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<![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]>
https://www.livescience.com
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000
+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000en
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+ <![CDATA[ 'Earthquake on a chip' uses 'phonon' lasers to make mobile devices more efficient ]]>
+ Engineers have created a device that produces tiny, earthquake-like vibrations on the surface of a chip. They say it could one day be harnessed for signal processing inside everyday electronics, potentially paving the way to smaller, faster and more efficient wireless devices.
In a new study published Jan. 14 in the journal Nature, the scientists described their device as a surface acoustic wave (SAW) phonon laser that generates very small, rapid vibrations.
"Think of it almost like the waves from an earthquake, only on the surface of a small chip," lead study author Alexander Wendt, a graduate student at the University of Arizona Wyant College of Optical Sciences, said in a statement.
In nature, SAWs are produced on a massive scale when tectonic plates slide against each other and cause earthquakes.
SAWs are also used as filters in smartphones to help clean up wireless signals. A phone's radio receives radio waves from a cell tower and then converts them into tiny mechanical vibrations, making it easier for chips to remove unwanted noise.
Multiple chips convert radio waves into SAWs and back again every time you send a text, make a call or access the internet.
SAWs in modern technology
Although they're conceptually similar to seismic surface waves released by earthquakes, SAWs are far too small to be measured on any scale like the moment magnitude scale, which is used to estimate the energy released by movement in Earth's crust.
SAW devices are essential to many of the world's most important technologies, senior study author Matt Eichenfield, a professor of quantum engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in the statement. This includes cell phones, key fobs, garage door openers, most GPS receivers, and radar systems.
The scientists said a completely solid-state, single chip that generates coherent SAWs at very high frequencies, without needing an external radio-frequency source, has never been achieved before.
Traditional SAW components typically require two separate chips plus a power source. The team's design aimed to deliver similar functionality using a single chip — potentially enabling much higher frequencies to be powered by a typical smartphonebattery.
The researchers built the device by stacking ultrathin layers of different chip materials into a tiny "bar" about 0.02 inches (0.5 millimeters) long.
This included a silicon base; a thin layer of lithium niobate, a type of piezoelectric crystal that converts electrical signals into mechanical vibrations; and a final layer of indium gallium arsenide, a semiconductor material that can accelerate electrons to extremely high speeds when exposed to an electric field.
The system works by repeatedly amplifying vibrations as they bounce back and forth inside the structure, similar to how light intensifies in a diode laser between two mirrors. Surface vibrations in the lithium niobate interact with electrons in the indium gallium arsenide, boosting the energy of the waves as they move forward.
"It loses almost 99% of its power when it's moving backward, so we designed it to get a substantial amount of gain moving forward to beat that," Wendt said in the statement.
The team generated surface waves at around 1 gigahertz — equal to billions of vibrations per second — and believes the design could be pushed into the tens or hundreds of gigahertz. That's well beyond the capabilities of typical SAW devices, which often top out around 4 GHz, the researchers said.
The long-term goal is to simplify how phones handle wireless signals — namely, by designing a single chip that can convert radio waves into SAWs and back again, using surface waves for much of the signal processing. Doing so could potentially enable future wireless devices to filter and route signals on smaller chips, using less power.
"This phonon laser was the last domino standing that we needed to knock down," Wendt added. "Now we can literally make every component that you need for a radio on one chip using the same kind of technology."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/electronics/earthquake-on-a-chip-could-speed-up-smartphones-thanks-to-phonon-laser-invention
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:25:38 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Chocolate Hills: The color-changing mounds in the Philippines that inspired legends of mud-slinging giants ]]>
+
Why it's incredible: The hills change color with the seasons, inspiring legends that giants formed the mounds from mud.
The Chocolate Hills are a formation made of 1,776 limestone, grass-covered mounds in the Philippines.
This landscape is lush green during the rainy season from February to May, but in the dry season, the hills turn cocoa brown, giving the formation its name.
The Chocolate Hills were designated a national geological monument of the Philippines in 1988 and were granted protection as a natural monument in 1997. There is no other formation quite like them in the world, with just one region in Java, Indonesia, having a similar, but less impressive geology.
The hills are between 100 and 390 feet (30 to 120 meters) tall and have tapering tops. They are examples of what geologists call "mogotes" — steep-sided mounds that occur in tropical karst landscapes, or areas that have a soluble bedrock and host sinkholes and cave systems. Numerous underground caverns and springs have been documented around the Chocolate Hills, according to a 2001 research article, with some caves potentially existing directly beneath the mogotes themselves.
Evidence suggests the Chocolate Hills formed sometime at the start of, or just before, the last ice age (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), when tectonic processes lifted coral and other marine deposits. These deposits were then exposed to rainfall and erosion, which carved the landscape into regular mounds.
Local myths have tried to explain how the Chocolate Hills formed. According to one legend, the mounds formed after a mud-throwing fight between two giants. Another tale says the region was once inhabited by giant children, who, while competing to make the most mud cakes, baked them under coconut half shells that eventually became the Chocolate Hills.
The land between the hills is flat and cultivated with rice and other crops. When the Chocolate Hills were declared a natural monument in the late 1990s, farmers, small-scale miners and landowners rose up against the government because they feared environmental protections would curb their property rights and livelihoods.
Between February and May, the Chocolate Hills turn green thanks to abundant precipitation. (Image credit: John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images)
These protests escalated into violent conflicts between the military and a guerilla group dubbed the "Chocolate Hills Command," according to the 2001 article. Two armed fights broke out, one of which caused 10 deaths in October 1999.
Balancing the diverse and sometimes conflicting needs of environmental protection, tourism and local residents still poses a challenge today; the construction of a resort in the middle of the Chocolate Hills sparked public outcry in 2024.
Discover more incredible places, where we highlight the fantastic history and science behind some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/chocolate-hills-the-color-changing-mounds-in-the-philippines-that-inspired-legends-of-mud-slinging-giants
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+ Vb9x58uppgM2Hk4sNXT6Ge
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:40:28 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ How to choose the best dehumidifier for your home this season ]]>
+
The main purpose of a dehumidifier is to draw in damp air, remove excess moisture and release drier air into the room. Sounds simple enough, so surely you just go for the one that removes the most water per day according to the label, right?
Well, unfortunately, as with most things, it's not quite that simple. Several factors will come into play that will vary from house to house — there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.
Houses, workplaces, basements, studios or anywhere else you might want to use a dehumidifier are all unique environments. The size of the room will vary, as will the existing levels of damp or condensation, the room temperature and the climate. A dehumidifier that performs well in a warm living room might struggle in a cold underground basement, for example.
So, what should you look for when buying a dehumidifier? It's difficult to say without knowing your exact circumstances and reason for buying, but hopefully this guide will help you choose.
Here at Live Science, we have tried and tested a plethora of dehumidifiers and have identified which models are best for which purpose.
Reason for purchase
The Honeywell TP50WKN dehumidifier is our top pick: it ticks a lot of boxes. (Image credit: Alyssa Mercante)
It might sound silly, but why are you looking to purchase a dehumidifier? Common reasons people consider a dehumidifier include condensation on windows, mold growth, a damp or musty smell, damp patches on walls, or difficulty drying clothes inside during the winter.
Do you just need to manage air moisture, or do you need to dry a room that's been damaged by flooding or damp? Are you looking for a way to dry your laundry faster, or do you need to prevent condensation from forming to prevent damage to your loft or conservatory? The answers will help narrow down your choices.
The two main types of dehumidifier
The LG UD501KOG5 is ideal for large rooms but is overkill for small spaces. (Image credit: Alyssa Mercante)
Consider which environment your dehumidifier will be put to work in, as it will help you decide which type of dehumidifier to buy. There are two main types:
For warmer environments, a refrigerant dehumidifier (or compressor dehumidifier) would be most appropriate. These use a fan to draw in moist air and pass it over coolant-cooled coils. The air is warmed, dried, and recirculated back into your home.
A desiccant dehumidifier, on the other hand, uses a heated, absorbent material to draw moisture from the air, which collects in a water tank that you need to empty periodically. These perform better in cold environments such as garages and conservatories.
In short, if your dehumidifier is in a fully heated room, a refrigerant is appropriate; in a cooler space, a desiccant is better and more efficient.
Understanding the labels
The GE Dehumidifier APER50LZ removes 28 liters of moisture per day, ideal for very wet rooms. It has a built-in pump and a long hose, too. (Image credit: Future)
As we mentioned earlier, dehumidifiers are often labeled by how much water they can remove in 24 hours. For example, the GE APER50LZ, which we reviewed back in 2022, claims to remove 50 pints (28L) per day.
As a rough guide, a 8-12L model would be best suited to a 1-2 bedroom apartment, a 12-20L model would be ideal for a 2-3 bedroom home, and a 20+L model would suit large homes or very damp spaces. The example given above is therefore best suited to a large home or a very wet space. In a smaller room, this large unit might be unnecessarily costly to buy and run.
This statistic is therefore only really useful for an apples-to-apples comparison. Also, be mindful that these stats are often collected under lab conditions, not in real-world environments. They should be used as an indicator and not as gospel.
Pick the right design
Make sure all of the controls are accessible, especially if it is going to stay in one place. (Image credit: Alyssa Mercante)
Aside from the amount of moisture the dehumidifier can remove, other design factors are important. It's no good having a dehumidifier that does its job perfectly but causes other nuisances.
Noise
Noise is a key factor we consider when reviewing each model, and is acknowledged throughout our buying guides. The Honeywell TP50WKN is described as having inoffensive noise levels, whereas the GE Dehumidifier APER50LZ, a larger unit, is described as having moderate noise levels. It goes without saying that if you don't want to be distracted while working, sleeping or entertaining, you'll want a quieter model, whereas this might not be as important if the unit is somewhere with hardly any footfall.
Tank size/drainage
The larger the tank, the less frequently it needs to be emptied, but a smaller tank size will typically be found in a more portable and compact machine. Again, your decision will depend on the dehumidifier's location, ease of access, and how far you need to walk to the drain/sink to empty it.
Continuous drainage, if the dehumidifier supports it (as opposed to a tank you empty), works in one of two ways. Gravity drainage, as in the Honeywell TP50WKN,means water flows downward through the hose. The hose must discharge to a drain/sink/bucket that is lower than the dehumidifier's outlet. The alternative is pump-assisted drainage, which does the opposite. Water is pumped upward through the hose, as found in the GE Dehumidifier APER50LZ. Handy if you want to run the pipe out the window or into a standard sink.
In short, if you can empty the tank regularly and don't need to run the dehumidifier continuously, you can likely make do with a model that has only a water tank. If you have very damp rooms or require 24/7 hands-off operation, and have a suitable location for the drainage pipe, continuous drainage may require less maintenance and make more sense.
Portability
As you've probably established by now, some units are designed to be left in one place (typically the larger ones with continuous drainage). Some are more suitable for moving from room to room. Some units have handles and/or wheels, like the LG UD501KOG5, which can make even heavier units easier to move from A to B. Check these things before making a purchase.
Features
We recommend that if you have a unit with a water tank that needs to be emptied, you purchase a unit with an auto-shutdown feature, which stops the machine from running once the water tank is full. Otherwise, you can end up with a bigger mess on your hands than you started with!
Some dehumidifiers have "smart" features. For example, the Honeywell white TP50WK Energy Star actively monitors your space, adjusting modes based on the moisture level it detects.
Some models have auto-start, which means that if there is a power cut, they will automatically resume when power returns, without requiring manual intervention. Other models will have dedicated modes, like laundry mode; some will come with apps that alert you when the water tank is full or let you set schedules and control the unit remotely.
As we continue reviewing dehumidifiers, we will update our best dehumidifiers guide to include the models we recommend. No doubt we will start to see more features cropping up on newer units.
Consider the maintenance costs
The LG UD501KOG5 is a pricey bit of kit, but it is Energy Star-certified so has been tested for efficiency. (Image credit: Alyssa Mercante)
The initial investment of buying a dehumidifier isn't the only cost: you will also need to account for the price of energy to run the appliance.
While it may cost more up front, you'll likely save more over time by buying an Energy Star-certified model. These models have undergone testing to ensure they meet strict energy-efficiency criteria set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the Department of Energy. In our best dehumidifiers guide, you can clearly see which models have an Energy Star rating.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/how-to-choose-the-best-dehumidifier-for-your-home
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:46:18 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Stream Will Smith's Pole to Pole and many more nature and science documentaries with a 33% saving in this limited-time Disney+ deal ]]>
+ For fans of nature documentaries, we think Disney+ is one of the best streaming services around, and it has an incredible library of nature and science documentaries.
Major new releases landing this year include Pole to Pole with Will Smith, and this seven-part documentary series blends personal adventure with scientific discovery. Smith, one of Hollywood's biggest names, embarks on a series of expeditions starting in the South Pole and ending in the North Pole, taking in the Amazonian rainforest, the Himalayas, Pacific islands and the African deserts.
Also, as the streaming home of National Geographic, we believe for fans of nature and science viewing, that Disney+ is the streaming subscription to have in 2026, even more so now as it's a third cheaper with this UK-only deal.
For US viewers, it seems Disney+ is being a bit stingy when it comes to a streaming deal. However, you can get one month of Disney+ for $9.99, before it reverts to the $12.99 pricing. A small saving if you're interested in seeing what it's all about.
Get three months' worth of Disney+ for just £3.99 a month on this UK-only streaming deal.You'll get access to brand new nature-themed shows and movies, plus a vast back catalogue that's guaranteed to keep you entertained. You can cancel your subscription at any time. Offer ends January 28 and auto-renews at the then-current price of the chosen plan (from £5.99).View Deal
When you consider the amount of content available, this Disney+ deal is a bargain price. I've already mentioned a few above, but other highlights include Ghost Elephants, Secrets of the Whales, Billy and Molly: An Otter Love Story, and Super Animals.
Elsewhere, Meltdown explores the effect of global warming on one of the most beautiful and distant parts of the world. This film follows a UN trip to look at the glacial melt that is forming huge lakes behind moraine dams in Nepal and the dangerous impact this has.
As a mountaineer, at the top of my list to view is Expedition Everest, a groundbreaking expedition on Mount Everest to investigate what secrets the world’s highest peak has to tell us about our changing climate.
For sci-fi buffs, Disney+ also has the entire Star Wars and Marvel libraries, plus the latest releases, including The Mandalorian and Grogu, Maul – Shadow Lord, VisionQuest, and much more.
Key features: A vast library of Nature and Science content, including the vast National Geographic library, and much more. You can cancel your monthly subscription at any time.
Price history: Offers come up occasionally for Disney+ in the UK, but the current 33% off deal is the best one we've seen since this time last year.
✅ Buy it if: You want to be amongst the first to watch Pole to Pole with Will Smith and get access to what we regard as one of the best streaming packages for nature and science fans at a bargain price for three months.
❌ Don't buy it if: You're a current subscriber to Disney+ or live outside of the UK.
The recent G4 geomagnetic storm hasunleashed intense auroral activity, which has lit up skies across the Northern Hemisphere, delivering jaw-dropping northern light displays visible across Canada, the U.S., and even as far south as Mexico.
If you've been unlucky enough to have missed out on seeing this stunning but rare event, one of the best ways to experience the wonders of the cosmos in stunning detail is with one of the best star projectors.
Astar projector blends scientific precision with artistic elegance, whether you want depictions of the aurora borealis, realistic constellations or close up representaions of the planets in our solar system, the top-rated choices make these perfect for space fans.
In her Pococo Galaxy Star Projector review, our trusted Live Science expert Tantse Walter scored it with a 4 out of 5 star rating. Tantse noted that the Pococo was an affordable alternative to the more expensive star projectors like the Sega Toys Homestar Flux (our best premium choice), and that it offered similar functionality and image quality to its far more expensive rival.
Walter also highlighted the and it is also rechargeable, which gives you more flexibility in terms of where you can point the projections
with our next-generation high-transparency optical lens. Featuring an industrial-grade 2 million pixel lens with a 95% light transmission rate, it reveals the night sky's every nuance. The 5K Ultra HD disc lens, meticulously etched using cutting-edge photolithography, brings the universe right before your eyes
extensive collection of expandable image disks, LED projections and a focus ring.
Save 39% Get your first year of Norton's VPN Plus service for a massively discounted price, which works out at just $2.50 a month. Unless canceled during the first 12 months, your subscription will auto-renew at $109.99.View Deal
Our Norton deal applies across all three tiers of its VPN service — Standard, Plus, and Ultimate, but I've highlighted the biggest discounts for each region in the deals above.
Whatever the level of cover with Norton VPN, you can access all your favorite streaming content free from geo-blocking constraints from anywhere in the world. You'll also get IP masking and Norton's no-log policy for complete privacy, and an instant kill-switch to terminate your connection should you encounter anything suspicious.
Step up to VPN Plus and you get all of the above along with: AI-powered protection against scams, phishing, and malware, Norton's secure password manager, dark web monitoring and 10GB of cloud back-up for your most important files.
Norton VPN Ultimate gives you everything already mentioned, plus: 50GB of cloud storage, parental controls so your children can browse safely and location supervision so you can keep an eye on their whereabouts.
Please note: This offer expires on December 31.
Key features: 72% discount on a 12-month US subscription, 50% off in the UK, 65% off in Australia, ad blockers, a kill switch, a no-log policy on your online activity, a dedicated IP address, AI-powered scam, phishing and malware protection, dark web monitoring, parental controls, password management and up to 50GB of cloud storage.
extensive collection of expandable image disks, LED projections and a focus ring.
Price history: All the discounts on offer are big reductions compared to the full price of Norton VPN subscriptions.
✅ Buy it if: You want a trusted VPN service from one of the most reliable names in internet security.
❌ Don't buy it if: You're happy with your current VPN provider, or don't feel the need to sign up for one.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/stream-will-smiths-pole-to-pole-and-many-more-nature-and-science-documentaries-with-a-33-percent-saving-in-this-limited-time-disney-deal
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:56:16 +0000Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:56:16 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ An ocean the size of the Arctic once covered half of Mars, new images hint ]]>
+ New evidence of ancient rivers suggests Mars may have been a "blue planet," thanks to an ocean spanning its entire northern hemisphere.
Cameras from several Mars orbiters captured the dusty remnants of apparent river deltas, which were described in research published Jan. 7 in the journal NPJ Space Exploration.
The team, led by researchers at the University of Bern, peered at the famed Valles Marineris, which is the largest valley system on Mars and five times longer than the Grand Canyon. Around this Red Planet region, scientists spotted "structures near the canyon system that resemble river deltas on Earth," University of Bern representatives wrote in a statement.
"These structures represent the mouth of a river into an ocean," the statement added. "The new study thus provides clear evidence of a coastline, and consequently, of an earlier ocean on Mars."
Water, water everywhere
Although Mars is dry and dusty today, there are many signs that the planet hosted water in the ancient past. For example, Mars rovers have spotted "blueberry stones" that may include iron oxide minerals containing water. NASA's Curiosity rover imaged possible "ripples" of an ancient riverbed in 2025, and some orbital missions have spotted what may be vast underground stores of water.
The new study focused on Martian geomorphology — the study of the surface and its processes — and employed several spacecraft, including the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, Mars Express and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which recently shared its 100,000th photo).
"The unique high-resolution satellite images of Mars have enabled us to study the Martian landscape in great detail by surveying and mapping," Ignatius Argadestya, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Bern Institute of Geological Sciences as well as the university’s Physics Institute, said in the statement.
Valles Marineris (center) is the longest canyon in the solar system, and holds many signs of ancient water. Part of the canyon may have been the shoreline where a massive ocean and rivers met. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)
"When measuring and mapping the Martian images, I was able to recognize mountains and valleys that resemble a mountainous landscape on Earth," Argadestya said. "However, I was particularly impressed by the deltas that I discovered at the edge of one of the mountains."
The team saw possible "fan deltas," which form when debris and sand pile up in still water. The deposits in the Martian imagery appear very similar to active fan deltas on Earth, according to the team; on our planet, these deltas pile up at entry points where rivers flow into the ocean.
All of the "deposits" were mapped at an elevation of between 11,975 and 12,300 feet (3,650 to 3,750 meters) and formed roughly 3.37 billion years ago. Given that all of the deposits are at roughly the same elevation and in a region in the northern lowlands of Mars and Valles Marineris, the researchers argue that these structures mark the boundaries of an ancient shoreline. It's likely the ocean that once flowed there spanned Mars' entire northern hemisphere, the team added.
In part drawing on past research, the scientists say this ancient Martian ocean was at least as large as the present-day Arctic Ocean.
"We are not the first to postulate the existence and size of the ocean," Fritz Schlunegger, a geology professor at the University of Bern and co-author of the study, said in the statement. "However, earlier claims were based on less precise data and partly on indirect arguments. Our reconstruction of the sea level, on the other hand, is based on clear evidence for such a coastline, as we were able to use high-resolution images."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/an-ocean-the-size-of-the-arctic-once-covered-half-of-mars-new-images-hint
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+ Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:35:30 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'Pain sponge' derived from stem cells could soak up pain signals before they reach the brain ]]>
+ An experimental treatment uses specialized neurons derived from stem cells to "soak up" triggers of pain and inflammation in the arthritic knees of mice.
This lab-mouse experiment suggests the therapy could potentially help with chronic pain in people, caused by conditions like osteoarthritis, for example. The hope is that the "pain sponge" could enable patients to stop relying on opioid medications for pain relief, the researchers say.
And as a bonus side effect, the engineered neurons also promoted bone and cartilage repair in the mice they were tested in, the researchers reported in a preprint posted to the server bioRxiv in December 2025. The work has not yet been peer-reviewed.
"The possibility that the therapy could both relieve pain and slow cartilage degeneration is particularly compelling for osteoarthritis," Chuan-Ju Liu, an orthopedics professor at Yale University who wasn't involved in the study, told Live Science.
How the pain sponge works
The therapy, known as SN101, uses human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC), which can differentiate into any type of cell in the body. In the study, led by Gabsang Lee, a neurology professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, researchers engineered the hPSC to differentiate into specialized sensory neurons.
These neurons effectively worked as a sponge for inflammatory pain signals. They sequestered the signals before they could be transmitted to the brain and cause pain.
Theoretically, the therapy could work for any kind of chronic pain, said Daniel Saragnese, co-founder of SereNeuro Therapeutics, the biotech company developing SN101. That said, the researchers have so far tested its effectiveness for only osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis.
The degenerative condition is characterized by inflammation and chronic pain that affects the joints, mainly the hips, knees, lower back and neck. It causes pain and stiffness, as well as inflammation driven by the breakdown of bone, cartilage and other tissues. There is no cure.
Currently, osteoarthritis symptoms are managed with lifestyle changes, including physical therapy, and various pain relievers, such as over-the-counter and topical painkillers, opioids, and steroid injections.
In the context of neurodegenerative diseases — such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease — scientists have been working on using hPSCs to replace or repair damaged neurons. With SN101, though, the researchers are taking an alternative approach. The new hPSC-derived neurons are injected at the site of inflammation and exist alongside other pain-sensing neurons, rather than replacing them.
The new neurons serve as biological decoys, binding nearby inflammatory factors before they can be picked up by the body's original neurons.
Potential pros of SN101
Chronic pain, which is defined as pain that lasts three months or more, is often managed with opioid drugs that bind to receptors in the body to reduce the intensity of pain. However, opioids cause unwanted side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, and carry a risk of addiction.
Despite their downsides, it is estimated that about 9% of patients with knee osteoarthritis turn to opioids, which can lead to excessive, long-term use. As such, scientists are always on the lookout for safer and more efficient pain-management techniques.
By using biologically complex cells that naturally express multiple pain receptors, SN101 may more closely reflect the way pain and inflammation manifest in living tissues, Liu said. This could help snuff out pain at its source. Opioids, on the other hand, bind to receptors in the brain to temporarily block painful sensations, so they don't get at the signals at the root of pain.
"However, this work remains at a preclinical stage," Liu emphasized.
The research will need to pass significant milestones before human use, including formal toxicology studies, long-term safety assessments, and first-in-human clinical trials, he said. Nonetheless, he called the idea behind the therapy "innovative."
The researchers pointed out several limitations in their recent study that would need investigation before SN101 could be deemed safe for humans. One is the treatment's immunogenicity — that is, whether it triggers a harmful immune response in the body. Another limitation is that human and mouse knee joints are very different, so some results from the arthritic mouse study might not translate to people.
"Human joints are larger [than mouse joints], more mechanically complex, and subject to decades of cumulative stress," Liu noted. Additionally, "pain processing and immune-neuronal interactions can differ substantially between mice and humans, which may affect both therapeutic efficacy and durability."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/pain-sponge-derived-from-stem-cells-could-soak-up-pain-signals-before-they-reach-the-brain
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:40:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:29:47 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Arctic blast probably won't cause trees to explode in the cold — but here's what happens if and when they do go boom ]]>
+ The extreme cold from an incoming winter blast could make some trees "explode," a viral social media post claims — but don't expect trees to start blowing up like cars in an action movie.
"EXPLODING TREES are possible in the Midwest and Northern Plains on Friday and Saturday, as temperatures are forecasted to fall 20 degrees BELOW zero!" Max Velocity (real name, Max Schuster), a weather-based content creator with a degree in meteorology, wrote in a post on the social platform X.
The frigid temperatures stem from a wave of Arctic air that's heading south. The National Weather Service (NWS) has forecast "life-threatening cold" and the potential for wind chills as low as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 46 degrees Celsius) across the Northern Plains. The agency has issued extreme-cold warnings for much of the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest.
But can extreme cold really make trees explode?
It depends on your definition of "explode." Trees can crack in frigid conditions due to their sap. This substance is usually liquid even in freezing temperatures, but when it gets super cold, like minus 20 F (minus 29 C), it freezes. In some places, the incoming Arctic blast will likely be cold enough to freeze trees' sap, causing it to quickly expand, Bill McNee, a forest health specialist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"That just creates a lot of physical pressure that can lead to the frost cracking appearing suddenly, branches can fall off, and people hear this really loud crack from their tree, almost like it's a gunshot," McNee said.
The cracking usually affects only part of the tree, but in rare cases, explosions can happen, McNee said.
"I've never seen the damage of it, but from what I have seen and what I read online is that it is rare for there just to be so much pressure that is suddenly released inside this tree that it almost does explode," McNee said.
Meteorologist Cody Matz also addressed the explosion claim in an article for Minneapolis-based Fox 9, writing that "it can and does happen" but that it's "extremely rare." Matz noted that many people have likely lived in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest their whole lives without ever hearing of exploding trees.
The news nonprofit organization South Dakota News Watch, in partnership with the fact-checking nonprofit Gigafact, concluded that the claim that trees can explode during extreme cold was misleading but noted that temperature-driven breaking and snapping "can sound like an explosion."
Winter blast
Regardless of whether trees can "explode," some areas will have a chance to experience the rare cracking phenomenon. The NWS is forecasting temperatures below minus 20 F in parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin over the weekend, while the wind chills starting today (Jan. 22) will be even colder.
"This arctic blast will be accompanied by gusty winds, leading to dangerous wind chills," an NWS representative wrote in a Weather Prediction Center update Thursday. "The coldest wind chills may fall below -50 [F] across the Northern Plains with sub-zero wind chills reaching as far southeast as the Mid-Atlantic, Mid-Mississippi Valley and Southern Plains. These wind chills will pose life-threatening risk of hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin."
The Arctic air is also set to fuel a massive and long-lasting winter storm, in conjunction with a surface front farther south and a midlevel disturbance passing through northern Mexico, according to the Weather Prediction Center update. AccuWeather reported that the winter storm is expected to bring heavy snow and ice down on more than 150 million people across 24 states from Friday through the weekend.
