A snowman-shaped object far beyond Pluto is breaking new ground in scientists’ understanding of our solar system. New data suggests two smaller objects merged slowly over time, rather than colliding, to form the planetesimal named Arrokoth, the team behind NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft said at a meeting in Seattle on Thursday.

Scientists once thought butterfly wings were just a pair of lifeless membranes. But now researchers from Columbia and Harvard universities have discovered a complex system of living structures hidden beneath the insect’s colorful scales. Their study, published Jan. 28 in Nature Communications, illustrates the divine design in the wings’ dainty flutter.

After traveling 139 million miles in space for more than 10 months, Christina Koch is back home. The NASA astronaut and two of her International Space Station crewmates, Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov, touched down in their Soyuz capsule southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Thursday.

Within three weeks of identifying the first case, Chinese officials had reported a new respiratory illness to the World Health Organization. Scientists identified the coronavirus a week later on Jan. 7. The country’s response to the new strain of viral pneumonia reveals the ways China—and the rest of the world—has improved responses to public health threats.

Researchers have refashioned frog stem cells into tiny robots that can move purposefully and heal themselves if injured. University of Vermont computer scientist Joshua Bongard admitted his team turned to biological organisms because life contains a complex artistry human technology cannot replicate. “There’s all of this innate creativity in life,” he said.

The 1-millimeter-wide robots, called xenobots, are “neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal,” Bongard said. “It’s a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism.”

Astronomers view a dimming star in the night sky as a harbinger of fireworks to come.

Betelgeuse (pronounced “beetlejuice”) reminds many of the 1989 movie Beetlejuice starring Michael Keaton as a trouble-making ghost. But for astronomers, Betelgeuse enjoys fame as the constellation Orion’s bright red “shoulder” star, located more than 600 light-years away and 12 times more massive than the sun.

New research shows the brains of adult mice can rewire themselves to enhance their senses when they spend long periods of time in a dark environment.