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LiveScience
LiveScience
Ben Turner

Science news this week: James Webb telescope finds a never-before-seen substance, China's 'Great Green Wall' grows faster than natural trees, and a Medici murder mystery is solved

Science China Great Green Wall Murder Live Science Earth United States antibiotic Japan Pluto
A telescope floats above Earth on the left, and three women inspect a skeleton on the right.

This week's science news was all about goings on in space, with reports that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) picked up a signal from a mysterious, never-before-seen substance on Pluto and Titan.

The space telescope detected a specific absorption line in the spectra of these worlds' atmospheres, revealing the characteristic trace of a unique and unknown molecule. It's unclear exactly what the molecule could be, and the mystery is made even more compelling by the fact that the environments of Pluto and Titan are very distinct.

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