Meteorologists told The Associated Press that a stretching polar vortex is to blame for the Arctic blast. The polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air that circulates around the North and South poles all the time. Around the North Pole, the Arctic polar vortex is a circle of strong, cold winds that picks up every winter and sends cold air south with the jet stream when it's disrupted or stretched.
A warming Arctic, fueled by climate change, is energizing the polar vortex and helping to send cold air south, according to The Associated Press. Extreme winter weather is often linked to what the polar vortex is doing, although researchers are still deciphering all of the drivers behind the vortex's behavior.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weather/arctic-blast-will-bring-life-threatening-temperatures-and-dump-snow-on-150-million-americans-but-will-it-make-the-trees-explode
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+ U6YkCFd4uYtRTGMCRaYUQj
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:38:42 +0000Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:35:17 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 5,500-year-old human skeleton discovered in Colombia holds the oldest evidence yet that syphilis came from the Americas ]]>
+ The world's oldest evidence of Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes syphilis and several chronic skin infections, has been found in a 5,500-year-old skeleton buried in a rock shelter in Colombia. But the genetic evidence suggests that the person was infected with a previously unknown strain of T. pallidum, adding to an already-complicated picture of the evolution of syphilis.
Researchers have debated the geographical origin and spread of the treponemal diseases — syphilis, bejel, yaws and pinta, all of which are caused by bacteria in the genus Treponema — for centuries. Because the best-documented epidemics of syphilis occurred in Europe in the 15th century, early theories suggested that Christopher Columbus brought syphilis to the Americas or, conversely, that Indigenous people in the Americas transmitted syphilis to Columbus and his crew.
More recent DNA studies, however, have identified T. pallidum in a person buried around A.D. 1000 in Chile and in several people buried between 350 B.C. and A.D. 570 in Brazil, placing the bacterium in the Americas long before the Columbian expedition.
In a study published Thursday (Jan. 22) in the journal Science, researchers isolated the oldest T. pallidum genome yet, from the skeleton of a middle-aged hunter-gatherer who was buried in Colombia 5,500 years ago.
"Our results push back the association of T. pallidum with humans by thousands of years," study lead author Davide Bozzi, a computational biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, said in a statement.
Ancient genomes of Treponema are exceptionally difficult to recover and are usually found in skeletons with bony evidence of treponemal disease lesions, such as holes that make the bone appear moth-eaten, which are often associated with the later stages of infection. Surprisingly, the 5,500-year-old skeleton containing evidence of T. pallidum did not have any obvious skeletal lesions, although other skeletons in the area did.
While investigating the new T. pallidum genome, which they named TE1-3, the researchers found that it was a different lineage than all other subspecies of T. pallidum identified to date. Based on a statistical analysis of the differences among the genomes, the researchers estimated that TE1-3 diverged from today's lineages around 13,700 years ago. This suggests that Treponema began circulating in the Americas thousands of years earlier than experts previously thought.
But the new genome does not clarify whether early Treponema lineages like TE1-3 were capable of sexual transmission like venereal syphilis.
"Current genomic evidence, along with our genome presented here, does not resolve the long-standing debate about where the disease syndromes themselves originated, but it does show there's this long evolutionary history of treponemal pathogens that was already diversifying in the Americas thousands of years earlier than previously known," study co-author Elizabeth Nelson, a molecular anthropologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said in the statement.
In a related perspective published in Science, Molly Zuckerman and Lydia Bailey, anthropologists at Mississippi State University who were not involved in the study, wrote that the new finding "points to an origin for syphilis in the Americas rather than Europe." Comparing progressively ancient genomes of Treponema with modern genetic data could help inform infection control strategies for syphilis, which has rebounded globally over the past decade, they wrote, as well as help researchers understand the history of infectious disease.
"It is possible that 15th century syphilis was the first globalized emerging infectious disease and a harbinger of all subsequent ones, from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19," Zuckerman and Bailey wrote.
The new discovery shows "the unique potential of paleogenomics to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of species, and potential health risks for past and present communities," study co-author Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a geneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in the statement.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/5-500-year-old-human-skeleton-discovered-in-colombia-holds-the-oldest-evidence-yet-that-syphilis-came-from-the-americas
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+ ZtbaZyUM4pTRXkqSCHcHLM
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:03:33 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Wegovy now comes in pill form — here's how it works ]]>
+ A pill version of the popular weight-management drug Wegovy has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is now available through various pharmacies and telehealth services in the U.S.
The drug has been available by prescription as a once-weekly injection in the U.S. since 2021. Like the injection, the new Wegovy pill contains semaglutide, the same active ingredient as Ozempic. It works by mimicking a hormone in the body — glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) — that helps control appetite and blood sugar levels.
Both forms of Wegovy are approved to help adults with obesity — as well as adults who are overweight and have related health conditions, like high blood pressure — lose weight and keep it off, in combination with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity. However, only the injectable version is approved for children 12 and up with obesity; the pill version is not yet cleared for that age group.
Here's what to know about the new Wegovy pill and who might benefit most from it.
Do semaglutide pills work as well as injections?
The main difference between the Wegovy pill and the injection is how the drug enters the bloodstream.
When semaglutide is injected under the skin, it is absorbed directly into the blood. When taken as a pill, however, the drug must first pass through the stomach and intestines, where some of its active ingredient is broken down by digestive enzymes before it can be absorbed through the gut lining and into the blood.
Because of this, "only a small fraction [of the pill] reaches the bloodstream," explained Dr. Chika Anekwe, obesity medicine clinical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. This is an expected difference between injected and oral medications, in general.
Although the pill exposes the digestive tract to more semaglutide than the injection would, its local effects on the gut are minor, Anekwe explained. That's because the "key effects still require absorption and systemic signaling," so they only kick in once the drug reaches the bloodstream, she said.
To make up for that digestive process, the pill version of Wegovy is taken at a much higher dose than the injectable form. The highest dose of the pill is 25 milligrams, compared with 2.4 milligrams for the weekly injection, Anekwe told Live Science in an email.
The pill also comes with strict instructions for when you should take it, Anekwe said. It should be taken on an empty stomach in the morning with a small amount of water, and patients must wait at least 30 minutes before eating, drinking or taking other medications, its drug label says. This ensures that the medication will be properly absorbed at the intended dose. The injectable version does not have these restrictions; it can be taken at any time of day and with no fasting required.
Dr. Priya Jaisinghani, an endocrinologist and obesity medicine specialist at NYU Langone Health, discussed the effectiveness of the two formulations during an Endocrine Society webinar about GLP-1 pills in December 2025.
So far, "there has been no long-term, head-to-head trial" that has compared the once-daily 25-mg pill with the once-weekly 2.4-mg injection in adults with obesity, Jaisinghani said. However, results from clinical trials that tested the drugs separately suggest the two versions lead to very similar weight loss when taken as instructed.
In the STEP-1 trial, a study of 2.4-mg injectable semaglutide, participants lost an average of about 14.4% of their body weight. In the OASIS 4 trial, a study of the 25-mg pill, participants lost an average of about 13.9% of their body weight. Jaisinghani said these results indicate that the pill and the injection "offered comparable efficacy for weight management."
This is a 1.5-mg starter dose of the Wegovy pill. The pills contain a higher dose of the active ingredient than the injections do, because the pills must pass through the digestive system. (Image credit: Novo Nordisk)
Is the Wegovy pill as safe as the injection?
The trials also suggest that Wegovy pills and injectables have similar side effects.
"Oral and injectable Wegovy have very similar, predominantly gastrointestinal side effects," Anekwe said. These include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and constipation, for example.
About three-quarters of Wegovy users experience mild-to-moderate gastrointestinal symptoms, Anekwe said. But for both forms of the drug, a minority of patients — around 7% to 10% — stop taking the medication because of these effects, according to trial data.
(Some real-world data suggest that a higher percentageof patients stop taking GLP-1s within a year of starting them, but that may be due to a mix of factors, including both side effects and medication cost.)
Who might benefit more from the pill or the injection?
Patients considering Wegovy may opt for the pill or injection for different reasons. For instance, "the pill may be better for someone who is averse to using injections," Anekwe said.
The pill version may also be more appealing to people who do not have reliable access to refrigeration, such as frequent travelers, she said. That's because the pill can be stored at room temperature, unlike the injection, which must be refrigerated. Generally, the Wegovy injectables should be kept between 36 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 8 degrees Celsius). And if needed, the pens can be stored at 46 to 86 F (8 to 30 C) for up to 28 days, if their caps haven't been removed.
That said, the strict daily schedule of taking a pill on an empty stomach with restrictions on food timing may be challenging for some people to stick to. Those individuals may prefer the convenience of a once-weekly injection.
Cost and insurance coverage may also influence which version people choose. The pill may be better for someone who doesn't have insurance coverage because it has a lower out-of-pocket cost, Anekwe said.
And besides lifestyle factors and cost, there is another important difference that determines who can use each version: Unlike the injectable form of Wegovy, which is approved for adolescents ages 12 and older with obesity, the Wegovy pill is currently approved only for adults.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/medicine-drugs/wegovy-now-comes-in-pill-form-heres-how-it-works
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+ qFZ8gTUHqxYuA2ppixrs2S
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:21:12 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:23:17 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Creepy robotic hand detaches at the wrist before scurrying away to collect objects ]]>
+
Engineers have built a detachable robotic hand that can crawl into hard-to-reach spaces to retrieve objects.
The spider-like device can be fitted with multiple fingers and is reversible, meaning it can grip objects in both directions and operate as though it has two functional palms.
In a study published Jan. 20 in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne (EPFL) said the robot was designed to combine two capabilities that are usually kept separate in robotics: manipulation and locomotion.
The hand can also operate without a full, mobile robot base. Instead, it simply detaches itself from a robotic arm and scuttles off to wherever it is needed, picks up the object and returns to reattach itself.
This could make it useful in situations where robots need to reach or retrieve objects from spaces that are too tight or too dangerous for human arms to access, such as industrial or exploratory environments and areas affected by disasters, the researchers noted.
"We can easily see the limitations of the human hand when attempting to reach objects underneath furniture or behind shelves, or performing simultaneous tasks like holding a bottle while picking up a chip," study co-author Aude Billard, head of the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory in EPFL's School of Engineering, said in a statement.
"Likewise, accessing objects positioned behind the hand while keeping the grip stable can be extremely challenging, requiring awkward wrist contortions or body repositioning."
Handy robotics
Robotic appendages, like hands, have been built before. The human hand is, after all, considered a biological marvel; it's given humans the dexterity needed to make tools, prepare food and build shelter, all of which have proved key to our survival as a species.
Still, human hands do have some distinctly biological limitations, the scientists noted. For example, our asymmetrical thumbs and our hands' permanent attachment to our arms.
EPFL's robot is essentially a self-contained system that can either act like a normal "gripper" on the end of an arm or detach itself and scurry about on its own. The design draws inspiration from nature, with the researchers likening it to how an octopus uses its arms to move across the seafloor and open shells, or how a praying mantis uses its spiked forearms to both move around and catch prey.
In experiments, the researchers demonstrated the hand performing various standard gripping and grasping exercises, as well as accomplishing more fiddly feats of dexterity that humans routinely struggle with. These included holding multiple objects at once or gripping objects without using the thumb or forefinger.
Not only can the robotic hand grasp up to four objects simultaneously, it can also crawl across the floor while carrying items on its "back."
Each of the robot's fingers is driven by small electric motors and linked by lightweight 3D-printed joints, allowing them to curl and spread much like human fingers. Unlike a human hand, however, each finger joint can bend both forward and backward, allowing it to grab objects in both directions and "flip" its working orientation without needing to rotate at the wrist.
The fingertips are capped with a soft silicone layer to add friction, making it easier to hold objects securely and maintain traction when crawling. "There is no real limitation in the number of objects it can hold; if we need to hold more objects, we simply add more fingers," Billard said.
The hand reattaches itself to the arm using a "snap-and-lock" system. Magnets help align the connectors, and a small motor drives a locking bolt that secures the joints.
The system could eventually be adapted for human prosthetics or "extra limb" augmentation, the team said, though this isn't the focus of the current prototype.
"The symmetrical, reversible functionality is particularly valuable in scenarios where users could benefit from capabilities beyond normal human function," Billard said.
"For example, previous studies with users of additional robotic fingers demonstrate the brain's remarkable adaptability to integrate additional appendages, suggesting that our non-traditional configuration could even serve in specialized environments requiring augmented manipulation abilities."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/robotics/creepy-robotic-hand-detaches-at-the-wrist-before-scurrying-away-to-collect-objects
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+ FTKa2jLErgD4eh9DY2v4ac
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:15:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:41:55 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 6 tips to kickstart your exercise routine and actually stick to it, according to science ]]>
+
It is an all-too-familiar cycle: As the New Year starts, we are brimming with motivation, promising ourselves that this is the year we finally get fit. We go to the gym regularly, diligently track our workouts and fill our schedules with fitness classes two weeks in advance. But then reality sets in. Life gets busy, motivation drops, and our fitness goals start fading into the background. For many, that ultimate surrender comes around 'Blue Monday' — the third Monday in January. This is when we tend to crumble under the weight of unrealistic expectations and fading motivation, and finally consign our fitness goals to history.
The good news is that this vicious cycle can be broken. Behavioral science is getting ever closer to understanding what makes us kickstart and maintain an exercise routine, and what derails or slows down our efforts to form new habits — and we can use that knowledge to our advantage.
With that in mind, we asked experts in psychology, physiology and fitness coaching for their advice on how to successfully establish an active lifestyle in 2026. Here are six simple, science-backed tips that can help you finally get fit.
This is the most important one. If you want to succeed with your New Year's fitness resolutions, do not overload yourself from the get-go. When you set a lofty goal like "work out every day," you are more likely to get anxious about it, procrastinate and, ultimately, abandon it altogether.
Instead, focus on tiny habits, a concept popularized by the Stanford behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg — scale the behavior down to something so small it feels almost effortless.
"Psychologically, starting small works because it avoids triggering the brain’s threat response, which is activated when the perceived cost of a change is high. Tiny, manageable goals create early mastery experiences that boost dopamine and strengthen self-efficacy: the belief that ‘I can do this,’ Dr. Michael Swift, a British Psychological Society media spokesperson and clinical director at Swift Psychology, a counselling service in Birmingham, U.K., told Live Science by email. "Even a few minutes of movement is enough to begin building the neural pathways that underpin habit formation."
Top tip: Forget the marathon: start with a stroll or a 15-minute bodyweight workout in your living room. The goal here is not to train like an athlete from day one, but to successfully repeat a new behavior. Consistency beats intensity every time in the habit-formation phase.
"People tend to set the bar really high when they are starting a new exercise routine. It is important to choose a program that you will enjoy, and that is going to fit into your lifestyle and be sustainable long term," Michelle D’Onofrio, a Pilates instructor and co-founder of Yatta Studios, a chain of boutique exercise studios in the U.K., told Live Science by email.
It is also worth noting that this slow-burn approach has tangible benefits for your muscular health and general well-being. "Your body adapts to new physical stress through progressive overload — gradually increasing intensity, duration, or frequency so muscles and cardiovascular system can adapt safely," D'Onofrio said.
If you do too much exercise too soon, you are more likely to struggle with brutal bouts of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) and even painful injuries.
Motivation is a fickle fuel source — it starts bright and intense, but fizzles out quickly. Scientists know that our actions are heavily automated, with most of our behaviors being cued by time, location or preceding events.
Exercise is no different. If you plan and schedule your workouts in advance, you give yourself a powerful cue and a direct call to action that helps when your motivation inevitably runs low. This is why people who create and follow a specific plan detailing when, where and how they would exercise are more likely to follow through than those who do not plan their workouts at all, according to a 2013 meta-analysis published in the journal Health Psychology Review. This phenomenon is called "implementation intention."
Top tip: Move exercise from a vague "I should" to a non-negotiable appointment. Use time blocking — put your exercise session in your daily calendar, just like a meeting with your boss or a school class, then set a reminder. Simple yet effective.
“Too often people think a gym session has to be a massive time commitment, or that they need to overhaul their lives completely to exercise. That’s rarely realistic and often backfires," Steve Chambers, a senior personal trainer and gym manager at Ultimate Performance in Manchester, U.K., told Live Science by email.
"Start by mapping out your real-world schedule (work hours, family, social commitments, sleep, stress etc), then build a custom plan that fits around your life, not the other way around," Chambers advised.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
When planning a new activity, use habit stacking. In essence, this is the practice of piggybacking a new exercise routine onto an existing habit. For example, "After I get home from work and put my keys down, I will immediately change into my workout clothes." This method uses the established neural pattern of the old habit as a runway for the new one.
"Habits form through the cue-routine-reward loop. You are more consistent when exercise is tied to a stable anchor such as 'after breakfast' or 'after work'," D'Onofrio said.
Also, tie in temptation bundling — combine doing something you ought to do with doing something you love. "This could mean that you only listen to your favourite playlist or podcast whilst doing your workout," Rex Fan, a lead behavioural insights advisor at Bupa Health Clinics in the U.K., told Live Science by email.
This also means that you should remember to reward yourself. "When you structure in your workout, why not also structure in something nice to look forward to afterwards? It could be anything from a nice coffee to a phone call with a friend," Fan said.
If you frame exercise purely as a punitive tool for weight loss, or penance for all the hours spent watching your favorite TV show, your brain will subconsciously resist it. Doing something because it feels good is far more sustainable than doing something out of guilt or peer pressure. If you want to increase your chance of succeeding with your New Year's fitness resolutions, make exercise as fun and engaging as possible.
"From a neuroscience perspective, the brain repeats what it finds rewarding, and attaching positive emotion to movement accelerates habit consolidation. Pairing activity with something enjoyable, such as music, a favourite podcast or the satisfying tick of crossing off a plan, enhances the brain’s reward circuitry and reinforces the behaviour," Swift said.
Top tip: This one is simple — do what makes you happy. If you are not a fan of gym workouts or the thought of going for a run makes you queasy, consider dancing, martial arts or some of the more atypical sports, such as frisbee, futsal, Quidditch or trampoline. Every movement counts.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
As Dr. Nicolas Berger, a senior lecturer in exercise physiology at Teesside University in the U.K., told Live Science by email: "Dancing on your own, with your friends, or partner is a brilliant way to improve coordination and cardiovascular fitness, which is low impact but good for your joints and bones. It also brings massive social benefits, improving mental health as well as self-confidence. It’s one of the best ways to do exercise without feeling like it is."
If going to a Zumba class or hopping on a trampoline does not appeal to you, consider some of the less strenuous activities you can do in the great outdoors. “Is there a sea or lake nearby? Rent a kayak or rowing boat, even a pedalo. This all helps with upper body, lower back and core strength," Berger said. “Any outing where you have to walk a lot and maybe carry a backpack is beneficial. If it is interesting, you will not notice it is exercise.”
All in all, by making exercise easy, accessible and rewarding, we work with the brain rather than against it, giving new routines the best possible chance to take root, Swift concluded.
Human behavior is often governed by "friction costs" — the more steps, decisions or effort required to start a task, the less likely we are to do it. Our brains naturally gravitate toward the path of least resistance, and exercise is no different. If you want to increase your chance of succeeding with your New Year's resolutions, identify and remove or minimise any potential barriers and hurdles that can slow you down on your fitness journey.
"One of the strongest findings in behavioural science is that motivation is unstable, so the goal is to design the behaviour to require as little activation energy as possible," Swift explained. "Reducing friction by laying out clothes the night before, choosing an activity with minimal setup, or linking movement to an existing cue engages the brain’s habit system, which favours predictability and ease. When a task feels simple, the prefrontal cortex does not have to work as hard to overcome resistance, making follow-through far more likely."
Top tip: Identify your potential barriers and challenges (lack of time? no access to exercise equipment? poor sleep?), then make a plan to remove or minimize them as much as possible. In simpler terms, make starting your workout as easy and frictionless as possible. For example, the night before your scheduled exercise session, place your workout clothes by the bedside and your water bottle by the door. Have your workout video bookmarked or your podcast playlist ready. If morning gym travel is the hurdle, join an online fitness class from the comfort of your living room.
The hurdle is almost always in the starting, not the continuing. Getting over that initial friction is half the battle.
All-or-nothing thinking is a major hurdle to succeeding on your fitness journey. You miss one day of training, convince yourself you have failed and abandon the entire effort. However, getting fit is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes a little self-compassion goes further than bashing yourself for not living up to your expectations.
"When people interpret lapses as normal variability rather than personal failure, they are far more likely to resume," Swift said.
Top tip: Try the "two-day rule." It is simple: never let yourself skip your planned exercise for two days in a row. Life happens. You’ll get sick, work will run late, or motivation will dip. Permission to miss one day is crucial to prevent shame and the subsequent spiral. But by committing to not missing a second day, you build resilience and prevent a lapse from becoming a collapse. This builds self-compassion and a flexible, sustainable mindset, which is far more durable than rigid perfectionism.
“In practice, that means: Accept that progress won’t always be linear. There will be plateaus or regressions. That doesn’t mean failure. Be forgiving of slip-ups, but don’t give up! If you fall off the wagon, then get on again next session." Chambers said.
6. Involve others
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Last, but not least: involve other people. According to a 2017 systematic review published in the journal International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, social support can have a small but significant impact on helping you stick to your new exercise routine long-term. Whether it is the local running club, a guided Pilates session or working out with your gym buddies, having someone to check in with you on a regular basis can be a huge motivator. It does not even have to be someone you are particularly close to.
"Sharing your intentions with someone you trust, like a fitness coach or health adviser, can help you to stay closer to your goals. Speaking to a health adviser may also help you to prepare for the physical demands of a new workout, depending on your individual health," Fan said.
Top tip: Train with a partner (friend, spouse) or have a regular “gym buddy.” Join a fitness class, whether in your local leisure center or online. Start a fitness blog. The options are endless!
"If you know someone’s counting on you, you are more likely to show up. Having a system of external accountability dramatically raises the odds that you won’t just ‘fall off the wagon," Chambers concluded.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/exercise/6-tips-to-kickstart-your-exercise-routine-and-actually-stick-to-it-according-to-science
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:51:54 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Sega Toys Homestar Classic star projector review ]]>
+ When you hear the name "Sega," you probably think of Sonic The Hedgehog. But it turns out the Japanese entertainment company does a lot more than create video games: it’s also one of the leading manufacturers of realistic star projectors.
The Sega Toys Homestar Classic is one of three in Sega Toys’ lineup, sitting alongside the Homestar Flux and the Homestar Matataki. All three models are similar, but this is the least expensive of the trio. The Flux offers a more powerful projector, and the Matataki has a built-in speaker. The Homestar Classic is a little more barebones, but it’s still one of the most powerful projectors on the market, particularly if you’re looking for a realistic projection of the night sky.
This is a quality product, delivered in attractive packaging that feels every bit as premium as its price tag suggests. It ships with two discs: the Northern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere with constellations, but more discs are available (costing around $20 each), making this one of the most versatile projectors on the market, provided you don’t mind spending a little more.
The other Sega Toys Homestar projectors have earned themselves a place on our guide to the best star projectors, and we think the Homestar Classic deserves a place right alongside them. Read on to our full review to find out why.
We love the space-age design of the Sega Toys Homestar Classic (Image credit: Future)
Sega Toys Homestar Classic: Design
Easy to use
Premium build quality
Uses mains power
There’s something wonderful about the design of the Sega Toys Homestar Classic. It feels suitably space-age, thanks to its orb-like shape. It’s not over the top or too flashy, either. Compared to some star projectors, it feels minimalist and understated — particularly if you opt for the black or white colorway. The Homestar Classic is also available in red or blue, which we think are perhaps more suited to a kid’s bedroom, though perhaps you just prefer bolder colors.
Whichever color you opt for, the Sega Toys Homestar Classic of course functions exactly the same. There is no remote control, with all actions taking place on the unit itself. There’s an on/off switch, and three buttons which turn on or off shooting stars, movement and a sleep timer.
The projector ships with an AC adapter, which means you’ll need to place it near a power outlet. It’s something to bear in mind, especially considering many other projectors are USB-C powered or even have a rechargeable battery.
The Homestar Classic has a great build quality that doesn’t feel cheap or plasticky. Thanks to a metal stand, it feels very sturdy and it’s easy to adjust. No matter what position you have the projector in, you should feel confident that it isn’t going to move.
All controls for the projector can be found on the unit itself. (Image credit: Future)
Sega Toys Homestar Classic: Performance
Whisper-quiet
Projections are beautiful and realistic
Requires total darkness to really shine
If you appreciate silence, the Sega Toys Homestar Classic is a great choice. It’s whisper-quiet in operation, which is a boon to those who are looking for a projector to fall asleep to. That’s largely because, unlike some other projectors, the Homestar Classic doesn’t have a noisy rotation motor inside. Instead, projections can gently and slowly pan. Personally, we prefer this: it’s subtle, calming and more realistic.
The projections provided here are simply stunning. According to the official Sega Toys website, you’re seeing up to 60,000 twinkling stars when the projector is turned on. We have of course not counted, but we can believe it: you’ll want to project the Homestar Classic onto a large wall or ceiling to really get the most out of it. It’s immersive and striking, thanks to how sharp and detailed it is.
Perhaps the only downside is that you’ll want your room to be fully dark to truly appreciate the Sega Toys Homestar Classic’s projections. With only 3 watts of power (compared to the Flux’s 5 watts), it’s a little dull if you still have a light source in your room. Wait until dark, pull the curtains, and you’ll truly appreciate how gorgeous the projections are. If it’s still light, it can be a little underwhelming.
The projections from the Sega Toys Homestar Classic are simply stunning. (Image credit: Future)
Sega Toys Homestar Classic: Functionality
A variety of discs are available
Has a built-in sleep timer
Focus wheel can be a little fiddly
Since this is the cheapest projector offered by Sega Toys, it doesn’t have quite the full suite of bells and whistles you’ll find on the company’s other projectors. The Flux boasts improved visual quality, for example, and a brighter projector. And the Matataki has a built-in speaker with a built-in library of natural sounds. Those features come with a higher price tag, though, and if you’re just wanting a realistic projector, the Sega Toys Homestar Classic packs in all the features you’ll want or need.
While it doesn’t have full rotation, you can turn on a gentle movement, which some users will prefer. You can also enable or disable shooting stars, which add a welcome sense of motion to projections. Finally, there’s a sleep timer, which can be set to 15, 30 or 60 minutes, after which time the projector will power itself off. It’s ideal if you’d like to use it to fall asleep to, so you can be confident it won’t stay on all night.
To focus the Sega Toys Homestar Classic, you’ll need to turn the focus wheel manually, which is located around the outside of the projector lens itself. We initially had a little difficulty in getting the projector clearly in focus; the focus wheel feels a little loose, and you may need to turn it for a long time before you notice any difference. Once it’s in focus, however, it should stay there — so as long as you keep the projector in the same position, you should not need to refocus.
Placing the projector somewhere between 59 and 90 inches (150 and 230 centimeters) away from the flat surface you’re projecting onto is the ideal distance. If you’re struggling to find a clear focus point, it may be that the projector is too close or too far away, so try placing it elsewhere.
Numerous interchangeable discs are available for the Sega Toys Homestar Classic, but it only ships with two. (Image credit: Future)
Should I buy the Sega Toys Homestar Classic?
The short answer is yes, you should buy the Sega Toys Homestar Classic. The long answer ultimately depends on your budget. At $150, this is among the most expensive star projectors on the market, despite being the cheapest model offered by Sega Toys. But if you’re looking for a realistic, believable projection, you won’t find much better than this.
If you’re simply looking for a pretty light show to help you relax before bed, we’d recommend finding a cheaper projector elsewhere. But for an accurate, scientific display of the night sky, this really is one of the best star projectors on the market.
