscreen ingredient long used in Asia and Europe. Here's how it works.

—'You can't patch your way out of it': Cheap AI worm can spread between devices without human guidance — but how did scientists create it?

—Water shortages could prevent the US from mining more lithium, deepening reliance on foreign imports

—Diagnostic dilemma: After taking a medicine for years, a man suddenly had weird changes in his taste that made food disgusting

Science Spotlight

'If there's any country that will do it, it's China': Why is China diverting some of the world's mightiest rivers thousands of miles?

An illustration showing Chinese politicians and scientists around a glass container filled with dams, clouds, hills and water — People in China's northern megacities have 74 times less fresh water than the average American — so the Chinese government has built the world's largest water diversion project. (Image credit: Xinmei Liu for Live Science)

People in China's northern megacities have 74 times less fresh water availability than the average American. But China boasts some of the largest rivers in Asia that flow farther south, along with massive water reserves in glaciers in the west. To address this imbalance, the Chinese government has built the world's largest water diversion project, ferrying water from the Yangtze River in the country's center and south over thousands of miles through a complex system of canals, pipes, dams, reservoirs and pumps.

And yet, this is still not enough to satisfy the water needs of the country's thirsty North. Now, China is expanding these routes and planning a third, western route for the project, which will be the most dangerous and ambitious route yet.

Beyond diverting the country's rivers, China is also building the world's largest dam in an earthquake-prone region in Tibet and has invested heavily in creating a permanent "sky river" to help solve the country's water crisis.

Something for the weekend

If you're looking for things to keep you busy over the weekend, here are some of the best news analyses, crosswords, interviews, opinion pieces and quizzes published this week.

—9 of the best technology conspiracy theories [Countdown]

— AI companies don't want to be legally responsible for their chatbots. US courts should make them. [Opinion]

—Live Science crossword puzzle #49: 'Short' tempered French emperor — 13 across [Crossword]

— Ancient empires quiz: Can you match these lands to the historical powers that ruled them? [Quiz]

—60 million stars: Euclid space telescope snaps the most detailed photo of the Milky Way ever taken [Skywatching]

Science in pictures

NASA satellite captures wave of warm water hundreds of miles long that signals a devastatingly strong El Niño

A heatmap of the Earth showing sea surface heights with red areas around the equator. — A wave of warm water and higher-than-usual sea surfaces (red) stretches across the Pacific, a few days before El Niño was declared. (Image credit: Data for the map were acquired by the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite and processed by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin)

New satellite imagery shows a wave of warm water stretching across the Pacific Ocean in a dramatic illustration of the newly declared El Niño. The image shows a red wave as it streaks across the equator and piles up around the west coast of South America.

Ocean patterns like this are known as Kelvin waves. They occur when winds in the Pacific Ocean near the equator temporarily reverse and blow from west to east. This enables warm water to gradually build up in the east,preventing cold waters from rising below.

The wave was spotted by NASA's Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, which measures ocean temperatures through radar scans of changes in sea surface height, caused by heat's expansionary effects upon water. The satellite has already observed several other Kelvin waves this year in anticipation of El Niño.

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