A rare cancer-fighting plant compound has been decoded

The sci-fi film Project Hail Mary, currently in theaters, is capturing the attention of both audiences and the scientific community for its science-based content. It manages to engage viewers with complex, cutting-edge topics—from astrophysics to language—without sacrificing entertainment. Yet not all films strike this balance. Many have promoted inaccurate or even misleading scientific ideas, and, thanks to their wide reach, have contributed to shaping distorted public perceptions of science.

Beaver Island is one in a string of verdant and scenic jewels in a northern Lake Michigan archipelago.

It's autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it's fog season in the Victorian Alps. NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of morning fog filling valleys in several national parks across the mountains of eastern Victoria in May.

Archaeologists have found something unexpected inside a 1,600-year-old Roman-era Egyptian mummy: a fragment of Homer's Iliad. It wasn't placed beside the body, but inside the mummy's abdomen. But the real surprise isn't just where the fragment was found. It's how it got there. To understand, we must go back—to the Iliad itself, and to what it became in the Roman world.