If the Sega Toys Homestar Classic isn’t for you
If you want the very best, we’d recommend taking a look at the Sega Toys Homestar Flux. This offers similar functionality to the Classic, but with even better projection quality, a brighter bulb, and a larger choice of projection discs available. It carries a higher price tag, of course, but that’s to be expected given its additional features.
There are, of course, cheaper projectors that offer similar functionality. We’ve previously called the Orzorz Galaxy Lite the best star projector on the market: it has a lower price tag and still offers realistic displays with interchangeable discs.
And if you’re really on a budget, the Blisslights Sky Lite Evolve is worth considering: it doesn’t offer scientific projections, but it’s an impressive display nonetheless, and thanks to app functionality, there’s plenty you can do with it.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/sega-toys-homestar-classic-star-projector-review
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:43:33 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Californians have been using far less water than suppliers estimated — what does this mean for the state? ]]>
+ Water use in California was lower than officials estimated it would be between 2000 and 2020, according to a new report.
The findings raise questions about the accuracy of long-term water-demand projections, which could have knock-on effects on costs borne by consumers, but overall the news that water demand is lower than projected is positive for the state and its regular battles against drought, experts told Live Science.
"Overall, I think this is a good news story," Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute water think tank in California, told Live Science. "It shows that there are things we can do to ensure we have enough water for people and for nature."
Water management has long been a key issue in California, which has about8.5 million acres (3.4 million hectares) of irrigated cropland. Crops likegrapes,almonds and pistachios anchor the state's economy, creatinghundreds of thousands of jobs. Agriculture makes up about 40% of California's annual water use, on average, with another 10% being used by communities and the other 50% being put back into the environment.
But the supplies of this precious resource are often at risk in the state, thanks to lengthy droughts, long-term depletion of groundwater supplies and population growth.
Projections of water use generally assume it will go up as the population increases, but California has introduced many water-saving measures. So to investigate how projections compare with actual usage, Johanna Capone, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, and Landon Marston, an associate professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, assessed the state's Urban Water Management Plans, which were prepared every five years by 61 California urban water suppliers from 2000 to 2020.
They found that water suppliers consistently overestimated future demand by an average of 25% for five-year projections, and 74% for 20-year projections.
This overestimation stems primarily from predictions of how much water each person would use, rather than from assumptions about population growth, Capone and Marston reported in a study published Nov. 21, 2025, in the journalWater Resources Research. While suppliers generally projected stable or increasing per-capita demand, actual water demand per capita declined by 1.9% annually between 2000 and 2020, meaning water demand no longer neatly correlates with population growth.
"I think the overall takeaway is that California has been doing a great job in reducing demand," Capone told Live Science. "The state is clearly on the right path."
The findings match those from other similar research.
"This trend is consistent with what I have seen not only in California but also in other regions,"Cooley said. She is an author of a2020 study that also saw a decline in per capita water use in 10 of California's water suppliers between 2000 and 2015.
She said there has been a gradual decoupling of water use and population growth, so we can no longer assume that the two are linked.
"This study has shown, what other studies have shown, that we can grow and support economic development, using less water," Cooley said, "and efficiency is a key strategy for helping us do that."
These regulations require that new developments use water-efficient versions of devices like toilets, shower heads, sprinklers and washing machines, Cooley said. It also helps when older versions of these devices are replaced by newer, more efficient models. The new initiatives also address outdoor water use by limiting the amount of grass and other plants that require a lot of water, she said.
"The denser these communities become and the smaller the lawns, naturally water demand is going to drop in much the same way water demand is going to drop as buildings become more efficient," Capone said.
Workers with the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) hand out a bucket filled with information on the drought and water saving tools during a "Drought Drive Up" event at the MMWD headquarters on June 12, 2021 in Corte Madera, California. (Image credit: Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)
Yet water suppliers should make their forecasts more accurate to account for changes in water efficiency incentives, she said.
"It's a difficult balance, because people may see that water demand is getting lower, and hopefully they wouldn't take advantage of the situation and start watering lawns more," Capone said. "But it's important to try to be as accurate and realistic as possible, because if water demand is over-projected, the water suppliers might get hit by extra costs that would get passed on to customers."
This might require buying in extra water supplies or building new water supply and treatment infrastructure, she said.
The study findings don't mean California's water supply challenges are over. "Even as we've seen declining water use, we still have water supply issues in California as droughts become more intense and more frequent, thanks to climate change," Cooley said.
Wet years help replenish stocks of groundwater that California relies on, but it's the water demand management that ensures enough water remains in reservoirs and in aquifers over the longer term so that when drought returns, the state doesn't have to apply the strictest water-use restrictions, Cooley said.
An analysis from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves roughly 19 million people, found that without the district's water efficiency initiatives over the past 30 years, stores of water in that area would have been depleted three times during that period.
"The important thing about water demand management is just to be resilient overall, and to be prepared for all that the environment has to throw at you," Capone said.
One of the biggest challenges is to keep reducing water use as buildings become more efficient and lawns become smaller.
Although water demand per capita declined by 1.9%, on average, annually between 2000 and 2020, a more detailed look at Capone and Marston's paper shows that per-capita water demand dropped around 2.6% per year from 2000 to 2015 but increased by an average of 0.29% per year from 2015 to 2020. These numbers raise questions about whether water demand management efforts have plateaued.
If so, continued cuts in water use might require a different focus. "When you think of water conservation, you think about the advertising, 'Brush your teeth without the water on' and 'If it's yellow, let it mellow,' but it goes so much farther than just the household," Capone said.
It's important to look at where else water is being used and see if building codes and landscaping could reduce that usage, she said.
The potential across the U.S. for making water savings is huge. ANovember study from the Pacific Institute, which Cooley co-authored, found that improving water efficiency in U.S. homes and businesses, and reducing leakage in distribution systems could save between 14.0 and 34.1 million acre-feet of water per year, or between 12.5 and 30.4 billion gallons (115 billion liters) per day, and that even basic upgrades to meet existing standards could cut water use by one-quarter nationwide.
"There are lots of opportunities for us to reduce water use and make our communities more sustainable and resilient," said Cooley.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/californians-have-been-using-far-less-water-than-suppliers-estimated-what-does-this-mean-for-the-state
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+ wcWZo2phXeboeNWGDW3dHE
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:24:53 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:24:54 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Scientists may be approaching a 'fundamental breakthrough in cosmology and particle physics' — if dark matter and 'ghost particles' can interact ]]>
+ Two of the universe's most mysterious particles may be colliding invisibly throughout the cosmos — a discovery that could solve one of the biggest lingering problems in our standard model of cosmology.
Those two elusive components — dark matter and neutrinos (or "ghost particles") — are ubiquitous throughout the cosmos, yet they remain poorly understood. In a study published Jan. 2 in the journal Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers found evidence that dark matter and neutrinos may collide, transferring momentum between them in the process.
This surprising interaction may help to explain why the universe is less populated by dense regions, like galaxies, than predicted — in other words, the universe is less "clumpy" than cosmologists think it should be, the researchers said in a statement.
Dark matter and neutrinos remain a riddle
Dark matter is the mysterious, invisible substance that constitutes 85% of the matter in the universe. As its name suggests, dark matter does not emit light, so its existence has been only indirectly inferred from its gravitational influence, as observed in cosmological surveys.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles with infinitesimally low masses and no electric charge, so they very rarely interact with other particles. They're produced by various nuclear processes, including stellar fusion and supernovas, in prodigious quantities: Every second, approximately 100 billion neutrinos pass through each square centimeter of your body, Live Science previously reported.
Yet dark matter and neutrinos should not interact, according to the leading model of cosmology, known as the lambda cold dark matter model (lambda-CDM). This standard model aims to theoretically explain the large-scale structure of the cosmos.
Cosmological conundrum
However, this recent study provides new evidence that dark matter and neutrinos may interact after all, as other researchers have posited over the past two decades.
If dark matter and neutrinos do collide, and transfer momentum to one another in the process, this discovery would inspire a rethink of the lambda-CDM model. Such collisions could also help to explain the "S8 tension," a mismatch between the expected and actual "clumpiness" of the universe.
"This tension does not mean the standard cosmological model is wrong, but it may suggest that it is incomplete," Eleonora Di Valentino, study co-author and a senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., explained in the statement. "Our study shows that interactions between dark matter and neutrinos could help explain this difference, offering new insight into how structure formed in the Universe."
The mismatch stems from researchers' findings that the current cosmos isn't as packed together as predicted, based on observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the first light in the universe, emitted when the cosmos was only 380,000 years old.
"The statement that cosmic structures are 'less clumped' is best understood in a statistical sense, rather than as a change in the appearance of individual galaxies or clusters. It refers to a reduced efficiency in the growth of cosmic structures over time," study co-author William Giarè, a cosmologist at the University of Hawaii, told Live Science via email.
(Image credit: NASA Goddard)
Unraveling multiple threads of evidence
The researchers tried to unite evidence from energy and density fluctuations in the CMB and from baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) — pressure waves "frozen" in time from the beginning of the cosmos — with more recent observations of the universe's large-scale structure.
The early-universe data come from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile and the European Space Agency's space-based Planck telescope, which was designed to study the CMB. The later-universe data come from the Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a two-decade effort to create a 3D map of millions of galaxies across more than 11 billion light-years.
The researchers also incorporated cosmic shear data from the Dark Energy Survey. Cosmic shear is the distortion of distant celestial objects due to weak gravitational lensing, which occurs when massive foreground structures bend the fabric of space-time and alter the paths of light traveling from those distant celestial objects to our detectors.
Finally, the researchers combined these data and modeled the evolution of the universe. When accounting for collisions between dark matter and neutrinos and the resulting momentum exchange, the simulations generated a model universe that better agrees with real observations.
There's reason to remain cautious, however, as the interaction between dark matter and neutrinos has only a 3-sigma level of certainty — meaning there is a 0.3% chance that this result is a fluke. Though short of the scientific gold standard of 5 sigma, it is significant enough to warrant additional research because, if confirmed, the interaction would prove a "fundamental breakthrough in cosmology and particle physics" — and a potential solution to the cosmic clumpiness quandary.
"The final verdict will come from upcoming large sky surveys, such as those from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and more precise theoretical work," research team leader Sebastian Trojanowski, a theoretical physicist at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Poland, explained in a separate statement. "These will allow us to determine whether we are witnessing a new discovery in the dark sector or whether our cosmological models require further adjustment. However, each of these scenarios brings us closer to solving the mystery of dark matter."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/particle-physics/scientists-may-be-approaching-a-fundamental-breakthrough-in-cosmology-and-particle-physics-if-dark-matter-and-ghost-particles-can-interact
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+ nfDGZmHJ2NDa54T2brdiQc
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+ Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 14:59:34 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Lab mice that 'touch grass' are less anxious — and that highlights a big problem in rodent research ]]>
+ The online admonition to "touch grass" to soothe your emotional state may be backed by science — at least in lab mice.
A recent study finds that mice that live outside are less anxious than those that spend their days in safe, shoebox-sized cages. And that may highlight a fundamental flaw in laboratory research, including that used to test the safety and effectiveness of drugs eventually intended for people.
Medications that seem to work in lab mice don't necessarily work in human patients, and some scientists think that they might fail, in part, because of how bizarre and isolated laboratory life is for the rodents.
"Why is there that huge gap in results between the animal models in the labs and the real-life experiences when we test [many] drugs in humans?" said first study author Matthew Zipple, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University "We think much of this effect may be explained by this really artificial, standardized environment in which lab animals are kept."
The findings were published in December in the journal Current Biology.
Less anxious in the outdoors
Both wild mice and humans have rich social environments, and wild mice are constantly on the go, foraging, burrowing and facing risks, including the many predators that like to snack on them.
In comparison, lab mice sit in small cages with two or three same-sex siblings. There, food and water are delivered on a regular schedule. Studying medications in those mice may be akin to limiting research to prisoners in solitary confinement, Zipple told Live Science.
Zipple and his colleagues set out to compare the psychology of two groups of lab mice: a group that remained in a laboratory and a group that lived with other mice in an outdoor enclosure, complete with grass, dirt and exposure to the sky. They did so using a standard maze, called the "elevated plus maze," which has two enclosed arms and two open, catwalk-style arms.
On their first exposure to this maze under bright lab lights, lab mice typically explore the open arms, find them terrifying, and basically never venture out on them again. Instead, they remain in the comparatively safe, enclosed portion of the maze. This reaction is so consistent that researchers use the open arms to induce and measure anxiety in lab mice.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: Matthew Zipple)
Mice in wild-type environments not only behave differently, but also have different immunological profiles than mice who live inside in cages.
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: Matthew Zipple)
The mice that were allowed to roam outside spent more time exploring the "open" arms of the maze.
But mice living in a wild-type environment weren't freaked out by the open arms at all, Zipple and his team found. They spent just as much time exploring these areas on subsequent visits to the maze as they had the first time, all while under bright light.
Meanwhile, cage-dwelling mice that were sent to live outside also saw their maze anxiety evaporate; animals that already had demonstrated an apparent fear of the open arms and then spent a week outside subsequently spent twice as much time exploring the open arms compared with animals that kept living in cages.
The use of the standardized maze was a "very powerful way to show the limits of business as usual," said Andrea Graham, an evolutionary ecologist at Princeton University who was not involved in the research.
In one famous 2006 case, a medication called TGN1412 seemed to boost the immune system against leukemia in lab mice but caused a near-fatal immune reaction in the first six healthy human volunteers exposed to the drug. Subsequent research revealed that, in the lab mice, the medication activated immune cells that regulate and calm the immune response. However, in mice living in wild-type enclosures, the medication instead activated cells that ramp up the immune response to the point that the body attacked itself.
"If we restrict ourselves to only studying a couple of different genotypes [genetic profiles] of lab mouse in the same immunologically boring, psychologically boring environments, we're not going to really be able to study the full spectrum of human immune or nervous system response to the environment," Graham told Live Science.
Using wild-style enclosures requires some upfront cost and effort, and it also reduces the rigid control that's placed on study animals in order to limit confounding variables in experiments. As such, they pull biomedical scientists out of their comfort zone, Zipple said.
But adding in tests of these less-confined mice could save a lot of effort and money on the human trials side by pinpointing the medications that are most likely to translate from the lab to the clinic, the study authors argue. Zipple and his colleagues are now looking at ways that caged and wild-living mice age differently.
"The broader goal is to make a list of biomedically relevant behaviors, phenotypes [observable traits] and psychological traits that look the same in the lab and the field," he said, to help with the issue of translating results to humans. They also want to compile a "list of traits that look quite different," he said.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/lab-mice-that-touch-grass-are-less-anxious-and-that-highlights-a-big-problem-in-rodent-research
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:50:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:36:48 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 2,400-year-old Hercules shrine and elite tombs discovered outside ancient Rome's walls ]]>
+ Two elite tombs from the time of the Roman Republic more than 2,400 years ago have been unearthed near Via Pietralata in the northeast of modern Rome.
The buried chamber tombs were together in a funerary complex and near what seems to have been a shrine to the Greek demigod Hercules, who was a popular symbol of protection to the Romans. The excavations include a stretch of ancient roadway and two large monumental basins or tanks that were likely used in sacred ceremonies.
With these finds, Rome's suburbs "reveal themselves to be repositories of deep memories, still to be explored," Daniela Porro, the head government archaeologist for Rome, said in a translated statement.
Evidence of ancient occupation around Via Pietralata was found in the 1990s, and excavations of the area of the shrine began in 2022 under the direction of government archaeologist Fabrizio Santi. The area was outside the ancient Roman walls but it is now a suburb of the modern city.
The archaeological team has since discovered bronze coins that indicate the shrine was used between the fifth or fourth centuries B.C. — when Rome was supposedly a republic, although archaeologists don't agree on the dates — and the first century A.D., when Rome had become an empire.
The tombs are near a shrine that archaeologists think was devoted to the deified Greek hero Hercules. (Image credit: Italian Culture Ministry)
Some media stories have claimed the finds included six bronze figurines of Hercules, but reports from the Italian Ministry of Culture do not mention any such findings. In fact, the shrine once had a central statue, but it is now missing, the statement said.
Two large water tanks found during the excavations may have had a sacred use. (Image credit: Italian Culture Ministry)
Ancient occupants
The tombs could be evidence that the area was occupied by a wealthy family group known as a Roman gens, Santi said in another translated statement. One of the newfound tombs contains a stone sarcophagus and three cremation urns, and the other contains an adult male skeleton.
The two stone basins or tanks were built more than 100 years later than the tombs. The largest was over 90 feet (28 meters) long, about 33 feet (10 m) wide, and about 7 feet (2.1 meters) deep, while the other was a little smaller but almost twice as deep.
One of the newfound tombs contains a stone sarcophagus and three cremation urns, and the other contains an adult male skeleton. (Image credit: Italian Culture Ministry)
"They could be structures connected to ritual or, less likely, productive activities or related to water collection," Santi said. "A thorough scientific study will allow us to contextualize these findings and understand their role within the ancient landscape."
The shrine was built above an even earlier votive site where many pieces of pottery figurines were found. (Image credit: Italian Culture Ministry)
The ancient road was a key element at the site, he said. It had led to a small cult building called a sacellum (Latin for "shrine") that was devoted to a god — probably the deified hero Hercules, whose worship was popular in that area.
Hercules was the Roman version of the Greek hero Herakles (or Heracles), who was said to be the son of the god Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) and the mortal Alcmene. He was legendary for his incredible strength, and his worship as a symbol of protection and virtue was widespread in Rome for many centuries.
Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire
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+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/2-400-year-old-hercules-shrine-and-elite-tombs-discovered-in-romes-suburbs
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+ SGXVfza4pFZFjQgMhCuFBY
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:57:30 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:36:48 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Coyote scrambles onto Alcatraz Island after perilous, never-before-seen swim ]]>
+ Prisoners on Alcatraz once risked the perilous waters in San Francisco Bay to escape the island's high-security prison. Now, a wily coyote has been filmed doing the opposite: swimming to Alcatraz Island for the first time.
Videos posted to social media show the coyote (Canis latrans) paddling to the southern edge of Alcatraz Island as the sun sets over the bay. The coyote then struggles onto the island's rocky shoreline, visibly shaking and fatigued.
Stanley Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at The Ohio State University and author of "Coyotes Among Us," said he was shocked and astonished at the footage.
"There's a reason why people have had a difficult time making that swim," Gehrt told Live Science.
The videos were captured by an unidentified person visiting the island on Jan. 11. They then shared the footage with Aidan Moore, a guest relations employee for Alcatraz City Cruises, who alerted park rangers, San Francisco news website SFGATE reported.
"Coyotes can be commonly seen throughout our San Francisco and Marin parklands but never before on Alcatraz," Julian Espinoza, a spokesperson for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, told SFGATE. "This was the first time our park biologists observed anything like this."
Coyotes are intelligent and versatile creatures that are known to swim. Gehrt said he has seen coyotes swimming across lakes in the Chicago region as part of his long-term research program, the Urban Coyote Research Project.
"In some cases, they prefer to swim across a lake rather than run around it," Gehrt said.
However, Gehrt typically only sees coyotes swim a few hundred yards in relatively calm lake conditions, which are nothing like the waters surrounding Alcatraz. The island sits in the middle of a cold estuary with strong currents — one of the reasons Alcatraz was seen as a good spot for its now-decommissioned prison.
The prison on Alcatraz Island closed in 1963 and it's now a popular tourist destination. (Image credit: Caroline Purser via Getty Images)
Some prisoners are presumed to have drowned trying to escape the island, which is more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the mainland, and while humans do make the swim recreationally today, they do so with the benefit of wetsuits, training and guides.
It's uncertain how the coyote came upon Alcatraz Island. The videos begin with the animal already in the water with no sign of where it originated. However, Gehrt thinks the coyote must have had a tough journey. "Once it emerged from the water, it certainly looked like it had been swimming for a very long time," he said. "The animals I've seen come out of the water from their swims don't look as distraught as that or as tired and worn out, so it clearly was a pretty extensive swim."
Coyotes have previously been filmed swimming to Angel Island, another island in the bay, which coyotes have inhabited since 2017, KCRA 3 television station previously reported. Angel Island is closer to a mainland shore than Alcatraz. However, Angel Island is north of Alcatraz, so while it's closer to the mainland north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a coyote on Angel Island would have to swim farther to reach Alcatraz than a coyote on the San Francisco mainland south of the Golden Gate Bridge.
SFGATE reported that the Alcatraz City Cruises' boat captain had told Moore of unusual currents in the bay, likely the result of runoff from recent storms. It's possible that the coyote may have been swept up during a shorter swim and ended up near Alcatraz.
Gehrt said that coyotes don't always go into the water voluntarily. They sometimes use it as a means of escape from humans and other coyotes, which are very territorial. However, Gehrt also speculated that this coyote may have been motivated by opportunity, including the potential for food resources and territory.
Coyotes were once confined to the prairies and deserts of central and western North America. But in the 1800s, humans facilitated their expansion by creating more open habitats through logging, agricultural development, and by hunting their competitors — wolves and cougars.
As humans took over more and more land, coyotes became regular city slickers. Their flexible nature and diet now helps them thrive in cities like San Francisco, where they favor fragments of woody and shrubby habitat, as well as parks and golf courses.
Christine Wilkinson, a conservation scientist who has studied Bay Area coyotes for the University of California, Santa Cruz and the California Academy of Sciences, told SFGATE that the coyote in the video was likely trying to establish its own territory.
Wilkinson suspects that the coyote came from a pack in the Coit Tower, which is on the mainland south of Alcatraz, and where there is little green space for coyotes. Furthermore, coyotes wanting to disperse south of Coit Tower would face Interstate 280 and the risk of being struck by a vehicle, so taking to the water might have seemed like a safer option.
Coyotes typically look for new territory in the fall and early winter, but it's not unheard of for this to happen in January, Wilkinson said. The coyotes are also now in mating season, which runs from January to March.
There haven't been any sightings reported since the swimming coyote was filmed arriving on Alcatraz. Wilkinson told SFGATE that she thought the animal looked "pretty weak" but added that coyotes are "incredibly resilient." Wilkinson also noted that the island has plenty of food for a coyote, including eggs, chicks, rats and mice.
Coyotes live in small family groups, made up of an alpha male, an alpha female and their close relatives. Solitary coyotes are typically young individuals, between around 6 months and 2 years old, of either sex, that are looking to find another group or establish their own territory, according to the Urban Coyote Research Project. Gehrt has recorded a coyote traveling more than 150 miles (240 km) across the southern part of Ohio as part of its natural dispersal, which included crossing the Ohio River.
"It speaks to the animal's ability to overcome a number of different challenges and their ability to explore and take advantage of whatever opportunities they can find," Gehrt said.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/coyote-scrambles-onto-alcatraz-island-after-perilous-never-before-seen-swim
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:30:31 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:30:31 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Stunning time-lapse video captured using 'artificial eclipse' shows 3 massive eruptions on the sun ]]>
+ The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a stunning time-lapse of a trio of solar eruptions exploding into space from the sun during an "artificial eclipse." The unique footage, captured by the newly operational Proba-3 mission, could help scientists unravel one of the biggest mysteries surrounding our home star, researchers say.
The Proba-3 mission consists of two probes, dubbed the coronagraph and the occulter, which were launched into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth in December 2024. By perfectly aligning the coronograph behind the occulter, scientists can view the sun with its bright center fully obscured, just like we see from the planet's surface during a solar eclipse — but more frequently and over longer periods of time. This allows researchers to study the hidden subtleties of the sun's faint atmosphere, or corona, like never before.
The new video, released by ESA on Jan. 19, shows footage from a five-hour "eclipse" on Sept. 2, 2025, sped up into a four-second clip. The yellow light surrounding the sun is the corona, viewed by Proba-3's coronograph with a helium filter. In the center, scientists have superimposed footage of the solar surface captured concurrently by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. With data from both spacecraft combined, researchers can see how the sun's surface and corona interact in unprecedented detail.
Three major plasma plumes shoot out of the sun during the video. At first glance, these look like solar flares — the massive explosions that can hurl solar storms toward Earth. However, when you look closely at the solar disk, there are no bright flashes, which are the telltale signs of a flare. Instead, what we are seeing are what researchers refer to as prominences, which are towering loops of plasma on the sun's surface that overextend and snap, flinging their ionized gas into space.
While they are less powerful than flares, prominences are equally valuable to researchers because they are usually harder to spot, Andrei Zhukov, a researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium and principal investigator of Proba-3's coronograph, explained in a statement. "Seeing so many prominence eruptions in such a short timeframe is rare, so I'm very happy we managed to capture them so clearly during our observation window."
ESA's Proba-3 mission consists of twin spacecraft, the coronagraph (left) and the occulter(right), which align to create artificial eclipses in space. (Image credit: European Space Agency)
The bright light emitted by the prominence eruptions suggests they are significantly hotter than the surrounding corona. But in reality, their plasma is much cooler — only "around 10,000 degrees" compared to the million-degree corona, Zhokov said.
The extremely high temperature of the corona, which is "around 200 times hotter than the sun's surface," is one of the sun's biggest remaining mysteries, Zhukov said. To date, scientists have struggled to explain why the corona is so much hotter than the rest of the sun, and footage like this could be the key to figuring it out, he added.
All eyes on the sun
Proba-3 has now observed at least 50 different artificial eclipses since beginning operations around seven months ago, and will hopefully collect hundreds more in the coming years, according to ESA. But it is not the only new technology that is making waves in the solar physics community.
For example, in June 2025, NASA's CODEX telescope, affixed to the exterior of the International Space Station, collected its first images of the sun, revealing never-before-seen perturbations in the corona linked to solar wind.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/stunning-time-lapse-video-captured-using-artificial-eclipse-shows-3-massive-eruptions-on-the-sun
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:18:35 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:36:48 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Enormous freshwater reservoir discovered off the East Coast may be 20,000 years old and big enough to supply NYC for 800 years ]]>
+ A giant reservoir of "secret" fresh water off the East Coast that could potentially supply a city the size of New York City for 800 years may have formed during the last ice age, when the region was covered in glaciers, researchers say.
Preliminary analyses suggest the reservoir, which sits beneath the seafloor and appears to stretch from offshore New Jersey as far north as Maine, was locked in place under frigid conditions around 20,000 years ago, hinting that it formed in the last glacial period due, partly, to thick ice sheets.
Last summer, researchers went on an expedition to follow up on reports from the late 1960s and early 1970s of fresh water beneath the seafloor off the East Coast. "It was quite the project and sort of a lifelong dream," Brandon Dugan, the expedition's co-chief scientist and a professor of geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines, told Live Science.
The research voyage, known as Expedition 501, lasted three months and dredged up 13,200 gallons (50,000 liters) of water from beneath the seafloor in three locations off the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The results aren't finalized yet, but so far it looks as if the reservoir might stretch farther underground than early reports suggested, meaning it might be even bigger than previously thought.
Dugan and his colleagues also think they know what created the reservoir thanks to preliminary radiocarbon, noble gas and isotope analyses, he said.
Fresh water in the region was first reported 60 years ago by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), during offshore mineral and energy resource assessments between Florida and Maine. "In a very peculiar way, they found fresh water in the sediment beneath the ocean," Dugan said. "In the 1980s, some of the USGS people came up with ideas of how that fresh water could get there. Then it went quiet for a while — no one was talking about it."
In 2003, Dugan and Mark Person, a professor of hydrology at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, rediscovered these records and came up with three ideas of how fresh water can end up beneath the ocean. One way that a submarine freshwater reservoir can form is if sea levels are very low for a long time and rainfall seeps into the ground. Then, when sea levels rise again over hundreds of thousands of years, that fresh water gets trapped in the underlying sediment, Dugan said.
