Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed

arXiv, 2026. DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2609.02823 (About DOIs). Credit: © 2009-2026 CERN Credit: © 2009-2026 CERN Co-author Jishen Qiu of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology drew inspiration from the hardening of freeze-dried fruits, noting that the Martian environment has extremely low temperatures and pressures akin to freeze-drying. The team experimented with various mixtures of sand and glue, the latter made from gelatin and yeast. But it’s a special yeast coated with sticky proteins similar to those mussels use to adhere to rocky surfaces. The gelatin provides scaffolding for the cells to grow, and the sand provides the structure and mass. Qiu et al. tested their concoction in simulated Martian conditions, 3D-printing small domes the size of wine corks. They found that the mixture freeze-dries after exiting the nozzle, leaving a light, porous foam with a compressive strength of 10 to 12 megapascals. Per the authors, that is strong enough to build a one- or two-story structure on Earth, where gravity is three times stronger than on Mars, so it should be possible to use their material to make much higher structures on the red planet. It’s less energy-intensive than heating and melting Martian rocks or moon dust into bricks, another approach that’s been proposed. And yeast recovered from dismantled structures could be easily recycled to build new ones. Chem Circularity, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.checir.2026.100120. Now Griffith University archaeologists have discovered that humans might have been using mind-altering subsances—by sucking and chewing on betel nuts—as early as the Late Pleistocene period some 25,000 years ago, according to a paper published in Science Advances. Betel nut consumption is common in India and the South Pacific, usually by mixing the seed with slaked lime (which releases the psychoactive compounds) and a few other ingredients to make a “quid,” then chewing it. The effects include mild euphoria and high alertness. The Griffith team discovered two rare early human forager skeletons from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, concluding that one dated to 25,000 to 16,000 years ago and the other to 7,600–6,300 years ago. Both skeletons had deep rounded grooves in their teeth, apparently caused by constantly sucking on whole betel nuts. By soaking betel nuts in artificial saliva, the authors concluded that this would release enough arecoline to alter brain function, although the psychoactive effects would be milder. The authors posit that people from that period sucked on betel nuts to relieve tooth pain, given that these populations are known to have had bad teeth and arecoline is a natural analgesic. But the seeds are abrasive and, over time, wore down the foragers’ teeth so much that inner pulp chambers were exposed. “So while this habit may have been a remedy for toothache, years of prolonged nut-sucking eventually caused much worse dental health problems, creating a cycle of continued habitual use,” said co-author Adam Brumm. Science Advances, 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aei1901. Galileo swore never to sell any of his telescopes, and he didn’t document any technical analyses of his instruments either; only eight such telescopes survive; none can unequivocally be attributed to the astronomer. But a historian at the University of Limerick in Ireland has uncovered a previously unknown 17th century description of a four-lens telescope attributed to Galileo in a 1666 manuscript written by a Spanish Dominican friar, detailing his findings in a paper published in the journal Annals of Science. The text in question is De Tellescopiis Stellarum, by Friar Ignacio Muñoz. Author Jose Maria Moreno Madrid was perusing the treatise when he came across the friar’s analysis of the telescope, complete with diagrams and drawings of the instrument. The analysis was specifically requested by the viceroy of New Spain as a test of the friar’s scientific expertise. Muñoz proposed improvements to the Spanish fleet to King Philip IV in hopes of ending his exile to Portuguese India. Muñoz noted in his manuscript that the telescope belonged to the king and was made by Galileo. According to Madrid, Galileo had presented Philip IV and his wife with one large and two smaller telescopes to curry favor while working on the problem of longitude. So Muñoz’s description could be referring to one of those three telescopes. The first four-lens telescopes appeared around 1643, but if Madrid’s analysis is correct, this would mean the innovation occurred much earlier, in 1630 at the latest, and could be attributed to Galileo. And Muñoz’s 1666 description would be “the most detailed technical analysis of a telescope provenly made” by the Renaissance astronomer. Annals of Science, 2026. DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2026.2661195. Credit: Public domain Credit: Public domain John Plunkett, a historian at the University of Exeter, was researching the history of cosmoramas and similar visual technology in the UK and Ireland as part of a broader European project. While poring over advertisements and articles in newspaper archives from the 1820s onward, in order to map the emerging use of cosmoramas around the world, he stumbled on a London auctioneer and surveyor, Brooks and Hedger, who were using cosmoramas in the 1830s to market various estate properties for sale, offering views of homes and grounds including “aerial perspectives.” Their offices were on Old Bond Street, close to the Cosmorama Rooms of Regent Street, so clearly the firm was capitalizing on the current fad. Per Plunkett, producing cosmoramas would have been a costly investment for the firm, requiring an artist to visit each property and create paintings or drawings from different angles, so this strategy was likely reserved for estates and luxury properties. The practice seems to have been abandoned by 1860, but Plunkett likened it to the virtual tours or walkthroughs employed by online real estate listing services like Redfin, Zillow, or Rightmove in the UK. Popular Visual Culture, 2026. DOI: 10.1080/17460654.2026.2700727 .