PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident

An ancient Maya city has been found “hidden in plain sight” beneath the jungle canopy in the Mexican state of Campeche. Archaeologists used a laser technique called LiDAR to scan the area, “accidentally” discovering the forgotten complex, which contains pyramids, amphitheatres and sports fields. They think the site, which they’ve named Valeriana, might have housed up to 50,000 people, which supports claims that Maya lived in complex cities or towns, not in isolated villages.

Physicists tame fundamental muon particles into highly controlled beam for first time

Researchers have accelerated muons — the heavier, unstable cousins of electrons — into a tightly controlled beam for the first time. A team at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai shot a laser at a stream of muons to bring the fast-moving particles to a near-standstill. Then, the researchers applied an electric field to accelerate these ‘cooled’ muons to around 4% of the speed of light. The feat takes researchers a step closer to making a muon collider, which would be smaller and cheaper than other current colliders, a reality.

DNA stores data in bits after epigenetic upgrade

An epigenetic upgrade allows DNA to store information as a binary code — the strings of 0s and 1s used by standard computers. Researchers developed a system in which short, prefabricated DNA “bricks” — with or without methyl groups — could be added to a reaction tube to form a growing DNA strand that represented a desired binary code. The encoded information could then be read using a DNA-sequencing technique that detects the methyl groups along the strand.

Ancient meteorite was ‘giant fertiliser bomb’ for life

A meteorite up to 200 times bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs might have acted as a “giant fertiliser bomb” that helped early microorganisms to thrive more than 3 billion years ago. The space rock would have caused a tsunami, partially evaporated the oceans and plunged Earth into darkness. On the plus side for Palæoarchæan life, it also released phosphorus and sloshed iron-rich water up from the deep.

Smallest fossilised dinosaur eggs ever found

Researchers in China have dug up the smallest known non-avian dinosaur egg at a construction site near the city of Ganzhou. At 29 millimetres long, the egg is about the size of a small strawberry. It was found in 2021 as part of a cluster of six eggs, and dated to be 80 million years old. Electron microscopy revealed that the eggs belonged to an unknown species, which the team named Minioolithus ganzhouensis.

AlphaFold reveals how sperm and egg hook up in intimate detail

Researchers have identified three proteins that work together as matchmakers between sperm and egg cells. They used the artificial-intelligence tool AlphaFold to predict the interactions between proteins of sperm cells. It predicted that three such proteins form a complex, which creates a place for an egg protein to bind.

Early galaxies are too big and too bright

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope are a portal to the past, allowing astrophysicists to study galaxies from the first billion years of the universe. These young galaxies appear bigger and brighter than our current theories about the evolution of the universe say they should be, leaving researchers to debate explanations for how these infant galaxies could have grown up so fast.

‘Stunning’ find in stone city of Petra

Geophysicists and archæologists have collaborated to discover an undisturbed burial site beneath the elaborate rock-cut Treasury building in Petra. After a non-invasive scan revealed temptingly tomb-like voids, digs confirmed the presence of 12 skeletal remains and a collection of grave artefacts. Researchers estimate that the remains might be from the height of the Nabataean society, which built the mountain fortress of Petra in what is now Jordan.

AI scans RNA ‘dark matter’ and uncovers 70,000 new viruses

A trawl of genomic samples archived in publicly available databases has revealed 70,500 RNA viruses that were previously unknown to science, many of them weird and nothing like known species. Researchers developed a deep-learning model to recognize the gene sequences that encode a key protein in the ubiquitous microorganisms. Looking at more than 10,000 samples from around the world, the team found new viruses in environments that included air, hot springs and hydrothermal vents.

Genome sequencing inside intact cells

A powerful new microscopy technique can simultaneously sequence an individual cell’s DNA and pinpoint the location of proteins inside it — all without having to break open the cell. Imaging DNA and proteins inside intact cells provides crucial information about how these molecules work together. The team behind the method, called expansion in situ genome sequencing, has already used it to study how ageing might alter the way that proteins in the nucleus interact with chromosomes.

Is this how complex life evolved?

With a tiny hollow needle and a bicycle pump, scientists have successfully kick-started an artificial endosymbiotic relationship by implanting bacteria into a fungus cell. These relationships, in which a microbial partner lives harmoniously within the cells of another organism, are thought to be what sparked the evolution of complex life. The systems could help researchers to understand how cell structures such as mitochondria and chloroplasts emerged more than a billion years ago. Researchers recreated a natural symbiosis by implanting the bacterium Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica into the fungi Rhizopus microsporus. When spores germinated, bacteria were also present in the cells of the next generation of fungi, showing that the endosymbiosis could be passed onto offspring.