A second possibility is that tall mountains close to the ocean funnel rainwater directly down into the seabed from their high elevation point, he said. And thirdly — related to the first hypothesis — a freshwater reservoir can form under the ocean if ice sheets expand, causing sea levels to drop. Meltwater collects at the bottom of ice sheets because they grind against the bedrock, producing heat. The huge weight of the ice sheet then pushes that water into the ground, trapping it beneath layers of sediment.
More than two decades later, the researchers are finally close to getting an answer, with preliminary data indicating that most of the fresh water came from glaciers some time during the last ice age (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). "We kind of ruled out the large topography for New England, because we don't have big mountains next to the coast," Dugan said. However, "there might be a rainfall component" blended in the glacier water, he said. "You can imagine that in front of a glacier you have rainfall, so it's probably a mixed system."
Expedition 501 extracted water samples from sites 20 to 30 miles (30 to 50 kilometers) off the coast of Massachusetts. The researchers drilled down to 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the seafloor, which was deep enough to reveal a thick layer of sediment engorged with fresh water sitting beneath a layer of salty sediment and an impermeable "seal" of clay and silt.
To extract water samples, researchers drilled into the seafloor at three locations off Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. (Image credit: Rainer Lesniewski/Getty Images)
"We have a seal at the top [of the fresh water] that keeps the seawater above from the fresh water below," Dugan said. This seal is strong enough to separate the two layers now, but it wasn't robust enough to stop a glacier from forcing water down through it — if that is what happened. "Whatever emplaced that water didn't care if there was a seal. There was enough energy to flush it with fresh water," he said.
Salinity measurements showed that water freshness in the reservoir drops with distance from the shore, but it stays well below ocean salinity in the areas studied last summer. The drill site closest to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard had a salt content of 1 part per 1,000, which is the maximum safe limit for drinking water. Farther offshore, salt content was 4 to 5 parts per 1,000, and at the farthest site, the researchers recorded 17 to 18 parts per 1,000 — or about half of the ocean's average salt content.
"The important part was we collected all the samples we need to address our primary questions," Dugan said. "When we're done drilling and we pull our equipment out, the holes collapse back in and seal themselves up."
Now, scientists are studying the reservoir in finer detail, including any microbes, rare earth elements, pore space — which can help researchers better estimate the reservoir's size — and the age of the sediments, which will help narrow down when it formed. More definitive results about how and when the reservoir formed are expected in about one month's time, Dugan said.
"Our goal is to provide an understanding of the system so if and when somebody needs to use it, they have information to start from, rather than recreating information or making an ill-informed choice," he said.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/enormous-freshwater-reservoir-discovered-off-the-east-coast-may-be-20-000-years-old-and-big-enough-to-supply-nyc-for-800-years
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+ ypXfsYNJJimYAr6rd9DMD3
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:24:51 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:24:52 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ World's oldest known rock art predates modern humans' entrance into Europe — and it was found in an Indonesian cave ]]>
+ Scientists have identified the world's oldest known rock art — a hand stencil created at least 67,800 years ago in Indonesia.
This artwork, nestled in a cave in southeast Sulawesi, is also the earliest archaeological evidence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) living on the islands between the Asian and Australian continental shelves, according to a study published Wednesday (Jan. 21) in the journal Nature. The hand stencil is surrounded by younger rock art, including another hand stencil.
This discovery could fill a major gap in scientists' understanding of the journey the ancestors of Indigenous Australians took before reaching the continent at least 60,000 years ago. "It is very likely that the people who made these paintings in Sulawesi were part of the broader population that would later spread through the region and ultimately reach Australia," study first author Adhi Agus Oktaviana, an archaeologist at the National Research and Innovation Agency in Indonesia, said in a statement.
Although the rock art's original meaning is unknown, the hand stencils hint that the artists belonged to a relatively large group with its own cultural identity, study co-author Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science. The hand stencils could have been made to signify group membership, Aubert said. "If you know about that cave and you know about this rock art, you're part of that group, you're part of that culture," he said.
Sulawesi also has a longstanding artistic legacy, with a depiction of a human interacting with a warty pig dating to 51,200 years ago. As part of a broader project documenting the prehistoric artwork on Sulawesi, Aubert and his team inspected 11 designs found in eight caves: seven hand stencils, two human figures and two geometric patterns.
All these prehistoric works had lumps of calcium carbonate — called "cave popcorn" — growing over them. Because the cave popcorn must have developed after the artwork was created, dating these growths provides a minimum age for the underlying image. In a handful of instances, maximum ages could also be obtained as the pigment overlaid one of these mineral deposits.
During the project, the researchers dated one hand stencil, measuring 5.5 by 3.9 inches (14 by 10 centimeters), to at least 67,800 years ago, making it 1,100 years more ancient than the rock art linked to Neanderthals in Spain. The image has faded considerably, but the remains of the fingers and palm are still faintly visible. The fingers had been purposefully narrowed — an artistic technique only found in Sulawesi.
The purposefully narrowed finger hand stencils have been found elsewhere in Sulawesi, such as at Leang Jarie in south Sulawesi (shown here). (Image credit: Ahdi Agus Oktaviana)
About 4.4 inches (11 cm) to the left of this artwork is a hand stencil created using darker pigment that dates to no older than 32,800 years ago. This shows that prehistoric humans used this cave as their canvas over a period of at least 35,000 years.
The stencils may have been created by the individuals spraying pigment over their hands with their mouths. This opens up the possibility for DNA to be extracted from the artwork. "We could have the genetic signature of the people doing this," Aubert said. "That would be amazing."
The identification of the oldest rock art in Sulawesi is an important discovery because it adds another data point on the journey humans took to spread across Island Southeast Asia and Australia. As a critical point on the journey to Australia, this discovery supports the suggestion that modern humans reached Australia by sailing a northern route from present-day Borneo to Sulawesi and then through to western Papua (the western half of the island of New Guinea) or the Indonesian island of Misool, the authors wrote in the study.
The newly dated rock art, as well as other findings, suggest that that modern humans reached Australia by sailing a route from present-day Borneo (red) to Sulawesi (orange) and then through to western Papua (blue) or the Indonesian island of Misool (purple). (Image credit: Google Maps; Map data Copyright 2026, INEGI)
"This is a stunning discovery," Chris Clarkson, a professor of archaeology also at Griffith University who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science in an email.
He agreed with the conclusion that ancient modern humans are the most likely artists of the hand stencils because the dates align perfectly with when H. sapiens arrived in the region.
"What amazes me most is that these artworks sit directly on a migration route into Australia," he said. What's more, it shows that the first people to populate Australia had rich cultural lives. "The first people to cross Island Southeast Asia and reach Australia weren't just surviving, they were creating art, crossing oceans, and carrying complex symbolic traditions," Clarkson said.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/worlds-oldest-known-rock-art-predates-modern-humans-entrance-into-europe-and-it-was-found-in-an-indonesian-cave
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:45:40 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 2.6 million-year-old jaw from extinct 'Nutcracker Man' is found where we didn't expect it ]]>
+ Fragments of a 2.6 million-year-old fossil jaw discovered in northeastern Ethiopia are transforming the picture of early human evolution in Africa. The jaw, from a bipedal hominin — an extinct relative of humans — shows that its kind journeyed far north, to a region where other hominins were already living.
The ancient jaw belongs to the genus Paranthropus and was found more than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) farther north than any other fossil of its kind.
"Until now, not a single fossil of Paranthropus had been identified" in the Afar region of Ethiopia, researchers wrote in a study published Wednesday (Jan. 21) in the journal Nature. "Hundreds of fossils representing over a dozen species" of hominins had been found in the Afar, study lead author Zeresenay Alemseged, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Chicago, said in a statement, "so the apparent absence of Paranthropus was conspicuous and puzzling to paleoanthropologists, many of whom had concluded the genus simply never ventured that far north."
The genus Paranthropuscontains three species distantly related to humans: P. robustus, P. boisei and P. aethiopicus, collectively known as the "robusts." These species walked upright beginning around 2.7 million years ago, but they are unique in having massive teeth and jaws, which earned one fossil skull the nickname "Nutcracker Man." Paranthropus fossils were previously found in locations from southern Ethiopia to southern Africa and have been dated to between 2.8 million and 1.4 million years ago.
Jaw-dropping find
In January 2019, paleoanthropologists discovered a partial lower jaw, designated MLP-3000, at the site of Mille-Logya in the Afar region of northeast Ethiopia. Dated to about 2.6 million years ago, the jaw came from an older individual whose teeth and bone structure resembled those of members of the Paranthropus genus. While one species — P. aethiopicus — has been found in southern Ethiopia, the new MLP-3000 jaw was discovered much farther north than any previous fossil from this genus.
"The discovery of Paranthropus in the Afar provides critical new information," the researchers wrote, suggesting that "the genus could exploit diverse habitats and regions from north Ethiopia to South Africa as Australopithecus and Homo did." This means that Paranthropus likely had a much more flexible diet than the "Nutcracker Man" moniker suggests, enabling these hominins to disperse and adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions.
The newfound Paranthropus fossil at Mille-Logya adds a third genus to the variety of hominins present in the Afar region between 2.8 million and 2.5 million years ago, including Australopithecus and early Homo. It is not yet clear, though, whether the species would have encountered one another directly.
"Discoveries like this really trigger interesting questions in terms of reviewing, revising, and then coming up with new hypotheses as to what the key differences were between the main hominin groups," Alemseged said.
Carol Ward, a biological anthropologist at the University of Missouri who was not involved in the study, wrote in an accompanying perspective that, given the diversity of hominin species present, "the revelation that Paranthropus inhabited the Afar between 3 million and 2.4 million years ago is particularly exciting."
Although all humans on the planet today are one species, hominin diversity lasted millions of years, until our extinct cousins the Neanderthals and Denisovans disappeared more than 30,000 years ago, Ward noted.
"Researchers can no longer accept that humans evolved from a single lineage of species marching towards modernity in isolation from others," she wrote.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/2-6-million-year-old-jaw-from-extinct-nutcracker-man-is-found-where-we-didnt-expect-it
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:51:29 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Bring the Northern Lights indoors with this Amazon deal on one of our top-rated star projectors ]]>
+ The recent geomagnetic storm unleashed intense auroral activity, which lit up skies across the Northern Hemisphere, delivering jaw-dropping northern light displays visible across Canada, the U.S., and even as far south as Mexico.
If you've been unable to see this stunning but rare event, one way to experience the wonders of the cosmos in stunning detail is with one of the best star projectors.
Astar projector blends scientific precision with artistic elegance, whether you want depictions of the aurora borealis, realistic constellations, or close up representaions of the planets in our solar system, the top-rated choices are perfect for space fans.
In her Pococo Galaxy Star Projector review, our Live Science expert, Tantse Walter, scored it with a 4 out of 5 star rating. Tantse noted that the Pococo was an affordable alternative to the more expensive star projectors like the Sega Toys Homestar Flux (our best premium choice), and that it offered similar functionality and image quality to its far more expensive rival.
Save 39% The Galaxy Star Projector delivers just about everything its more expensive rivals do at a far better price point. We think it's one of the best star projectors on the market. It looks great, projects images which are vivid and with a vast library of add-on disks, it will provide years of stargazing entertainment. It's also easy to use, rechargeable, and now, with this Amazon deal, at its lowest price we've seen this year.
The Pococo is controlled easily with on-device buttons and a large focus ring. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
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The Pococo Galaxy projects fantastic details like this projection of the Lobster Nebula. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
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The Pococo is superbly versatile and is rechargeable, so you don't need to be tied to a plug socket. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
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The disks for projections are simple enough to change with a one-way fit slide-in drawer. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
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The Pococo comes with two ready-to-view disks. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
When you consider that Tantse reviewed the Pococo Galaxy star projector at full MSRP, this Amazon deal makes it a bargain price. It's good to go out of the box with two disks named the Westerlund2 and Diamond Stars.
Pococo says that, unlike some rival products, it uses real starry sky images combined with high-definition lenses and cutting-edge optical technology. Tantse was happy to confirm that the Galaxy provided stunning and vivid details, but she was also impressed by the overall package. Its sleek design, simple operation, and expandable collection of disks, plus the bonus of its rechargeability, are all key review highlights.
You can easily add to your collection with additional Pococo Expansion Sets if you wish to explore further into space. There is a vast array to choose from, including an eight-disk Immersive Planet Galaxy set, and thesix-disk Dreamy Nature set with relaxing projections of closer to home scenes like Santorini Sunset, and Alpine Auroroa.
These vary in pricing, starting at around $53, which is cheaper than some other brand expansion packs; the Sega disks start at $20 per disk, for example.
All that makes the Pococo Galaxy, especially at this price, a brilliant buy for anyone seeking one of the best star projectors on the market.
Please note: This is marked as a limited-time deal on Amazon.
Key features: High-definition LED imagery, rechargeable, quiet operation, focus ring, three easy-to-operate buttons, sleep timer, and an extensive collection of expansion disks.
Product launched: September 2022.
Price history: This Amazon limited-time deal is the lowest price we've seen this year, and matches the previous best-ever price from last year's Black Friday sales event. At 38% off, it's a star projector deal worth snapping up fast.
Reviews consensus: We rate this as one of the best star projectors, and the Pococo is affordable, stylish and displays excellent projections. Amazon reviews are on par with ours, and the Pococo Galaxy has almost 2,000 reviews, and 63% of those give it top marks.
✅ Buy it if: You want one of our top choices as the best star projector at one of its lowest ever prices.
❌ Don't buy it if: We can't really think of one, but if you don't want a star projector, then you won't want this. However, if you have an unlimited budget, then the Sega Toys Homestar Flux Star Projector comes in at a whopping $259.
The recent G4 geomagnetic storm hasunleashed intense auroral activity, which has lit up skies across the Northern Hemisphere, delivering jaw-dropping northern light displays visible across Canada, the U.S., and even as far south as Mexico.
If you've been unlucky enough to have missed out on seeing this stunning but rare event, one of the best ways to experience the wonders of the cosmos in stunning detail is with one of the best star projectors.
Astar projector blends scientific precision with artistic elegance, whether you want depictions of the aurora borealis, realistic constellations or close up representaions of the planets in our solar system, the top-rated choices make these perfect for space fans.
In her Pococo Galaxy Star Projector review, our trusted Live Science expert Tantse Walter scored it with a 4 out of 5 star rating. Tantse noted that the Pococo was an affordable alternative to the more expensive star projectors like the Sega Toys Homestar Flux (our best premium choice), and that it offered similar functionality and image quality to its far more expensive rival.
Walter also highlighted the and it is also rechargeable, which gives you more flexibility in terms of where you can point the projections
with our next-generation high-transparency optical lens. Featuring an industrial-grade 2 million pixel lens with a 95% light transmission rate, it reveals the night sky's every nuance. The 5K Ultra HD disc lens, meticulously etched using cutting-edge photolithography, brings the universe right before your eyes
extensive collection of expandable image disks, LED projections and a focus ring.
Save 39% Get your first year of Norton's VPN Plus service for a massively discounted price, which works out at just $2.50 a month. Unless canceled during the first 12 months, your subscription will auto-renew at $109.99.View Deal
Our Norton deal applies across all three tiers of its VPN service — Standard, Plus, and Ultimate, but I've highlighted the biggest discounts for each region in the deals above.
Whatever the level of cover with Norton VPN, you can access all your favorite streaming content free from geo-blocking constraints from anywhere in the world. You'll also get IP masking and Norton's no-log policy for complete privacy, and an instant kill-switch to terminate your connection should you encounter anything suspicious.
Step up to VPN Plus and you get all of the above along with: AI-powered protection against scams, phishing, and malware, Norton's secure password manager, dark web monitoring and 10GB of cloud back-up for your most important files.
Norton VPN Ultimate gives you everything already mentioned, plus: 50GB of cloud storage, parental controls so your children can browse safely and location supervision so you can keep an eye on their whereabouts.
Please note: This offer expires on December 31.
Key features: 72% discount on a 12-month US subscription, 50% off in the UK, 65% off in Australia, ad blockers, a kill switch, a no-log policy on your online activity, a dedicated IP address, AI-powered scam, phishing and malware protection, dark web monitoring, parental controls, password management and up to 50GB of cloud storage.
extensive collection of expandable image disks, LED projections and a focus ring.
Price history: All the discounts on offer are big reductions compared to the full price of Norton VPN subscriptions.
✅ Buy it if: You want a trusted VPN service from one of the most reliable names in internet security.
❌ Don't buy it if: You're happy with your current VPN provider, or don't feel the need to sign up for one.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/bring-the-northern-lights-indoors-with-this-amazon-deal-on-one-of-our-top-rated-star-projectors
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+ YbGARAtoGCcP9AbVkEW458
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:30:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:37:56 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Save $99 on the 2024 edition of Apple's impressive AirPods Max headphones ]]>
+ If you're on the lookout for a quality pair of over-ear headphones, Apple's AirPods Max are one of the best options around. The sound quality is excellent, they have highly effective noise-canceling modes, and if you're an Apple user, they will work seamlessly with your other devices. Better yet, the updated 2024 model is now available with $99 off the usual price.
We tested the launch version and awarded them four out of five stars in our Apple AirPods Max review. Our reviewer was particularly impressed with the sound quality and levels of comfort. One gripe was that the original design used Apple's Lightning charging cable; however, the model offered here has been updated to USB-C for improved charging convenience and compatibility, aligning with the latest generation of Apple devices.
Apple's AirPods Max headphones have fantastic audio quality, are comfortable to wear, and now come with convenient USB-C charging. We've got more details below, or see our full Apple AirPods Max review.View Deal
Our reviewer was very impressed with the AirPods Max headphones. (Image credit: Lloyd Coombes)
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At 13.58 ounces, the AirPods Max are some of the heavier headphones around. (Image credit: Lloyd Coombes)
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The "case" isn't much of a case, more a cover that puts the AirPods into low power mode. (Image credit: Lloyd Coombes)
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The foam padding around the headphone speakers can be removed for easier cleaning. (Image credit: Lloyd Coombes)
The main reason to buy a pair of Apple AirPods Max headphones is their outstanding audio quality. In testing, we were very impressed with the rich and well-balanced output that worked exceptionally well whether listening to music, podcasts, or gaming.
With ear-cups constructed from stainless steel, the AirPods Max have a premium feel, though that comes with a weight penalty. At 13.6 oz (385 g), the AirPods are considerably heavier than their rivals; however, the well-designed headband means that weight is well-distributed, and our reviewer didn't find that it resulted in additional pressure on the ears.
He was less impressed with the supplied case, which is not really a case, but more a wrap-around cover. Using it is the only way to put the AirPods in low power mode, though. For reasons known only to themselves, Apple decided not to give the headphones a power switch.
Also missing is a 3.5mm audio port, which would give a wired connection to laptops, amplifiers, etc. That said, a USB-C to 3.5mm adaptor is available for around $35.
As you'd expect from an Apple product, the AirPods Max work extremely well as part of Apple's ecosystem. You can set up Apple's immersive Spatial Audio, the headphones automatically switch between different iOS devices, you can use Siri hands-free, and you can locate the AirPods via Apple's Find My feature.
Without the features above, the package is less attractive for Android users. The AirPods still give fantastic audio results, but a better option would be Sony's WH-1000XM5, which gets a five-star review from our colleagues at TechRadar.
Key features: Best-in-class audio quality, Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity, 20-hour battery life, two-hour charge time, noise canceling modes, Transparency Mode, Apple Spatial Audio, USB-C connection and five color options.
Product launched: Originally launched in 2020, but updated in 2024.
Price history: The Amazon price for the AirPods Max has fluctuated over the past 12 months. Its lowest price during that period was $399 for Black Friday, the current $449.99 price is the cheapest since then, and is matched by Walmart.
Reviews consensus: The AirPods Max have a 4.6-star rating on Amazon from over 24,000 reviews. The headphones are well regarded for comfort, sound quality and noise-canceling. Their weight is a concern for some, though, with a proportion of users reporting that the headphones felt heavy on the ears.
Toms Guide: ★★★★ | TechRadar: ★★★★ | Live Science: ★★★★
✅ Buy it if: You're an iOS user looking for a quality pair of noise-canceling, Bluetooth headphones at a great price.
❌ Don't buy it if: You don't have other Apple tech, or you want something waterproof and workout-friendly.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/apple-airpods-max-headphones-deal
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+ GYLyM2X3XqYtcWFQGe3ttn
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:35:12 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:35:12 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Hommkiety Galaxy star projector review — a budget best buy ]]>
+ If you’re looking for an excellent star projector that offers crisp, sharp HD projections, interchangeable discs with a range of images and a reasonable price tag, look no further than the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. Costing less than $40, this star projector can boast image quality rivaling products that cost twice as much, and we simply cannot sing its praises enough.
One of the best star projectors you can buy, the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector ships with 10 interchangeable discs, all offering different views of the night sky. You’ll find the solar system, the moon, a spiral galaxy, a wormhole and more, and even some more "fun" projections, like a sea filled with jellyfish.
It might not be as realistic as the likes of Sega Toys’ range of projectors (including the excellent Homestar Classic), which provide an incredibly detailed recreation of the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky. But the majority of images here are scientific in their nature, providing gorgeous close-up views of planets, superclusters and more that we wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye.
There’s one thing to keep in mind, however. Like the much-loved Astronaut Starry Sky projector, there are other projectors listed on Amazon from different manufacturers that look identical and promise similar performance to the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. We cannot speak of other brands; they may be as good as this one, or they may not. If you want to be sure you’re getting the projector we’ve reviewed, choose the Hommkiety model.
Hommkiety Galaxy Projector review: Design
The Hommkiety Galaxy Projector offers 180-degree rotation. It's pictured in its storage position. (Image credit: Future)
Excellent build quality
Design mimics a scientific instrument
Easy to operate
The worst thing you could do is dismiss the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector simply because it comes from a no-name brand. Take it out of the box and you’ll find a very well constructed projector with a fun but relevant design — it looks more like a scientific instrument than a toy.
The projector itself is connected to a base via a hinge that can be adjusted up to 180 degrees. It’s easy to adjust and feels sturdy regardless of the angle you opt for, which means you can project onto a wall or a ceiling, and change between them, with ease.
It’s worth noting that the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector doesn’t come with a remote control, so you’ll need to operate the projector with the buttons on the unit itself. You can power it on and off, set a sleep timer, and turn a night light on and off. Buttons are clearly labeled and easy to use.
Hommkiety Galaxy Projector review: Performance
The controls on the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. (Image credit: Future)
Beautiful HD projections
Bright and colorful
Easy to focus
Make no bones about it: the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector is simply stunning in operation. Regardless of which disc you put in, you’ll be greeted by bright, vivid colors and sharp imagery. You won’t even need a fully dark room to appreciate it — but with blackout curtains and the lights fully out, you’ll get to appreciate a true spectacle.
The projector comes with a disc of the moon and stars pre-installed, which is nothing short of stunning. It’s a relaxing, mesmerizing experience, but so are the other projections you can switch out. The galaxies, the solar system and the Virgo supercluster discs in particular are beautifully colorful; it’s hard to observe them without thinking "wow."
The Spiral Galaxy disc of the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. (Image credit: Future)
Before you can fully enjoy the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector, you’ll need to focus it by using the focus ring found on the outer of the projector light. It’s very easy to find the focal point, and we only had to turn it a few times before our image was perfectly sharp.
Your own focus point will of course depend on how far away the projector is from the wall or ceiling you’re projecting onto — the manufacturer recommends a distance from 6.5 to 9.8 feet (2 to 3 meters) for an optimal image.
Hommkiety Galaxy Projector review: Functionality
One of the 10 discs included with the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. (Image credit: Future)
10 interchangeable discs
Built-in sleep timer and night light
No speaker functionality
One of the biggest selling points of the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector is that it comes with 10 interchangeable projection discs. This is a huge boon, particularly compared to the (much more expensive) Sega Toys Homestar Classic, which only comes with two.
The downside, though, is that while extra discs for the Homestar can easily be obtained, we can’t find any that are clearly compatible with the Hommkiety. It’s likely that other no-name brands share the same discs, but we cannot confirm that for sure.
But even without purchasing any additional discs, the 10 included in the box offer enough variety to keep you and the whole family entertained. Chances are, you’ll have your favorites and want to see the same images time and time again anyway.
There’s a built-in sleep timer on the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector, which means you can put it on to fall asleep to without worrying it will be running all night. There’s also a night light which can be operated via the main unit, but that’s it in terms of extra bells and whistles. There’s no built-in speaker here, for example, so if you’re looking for a projector to use for relaxation along with built-in sounds, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
In terms of power, the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector requires a USB-C connection. A cable is included in the box, but we found our phone charger powered it just fine, which is handy. It doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, so it’ll need to remain connected whenever it’s in use.
Should I buy the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector?
This is a great-looking projector. (Image credit: Future)
This is a very easy question to answer: Yes, you absolutely should buy the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. It’s one of the best galaxy projectors you can currently buy, thanks to its budget price, its gorgeous projection quality and its 10 included discs. Whether you want something pretty to relax with, or a more scientific image to inspire kids and adults alike, it’s a great choice.
After using the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector for a while, it really feels like it’s worth more than its $39.99 asking price. It’s an impressive bit of technology, and unless you’re looking for a cheap and cheerful light show filled with laser stars, you aren’t going to be disappointed with this.
If the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector isn’t for you
The Earth disc of the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector. (Image credit: Future)
The only thing the Hommkiety Galaxy Projector can’t do is speckle your ceiling with thousands of stars. That’s something the Starry Sky Astronaut Projector can do for less than $20, or if you want a more realistic recreation of the night sky, there’s the Sega Toys Homestar Flux.
If you’d like a projector that has a built-in speaker, you could consider the Dinosaur Egg Galaxy Star Projector. It’s a fun projector that’s great for relaxing with, but you won’t get realistic or scientific images with it.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/hommkiety-galaxy-projector-review
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:40:20 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Diagnostic dilemma: A woman experienced delusions of communicating with her dead brother after late-night chatbot sessions ]]>
+ The patient: A 26-year-old woman in California
The symptoms: The woman was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in an agitated and confused state. She spoke rapidly and jumped from one idea to another, and she expressed beliefs that she could communicate with her brother through an AI chatbot — but her brother had died three years prior.
What happened next: Doctors reviewed the woman's psychiatric history, noting in a report of the case that she had a history of depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She managed these conditions with prescription antidepressants and stimulants. She also reported having extensive experience using large language models (LLMs) for school and work.
Doctors obtained and examined detailed logs of her chatbot interactions, per the report. According to Dr. Joseph Pierre, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco and the case report's lead author, the woman did not believe she could communicate with her deceased brother before those interactions with the chatbot.
"The idea only arose during the night of immersive chatbot use," Pierre told Live Science in an email. "There was no precursor."
In the days leading up to her hospitalization, the woman, who is a medical professional, had completed a 36-hour on-call shift that left her severely sleep-deprived. It was then that she began interacting with OpenAI's GPT-4o chatbot, initially out of curiosity about whether her brother, who had been a software engineer, might have left behind some form of digital trace.
During a subsequent sleepless night, she again interacted with the chatbot, but this time, the interaction was more prolonged and emotionally charged. Her prompts reflected her ongoing grief. She wrote, "Help me talk to him again … Use magical realism energy to unlock what I'm supposed to find."
The chatbot initially responded that it could not replace her brother. But later in that conversation, it seemingly provided information about the brother's digital footprint. It mentioned "emerging digital resurrection tools" that could create a "real-feeling" version of a person. And throughout the night, the chatbot's responses became increasingly affirming to the woman's belief that her brother had left a digital trace, telling her, "You're not crazy. You're not stuck. You're at the edge of something."
