Science news this week: The world’s oldest rock art, giant freshwater reservoir found off the East Coast, and the biggest solar radiation storm in decades

This week’s science news was filled with discoveries once thought lost to time — notably, the world’s oldest known rock art was discovered in Indonesia.

The roughly 70,000-year-old stencil of a human hand, found in a cave in Sulawesi, promises to fill a major gap in scientists’ understanding of humanity’s migration across the islands of Southeast Asia to Australia, and was likely left by an ancestor of Indigenous Australians.

And it wasn’t just ancient Homo sapiens who were found to have made intrepid and unexpected journeys this week, as a 2.6 million-year-old fossil jaw of the extinct human relative Paranthropus (or “Nutcracker Man”) was found hundreds of miles farther north than previously thought possible.

Jumping forward to slightly more recent history, researchers this week revealed tombs, shrines, burial grounds and shipwrecks. These finds included a 2,400-year-old Hercules shrine discovered outside ancient Rome’s walls; 1,400 year-old Anglo-Saxon “sand burials” unearthed during the construction of a power plant in the U.K.; a medieval “super ship” wreck found off Denmark; and the oldest evidence of the bacterium that causes syphilis, suggesting that the disease originated in the Americas.

Giant freshwater reservoir beneath East Coast seafloor

An expedition off the coast of Massachusetts confirmed this week the existence of a giant sub-seafloor reservoir that could supply a city the size of New York City with fresh water for around 800 years.

The freshwater reservoir stretches from offshore New Jersey as far north as Maine and possibly formed 20,000 years ago during the last ice age, when rainwater became trapped underground before sea levels rose.

More definitive results about how and when the reservoir took shape, alongside its bacterial and mineral contents, are expected soon. The scientists who found it say the information could prove vital to those who may want to tap into it in the future.

Discover more planet Earth stories

—Arctic blast probably won’t cause trees to explode in the cold — but here’s what happens if and when they do go boom

—Californians have been using far less water than suppliers estimated — what does this mean for the state?

—‘The scientific cost would be severe’: A Trump Greenland takeover would put climate research at risk

Life’s Little Mysteries

It’s a truism that we often miss what’s right under our noses, but what about our noses themselves? How is it that we go through life ignoring the fleshy prows perched right on our faces, only seeing them with a conscious effort? The answer isn’t because they’re out of our sight but instead because of an ingenious neurovisual sleight of hand that may be key to our survival.

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The biggest solar radiation storm in decades

Earth’s most powerful solar radiation storm in more than two decades hit Monday (Jan. 19), sending curtains of auroras across night skies as far south as Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico.

While some publications reported that the storm was the largest geomagnetic storm since 2003, that was a slight exaggeration; 2024’s “Mother’s Day storm” was more powerful. However, the latest storm was one of the most powerful solar radiation storms on record — meaning the sheer quantity of radiation hurled at Earth was extraordinary.

Discover more space stories

—‘Like watching a cosmic volcano erupt’: Scientists see monster black hole ‘reborn’ after 100 million years

—An ocean the size of the Arctic once covered half of Mars, new images hint

—‘Goddess of dawn’: James Webb telescope spies one of the oldest supernovas in the early universe

Also in science news this week

—Scientists may be approaching a ‘fundamental breakthrough in cosmology and particle physics’ — if dark matter and ‘ghost particles’ can interact

—Coyote scrambles onto Alcatraz Island after perilous, never-before-seen swim

—Diagnostic dilemma: A woman experienced delusions of communicating with her dead brother after late-night chatbot sessions

—People, not glaciers, transported rocks to Stonehenge, study confirms

Science Spotlight

Not long ago, astronomers thought they knew the story of how gigantic supermassive black holes formed. They believed it happened the same way regular black holes are born: by collapsing from large stars and slowly merging until they grow to billions of times the sun’s mass.

But the James Webb Space Telescope appears to have upended that story by finding enormous black holes in the earliest epochs of our universe that shouldn’t have had the time to grow by merging or devouring matter.

So how did these behemoths get so enormous? Live Science investigated the explanations — and all of their revolutionary potential — in this fascinating Science Spotlight.

Something for the weekend

If you’re looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the analyses, crosswords and opinion stories published this week.

—Lab mice that ‘touch grass’ are less anxious — and that highlights a big problem in rodent research [Analysis]

—Live Science crossword puzzle #26: Nothing can travel faster than this — 12 across [Crossword]

—Indigenous TikTok star ‘Bush Legend’ is actually AI-generated, leading to accusations of ‘digital blackface’ [Opinion]

Science in motion

This week saw the release of a stunning time lapse of the sun that could help unravel one of the most enduring mysteries concerning our home star.

The footage, taken by the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission, captures three major plumes of plasma jetting out of the sun’s surface. By studying it further, astronomers want to learn why the sun’s faint atmosphere, or corona, is hundreds of times hotter than its surface.

A better understanding of the warp and weft of the sun’s magnetic-field lines could help researchers make better predictions of when these lines will snap to unleash solar flares, some of which can have devastating consequences for Earth.

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