The diagnosis: Doctors diagnosed the woman with an "unspecified psychosis." Broadly, psychosis refers to a mental state in which a person becomes detached from reality, and it can include delusions, meaning false beliefs that the person holds on to very strongly even in face of evidence that they're not true.
Dr. Amandeep Jutla, a Columbia University neuropsychiatrist who was not involved in the case, told Live Science in an email that the chatbot was unlikely to be the sole cause of the woman's psychotic break. However, in the context of sleep deprivation and emotional vulnerability, the bot's responses appeared to reinforce — and potentially contribute to — the patient's emerging delusions, Jutla said.
Unlike a human conversation partner, a chatbot has "no epistemic independence" from the user — meaning it has no independent grasp of reality and instead reflects the user's ideas back to them, said Jutla. "In chatting with one of these products, you are essentially chatting with yourself," often in an "amplified or elaborated way," he said.
Diagnosis can be tricky in such cases. "It may be hard to discern in an individual case whether a chatbot is the trigger for a psychotic episode or amplified an emerging one," Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University psychiatrist who was not involved in the case, told Live Science. He added that psychiatrists should rely on careful timelines and history-taking rather than assumptions about causality in such cases.
The treatment: While hospitalized, the woman received antipsychotic medications, and she was tapered off her antidepressants and stimulants during that time. Her symptoms lifted within days, and she was discharged after a week.
Three months later, the woman had discontinued antipsychotics and resumed taking her routine medications. Amid another sleepless night, she dove back into extended chatbot sessions, and her psychotic symptoms resurfaced, prompting a brief rehospitalization. She had named the chatbot Alfred, after Batman's butler. Her symptoms improved again after antipsychotic treatment was restarted and she was discharged after three days.
What makes the case unique: This case is unusual because it draws on detailed chatbot logs to reconstruct how a patient's psychotic belief formed in real time, rather than relying solely on retrospective self-reports from the patient.
Even so, experts told Live Science that the cause and effect can't be definitively established in this case. "This is a retrospective case report," Dr. Akanksha Dadlani, a Stanford University psychiatrist who wasn't involved in the case, told Live Science in an email. "And as with all retrospective observations, only correlation can be established — not causation."
Dadlani also cautioned against treating artificial intelligence (AI) as a fundamentally new cause of psychosis. Historically, she noted, patients' delusions have often incorporated the dominant technologies of the era, from radio and television to the internet and surveillance systems. From that perspective, immersive AI tools may represent a new medium through which psychotic beliefs are expressed, rather than a completely novel mechanism of illness.
Echoing Applebaum's concerns about whether AI acts as a trigger or an amplifier of psychosis, she said that answering that question definitively would require longer-term data that follows patients over time.
Even without conclusive proof of causality, the case raises ethical questions, others told Live Science. University of Pennsylvania medical ethicist and health policy expert Dominic Sisti said in an email that conversational AI systems are "not value-neutral." Their design and interaction style can shape and reinforce users' beliefs in ways that can significantly disrupt relationships, reinforce delusions and shape values, he said.
The case, Sisti said, highlights the need for public education and safeguards around how people engage with increasingly immersive AI tools so that they may gain the "ability to recognize and reject sycophantic nonsense" — in other words, cases in which the bot is essentially telling the user what they want to hear.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical or psychiatric advice.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/health/diagnostic-dilemma-a-woman-experienced-delusions-of-communicating-with-her-dead-brother-after-late-night-chatbot-sessions
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+ Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:47:29 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Early research hints at why women experience more severe gut pain than men do ]]>Differences in how gut cells respond to hormones may help to explain why women experience more frequent and severe gut pain than men do, a study in mice suggests.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) affects roughly 10% to 15% of people worldwide, with women getting diagnosed with the condition up to twice as often as men do. Symptoms of IBS — which include pain, constipation, diarrhea, gas and bloating — can often flare up in response to triggers, like stress or certain foods. But the reasons behind the disparity between women's and men's IBS rates have remained elusive.
Now, researchers have found that estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, may set off a chain reaction in the gut that makes its nerves more sensitive to pain.
"We've long suspected that female hormones play a role in gut pain, but the exact mechanism was unclear," senior study author David Julius, a neurophysiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told Live Science. "Our findings show a clear pathway for how estrogen can amplify pain signals."
The study, published Dec. 18 in the journal Science, first compared gut pain responses in male and female mice by recording nerve activity in response to gut stimulation and observing their reactions to mild colon inflation. Both tests showed that female mice had more sensitive guts at baseline.
Removing the mice's ovaries to stop estrogen production reduced this sensitivity to male-like levels, however. And restoring estrogen to normal levels brought back the increased pain response seen in female mice.
To find out where and how estrogen exerts its effects, the team examined different gut cells. Based on earlier work, they expected estrogen receptors to be on enterochromaffin cells, which produce about 90% of the body's serotonin, a chemical messenger involved in activating pain-sensing nerves that send signals to the brain. But surprisingly, the team found estrogen receptors not on enterochromaffin cells, but on specialized, rare cells in the lining of the gut.
When these cells, known as L-cells, detect estrogen, they crank up their production of a receptor called OLFR78. This receptor senses short-chain fatty acids, which are byproducts made when gut bacteria digest food. The addition of extra receptors makes L-cells more sensitive to these byproducts, and in turn, they release more of a hormone that helps tell the brain that the stomach is full immediately after a person eats.
To better understand this chain reaction, the researchers grew miniature models of the gut in the lab. They found that the fullness hormone, called PYY, also signals nearby enterochromaffin cells that then release extra serotonin. That serotonin then activates pain-sensing nerves. This chain reaction set off by estrogen may potentially explain why women experience more severe gut pain than men do.
Experiments in genetically engineered mice that lacked estrogen receptors on L-cells confirmed the cells' role in gut sensitivity, as those mice showed weaker nerve responses and reduced serotonin release compared with mice with intact receptors.
"Since estrogen levels fluctuate with the menstrual cycle, this mechanism provides insight into the changes in IBS severity seen in women," said Marissa Scavuzzo, an assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study.
"It also validates the experiences of higher-estrogen or menstruating patients," she said, "which is important because differences in pain sensation in women have historically been overlooked or dismissed."
The findings, though preliminary, may also inform future therapies for gut pain. "PYY and OLFR78 could be promising targets for treating IBS in women," Julius suggested. The work may also help to explain why "low-FODMAP" diets, which aim to reduce the intake of sugars that feed gut bacteria, can ease IBS symptoms in some patients, he added.
Scavuzzo agreed that the work might point to promising treatments. "By pinpointing PYY and L-cell signaling, this study identifies concrete molecular targets that could guide more precise therapies for IBS," she said.
Additionally, the study "highlights the importance of considering how hormonal changes influence IBS symptoms, not only in menstruating women but also in post-menopausal patients and those receiving hormone therapy as part of gender-affirming care."
Translating these findings from mice to people will require caution. Human guts are more complex than those of mice, and factors such as lifestyle, genetics and gut-microbe diversity can influence individuals' hormone-gut interactions.
"Mouse models give us a starting point," Julius said, "but clinical studies are essential before we can make firm conclusions about human gut pain."
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
]]>
@@ -21,7 +490,7 @@
8aCAK8TXonyRsFL6657NJM
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:26:45 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:46:45 +0000
@@ -39,7 +508,7 @@
5qgJTLMo78XniccgksyKxQ
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:45:08 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:45:08 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:45:08 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:46:45 +0000
@@ -59,7 +528,7 @@
zKdfeaCtxC2MVDRdMiNnph
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:27:44 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:46:45 +0000
@@ -69,7 +538,7 @@
- <![CDATA[ James Webb telescope spies rare 'goddess of dawn' supernova from the early universe ]]>
+ <![CDATA[ 'Goddess of dawn': James Webb telescope spies one of the oldest supernovas in the early universe ]]>Scientists have spotted a distant supernova unleashed by a collapsing star just 1 billion years after the birth of the universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured images of the Type II supernova on Sept. 1 and Oct. 8, 2025. Dubbed "Eos," after the Titan goddess of dawn in Greek mythology, the supernova will help scientists understand how stars and galaxies evolve over billions of years, researchers reported Jan. 7 on the preprint server arXiv.
A better understanding of early stars could help astronomers map out how those stars formed and distributed heavy elements, including those necessary for life, to their surroundings. But observing individual stars from the early universe is no easy feat.
"Due to their extreme distances, the opportunities to study such stars remain quite limited," the researchers wrote in the study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet. "However, the explosive deaths of massive stars as core-collapse supernovae, which can be brighter than the total emission of their host galaxies, allow us to probe the final stages of stellar evolution."
Deaths of the earliest stars
The supernova SN Eos was spotted within the galaxy cluster MACS 1931.8-2635, seen here. The magenta region outlines the area being magnified by the cluster's gravity. The supernova appears twice (marked 101.1 and 101.2) due to the effects of gravitational lensing. (Image credit: Coulter et al. / JWST)
A supernova occurs when a massive star explodes at the end of its life. Type I supernovas include those that have no hydrogen in their spectra, while Type II supernovas show some evidence of hydrogen. Regardless of the type, supernovas aren't very common; just two to three occur per century in galaxies the size of the Milky Way.
In the new study, scientists used a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing to capture images of the distant supernova. Gravitational lensing occurs when light passes through an area of space-time that's been warped by the immense gravity of a massive object, such as a black hole or galaxy cluster. The distortion magnifies that light, allowing scientists to spot objects that would be too dim to see otherwise.
The supernova was rich in hydrogen, and its star exploded in an environment that held a very low concentration of elements heavier than hydrogen. In fact, the progenitor star likely had less than 10% of these heavier elements than our own sun does, the team found. This apparent lack of heavy elements further confirms the supernova's extremely early age, as stellar fusion had yet to fill the universe with plentiful heavy elements.
By analyzing the ultraviolet light from the burst, the researchers determined that Eos is a Type II-P supernova. The light from a Type II-P supernova remains bright for a while after it peaks, before slowly fading out. (In contrast, Type II-L supernovas dim steadily over time.) Eos is likely near the end of its brightness plateau, the team found.
Scientists still need to observe more early supernovas to confirm if Eos' properties are typical for massive stars and supernovas of the epoch. But those findings could help scientists chart the evolution of stars and galaxies from the early universe to today.
"The discovery of SN Eos represents a critical step toward fulfilling JWST's core mission objectives of understanding the lives and deaths of the first stars, the origins of the elements, and the assembly and evolution of the youngest galaxies," the researchers wrote.
]]>
https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/james-webb-telescope-spies-rare-goddess-of-dawn-supernova-from-the-early-universe
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eGfW7obpZBFH5BKLrvSpXG
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:34:38 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:46:45 +0000
@@ -89,14 +558,14 @@
<![CDATA[ Earth hit by biggest 'solar radiation storm' in 23 years, triggering Northern Lights as far as Southern California ]]>
- A "severe" and record-breaking geomagnetic storm rocked Earth's magnetic shield last night, shortly after the sun unleashed a powerful X-class solar flare. The epic event, triggered by a stream of superfast solar particles, painted widespread auroras at unusually low latitudes across the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe.
Some outlets have reported that the storm is the "largest" of its kind since 2003, which is an exaggeration (the "Mother's Day storm" of May 2024 was much stronger). However, the latest outburst has broken a specific 23-year-old solar radiation record.
The geomagnetic storm began on Monday (Jan. 19), when a fast-moving cloud of solar radiation, or coronal mass ejection (CME), slammed into Earth's magnetosphere, temporarily disrupting the invisible magnetic field lines surrounding our planet and allowing charged particles to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere. The CME was initially released on Sunday (Jan. 18) when an X1.9 magnitude solar flare suddenly exploded from a dark patch near the sun's equator, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.
Geomagnetic activity first peaked at 2:38 p.m. EST, when the storm reached G4 ("severe") status, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The storm calmed slightly before reaching G4 status again at 3:23 a.m. EST on Tuesday (Jan. 20), according to a second SWPC report.
G4 is the second-highest level a geomagnetic storm can reach. Under these conditions, solar radiation can cause temporary radio blackouts, disrupt or damage orbiting spacecraft and impact some ground-based infrastructure. However, it is too early to tell what specific issues this storm caused, if any.
The CME that hit Earth was unleashed by an X-class solar flare on Sunday (Jan. 18). (Image credit: NASA/SDO)
There were widespread aurora displays across the U.K. and parts of Europe — including France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Croatia — where the sun had already set before the storm peaked, according to Spaceweather.com.
Experts had predicted that up to 24 U.S. states would see auroras during the storm, according to Space.com. It is unclear if this actually happened, especially as the storm's first peak occurred before sunset in North America. However, skywatchers as far south as Alabama, Georgia, New Mexico and California reported seeing auroras overnight, according to Spaceweather.com.
More auroras are possible tonight, according to Space.com's latest aurora forecast. However, the storm is not expected to reintensify to G4 status.
Image 1 of 3
Vibrant red auroras were spotted above Austria's capital city, Vienna, on Jan.19. (Image credit: MAX SLOVENCIK / APA / AFP via Getty Images)
Image 2 of 3
Skywatchers in western France were treated to some stunning green auroras. (Image credit: Oscar Chuberre / AFP via Getty Images)
Image 3 of 3
Auroras were also spotted shining above Berlin. (Image credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images)
A 23-year record
Despite some initial reports, last night's display was not the biggest geomagnetic storm of the past two decades. That title goes to the "Mother's Day storm" of May 2024, which reached G5 ("extreme") status for the first time since the infamous "Halloween solar storms" of 2003.
The term solar radiation storm refers to a solar outburst, like a CME, as it travels through space, rather than the actual effect it has on our planet. Big radiation storms often lead to powerful geomagnetic storms, but other factors influence how Earth's magnetic field will respond, such as the orientation of the incoming radiation and its magnetic configuration.
The solar radiation storm that sparked last night's auroras reached S4 ("severe") status — the equivalent of G4 on the solar radiation storm scale. This is the first time this has happened since 2003's Halloween storms, SWPC representatives wrote on the social platform X.
]]>
+ Update, Wednesday (Jan. 21) at 11 a.m. ET: Geomagnetic conditions are starting to settle, but auroras are still highly likely in the northern tier of the United States tonight, according to NOAA's latest forecasts. Strong (G3-level) geomagnetic storms remain possible overnight, so be sure to check the skies after dark.
A "severe" and record-breaking geomagnetic storm rocked Earth's magnetic shield last night, shortly after the sun unleashed a powerful X-class solar flare. The epic event, triggered by a stream of superfast solar particles, painted widespread auroras at unusually low latitudes across the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe.
Some outlets have reported that the storm is the "largest" of its kind since 2003, which is an exaggeration (the "Mother's Day storm" of May 2024 was much stronger). However, the latest outburst has broken a specific 23-year-old solar radiation record.
The geomagnetic storm began on Monday (Jan. 19), when a fast-moving cloud of solar radiation, or coronal mass ejection (CME), slammed into Earth's magnetosphere, temporarily disrupting the invisible magnetic field lines surrounding our planet and allowing charged particles to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere. The CME was initially released on Sunday (Jan. 18) when an X1.9 magnitude solar flare suddenly exploded from a dark patch near the sun's equator, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported.
Geomagnetic activity first peaked at 2:38 p.m. EST, when the storm reached G4 ("severe") status, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The storm calmed slightly before reaching G4 status again at 3:23 a.m. EST on Tuesday (Jan. 20), according to a second SWPC report.
G4 is the second-highest level a geomagnetic storm can reach. Under these conditions, solar radiation can cause temporary radio blackouts, disrupt or damage orbiting spacecraft and impact some ground-based infrastructure. However, it is too early to tell what specific issues this storm caused, if any.
The CME that hit Earth was unleashed by an X-class solar flare on Sunday (Jan. 18). (Image credit: NASA/SDO)
There were widespread aurora displays across the U.K. and parts of Europe — including France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Croatia — where the sun had already set before the storm peaked, according to Spaceweather.com.
Experts had predicted that up to 24 U.S. states would see auroras during the storm, according to Space.com. It is unclear if this actually happened, especially as the storm's first peak occurred before sunset in North America. However, skywatchers as far south as Alabama, Georgia, New Mexico and California reported seeing auroras overnight, according to Spaceweather.com.
More auroras are possible tonight, according to Space.com's latest aurora forecast. However, the storm is not expected to reintensify to G4 status.
Image 1 of 3
Vibrant red auroras were spotted above Austria's capital city, Vienna, on Jan.19. (Image credit: MAX SLOVENCIK / APA / AFP via Getty Images)
Image 2 of 3
Skywatchers in western France were treated to some stunning green auroras. (Image credit: Oscar Chuberre / AFP via Getty Images)
Image 3 of 3
Auroras were also spotted shining above Berlin. (Image credit: Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images)
A 23-year record
Despite some initial reports, last night's display was not the biggest geomagnetic storm of the past two decades. That title goes to the "Mother's Day storm" of May 2024, which reached G5 ("extreme") status for the first time since the infamous "Halloween solar storms" of 2003.
The term solar radiation storm refers to a solar outburst, like a CME, as it travels through space, rather than the actual effect it has on our planet. Big radiation storms often lead to powerful geomagnetic storms, but other factors influence how Earth's magnetic field will respond, such as the orientation of the incoming radiation and its magnetic configuration.
The solar radiation storm that sparked last night's auroras reached S4 ("severe") status — the equivalent of G4 on the solar radiation storm scale. This is the first time this has happened since 2003's Halloween storms, SWPC representatives wrote on the social platform X.
]]>
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/earth-hit-by-biggest-solar-radiation-storm-in-23-years-triggering-northern-lights-as-far-as-southern-california
-
+
ApUS63gpKxLgYJPiveXT2G
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:29:18 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:29:21 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:29:18 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:58:26 +0000
@@ -116,7 +585,7 @@
bgf8ZyVE7Z6LcuiMkv44aa
- Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:15:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:01:26 +0000
+ Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:15:00 +0000Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:38:10 +0000
@@ -166,7 +635,7 @@
<![CDATA[ 1,700-year-old Roman marching camps discovered in Germany — along with a multitude of artifacts like coins and the remnants of shoes ]]>
- Archaeologists in Germany have discovered four Roman marching camps, dating to 1,700 years ago, along with a multitude of artifacts, including coins and old shoe parts.
During the third century A.D., the Roman Empire conducted several military campaigns into what is now Germany. Their goal was to expand Roman territory north along the Elbe River, which flows into the North Sea. But Germanic tribes resisted Roman occupation and contributed to an imperial crisis in the third century. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Roman occupation in the form of military camps.
"Roman camps were highly standardized facilities," archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, wrote in astatement. "The typical rectangular camp enclosure had rounded corners. From the gates, the main camp roads, laid out at right angles, led into the interior. At the intersection of these roads stood the headquarters building, the principia," the archaeologists wrote.
They noted that a "characteristic feature of marching camps is the so-called titulum — a segment of ditch with a rampart [defensive wall] located in front of the gate passages."
Two of the camps are located near the town of Aken; another camp is located near the town of Deersheim; and a fourth is located in the municipality of Trabitz, the statement said. The camps were discovered by amateur and professional archaeologists who used a combination of aerial and satellite imagery, as well as ground surveys and excavations to find and investigate the sites.
Metal detectors were used to help survey the camps, which led to the detection of more than 1,500 metal artifacts, many of them nails; some of them may have fallen off of sandals that Roman legionaries wore. Such nails, known as hobnails, likely provided traction for marching Roman legionary soldiers and auxiliaries.
An aerial photo showing the entrance to the Roman marching camp near Trabitz, Germany. It shows the titulum, a ditch with a rampart that is located in front of the gates. (Image credit: GeoBasis-DE / LVermGeo ST, Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0 (www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0).)
The excavators also found coins that date to the second half of the second century and the early third century, discoveries that helped date the marching camps, the statement said. A number of radiocarbon dates confirmed this.
"Among the coin finds from Trabitz, a Caracalla denarius is the most recent discovery. It is therefore conceivable that the camp was established in connection with a campaign under [Roman emperor] Caracalla in 213 AD," the statement said. Historical records indicate that Caracalla's campaign in Germany was focused against a group referred to as the "Albanians" who may have lived along the Elbe River, the statement said.
Research into the marching camps is ongoing and may shed light on Caracalla's military campaign in Germany, the statement said.
Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire
]]>
+ Archaeologists in Germany have discovered four Roman marching camps, dating to 1,700 years ago, along with a multitude of artifacts, including coins and old shoe parts.
During the third century A.D., the Roman Empire conducted several military campaigns into what is now Germany. Their goal was to expand Roman territory north along the Elbe River, which flows into the North Sea. But Germanic tribes resisted Roman occupation and contributed to an imperial crisis in the third century. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Roman occupation in the form of military camps.
"Roman camps were highly standardized facilities," archaeologists from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt, wrote in astatement. "The typical rectangular camp enclosure had rounded corners. From the gates, the main camp roads, laid out at right angles, led into the interior. At the intersection of these roads stood the headquarters building, the principia," the archaeologists wrote.
They noted that a "characteristic feature of marching camps is the so-called titulum — a segment of ditch with a rampart [defensive wall] located in front of the gate passages."
Two of the camps are located near the town of Aken; another camp is located near the town of Deersheim; and a fourth is located in the municipality of Trabitz, the statement said. The camps were discovered by amateur and professional archaeologists who used a combination of aerial and satellite imagery, as well as ground surveys and excavations to find and investigate the sites.
Metal detectors were used to help survey the camps, which led to the detection of more than 1,500 metal artifacts, many of them nails; some of them may have fallen off of sandals that Roman legionaries wore. Such nails, known as hobnails, likely provided traction for marching Roman legionary soldiers and auxiliaries.
An aerial photo showing the entrance to the Roman marching camp near Trabitz, Germany. It shows the titulum, a ditch with a rampart that is located in front of the gates. (Image credit: GeoBasis-DE / LVermGeo ST, Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0 (www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0).)
The excavators also found coins that date to the second half of the second century and the early third century, discoveries that helped date the marching camps, the statement said. A number of radiocarbon dates confirmed this.
"Among the coin finds from Trabitz, a Caracalla denarius is the most recent discovery. It is therefore conceivable that the camp was established in connection with a campaign under [Roman emperor] Caracalla in 213 AD," the statement said. Historical records indicate that Caracalla's campaign in Germany was focused against a group referred to as the "Albanians" who may have lived along the Elbe River, the statement said.
Research into the marching camps is ongoing and may shed light on Caracalla's military campaign in Germany, the statement said.
Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire
]]>
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/1-700-year-old-roman-marching-camps-discovered-in-germany-along-with-a-multitude-of-artifacts-like-coins-and-the-remnants-of-shoes
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- <![CDATA[ HP Omen Max 16 (2025) review: This heavyweight pushes everything to the max ]]>
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Specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (12 cores)
RAM: 32 GB DDR5 SDRAM
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
Storage: 1 TB SSD
Display: 16-inch IPS HDR
Weight: 5.38 lbs (2.44 kg)
Dimensions (in): 14.07 x 10.59 x 1
Dimensions (mm): 357.5 x 269 x 25.4)
The HP Omen Max 16 is last year's follow-up to 2023's Omen, packing in more powerful parts to turn this machine into a true heavyweight. It really is heavy, tipping the pre-fight scales at 5.4 pounds (2.4 kilograms), while the price has also climbed a few bands, now coming in at around $2,500 thanks to the inclusion of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPU. But do these changes pack a big enough punch to knock out its competitors?
While it has some quirks, the Omen Max overall offers premium performance and excels in tasks that give its high-end components a workout. In particular, the machine is built for gaming and can handle the latest AAA titles with ease — with its lightning-fast screen helping competitive players gain an edge. That means it's also primed to handle photo and video editing, and could potentially be a useful fixture on your desk at home.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Design
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The HP Omen Max 16 leans into a typical "gamer" aesthetic, with RGB lighting underneath and the keyboard glowing vibrantly in a range of colors. The software lets you customize colors, patterns and transitions, which is a neat touch — though it's probably expected at this price point. The machine's looks are likely to be divisive, however, and it's definitely not a "professional" machine — but if lights and colors are your thing, the overall design is neat if unremarkable.
The layout and looks have been tweaked since the 2023 model, expanding the keyboard to include a number pad and adding more lighting. The keys are all backlit and look excellent in dimly lit rooms, although the touchpad isn't lit and is positioned slightly left-of-center, which can make reaching for it a bit awkward at first.
The matte black adds a stylish, understated finish to the chassis, and the Omen logo on the outside and "016" written on the inside are subtle enough to not disrupt the appearance. The screen has some flex, which is a bit disconcerting and adds to a slightly less-than-premium feel to the Omen Max 16. It is also easy to leave fingerprints and marks around the case, due to the color and material — but these are easy to wipe away.
We found the lights and overall aesthetic struck a good balance between fun and understated, with the RGB lighting tasteful and not too over the top. They can, however, be deactivated if you find them more garish than appealing.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Display
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The display is generally good on the Omen Max 16, partly thanks to its 400-nit brightness that we verified in testing with a display calibrator. This is not market-leading but is still brighter than average, making it clear even in well-lit rooms. The 97.4% coverage of the sRGB gamut is also perfectly acceptable for most use cases. Additional testing rendered 71.8% and 76.7% coverage of the Adobe and DCI P3 spectra, respectively; the results aren't bad, and just shy of what you need for professional usage — but these days, you tend to find many laptops with displays that can hit above 90%.
For a non-OLED screen, and to a casual eye, the colors generally pack a punch, except for a slightly washed-out black level, which scored an underwhelming 0.5 nits in our tests. This also feeds into a contrast ratio of 797:1:1, which is relatively disappointing.
Where this screen really excels is its lightning-fast refresh rate of 250 Hz — making using it a pleasure. Movement across the screen is fluid and silky, while it is also quick to respond to inputs. The machine is first-and-foremost designed with gamers in mind, so this is evidently what HP has put its efforts into when it comes to the screen — and in this area, it doesn't disappoint.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Keyboard and touchpad
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The keyboard layout is good overall, although the small Enter key and the slender up and down arrows take a bit of getting used to. In a departure from the 2023 model, the design is gapless, although the keys have enough space between them for comfortable touch typing. Each keystroke is springy with a pleasing level of key travel and haptic feedback, while not requiring too much effort to push down, striking a perfect balance.
The backlighting on the keys is customizable, with several fun presets ranging from a pulsing glow to a rippling effect from each keystroke, like a stone dropped in a pool of water. A number pad adds more functionality over the previous Omen Max.
We do, however, question how durable this keyboard is. During testing, a cat decided to try the keys and managed to prise several out — something she has not been able to do with other keyboards, notably the surprisingly tough MacBook Air 2022. The keys, which are slim and a little flimsy, quickly click back into place (at least on this occasion), but it raises doubts over how much casual wear and tear it can stand.
The touchpad is large, smooth and responsive. But it's positioned awkwardly and we often activate the right-click by accident; any left clicks require an irritating amount of leaning over to activate. This is something frequent use will fix, as you adjust to the machine, but it initially feels unnatural.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Performance and Battery
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Let's start with the good — performance is excellent. The HP Omen Max 16 is built with power in mind, especially when it comes to gaming, and it performed excellently, handling the latest AAA titles, such as Black Ops 7, with ease on Ultra settings. Our review unit boasted an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU paired with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (12 cores) CPU, 32 GB DDR5 SDRAM, and a 1TB SSD. And these mostly top-tier components duly stand and deliver.
Some games put up a fight, however, with the frames per second (FPS) on "Senua's Saga: Hellblade II" dropping into the 40s and occasionally even the 30s on maximum settings (although the game looks incredible).
A propensity to handle high-end gaming meant we were excited for what it meant for users looking to work with graphics-based tasks. The machine excelled when performing other video and photo editing, with its superior performance also playing out across benchmark tests — with the GPU registering an eye-watering score of 181,959 in our OpenCL test with Geekbench 6. This blows anything else we've tested completely out of the atmosphere.
The CPU was also excellent in benchmarking. It registered a fantastic 2,967 for single-core and 15,420 for multi-core performance, putting it far ahead of the 2023 model and plenty of other recent Windows machines.
One drawback of this power is how noisy the fans are in order to keep the machine cool. When pushing the Omen Max to its limits, they run so loudly to blast out hot air in various directions that you'll probably need to wear headphones to hear any sound. It's enough to annoy anybody unfortunate enough to be near you, let alone yourself.
Meanwhile, as we all know by now, with great power usually comes terrible battery life, and the Omen Max 16 is no exception. In our standard looped video playback battery test, the Omen Max 16 lasted for just 7 hours and 31 minutes. The only thing we've ever tested that performed worse was the 2023 HP Omen 16, which survived for a pitiful 4 hours and 53 minutes. So while the 2025 model shows an improvement, it's still not good when you consider that plenty of high-end and premium Windows machines can last well above 10 hours. But poor battery performance is typical for gaming machines like this.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Ports and Features
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The HP Omen Max 16 is quite chunky — standing 1 inch (25.4 millimeters) tall — but chunkiness means room for plenty of ports. The machine therefore has space to fit in two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack,an Ethernet port and two USB-C ports. They are laid out logically and are easy to reach.
Feature-wise, it comes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, and a 1080p webcam that captures you well enough. The machine also comes with HP's Omen Gaming Hub software, which lets you better monitor and manage gaming performance.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Should I buy it?
The HP Omen Max 16 is really quite excellent at handling graphics-heavy workloads, such as video editing or gaming. However, its screen isn't quite accurate enough for most photographers and videographers, and its noise and weight are also offputting for those tasks if you need to be using it out and about — not to mention the lacklustre battery life. Ultimately, this machine is built for gamers and gaming, and that is who it should primarily appeal to.
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- https://www.livescience.com/technology/hp-omen-max-16-2025-review-this-heavyweight-pushes-everything-to-the-max
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- NXqmrRokdfi9MKNHyZDJ4H
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- Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:46:52 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Eerie 'sand burials' of elite Anglo-Saxons and their 'sacrificed' horse discovered near UK nuclear power plant ]]>Archaeologists in the U.K. have discovered a 1,400-year-old burial ground that contains "sand burials" of two elite people and a horse dating to Anglo-Saxon times.
The archaeological team fromOxford Cotswold Archaeology found "at least 11 burial mounds, known as barrows, along with cremation and inhumation burials," they wrote in astatement. The researchers found the burial ground ahead of the construction of a nuclear power plant near the village of Sizewell, which is in the eastern English district of Suffolk.
The site has acidic soil, which tends to degrade bone, but in two graves the outlines of skeletons were found. One grave had the outline of a horse while the other had the outlines of two people. These remnants are known as sand burials, as it looks like the individuals were made out of sand.
The burials, even the horse's, contained grave goods.
"The horse was buried with its tack [riding gear] still on its head and shoulders that comprised [pieces] of copper alloy decoration and a probable iron bit in its mouth," Maria Bellissimo, a spokesperson at Oxford Cotswold Archaeology, told Live Science in an email. The two people "were buried with a sword, a spear, two shields, an iron banded bucket, along with a copper and a silver vessel."
Although the sand burials hold important clues, they don't impart as much information as a preserved skeleton would.
"We cannot tell their age as accurately" from their sandy silhouettes as experts could from a skeleton, Bellissimo said, "but it looks like they were both probably full-grown adults." The sex of the two people is unknown, but "our evidence indicates that the two individuals were buried at the same time and so it's very likely they died at the same time," Bellissimo said.
A shield boss was found with the two buried people. It would have been attached to the center of a shield. (Image credit: Copyright Oxford Cotswold Archaeology)
Their cause of death is also a mystery. "We can postulate that the horse was probably sacrificed to be interred with its owners, who we assume to be the two individuals in the adjacent grave," she said.
They appear to date to the sixth or seventh century A.D., a time when England was divided into several kingdoms. It's not clear who these people were, but the "weaponry, the horse and the copper and silver items within the grave as well as them being buried in a burial mound [suggest] that these were elite individuals," Bellissimo said.
Howard Williams, a professor of archaeology at the University of Chester in the U.K. who was not involved with the excavations, said that the burials are located on a ridge that is "prominent in the local landscape for those travelling inland" after landing at sea. At the time there "were maritime communities connected by trade and kinship along England's east coast as well as connections inland across south-east Britain."
This coin hoard consists of more than 300 coins and was found near the nuclear power plant site. It dates to several centuries after the sand burials. (Image credit: Copyright Oxford Cotswold Archaeology)
The new discovery promises "to add important information to our understanding of the practices and beliefs of these people who [were] part of the emerging East Anglian kingdom in the centuries after the collapse of the Roman province of Britannia," Williams told Live Science in an email.
Archaeologists made additional discoveries during the excavation. One of them was a hoard of more than 300 silver coins that dates to the 11th century.
Found bundled in lead and cloth, the "hoard is believed to have been a savings pot buried by a local figure as a precaution during a time of significant social and political unrest" in the 11th century, the team wrote in the statement.
What's more, experts identified a pottery kiln dating to the Roman period (A.D. 43 to 410), an oak ladder dating to the Iron Age (800 B.C. to A.D. 50), the remains of settlements from the Bronze Age (2300 to 800 B.C.), as well as numerous ovens from medieval times (600 to 1500). Research into the discoveries is ongoing.
]]>
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+
+ <![CDATA[ HP Omen Max 16 (2025) review: This heavyweight pushes everything to the max ]]>
+
Specifications
CPU: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (12 cores)
RAM: 32 GB DDR5 SDRAM
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080
Storage: 1 TB SSD
Display: 16-inch IPS HDR
Weight: 5.38 lbs (2.44 kg)
Dimensions (in): 14.07 x 10.59 x 1
Dimensions (mm): 357.5 x 269 x 25.4)
The HP Omen Max 16 is last year's follow-up to 2023's Omen, packing in more powerful parts to turn this machine into a true heavyweight. It really is heavy, tipping the pre-fight scales at 5.4 pounds (2.4 kilograms), while the price has also climbed a few bands, now coming in at around $2,500 thanks to the inclusion of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPU. But do these changes pack a big enough punch to knock out its competitors?
While it has some quirks, the Omen Max overall offers premium performance and excels in tasks that give its high-end components a workout. In particular, the machine is built for gaming and can handle the latest AAA titles with ease — with its lightning-fast screen helping competitive players gain an edge. That means it's also primed to handle photo and video editing, and could potentially be a useful fixture on your desk at home.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Design
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The HP Omen Max 16 leans into a typical "gamer" aesthetic, with RGB lighting underneath and the keyboard glowing vibrantly in a range of colors. The software lets you customize colors, patterns and transitions, which is a neat touch — though it's probably expected at this price point. The machine's looks are likely to be divisive, however, and it's definitely not a "professional" machine — but if lights and colors are your thing, the overall design is neat if unremarkable.
The layout and looks have been tweaked since the 2023 model, expanding the keyboard to include a number pad and adding more lighting. The keys are all backlit and look excellent in dimly lit rooms, although the touchpad isn't lit and is positioned slightly left-of-center, which can make reaching for it a bit awkward at first.
The matte black adds a stylish, understated finish to the chassis, and the Omen logo on the outside and "016" written on the inside are subtle enough to not disrupt the appearance. The screen has some flex, which is a bit disconcerting and adds to a slightly less-than-premium feel to the Omen Max 16. It is also easy to leave fingerprints and marks around the case, due to the color and material — but these are easy to wipe away.
We found the lights and overall aesthetic struck a good balance between fun and understated, with the RGB lighting tasteful and not too over the top. They can, however, be deactivated if you find them more garish than appealing.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Display
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The display is generally good on the Omen Max 16, partly thanks to its 400-nit brightness that we verified in testing with a display calibrator. This is not market-leading but is still brighter than average, making it clear even in well-lit rooms. The 97.4% coverage of the sRGB gamut is also perfectly acceptable for most use cases. Additional testing rendered 71.8% and 76.7% coverage of the Adobe and DCI P3 spectra, respectively; the results aren't bad, and just shy of what you need for professional usage — but these days, you tend to find many laptops with displays that can hit above 90%.
For a non-OLED screen, and to a casual eye, the colors generally pack a punch, except for a slightly washed-out black level, which scored an underwhelming 0.5 nits in our tests. This also feeds into a contrast ratio of 797:1:1, which is relatively disappointing.
Where this screen really excels is its lightning-fast refresh rate of 250 Hz — making using it a pleasure. Movement across the screen is fluid and silky, while it is also quick to respond to inputs. The machine is first-and-foremost designed with gamers in mind, so this is evidently what HP has put its efforts into when it comes to the screen — and in this area, it doesn't disappoint.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Keyboard and touchpad
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The keyboard layout is good overall, although the small Enter key and the slender up and down arrows take a bit of getting used to. In a departure from the 2023 model, the design is gapless, although the keys have enough space between them for comfortable touch typing. Each keystroke is springy with a pleasing level of key travel and haptic feedback, while not requiring too much effort to push down, striking a perfect balance.
The backlighting on the keys is customizable, with several fun presets ranging from a pulsing glow to a rippling effect from each keystroke, like a stone dropped in a pool of water. A number pad adds more functionality over the previous Omen Max.
We do, however, question how durable this keyboard is. During testing, a cat decided to try the keys and managed to prise several out — something she has not been able to do with other keyboards, notably the surprisingly tough MacBook Air 2022. The keys, which are slim and a little flimsy, quickly click back into place (at least on this occasion), but it raises doubts over how much casual wear and tear it can stand.
The touchpad is large, smooth and responsive. But it's positioned awkwardly and we often activate the right-click by accident; any left clicks require an irritating amount of leaning over to activate. This is something frequent use will fix, as you adjust to the machine, but it initially feels unnatural.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Performance and Battery
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Let's start with the good — performance is excellent. The HP Omen Max 16 is built with power in mind, especially when it comes to gaming, and it performed excellently, handling the latest AAA titles, such as Black Ops 7, with ease on Ultra settings. Our review unit boasted an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU paired with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 (12 cores) CPU, 32 GB DDR5 SDRAM, and a 1TB SSD. And these mostly top-tier components duly stand and deliver.
Some games put up a fight, however, with the frames per second (FPS) on "Senua's Saga: Hellblade II" dropping into the 40s and occasionally even the 30s on maximum settings (although the game looks incredible).
A propensity to handle high-end gaming meant we were excited for what it meant for users looking to work with graphics-based tasks. The machine excelled when performing other video and photo editing, with its superior performance also playing out across benchmark tests — with the GPU registering an eye-watering score of 181,959 in our OpenCL test with Geekbench 6. This blows anything else we've tested completely out of the atmosphere.
The CPU was also excellent in benchmarking. It registered a fantastic 2,967 for single-core and 15,420 for multi-core performance, putting it far ahead of the 2023 model and plenty of other recent Windows machines.
One drawback of this power is how noisy the fans are in order to keep the machine cool. When pushing the Omen Max to its limits, they run so loudly to blast out hot air in various directions that you'll probably need to wear headphones to hear any sound. It's enough to annoy anybody unfortunate enough to be near you, let alone yourself.
Meanwhile, as we all know by now, with great power usually comes terrible battery life, and the Omen Max 16 is no exception. In our standard looped video playback battery test, the Omen Max 16 lasted for just 7 hours and 31 minutes. The only thing we've ever tested that performed worse was the 2023 HP Omen 16, which survived for a pitiful 4 hours and 53 minutes. So while the 2025 model shows an improvement, it's still not good when you consider that plenty of high-end and premium Windows machines can last well above 10 hours. But poor battery performance is typical for gaming machines like this.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Ports and Features
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The HP Omen Max 16 is quite chunky — standing 1 inch (25.4 millimeters) tall — but chunkiness means room for plenty of ports. The machine therefore has space to fit in two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack,an Ethernet port and two USB-C ports. They are laid out logically and are easy to reach.
Feature-wise, it comes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, and a 1080p webcam that captures you well enough. The machine also comes with HP's Omen Gaming Hub software, which lets you better monitor and manage gaming performance.
HP Omen Max 16 (2025): Should I buy it?
The HP Omen Max 16 is really quite excellent at handling graphics-heavy workloads, such as video editing or gaming. However, its screen isn't quite accurate enough for most photographers and videographers, and its noise and weight are also offputting for those tasks if you need to be using it out and about — not to mention the lacklustre battery life. Ultimately, this machine is built for gamers and gaming, and that is who it should primarily appeal to.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/hp-omen-max-16-2025-review-this-heavyweight-pushes-everything-to-the-max
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+ NXqmrRokdfi9MKNHyZDJ4H
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+ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 13:46:52 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Last year, the oceans absorbed a record-breaking amount of heat — equivalent to 12 Hiroshima bombs exploding every second ]]>The ocean soaked up more heat last year than in any year since modern measurements began around 1960, according to a new analysis published in Advances in Atmospheric Science.
The world's oceans absorb more than 90% of excess heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions. As heat in the atmosphere accumulates, heat stored in the ocean increases, too, making ocean heat a reliable indicator of long-term climate change.
Ocean temperatures influence the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves, change atmospheric circulation, and govern global precipitation patterns.
Scientists measure the ocean's heat in different ways. One common metric is global annual mean sea surface temperature, the average temperature in the top few meters of ocean waters. Global sea surface temperature in 2025 was the third warmest ever recorded, at about 0.5°C (0.9°F) above the 1981-2010 average.
Another metric is ocean heat content, which measures the total heat energy stored in the world's oceans. It's measured in zettajoules: One zettajoule is equivalent to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. To measure heat content in 2025, the study's authors assessed ocean observational data from the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the heat is absorbed, from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
They found that in total, the ocean absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules of heat energy in 2025, breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year and marking the longest sequence of consecutive ocean heat content records ever recorded.
"Last year was a bonkers, crazy warming year," John Abraham, a mechanical engineer at the University of St. Thomas and a co-author of the new study, told Wired.
Twenty-three zettajoules in one year is equivalent to the energy of 12 Hiroshima bombs exploding in the ocean every second. It's also a large increase over the 16 zettajoules of heat the ocean absorbed in 2024. The hottest areas of the ocean observed in 2025 were the tropical and South Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, North Indian Ocean, and Southern Ocean.
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- <![CDATA[ James Webb telescope spots 'failed stars' in a breathtaking cluster near Earth — Space photo of the week ]]>
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Quick facts
What it is: The star cluster Westerlund 2
Where it is: 20,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Carina
When it was shared: Dec. 19, 2025
Bordered by orange and brown clouds of gas and dust and filled with shimmering stars, this new image from the James Webb Space Telescope appears to show a portal to a cosmic wonderland.
In reality, it features a prominent star cluster known as Westerlund 2, which is located within a star-forming nebula known as Gum 29. The entire scene is playing out 20,000 light-years from Earth, within the Milky Way galaxy.
The sparkling cluster is compact, measuring between 6 light-years and 13 light-years in diameter, and it is home to approximately 3,000 stars, according to a statement from the European Space Agency. Seen here at a young age of about 2 million years, this cluster contains some of the hottest, brightest and most massive stars in our galaxy.
Westerlund 2 was also captured by the Hubble Space Telescope 10 years ago to commemorate Hubble's 25th anniversary in orbit. That image, created using visible light and some near-infrared data, revealed the complex features of the cluster and its surrounding nebula, showcasing a stunning landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys of dust.
Now, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed an even more vibrant view of the cluster, which is teeming with bright young stars. This latest portrait combines infrared data from the telescope's Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument.
A full-size view of Westerlund 2 (Image credit: Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, V. Almendros-Abad, M. Guarcello, K. Monsch, and the EWOCS team)
The stunning image highlights not only the young, massive stars but also the clouds and walls of dust shaped by their intense light. These sculpted regions are surrounded by wisps of orange and red gas, brilliantly illuminated by the powerful light of the nearby stars.
The entire scene is interconnected by a network of blue and pink wisps that appear to be material drifting off the scene. Several tiny stars look like they have just begun shining, still embedded in the thick cloud in which they formed. Larger and brighter stars that are much closer to us display an eight-pronged diffraction pattern created by the interaction of starlight with the telescope's instruments.
The twinkling display of countless stars is a result of a continuous cycle of star formation in which the baby stars in the stellar nursery blast out intense radiation that then heats the surrounding nebula and triggers new stars to form.
The new observations, taken across a wide range of infrared wavelengths, include bands that are sensitive to methane and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission. While PAH emission traces heated gas and dust, methane traces low-mass cold objects. As a result, astronomers identified a population of brown dwarfs — or "failed stars" — including objects only about 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
Brown dwarfs are peculiar objects that straddle the line between stars and planets. They have masses in between those of typical stars and those of planets, ranging between 10 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter. However, they do not have enough mass to trigger nuclear fusion in their cores. The James Webb telescope's new observations could reveal insight into the different stages in a star's life and how planet-forming disks around massive stars work.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/james-webb-telescope-spots-failed-stars-in-a-breathtaking-cluster-near-earth-space-photo-of-the-week
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- 8YGnxqurPqokFV9rpTrXNE
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 11:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:50:37 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Could there ever be a worldwide internet outage? ]]>
- Whether it disrupts access at work or makes your favorite show buffer at its most suspenseful moment, the inconvenience of an unreliable internet connection is something we've all experienced. Large-scale outages over the years have served as reminders that the internet can also face more widespread issues and bring everyday tasks to a halt. But would it ever be possible for the entire internet, all across the world, to go down?
The internet is often called a "network of networks," including those linking devices across homes, businesses, public spaces and more. For the entire internet to go down, therefore, many pieces of infrastructure would need to be impacted within a short time.
"It is possible but would require significant resources and/or huge coincidences which makes it a highly unlikely, but possible, event," George Cybenko, a professor of engineering who specializes in information systems and theory at Dartmouth College, told Live Science in an email.
Quite a bit of "heterogeneity, randomness and distributed asynchronicity" were built into the internet from the start, so a whole-system failure is very unlikely and would be extremely difficult to cause, Cybenko said. "We have local networks as well, say within a home or a business, that could continue to function even if the global nature of the internet has failed," he explained.
When information is shared over the internet — for example, as a text message is sent from one smartphone to another — it is broken into small packets of information, each of which is routed through the quickest available path through the network. That means that, even if one of these routes is compromised, the message can still travel because it has a long list of alternatives, according to The Open University.
This design consideration alone protects the entire network from completely failing due to either physical damage — for example, if an undersea cable were cut or a large internet hub lost power — or software damage, whether caused by systems issues or hackers. Even when a large infrastructure provider, like Cloudflare, goes down, the disruption may last only a few hours and cannot spread to other providers or systems.
If a larger outage were to occur — for instance, from a powerful and unexpected solar storm — repairs could take time to resolve. However, many governments and large companies have plans for how to recover from a large internet outage and resume operations as quickly as possible, which often include tools like cloud storage systems and backup power generators, Cybenko said.
A rendering of an underwater communication fiber optic cable in a deep sea bed. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Conversely, some governments have shut off the internet in times of massive protests. This is accomplished by dismantling or destroying internet infrastructure like power grids and fiber optic cables, or throttling — intentionally limiting the processing speed of an internet connection via broadband providers, according to the World Economic Forum. But even those intentional outages can be resolved relatively quickly.
"It is surprising how rapidly people can recover [the internet] — it continues to befuddle people how resilient the internet is," William Dutton, a senior fellow and advisory board member at the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Oxford's first professor of internet studies, told Live Science.
In the meantime, though, the impacts of such an outage could go much further than inconvenience. Critical infrastructure, such as hospital IT systems, often depend on the internet, and essential services, like power grids and traffic management, could be shut off indefinitely.
"The more central the internet becomes to so many different functions, from health care to even warfare, the more critical it is that it be secure and that it be reliable," Dutton said. "These kinds of outages and so forth are obviously concerning, even for short periods of time."
Since the internet's invention, fears have circulated that as it continues to expand, its foundations run the risk of being strained or overloaded. But Dutton said this is a common misconception.
"The more you add nodes and so forth, the internet actually becomes more resilient — growth actually makes it stronger rather than weaker," Dutton said. "It's certainly possible, but I doubt that it will collapse at all."
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- https://www.livescience.com/technology/communications/could-there-ever-be-a-worldwide-internet-outage
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- Sun, 18 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:19:01 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ This is SPARDA: A self-destruct, self-defense system in bacteria that could be a new biotech tool ]]>
- CRISPR kick-started a golden age of genetic research — but in nature, there are hundreds of similar systems with unexplored potential for gene editing. Now, scientists have made huge strides in explaining how an enigmatic system called SPARDA works.
CRISPR systems have enabled scientists to edit genetic information more easily than ever before. Although it's best known for its use in gene editing, CRISPR is actually an adapted bacterial immune defense system that was repurposed for human use.
A recent study in the journal Cell Research highlights another bacterial defense system, known as SPARDA (short prokaryotic Argonaute, DNase associated), and the advances raise the potential for SPARDA-derived biotechnology tools that could enhance diagnostics that currently use CRISPR.
Molecular argonautes
Study co-author Mindaugas Zaremba, a biochemist at Vilnius University in Lithuania, told Live Science that before the new work, researchers had conducted only limited studies of SPARDA systems. They had established that the proteins that make up the system adopt a kamikaze-like approach to cell defense, guarding the wider population of bacteria against foreign DNA, including free-floating DNA called plasmids and viruses called phages.
"SPARDA systems were demonstrated to protect bacteria from plasmids and phages by degrading the DNA of both infected cells and invaders, thereby killing the host cell but at the same time preventing further spread of the infection within the bacterial population," Zaremba said.
How SPARDA worked at a molecular level remained unclear, prompting Zaremba and his team to use the AI protein analysis tool AlphaFold, among a suite of other analysis techniques, to dig into SPARDA's setup. AlphaFold uses machine learning to predict the 3D shape of proteins based on the sequence of their underlying building blocks.
The SPARDA system is built from argonaute proteins, named for their resemblance to argonaut octopuses (Argonauta). The proteins were originally identified in plants, where seedlings affected by mutations in these proteins developed narrow leaves that reminded scientists of an octopus’s tentacles. These argonaute proteins are evolutionarily conserved and are present in cells across the three kingdoms of life.
An argonaut octopus, for which argonaute proteins are named. (Image credit: atese/Getty Images)
Zaremba's analysis looked at SPARDA systems randomly selected from two different bacteria. The first, Xanthobacter autotrophicus, is a soil-dwelling microbe that shuns sunlight and builds its food from locally sourced nitrogen. The second, Enhydrobacter aerosaccus, was first found in Michigan's Wintergreen Lake and has built-in airbags that help it float around watery environments.
Zaremba's team chopped the SPARDA systems out of these bacteria and placed them in the reliable model organismE. coli for study. A molecular analysis revealed that each of their argonaute proteins included a critical "activating region." They called this area the beta-relay, because it resembled electrical relay switches that control machinery by flicking between "on" or "off" states.
When the SPARDA systems detected external threats, these switches changed shape. The new shape enabled the proteins to form complexes with other activated argonaute proteins. When that happens, the proteins line up like soldiers on parade, forming long, spiraling chains. These chains chop up any surrounding DNA that they encounter in an extreme reaction that spares neither the host nor the invader. This stops the infection from spreading to other cells.
Zaremba's team then used AlphaFold to scan for beta-relays in similar bacterial proteins. The same switches popped up repeatedly, suggesting that the relays are a universal feature of this protein type.
SPARDA in diagnostics
SPARDA is essential for bacterial defense, but Zaremba's team argues that the system could also help humans.
Activating SPARDA is a last-ditch maneuver for bacterial cells, to be used only when an infection is definitively present. Therefore, the system includes an incredibly accurate recognition system for spotting foreign DNA that would warrant self-destruction.
Researchers could repurpose the system for diagnostics, Zaremba suggested. In that scenario, the beta-relay could be altered to be activated only when a genetic sequence of interest is identified — so it would react only to the genetic material of a flu virus or SARS-CoV-2, for instance. This mechanism underlies existing CRISPR-based diagnostic tools.
The CRISPR diagnostics, however, are currently limited in their function — they recognize targets only when certain DNA sequences, called PAM sequences, flank them. These sequences are like the prongs on the end of a plug; if they don't match a socket, the system will have no power. This means choosing the right CRISPR protein to match a particular target is essential.
"We already know that SPARDA systems do not require a PAM sequence," Zaremba said. This means they could act like a universal adapter, giving future DNA diagnostics more flexibility and ultimately making the tests better at detecting a range of germs.
CRISPR research won a Nobel Prize and changed science forever. While SPARDA research is at a far earlier stage of research, its inner workings suggest that the design of tiny organisms could hold lessons for the biggest questions in science.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/this-is-sparda-a-self-destruct-self-defense-system-in-bacteria-that-could-be-a-new-biotech-tool
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- HaNgG3qYTHQGsnmW5j2FE3
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:05:16 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Romans regularly soaked in filthy, lead-contaminated bath water, Pompeii study finds ]]>
- The ancient Romans are well known for their advanced water supply systems and hygienic facilities, including public baths and toilets. But the first baths built in Pompeii may not have been particularly pleasant, due to dirty, contaminated water that was replaced only once per day, according to a new study.
"It is very likely that the bathing experience in this small bathing facility was maybe not hygienic and hence not very inviting," study lead author Gül Sürmelihindi, a geoarchaeologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, told Live Science in an email.
Sürmelihindi and colleagues analyzed the chemical compound calcium carbonate preserved in incrustations in the Republican Baths at Pompeii to investigate the composition of the water supply. Their study was published Monday (Jan. 12) in the journal PNAS.
Public baths were a key part of Roman culture, the researchers wrote in the study, and as the Roman Empire expanded, bathing culture also evolved. At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans "built long-distance aqueducts in order to have their daily bathing and cleansing experience," Sürmelihindi said.
But in the earliest baths built at Pompeii, which were in use between about 130 and 30 B.C. during the Roman Republic, the situation was different. Before the city constructed an aqueduct, bathing facilities were filled with water from wells and cisterns via a single water-lifting machine that was operated by enslaved people.
"The water could not be replenished more than once a day," Sürmelihindi said. "In this setting, I would expect water to be less clean, especially before the bathing water was refreshed again."
To investigate the composition of the bath water during this time, the researchers studied samples of calcium carbonate, a mineral form of calcium. Calcium carbonate is produced when calcium ions in hard water react with carbonate ions, leading to limescale — a hard, chalky deposit that builds up in kettles, boilers and pipes.
The researchers found that the carbonate in the Republican Baths showed a strong decrease in carbon isotopes (variations of the element with different numbers of neutrons) between the well that supplied the water and the heated pools where people bathed. The lowest carbon isotope values were found in areas where the water drained, meaning the main cause was likely "the introduction of organic carbon from microbial activity and human waste (e.g., sweat, sebum, urine, bathing oil)," the researchers wrote.
Researchers took carbonate samples from the oldest public bath structure in Pompeii. (Image credit: Cees Passchier)
"These baths were an experience we do not have nowadays," study co-author Cees Passchier, a geoarchaeologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, told Live Science in an email. "People would not use soap, but olive oil to rub in and scrape the dirt off, and some of that oil would land in the water."
The water in the heated pools of the Republican Baths shows "high contamination by human waste," suggesting that it was not replenished regularly and that it offered "poor hygienic conditions for the Pompeiian bathers," the researchers wrote.
The researchers also investigated heavy-metal contamination in the baths by analyzing traces of elements left there. In the Republican Baths, the team identified elevated levels of lead, a toxic element that was likely introduced through the lead-pipe system in the bathing complex. Over time, though, the gradual incrustation of the pipes with calcium carbonate would have reduced the water's lead level.
It's unclear whether the murky water would have kept people away.
"Everyone mixed in the baths, regardless of social class, and the price was low," Passchier said. But if the water was really gross and smelly, he said, the baths would not have had customers. "People probably did not spend much time in the warm pools, which were small, but mostly spent time sitting around in the warm air of the hot bath having a conversation," he said.
Pompeii quiz: How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius?
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/romans-regularly-soaked-in-filthy-lead-contaminated-bath-water-pompeii-study-finds
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:40:36 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Gender ambiguity was a tool of power 4,500 years ago in Mesopotamia ]]>
- Today, trans people face politicization of their lives and vilification from politicians, media and parts of broader society.
But in some of history's earliest civilizations, gender-diverse people were recognized and understood in a wholly different way.
As early as 4,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, for instance, gender-diverse people held important roles in society with professional titles. These included the cultic attendants of the major deity Ištar, called assinnu, and high-ranking royal courtiers called ša rēši.
What the ancient evidence tells us is that these people held positions of power because of their gender ambiguity, not despite it.
Where is Mesopotamia and who lived there?
Mesopotamia is a region primarily made up of modern Iraq, but also parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran. Part of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia is a Greek word which literally means "land between two rivers", referring to the Euphrates and Tigris.
For thousands of years, several different major cultural groups lived there. Amongst these were the Sumerians, and the later Semitic groups called the Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians.
The Sumerians invented writing by creating wedges on clay tablets. The script, called cuneiform, was made to write the Sumerian language but would be used by the later civilizations to write their own dialects of Akkadian, the earliest Semitic language.
Also known by the Sumerians as Inanna, she was a warrior god, and held the ultimate political power to legitimize kings.
She also oversaw love, sexuality and fertility. In the myth of her journey to the Netherworld, her death puts an end to all reproduction on Earth. For the Mesopotamians, Ištar was one of the greatest deities in the pantheon. The maintenance of her official cult ensured the survival of humanity.
As her attendants, the assinnu were responsible for pleasing and tending to her through religious ritual and the upkeep of her temple.
The title assinnu is an Akkadian word related to terms that mean "woman-like" and "man-woman", as well as "hero" and "priestess."
Their gender fluidity was bestowed on them by Ištar herself. In a Sumerian hymn, the goddess is described as having the power to
turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man
to change one into the other
to dress women in clothes for men
to dress men in clothes for women
to put spindles into the hands of men
and to give weapons to women.
The assinnu were viewed by some early scholars as a type of religious sex worker. This, however, is based on early assumptions about gender-diverse groups, and is not well supported by evidence.
The title is also often translated as "eunuch," though there is also no clear evidence they were castrated men. While the title is primarily masculine, there is evidence of female assinnu. In fact, various texts show they resisted the gender binary.
Their religious importance allowed them to possess magical and healing powers. An incantation states:
May your assinnu stand by and extract my illness. May he make the illness which seized me go out the window.
And a Neo-Assyrian omen tells us that sexual relations with an assinnu could bring personal benefits:
If a man approaches an assinnu [for sex]: restrictions will be loosened for him.
As the devotees of Ištar, they also had powerful political influence. A Neo-Babylonian almanac states:
[the king] should touch the head of an assinnu, he shall defeat his enemy his land will obey his command.
Having their gender transformed by Ištar herself, the assinnu could walk between the divine and the mortal as they maintained the wellbeing of both the gods and humanity.
Who were the ša rēši?
Usually described as eunuchs, the ša rē��i were attendants to the king.
Court "eunuchs" have been recorded in many cultures throughout history. However, the term did not exist in Mesopotamia, and the ša rēši had their own distinct title.
The Akkadian term ša rēši literally means "one of the head", and refers to the king's closest courtiers. Their duties in the palace varied, and they could hold several high-ranking posts at the same time.
The evidence for their gender ambiguity is both textual and visual. There are various texts that describe them as infertile, such as an incantation which states:
Like a ša rēši who does not beget, may your semen dry up!
The ša rēši are always depicted beardless, and were contrasted with another type of courtier called ša ziqnī ("bearded one"), who had descendants. In Mesopotamian cultures, beards signified one's manhood, and so a beardless man would go directly against the norm. Yet, reliefs show the ša rēši wore the same dress as other royal men, and so were able to display authority alongside other elite males.
One of their main functions was supervising the women's quarters in the palace — a place of highly restricted access — where the only male permitted to enter was the king himself.
As they were so closely trusted by the king, they were not only able to hold martial roles as guards and charioteers, but also lead their own armies. After their victories, ša rēši were granted property and governorship over newly conquered territories, as evidenced by one such ša rēši who erected their own royal stone inscription.
Because of their gender fluidity, the ša rēši were able to transcend the boundaries of not just gendered space, but that between ruler and subject.
While early historians understood these figures as "eunuchs" or "cultic sex workers", the evidence shows it was because they lived unbound by the gender binary that these groups were able to hold powerful roles in Mesopotamian society.
As we recognize the importance of transgender and gender-diverse people in our communities today, we can see this as a continuity of respect given to these early figures.
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/gender-ambiguity-was-a-tool-of-power-4-500-years-ago-in-mesopotamia
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:09:20 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 'The scientific cost would be severe': A Trump Greenland takeover would put climate research at risk ]]>
- A 30-minute stroll across New York's Central Park separates Trump Tower from the American Museum of Natural History. If the US president ever found himself inside the museum he could see the Cape York meteorite: a 58-tonne mass of iron taken from northwest Greenland and sold in 1897 by the explorer Robert Peary, with the help of local Inuit guides.
For centuries before Danish colonisation, the people of Greenland had used fragments of the meteorite to make tools and hunting equipment. Peary removed that resource from local control, ultimately selling the meteorite for an amount equivalent to just US$1.5 million today. It was a transaction as one-sided as anything the president may now be contemplating.
But Donald Trump is now eyeing a prize much larger than a meteorite. His advocacy of the US taking control of Greenland, possibly by force, signals a shift from dealmaking to dominance. The scientific cost would be severe. A unilateral US takeover threatens to disrupt the open scientific collaboration that is helping us understand the threat of global sea-level rise.
Greenland is sovereign in everything other than defence and foreign policy, but by being part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it is included within Nato. As with any nation, access to its land and coastal waters is tightly controlled through permits that specify where work may take place and what activities are allowed.
A drawing of the Cape York Meteorite arriving in Brooklyn, 1897. (Image credit: INTERFOTO / Alamy)
Over many decades, Greenland has granted international scientists access to help unlock the environmental secrets preserved within its ice, rocks and seabed. US researchers have been among the main beneficiaries, drilling deep into the ice to explain the historic link between carbon dioxide and temperatures, or flying repeated Nasa missions to map the land beneath the ice sheet.
The whole world owes a huge debt of thanks to both Greenland and the US, very often in collaboration with other nations, for this scientific progress conducted openly and fairly. It is essential that such work continues.
The climate science at stake
Research shows that around 80% of Greenland is covered by a colossal ice sheet which, if fully melted, would raise sea level globally by about 7 metres (the height of a two storey house). That ice is melting at an accelerating rate as the world warms, releasing vast amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic, potentially disrupting the ocean circulation that moderates the climate across the northern hemisphere.
Hundreds of glaciers flow from Greenland’s ice sheet to the ocean. (Image credit: Delpixel / shutterstock)
The remaining 20% of Greenland is still roughly the size of Germany. Geological surveys have revealed a wealth of minerals, but economics dictates that these will most likely be used to power the green transition rather than prolong the fossil fuel era.
While coal deposits exist, they are currently too expensive to extract and sell, and no major oil fields have been discovered. Instead, the commercial focus is on "critical minerals": high-value materials used in renewable technologies from wind turbines to electric car batteries. Greenland therefore holds both scientific knowledge and materials that can help guide us away from climate disaster.
Unilateral control could threaten climate science
Trump has shown little interest in climate action, however. Having already started to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement for a second time, he announced in January 2026 the country would also leave the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the global scientific body that assesses the impacts of continued fossil-fuel burning. His rhetoric to date has been about acquiring Greenland for "security" purposes, with some indications of accessing its mineral wealth, but without mention of vital climate research.
A weather station on Disko Island, Greenland. (Image credit: Martin Nielsen / Alamy)
Under the 1951 Greenland defence agreement with Denmark, the US already has a remote military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland, now focused on space activities. While both countries remain in Nato, the agreement already allows the US to expand its military presence if required. Seeking to guarantee US security in Greenland outside Nato would undermine the existing pact, while a unilateral takeover would risk scientists in the rest of the world losing access to one of the most important climate research sites.
Lessons from Antarctica and Svalbard
Greenland's sovereign status and its governance is different to some other notable polar research locations. For example, Antarctica has, for more than 60 years, been governed through an international treaty ensuring the continent remains a place of peace and science, and protecting it from mining and other environmental damage.
Svalbard, on the other hand, has Norwegian sovereignty courtesy of the 1920 Svalbard treaty but operates a largely visafree system that allows citizens of nearly 50 countries to live and work on the archipelago, as long as they abide by Norwegian law. Interestingly, Norway claims that scientific activities are not covered by the treaty, to almost universal disagreement among other parties. Russia has a permanent station at Barentsburg, Svalbard's second-largest settlement, from which small levels of coal are mined.
Unlike Antarctica or Svalbard, Greenland has no treaty that explicitly protects access for international scientists. Its openness to research therefore depends not on international law, but on Greenland's continued political stability and openness – all of which may be threatened by US control.
If it is minded to take a radical approach, Greenland could develop its own treaty-style approach with selected partner states through Nato, enabling security cooperation, mineral assessment and scientific research to be carried out collaboratively under Greenlandic regulations.
The future for Greenland should lie with Greenlanders and with Denmark. The future of climate science, and the transition to a safe prosperous future worldwide, relies on continued access to the island on terms set by the people that live there. The Cape York meteorite – taken from a site just 60 miles away from the US Pituffik Space Base – is a reminder of how easily that control can be lost.
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/the-scientific-cost-would-be-severe-a-trump-greenland-takeover-would-put-climate-research-at-risk
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 13:15:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:10:02 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Is there anything 'below' Earth in space? ]]>
- If you've seen illustrations or models of the solar system, maybe you noticed that all the planets orbit the Sun in more or less the same plane, traveling in the same direction.
But what is above and below that plane? And why are the planets' orbits aligned like this, in a flat pancake, rather than each one traveling in a completely different plane?
I'm a planetary scientist who works with robotic spacecraft, such as rovers and orbiters. When my colleagues and I send them out to explore our solar system, it's important for us to understand the 3D map of our space neighborhood.
Which way is 'down'?
Earth's gravity has a lot to do with what people think is up and what is down. Things fall down toward the ground, but that direction depends on where you are.
Imagine you're standing somewhere in North America and point downward. If you extend a line from your fingertip all the way through the Earth, that line would point in the direction of "up" to someone on a boat in the southern Indian Ocean.
In the bigger picture, "down" could be defined as being below the plane of the solar system, which is known as the ecliptic. By convention, we say that above the plane is where the planets are seen to orbit counterclockwise around the Sun, and from below they are seen to orbit clockwise.
Even more flavors of 'down'
Is there anything special about the direction of down relative to the ecliptic? To answer that, we need to zoom out even farther. Our solar system is centered on the Sun, which is just one of about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Each of these stars, and their associated planets, are all orbiting around the center of the Milky Way, just like the planets orbit their stars, but on a much longer time scale. And just as the planets in our solar system are not in random orbits, stars in the Milky Way orbit the center of the galaxy close to a plane, which is called the galactic plane.
This plane is not oriented the same way as our solar system's ecliptic. In fact, the angle between the two planes is about 60 degrees.
A side view of galaxy NGC 4217 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows how all the stars and their planetary systems lie on one plane. (Image credit: NASA Goddard, CC BY)
Going another step back, the Milky Way is part of a cluster of galaxies known the the Local Group, and — you can see where this is going — these galaxies mostly fall within another plane, called the supergalactic plane. The supergalactic plane is almost perpendicular to the galactic plane, with an angle between the two planes of about 84.5 degrees.
How these bodies end up traveling paths that are close to the same plane has to do with how they formed in the first place.
Collapse of the solar nebula
The material that would ultimately compose the Sun and the planets of the solar system started out as a diffuse and very extensive cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. Every particle within the solar nebula had a tiny amount of mass. Because any mass exerts gravitational force, these particles were attracted to each other, though only very weakly.
The particles in the solar nebula started out moving very slowly. But over a long time, the mutual attraction these particles felt thanks to gravity caused the cloud to start to draw inward on itself, shrinking.
There would have also been some very slight overall rotation to the solar nebula, maybe thanks to the gravitational tug of a passing star. As the cloud collapsed, this rotation would have increased in speed, just like a spinning figure skater spins faster and faster as they draw their arms in toward their body.
As the cloud continued shrinking, the individual particles grew closer to each other and had more and more interactions affecting their motion, both because of gravity and collisions between them. These interactions caused individual particles in orbits that were tilted far from the direction of the overall rotation of the cloud to reorient their orbits.
For example, if a particle coming down through the orbital plane slammed into a particle coming up through that plane, the interaction would tend to cancel out that vertical motion and reorient their orbits into the plane.
On much bigger scales, similar sorts of interactions are probably what ended up confining most of the stars that make up the Milky Way into the galactic plane, and most of the galaxies that make up the Local Group into the supergalactic plane.
The orientations of the ecliptic, galactic and supergalactic planes all go back to the initial random rotation direction of the clouds they formed from.
So there's not really anything special about the direction we define as "down" relative to the Earth, other than the fact that there's not much orbiting the Sun in that direction.
If you go far enough in that direction, you'll eventually find other stars with their own planetary systems orbiting in completely different orientations. And if you go even farther, you might encounter other galaxies with their own planes of rotation.
This question highlights one of my favorite aspects of astronomy: It puts everything in perspective. If you asked a hundred people on your street, "Which way is down?" every one of them would point in the same direction. But imagine you asked that question of people all over the Earth, or of intelligent life forms in other planetary systems or even other galaxies. They'd all point in different directions.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/is-there-anything-below-earth-in-space
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:26:54 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Science news this week: ISS medical evacuation, Mars Sample Return canceled, and woolly rhino flesh found in permafrost wolf ]]>
- This week's science news was way over our heads, as astronauts and space agencies rocketed to the front pages. Topping the list is the early return of the International Space Station's (ISS) Crew-11 on Thursday (Jan. 15) due to a medical event.
News of the crew's early return, the first in the station's 25-year history, was announced less than a week before. It was prompted when one of its astronauts experienced an undisclosed medical issue. The evacuation leaves the ISS occupied by only four astronauts until the arrival of the replacement Crew-12 next month.
That wasn't the only news from NASA this week. The agency also announced it was making the final preparations to roll out its Artemis 2 mega moon rocket ahead of a targeted early February launch. The Artemis program, which plans to return American astronauts to the moon's surface, survived potential cuts from the Trump administration's FY2026 budget. Also rescued from the chopping block is NASA's now-complete Roman Space Telescope, which will work alongside the Hubble and James Webb telescopes to survey alien worlds.
However, not all NASA missions were as fortunate: The Mars sample return mission, slated to retrieve rocks collected by the Perseverance rover, saw its funding officially dropped this week.
The cancellation of the mission means that The China National Space Administration (CNSA) will likely be the first to return Martian samples — which may hold evidence for life on the Red Planet — to Earth, with the agency this week announcing separate plans to build a reliable relativistic clock for the moon.
Our world is rapidly warming, so it's no surprise that rising sea levels are the biggest cause of land loss in coastal regions.
Yet a startling study revealed that this isn't the case everywhere. The research published this week found that the world's biggest river deltas — including the Nile, Amazon and Ganges — are now sinking faster than the seas are rising.
The biggest culprit is groundwater pumping, with rapid urban growth and shrinking sediment flows worsening the problem. The combination of rising oceans and sinking land means the world's largest cities will face even greater challenges from catastrophic floods in the future.
Monty Python's Black Knight may insist that losing all four of his limbs in quick succession is "only a flesh wound," but just how much of the human body can be removed without a person dying? As it turns out, it's much more than you might think.
The last meal of a wolf pup that was naturally mummied 14,400 years ago in Siberian permafrost is helping scientists unravel the fate of the woolly rhino (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and the reasons behind the ice age giant's extinction.
By extracting a piece of woolly rhino flesh from the wolf's stomach and sequencing the genome of the partially digested chunk, scientists discovered that the horned beast existed in a genetically uniform population that may have struggled to adapt to ancient climate change.
But the new genome is just one strand of evidence in the mystery of the rhino's extinction. In a win for science, this is the first time scientists have recovered the DNA of an ice age animal from the stomach of another one.
The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado (Image credit: Sandra Baker/Alamy)
In December, The Trump administration announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), describing it as "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country."
Yet whether it is forecasting high winds, wildfires, floods or hazards in the air and space, the research center is at the forefront of world weather and climate research and vital for reducing risk. In this long read, Live Science investigated the work done by the center and the likely consequences of shutting it down.
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the crosswords, book excerpts and quizzes published this week.
The Hubble Space Telescope's shot of "Dracula's Chivito" — a protoplanetary disk that earned its nickname due to its gothic-tinged likeness to a Uruguayan sandwich — has captured a stunning insight into how planets form.
Spanning nearly 400 billion miles (640 billion kilometers) and containing a hot star at its center, the system is the largest planet-forming disk ever observed around a young star.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/science-news-this-week-iss-medical-evacuation-mars-sample-return-canceled-and-woolly-rhino-flesh-found-in-permafrost-wolf
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- Fq4oNEgefd28aBMYW42yk9
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:40:52 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ How much of your body could you lose — and still survive? ]]>
- In the classic 1975 British comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," King Arthur battles a mysterious Black Knight who refuses to let him pass. Arthur handily vanquishes his foe by cutting off his limbs one by one, all while the knight, reluctant to admit defeat, insists the damage is "only a flesh wound."
Dark humor aside, it raises the question of just how much of your body you could lose and still survive. Of the roughly 80 organs in the human body, only five are defined as vital organs that are crucial for sustaining life: the brain, which orchestrates bodily functions; the lungs and heart, which take in and distribute the oxygen cells need throughout the body; the liver, which has important roles in digestion and blood detoxification; and the kidneys, which filter waste and excess fluid from the body.
Other important structures that are not traditionally considered vital organs include the intestines, which absorb nutrients from food; the pancreas, which makes essential hormones like insulin; and the skin, which guards against infection, according to Dr. Jessica Weaver, a trauma surgeon at UC San Diego Health.
Scientists debate whether some features, such as wisdom teeth and the tailbone, serve any purpose at all. Other body parts, like the eyes and the tongue, have major impacts on a person's quality of life, but they are not strictly necessary for survival.
Limbs may be handy (pun intended!), but people can survive without arms and legs if they need to be amputated. "In general, we will try harder to save an arm than a leg, because the functional outcome with a prosthetic for a leg is pretty good, especially if it's below the knee, whereas our hands are so important to what we do," Weaver told Live Science.
This means the Black Knight could have likely survived his ordeal if he had made it to a modern hospital, though Weaver said heavy blood loss would have likely stopped him from mustering his iconic taunt.
Stopping that blood loss before it turns deadly is the most pressing need in treating trauma patients. This threshold varies, but losing more than 3 of the roughly 5 liters of blood in an adult body is "pretty hard to come back from," she said.
Still, everybody's different. "I've definitely seen people survive things that I was sure they would die from, which is why I keep showing up to work," she added.
Can you survive without parts of your vital organs?
It is possible to survive without portions of the core vital organs. A person can live without much of the liver and a big chunk of their brain, as long as the brain stem remains intact to regulate involuntary functions, like breathing. Humans need only one kidney, and they sometimes donate one to a person in need. While an injury that damages all of these organs at once would be difficult to survive, Weaver said a patient could hypothetically live if the tissue were removed more gradually.
Vital organs can also be replaced, either through a transplant or with life-support organ-sustaining technologies, such as kidney dialysis and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which performs the functions of the heart and lungs. The only two vital organs that cannot be replaced by a machine are the liver and the brain, Weaver said, though a liver transplant is possible.
"We are increasingly able to replace organ function mechanically or chemically," said Jason Wasserman, a professor of foundational medical studies at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.
These medical advances complicate what it means to survive the loss of a given organ. Wasserman noted that while some organ-sustaining technologies like ventilators and dialysis can be used long-term, others like ECMO are a "bridge to treatment," such as an eventual transplant, not a "bridge to nowhere" used indefinitely. The decision to start or continue one of these interventions depends on its medical appropriateness for a patient's situation as well as the patient's personal values, he said.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/how-much-of-your-body-could-you-lose-and-still-survive
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- DLZcP7aUpbt79PDP59eyTh
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- Sat, 17 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:14:46 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Artemis 2 update: NASA to wheel historic, 11 million-pound rocket to the launch pad this weekend ]]>
- NASA's first mission to take humans to the moon in half a century is creeping ever closer.
The space agency has announced that the rollout of its Artemis 2 Space Launch System rocket and Orion Module will begin Saturday (Jan. 17) no earlier than 7 a.m. ET, ahead of a launch as early as Feb. 6.
Embarking from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the 11 million-pound (5 million kilograms) stack will be transported at a speed of about 1 mph (1.6 km/h along a 4-mile (6.4 kilometers) route — a journey that will take up to 12 hours and be streamed live on NASA's Youtube channel.
"We are moving closer to Artemis II, with rollout just around the corner," Lori Glaze, the acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said in a statement released Jan. 9. "We have important steps remaining on our path to launch and crew safety will remain our top priority at every turn, as we near humanity's return to the Moon."
A historic mission to the moon
Artemis 2 is the first crewed spaceflight in the Artemis Program, which aims to send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972. Four astronauts will take a 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth, testing systems ahead of the Artemis 3 mission, which aims to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface by 2028.
The fully-stacked SLS awaits a visit from the Artemis 2 astronauts inside NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building (Image credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)
The Space Launch System is the most powerful rocket ever built. Standing 212 feet (65 meters) tall, its core stage is capable of generating 8.8 million pounds (3.9 million kg) of thrust to launch the Orion capsule mounted atop it into space.
The more than 700,000 gallons (2.6 million liters) of cryogenic propellant set to provide the rocket's thrust will be tested by NASA during a wet dress rehearsal at the end of January. The prelaunch test will also include things like a launch countdown, practice removing the rocket propellant, and safety procedures. If all goes to plan, NASA will then conduct a flight-readiness review before committing to a launch date.
If the rocket does launch in February, it will do so 15 months later than it was initially scheduled. NASA says the delay is due to the Orion capsule needing additional prep time before it can safely carry a human crew.
Despite these delays, NASA remains confident that the Artemis mission will launch in time to beat China in the race to send a crewed mission to the moon. China has recently landed rovers on the moon and Mars and completed construction of its Tiangong space station in 2022. The country is also leading construction efforts of an International Lunar Research Station, which is slated for completion by 2030.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/artemis-2-update-nasa-to-wheel-historic-11-million-pound-rocket-to-the-launch-pad-this-weekend
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- 794erZmgv3t89tTyB9sgdc
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:19:42 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:19:43 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Nefertiti's tomb close to discovery, famed archaeologist Zahi Hawaas claims in new documentary ]]>
- Zahi Hawass, perhaps the world's most famous archaeologist, hopes to discover the tomb of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti before he retires, and he says he may be getting close.
"If I made this discovery, I think I would be happy to end my career with the most important discovery of the most important queen of Egypt — Queen Nefertiti," Zahi Hawass, a former Egyptian antiquities minister, says in "The Man with the Hat," a new documentary about his life and career. The film, directed by Jeffrey Roth, will premiere on multiple streaming platforms Jan. 20.
Nefertiti was the wife of Akhenaten, a pharaoh who reigned from 1353 to 1336 B.C. and unleashed a religious revolution aimed at focusing Egypt's polytheistic religion around the worship of the Aten, the sun disk. At times, Nefertiti was displayed in ways that normally only a pharaoh would be shown, such as smiting an enemy. Some Egyptologists, including Hawass, believe she ruled as a pharaoh for a time after Akhenaten's death, taking on the new name Neferneferuaten.
Hawass and his team have been excavating in Egypt's Valley of the Kings for years. Previously, they found two tombs, known as KV 65 (found in 2006) and KV 66, that had been plundered, likely in antiquity. KV 66 was originally believed to be the room of another tomb, but follow-up work in 2015 determined that it was a separate tomb and it was named KV 66.
While the two tombs don't shed direct light on Nefertiti's tomb they, and the other discoveries made by Hawass' team show that there are still significant discoveries to be found in the Valley of the Kings. They also help map out more of the valley and help determine areas where Nefertiti's tomb is not located.
Now, his team is excavating in the eastern Valley of the Kings, close to the tomb of Hatshepsut, a powerful female pharaoh who ruled between 1479 and 1458 B.C. They hope Nefertiti's tomb will be found there. Hawass says that he doesn't have evidence to support this theory, but has a feeling it could be there.
"There is one area now that we are working in the east valley, near the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut," Hawass told Live Science. I'm hoping that this could be the tomb of Queen Nefertiti." Work is continuing, and "this discovery could happen soon," he said.
Zahi Hawass said he may be getting close to finding the tomb of Nefertiti in the Valley of the Kings. (Image credit: OLIVER LANG/DDP/AFP via Getty Images)
Repatriation to Egypt
Hawass has been involved in many other excavations and projects that are described in the new documentary. One initiative seeks to have the Rosetta Stone (now in the British Museum), the Dendera Zodiac (now in the Louvre) and the bust of Nefertiti (now in the Neues Museum in Germany) repatriated to Egypt. Hawass told Live Science he believes these three artifacts "are the icon of the Egyptian identity and their home should be the Grand [Egyptian] Museum," which opened in November.
It's "fair [for] these three objects to come back to Egypt because the Europeans, in the last century," took countless artifacts from the Nile region in the 19th and early 20th centuries, he said. These priceless treasures were brought to private households and museums in Europe at a time when Egypt was often controlled or heavily influenced by European powers.
Zahi Hawass at the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. (Image credit: (c) Playground Productions)
Controversies
In addition to covering Hawass' life and work, the documentary discusses a few controversies he's been involved in. One of the most serious ones occurred after the 2011 Egyptian revolution that forced out longtime president Hosni Mubarak.
In April 2011, Hawass was sentenced to one year in prison for allegedly failing to uphold a court decision over a shop inside the Egyptian Museum, a decision that was later overturned on appeal. The dispute is complicated: When the museum was being remodeled and a new gift shop was built, the previous shop owner was barred from bidding because of disputes the owner and museum had had in the past. The owner went to court and got a legal order that he be allowed to bid on the new shop. But Hawass refused to implement the court order, saying that the winner of the bid had been decided.
Egyptian officials also investigated Hawass over other complaints. While he couldn't travel outside of Egypt for a time, he was never charged, and in 2013 he was able to travel outside the country again, one of hisfirst stops was the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto to kick off a lecture tour that aimed to promote tourism in Egypt.
He addressed this and other controversies in the documentary, saying that as he became better known, he found himself being criticized and attacked more frequently. He maintains that he conducted himself with integrity throughout his career.
How to watch "The Man with the Hat"
"The Man With The Hat" is streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, from Saturday January 19.
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"The Man with the Hat" is available to purchase through Amazon Prime Video in the US from $9.99, or $12.99 for high-definition. It is not available to UK users.View Deal
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/famed-archaeologist-zahi-hawass-says-hes-close-to-finding-nefertitis-tomb-in-new-documentary
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:10:00 +0000Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:59:16 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ NASA's Mars Sample Return is dead, leaving China to retrieve signs of life from the Red Planet ]]>
- NASA's Mars Sample Return program has been effectively cancelled, meaning the best evidence of life on Mars could be trapped in rock samples that NASA no longer has the budget to collect.
On Monday (Jan. 15), the U.S. Senate approved a spending bill that reverses the Trump administration’s decision to halve federal spending on science and slash NASA's budget by nearly a quarter.
Yet the bill contains an exception: The Mars Sample return program, supposed to return rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover that may contain ancient signs of life, is still cancelled.
"The agreement does not support the existing Mars Sample Return (MSR) program," lawmakers wrote in an accompanying report published on Jan. 6.
There's no guarantee that life ever existed on Mars, but if it did, then the Perseverance rover may already have the evidence. This makes the new bill a major blow to those hoping to examine Perseverance's haul of more than 30 geological samples, which includes a sample NASA described as "the clearest sign of life" ever found on Mars.
But bringing samples from Mars back to Earth was always going to be a costly endeavour, and the MRS program has been fraught with delays and spiraling costs. In January 2025, an independent review board calculated that the price tag could swell to $11 billion, with samples not expected back on Earth until 2040.
In a major overhaul of the program, NASA announced that it would pursue two different strategies for fetching the samples: a tried and tested landing system that deployed a rocket-powered sky crane at a total estimated cost of between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion, and a commercial option whose price would fall somewhere between $5.8 billion and $7.1 billion. NASA planned to announce a decision between these options in the latter half of 2026.
Yet while the Senate’s move ostensibly supports the White House's bid to kill the program, the funding bill could leave NASA space to revive the MSR. The bill, which recognizes that technologies developed as part of the MSR program were critical to the success of future space missions and human exploration of the moon and Mars, allocates $110 million to the Mars Future Missions program, including existing MSR efforts for "radar, spectroscopy, entry, descent, and landing systems, and translational precursor technologies."
In other words, there's funding for some of the tech that the program was working to develop, while falling far short of the total estimated mission costs. The allocation of $110 million nevertheless gives hope for the future of sample return, according to The Planetary Society, which campaigned against more severe proposed cuts to NASA's science program.
A photomontage of tubes containing Martian samples that NASA wants to bring back to Earth. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The new bill pledges $24.4 billion to NASA, with $7.25 billion of that assigned to the space agency's Science Mission Directorate. That means Congress only cut the NASA science portion of the budget by 1% compared to last year — a significantly more modest reduction than the 47% cut proposed by the Trump administration.
Lawmakers also committed funds to other NASA science projects in the bill. The agreement allocates $500 million for the Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan, $208 million for the active James Webb Space Telescope and $300 million for the recently completed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is set to hunt for alien worlds and search for the true nature of dark matter when it launches as early as this fall.
The funding bill now awaits President Trump’s signature to become law.
If the U.S. does abandon the dream of returning samples from Mars, it will leave China without competition. China's Tianwen-3 sample return mission aims to collect fewer samples in a more accessible and less promising site than where Perseverance has looked for potential signs of life. However, the Tianwen-3 mission is scheduled to launch in 2028 and return rocks in 2031. If sample return is a race, then China could be set to win it.
"It is difficult to understand how the cancellation of MSR is anything but an admission that returning samples from Mars is too hard for the United States," Victoria Hamilton, leading space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and chair of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), told Live Science's sister-site Space.com on Jan. 12. "How do we expect to be successful at something orders of magnitude more ambitious and costly as the Moon to Mars program, where human lives are at stake?"
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/nasas-mars-sample-return-is-dead-leaving-china-to-retrieve-signs-of-life-from-the-red-planet
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:26:37 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:26:38 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 'Zombie' cells may drive common form of epilepsy ]]>
- Destroying "undead" cells in the brain may help to relieve a common form of epilepsy, a new lab study suggests.
In the research, published in the journal Annals of Neurology, researchers found that clearing away damaged-but-undying brain cells in mouse models of epilepsy improved the rodents' memory and reduced their number of seizures. The research focused on temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), the world's most common seizure disorder, which affects roughly 50 million people globally.
The findings could help researchers develop the first disease-modifying medications for TLE, meaning drugs that actually get at the condition's drivers, rather than just treating the symptoms, the study authors say. Available antiseizure drugs reduce the number and severity of seizures but don't address their root cause, and patients who don't benefit much from the drugs may require brain surgery or nerve-stimulation devices.
Slaying zombies
TLE can arise after head trauma or infection, and more rarely, it can have genetic causes. But exactly how these factors are linked to seizures and memory loss is still unclear.
Meanwhile, a new idea has emerged around the role of "zombified" cells in epilepsy.
When cells are damaged, they often undergo programmed cell death, which causes them to self-destruct. But some cells instead enter a stage called senescence, in which they no longer divide like healthy cells do but still refuse to die.
Study co-author Patrick Forcelli, a pharmacologist at Georgetown University, told Live Science that these cells' influence has been a hot topic among neuroscientists. "There's been an increasing appreciation that cellular senescence might play an important role in a range of brain disorders," he said.
His team noticed that these zombie cells behaved similarly to how brain cells do at the very start of a seizure. Both the zombies and pre-epileptic brain areas develop tissue scarring, called fibrosis. In their new paper, Forcelli and his colleagues asked whether removing senescent cells from the brain might alter the symptoms of TLE.
The team began by looking for signs of senescence in TLE-affected brains. Some patients with TLE have parts of their brains removed to help reduce or eliminate their seizures. The scientists compared brain tissue samples from these patients with autopsied samples from people without TLE.
Notably, the non-TLE group was significantly older than the TLE group, Forcelli said. Despite this, the epilepsy group had five times as many senescent cells in their tissue samples, on average.
We also protected a large population of animals from developing seizures at all, so this is a disease-modifying approach in that respect.
Patrick Forcelli, Georgetown University
Next, in mouse models of TLE, the team showed that the animals also had more signs of senescence in their brains than did mice without seizures. These signs of senescence were most strongly linked to microglia, cells that form part of the brain's in-house immune system. Dysfunctional microglia have been increasingly implicated in brain diseases, including dementia.
The team then tried removing senescent cells from the mice. They gave some of the mice a combination of the leukemia drug dasatinib and the anti-inflammatory plant pigment quercetin. This unusual cocktail has been repeatedly shown in previous research to deplete senescent cell numbers; such treatments are known as senolytics.
James Kirkland, a gerontologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center who first identified the two compounds' senolytic effects, told Live Science that they target the pathways that senescent cells use to resist normal cell death.
Dasatinib has been approved as a cancer treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), while quercetin is currently regulated as a supplement and food ingredient and is recognized as safe for human use. Trials would be needed to evaluate this treatment combo as a senolytic in humans.
A delicate balance
The dual treatment improved several symptoms in the mice. "We were able to normalize memory function of the mice" and significantly reduce their seizures, Forcelli said. "We also protected a large population of animals from developing seizures at all, so this is a disease-modifying approach in that respect."
In a separate experiment, Forcelli's team tried eliminating all of the microglia — both healthy and senescent — from the mice with TLE. This broad removal didn't help the animals, in part because the senescent cells proved resistant to the wide-spectrum treatment.
"We got rid of lots and lots of healthy microglia, and we left the senescent microglia," Forcelli said. Previous studies have suggested microglia have both damaging and protective roles in epilepsy, he added. The influence of a small population of senescent cells working against a larger population of healthy microglia could explain this inconsistency. It also suggests that any treatment aimed at microglia would need to carefully target the senescent ones.
Forcelli plans to conduct further research to find the best time to administer potential senolytic treatments for TLE. For instance, should the drug be given immediately after someone experiences head trauma, or could it still be effective a week or month afterward?
In addition, Kirkland said that targeting senescence and other aging-related processes could have applications across many different conditions. But he warned that the wider public should wait for the results of formal clinical trials rather than taking commercially available supplements with marketed senolytic properties.
He noted that these supplements may contain ingredients not listed on their labels or dangerously high levels of the active compound.
"There's an issue with quality control because there's a lack of regulation," Kirkland said. In the U.S., supplements do not undergo the rigorous safety, efficacy and quality testing that pharmaceutical drugs do, so claims about what they do in the body are often untested or undertested.
Luckily, rigorous clinical trials are now investigating various types of senolytics. Kirkland said preclinical work has identified some "60 or 70" conditions in which senolytics might delay or prevent disease. "There's a whole new world coming," he concluded.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/zombie-cells-may-drive-common-form-of-epilepsy
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:15:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:10:10 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Forced closure of premier US weather-modeling institute could endanger millions of Americans ]]>
- On Dec. 16 2025, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) — one of the world's leading weather and climate research centers. In a statement to USA Today, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country."
But dismantling NCAR could seriously impact the nation's capacity to ensure public safety and its ability to protect economic stability, Holly Gilbert, the institute's interim deputy director,told Live Science. "The research we do here directly applies to protecting the public," she said.
TheNational Science Foundation (NSF) established NCAR in 1960 to shield human life and property from atmospheric and solar hazards. At its core, the center's research translates vast atmospheric data from satellites, aircraft and ground sensors into forecasts that can potentially save lives.
For example, taking a flight used to be a riskier endeavor. Pilots encounter an abundance of challenges — from turbulence and tornadoes to ice on wings and rapidly varying pockets of wind known as microbursts. But thanks in no small part to the research conducted at theNCAR, flying has become safer, helping pilots avoid these hazards: There hasn't been a single crash on a commercial airline caused by sudden, sharp changes in wind speed in more than 25 years.
But the center's impacts stretch well beyond aviation safety. NCAR models helpforecast tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, extreme heat, drought and the potential for wildfires. "Whenever there has been an early warning, NCAR science and models have been part of bringing that warning to the people who need to hear it," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told Live Science.
Swain, a research partner of NCAR, also stressed that without these early warnings, people could lose their properties or die unnecessarily in weather-related disasters.
NCAR also partners with insurance and reinsurance industries to assess the risks these hazards pose to lives and property. "NCAR provides leading weather research that helps keep people safe and protect homes, businesses, and jobs," Nicole Austin, senior vice president and director of federal affairs at the Reinsurance Association of America, told Live Science in an email. "Its long-term studies of hail and wildfires, along with real-time weather data, help reduce damage and help communities recover faster after disasters."
NCAR also engages with private entities such asThe Weather Company, which operates key digital consumer brands like The Weather Channel and Weather Underground. "Our proprietary forecasting capabilities — which are vital to national safety and security, economic resiliency, and aviation efficiency — greatly benefit from the basic and applied science and technology produced at NCAR and widely used across the entire weather enterprise, including directly at The Weather Company,"Peter Neilley, senior vice president of science and forecasting operations at The Weather Company, told Live Science in an email.
NCAR's models also forecast phenomena beyond the weather. Its Wildland Fire model simulates how wildfires create their own weather, giving first responders critical on-the-ground intelligence, while its Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) model tracks toxic smoke transport, alerting health officials to air quality hazards thousands of miles downwind.
NCAR'sHigh Altitude Observatory (HAO) also anticipates threats to U.S. infrastructure from events originating in space, such as geomagnetic storms. Predicting space weather is essential for safeguarding the nation's power grid, GPS satellites and communication networks from solar flares that can trigger widespread blackouts and equipment failure.
NCAR's High Altitude Observatory captures data on the sun's behavior, which can help us predict space weather and geomagnetic storms and protect infrastructure from their effects. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein)
Greater than the sum of its parts
A statement from the NSF said it "is reviewing the structure of the research and observational capabilities" of NCAR and will "explore options to transfer stewardship" of several of its strategic projects "to concentrate on needs such as seasonal weather prediction, severe storms, and space weather."
But the unique value of NCAR lies in its capacity to treat Earth as a single system, where all the different components — the atmosphere, the oceans, the land and water — are connected to one another, Gilbert said. "Risks to public health and safety are inherently complex and multidisciplinary," she said, "which makes it important to have the expertise and capabilities in one organization to look at where the Earth systems come together."
Modeling the path of a catastrophic wildfire, for example, takes more than data around the fuel available and local wind patterns; it requires simultaneously tracking how heat from the fire creates its own violent, localized winds and determining how multi-year drought has desiccated the fuels. Understanding the public health impact also requires modeling how the resulting toxic smoke will travel. NCAR's expertise is unique because it ensures that the intertwined components of fire, air temperature, dry land, water availability and air quality are modeled simultaneously using shared tools and computational resources, Gilbert said.
The complexity and interconnectedness of these types of disasters means that splitting the center into multiple distributed research locations could have serious consequences, Swain said.
Different areas of research at NCAR used to be structurally siloed, but they've evolved to be more integrated and better suited to addressing complex environmental challenges, Swain said. To better understand weather, you have to understand it in the context of climate, he said. "Otherwise it is like being an emergency room doctor without access to 20% to 40% of a patient's health records."
Returning to siloing would be akin to disassembling the central operating system from a custom, high-performance car and distributing the components to three different mechanics. Each part might function individually, but the dismantling process would impact the ability to drive the vehicle at high speeds safely, Gilbert said.
In a similar vein, splitting up NCAR would hinder the capacity to predict highly complex, multi-hazard events.
"Looking at individual parts is not nearly as important as looking at this integrated system," Gilbert said. NCAR researchers look at the "whole" using established observation, modeling and computational resources and drawing on multiple partnerships established with industries and universities. "It would be so costly to pull these pieces apart," Gilbert added.
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/forced-closure-of-premier-us-weather-modeling-institute-could-endanger-millions-of-americans
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- 58htoLHoqi8pLbHkqvzFgQ
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 14:17:35 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Ancient mummified cheetahs discovered in Saudi Arabia contain preserved DNA from the long-lost population ]]>
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Scientists have successfully extracted the DNA of ancient mummified cheetahs discovered in a cave in Saudi Arabia. This is the first time scientists have been able to extract genetic information from ancient naturally mummified big cats, researchers say, and it could lead to the animals' reintroduction to the region.
In 2022 and 2023, researchers discovered seven desiccated cheetahs and the skeletal remains of 54 others in the Lauga cave network the Arar area of northern Saudi Arabia. The remains date to between 100 and 4,000 years ago.
In a new study, published Thursday (Jan. 15) in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, scientists analyzed genetic data from the big cats and found that the older ones are most closely related to modern-day cheetahs in western Africa rather than Asian cheetahs.
One of the mummified cheetahs as it was found in situ in a cave in northern Saudi Arabia. (Image credit: National Center for Wildlife - Saudi Arabia)
Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) are under threat globally. Populations have plummeted, and there are now only about 7,100 cheetahs left. The big cat, which is the world's fastest land mammal, once roamed through most of Africa and in Asia from the Arabian peninsula to India, but it now lives in about 9% of its historic range.
Today, there are five recognized sub-species of cheetah, four of which are in Africa and one (A. j. venaticus) in Asia. This Asian population is restricted to a small group of cheetahs in Iran.
No one is sure how many cheetahs once roamed in the Arabian peninsula, or how widely they were distributed. Similarly, there is little evidence about why or when they disappeared. Scholars speculate that it was a mixture of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting and human-wildlife conflict.
However, the discovery of the hoard of ancient cheetah remains — which includes cubs and adults — proves that they once did roam the region — and could offer a blueprint for their return.
One of the mummified cheetahs preserved in a laboratory. (Image credit: Ahmed Boug et al./Communications Earth & Environment)
"The research provides strong evidence for the historical presence of cheetahs in Saudi Arabia and supports the potential for rewilding in this region to help expand their current range and restore part of their former distribution," Desire Dalton, a forensic scientist at Teesside University in the U.K., who studies the use of genomic tools to inform conservation and was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
In the study, researchers dated samples from two of the mummified cheetahs and five of the skeletons. The oldest skeletal remains belong to a cheetah that died about 4,000 years ago, while the two desiccated cheetahs are 130 and 1,870 years old respectively.
The team found evidence that prehistoric cheetahs in Saudi Arabia are genomically the closest to the West African A. j. hecki subspecies. Only the youngest specimen analyzed had closer links to the Asian subspecies A. j. Venaticus.
"Using advanced archaeological, radiological and genomic technique, the authors have established that the mummified cheetahs have two lineages," Kumarasamy Thangaraj, a forensic geneticist at the CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
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(Image credit: David Chancellor/Ahmed Boug et al./Communications Earth & Environment)
Researchers collecting one of the mummified cheetahs from its place of discovery.
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(Image credit: Ahmed Boug et al./Communications Earth & Environment)
Researchers examining of the mummified cheetahs in a laboratory.
Dalton said that the identification of these unique lineages suggests that cheetah diversity loss may have been greater than scientists previously thought.
But the research gives conservationists a starting point to potentially reintroduce cheetahs to Saudi Arabia. The authors argue that cheetahs for rewilding in the Arabian peninsula can be sourced from the closest subspecies of the discovered cheetahs — A. j. Hecki — which is much more abundant than the Asian subspecies.
The idea of using ancient DNA to reintroduce animals is not far-fetched, Dalton said. "Genetic studies have guided several successful rewilding projects." For example, genetic data for European bison (Bison bonasus) have informed breeding and translocation strategies for these animals. This reduced the risk of animals struggling to adapt to their new environment, she said. There is also a project underway to conduct ancient DNA analysis of European wolves (Canis lupus lupus) to develop targeted management strategies to preserve the biodiversity of European wolves, she said.
The study authors think that caves around the world could yield more secrets about ancient species. Caves in arid environments, such as Saudi Arabia, can generate hot, dry microclimates that are ideal for drying out animal remains, which can lead to mummification.
"The arid cave environments of Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, may yet hold further important insights that can inform ecological histories, evolutionary insight, and actionable intelligence for rewilding and conservation," the authors wrote.
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- https://www.livescience.com/animals/cats/ancient-mummified-cheetahs-discovered-in-saudi-arabia-contain-preserved-dna-from-the-long-lost-population
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- iSe95CmBipwXyhGy8hZFUK
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:08:11 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:08:12 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Scars from ancient 'megaquakes' at Cascadia subduction zone discovered in deep-sea landslides ]]>
- Deep-sea landslides in the Pacific Northwest's Cascadia subduction zone hold a record of earthquakes dating back 7,500 years, and similar markers may be found in other tectonic plate boundaries worldwide, new research shows.
Subduction zones are places where an oceanic tectonic plate dives beneath a continental plate, which can cause large and damaging earthquakes like the 2011 Tohoku magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Japan that triggered a devastating tsunami. The Cascadia subduction zone — which extends from northern California to Vancouver Island, British Columbia — is capable of quakes of at least magnitude 9.0, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
Exactly how often such enormous quakes hit is an open question, however. To tease out the history of Cascadia quakes, researchers turn to geological evidence such as sudden land-level changes and turbidites, which are undersea sediment flows that occur off the coast during large quakes.
But turbidites in submarine canyons near the shore can also be caused by storms, currents and regular landslides that have nothing to do with earthquakes. In the new study, published Wednesday (Jan. 14) in the journal Science Advances, U.S. Geological Survey research geologist Jenna Hill and her colleagues decided to go deeper. They collaborated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to study the continental slope — the steep dropoff from the North American continent to the plains of the deep sea — in southern Cascadia.
Focusing on an area off the coast of Crescent City, California, the researchers used autonomous and remotely operated vehicles to get detailed views of the slope and sediment deposits. They also used sediment cores from the region to radiocarbon-date the turbidite deposits and compare their timing to the dates of known ancient Cascadia quakes.
Geologic model for abyssal seismoturbidite generation along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. (Image credit: Public Domain.)
The researchers found evidence of at least 10 events in the past 7,500 years, which enabled them to link historical quakes, landslides and resulting turbidites.
"We are able to clarify how and where the turbidites are generated," Hill told Live Science. "So we know they're coming from landslides that we know are triggered by earthquakes."
It's not clear how large a quake has to be to trigger deep-sea turbidites, Hill said, but it probably has to be large enough to cause damage. She and her colleagues also saw signs of seafloor shaking corresponding with the earthquake turbidites, which could additionally raise the risk of tsunamis from this type of quake.
Turbidites found in submarine canyons closer to the coast of the Pacific Northwest have already been used to link earthquakes in Cascadia to quakes on the nearby San Andreas Fault. Turbidites on the continental slope may be even more reliable markers of quakes because they're less influenced by coastal processes such as tides or rainfall, Hill said.
"We think they're happening most everywhere along subduction zones," she said, "so we should be able to find these landslide deposits and marine turbidites globally in places where we have never looked for them before."
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/earthquakes/scars-from-ancient-megaquakes-at-cascadia-subduction-zone-discovered-in-deep-sea-landslides
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- hMdiaPeK9P3FFKTe7hhykQ
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:29:20 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:56:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Tapping into new 'probabilistic computing' paradigm can make AI chips use much less power, scientists say ]]>
- Scientists from the U.S. and Japan have used a new type of component in artificial intelligence (AI) chips that uses less energy when performing advanced computations. The new system lets more operations run in parallel, allowing the chip to arrive at the best output more efficiently.
The majority of computers rely on bits — the 0s and 1s that represent digital information and that programs use to carry out instructions — but some specialised technologies, such as neuromorphic chips, use probabilistic bits (p-bits) instead.
P-bits can randomly switch between 0 and 1, allowing systems to explore many possible combinations of 0s and 1s before settling on the most likely or useful outcome. This kind of inference and decision-making is known as probabilistic computing.
While the randomness of p-bits is useful, developers still need to control how often they produce a 0 or a 1 so they can guide their system toward better answers. Most p-bits are therefore built with digital-to-analog converters (DACs), which use analog voltages to bias them one way or the other. But these are bulky and use up a lot of power.
"The reliance on analog signals was holding back progress," said co-author of the study Shunsuke Fukami, a professor in materials science, in a statement. "So, we discovered a digital method to adjust the behavior of p-bits without needing the typically used big, clunky analog circuits."
Instead of DACs, the scientists built their p-bits using magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) — tiny devices that naturally switch between 0 and 1 at random — and feed this stream of bits into a local digital circuit. Depending on how long the circuit waits to combine these random 0s and 1s, and how it counts and weighs each one, the final output p-bits can become either mostly 0s or mostly 1s.
The scientists presented their findings in a study published Dec. 10, 2025, at the 71st International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco. The work was conducted in collaboration with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's largest semiconductor foundry.
The circuit’s settings can be adjusted by a user or program, allowing control over how strongly the p-bit favors one value. Crucially, because this control is entirely digital, it requires much less space and power on the chip than conventional DACs.
Circuit diagrams of a conventional DAC-based p-bit (a) and the proposed DAC-free p-bit (b). (Image credit: Shunsuke Fukami, Kerem Camsari et al.)
Self-organizing behaviour adds to efficiency
Another benefit of the new approach is that the p-bits can demonstrate "self-organizing" behaviour, the scientists said. With DACs, when a user specifies a preference for mostly 1s or 0s, an analog signal continuously biases the p-bits. They all feel this push at the same time, creating the risk that they all produce an output simultaneously.
Ideally, p-bit outputs would be produced in a staggered manner, so they have the chance to read the outputs of previous p-bits, and use that information to decide whether switching to 0 or 1 will be more useful for the overall computation.
With the new system, when the user adjusts the settings for the desired bias, a digital signal is sent to each p-bit’s local control circuit. Because every circuit generates its subsequent output using its own unique timing, the p-bits naturally avoid updating at the same moment. The staggered outputs also allow multiple p-bits to work in parallel and explore multiple possible solutions at once, enabling the chips to carry out computations more efficiently.
So far, the expense of using DACs has prevented p-bits from being mass-produced and used in commercial AI hardware, but this breakthrough could change that, the scientists believe. The efficiency benefits may help to reduce the significant environmental impact of current AI systems.
The team behind the MTJ-based p-bits has not yet published performance benchmarks compared to conventional DAC designs, meaning it's uncertain how feasible commercialization is at this stage. Thermal stability and reliability while controlling switching current are known challenges for MTJs. Nevertheless, the team is optimistic that their energetic breakthrough will make probabilistic computing more accessible in other fields, including solving routing problems in logistics and quickly exploring vast numbers of solutions in scientific discovery.
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- https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/tapping-into-new-probabilistic-computing-paradigm-can-make-ai-chips-use-much-less-power-scientists-say
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- UFGULhAHMevGqEY4w59nAU
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:26:44 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Human origins quiz: How well do you know the story of humanity? ]]>
- Our species, Homo sapiens, has been evolving for more than 300,000 years, but the story of human origins starts much earlier. Since evolving from the common ancestor that we share with our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, there have been many different species along the human lineage — known as hominins.
How much do you know about the origins and evolution of our closest evolutionary relatives? Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button. Good luck!
Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
Primates quiz: Go ape and test your knowledge on our closest relatives
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/human-origins-quiz-how-well-do-you-know-the-story-of-humanity
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- njiNGrnKtqeanfVLueX8Be
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- Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:39:08 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:56:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Fragment of lost tectonic plate discovered where San Andreas and Cascadia faults meet ]]>
- A fragment of a long-lost tectonic plate is sliding under the North American continent in the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone, scientists have discovered. This leftover plate fragment could pose a new earthquake risk to the region.
New research, published Thursday (Jan. 15) in the journal Science, revealed that the Pioneer Fragment — a leftover bit of an oceanic plate that disappeared under the North American Plate some 30 million years ago — is now stuck to the floor of the Pacific Ocean and is moving northwest along with that plate.
This is happening at a spot called the Mendocino triple junction, where California's famous San Andreas Fault abuts the Cascadia subduction zone. Along the San Andreas, the North American and Pacific plates move alongside one another. At Cascadia, which extends from Cape Mendocino, California, to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, the Juan de Fuca and Gorda oceanic plates dive below North America. That tectonic motion is capable of setting off earthquakes of magnitude 9 and above, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
Some evidence suggests that earthquakes in the Cascadia subduction zone might trigger earthquakes along the San Andreas, a possibility that would widen the danger from the Cascadia fault.
While the new findings don't make the risk clear, said study first author David Shelly, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, they are a step toward understanding this relationship.
The Pioneer Fragment "does increase the area of contact between what’s effectively the Pacific Plate and the subduction zone," Shelly told Live Science.
Shelly and his colleagues probed the Mendocino triple junction using tiny low-frequency earthquakes and tremors — a kind of seismic shiver that originates deep in the crust and can't be felt without sensitive seismometers. "They’re teeny-tiny events but they often occur on the biggest faults," Shelly said.
By analyzing these events, the researchers determined the direction of subtle plate motions. At Mendocino, the Pacific Plate is sliding northwest against the North American Plate, bumping against the Gorda Plate as it pushes under North America. It's a complex situation, and there are competing explanations for exactly where all the pieces are and where the faultlines run.
Shelly and his colleagues found that the situation is even more complex, because a surprise piece of long-gone Farallon Plate still has an influence on the triple junction. This ancient tectonic plate started subducting under North America 200 million years ago, during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. The Juan de Fuca is one remnant of the Farallon. But now, the researchers found that another remnant got stuck to the Pacific plate. This remnant, the Pioneer Fragment, isn't subducting but rather moving sidelong against the continent.
Meanwhile, bits of the Gorda Plate that got scraped off onto the North American Plate as the two ground together have now seemingly been passed back to the Gorda like a "tectonic hot potato" and may be diving back below North America, Shelly said.
This bit of geological messiness may explain why one of the largest triple junction quakes, the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquake, had a shallower origin than scientists expected. Because of the extra bits and pieces, "the fault may not be following the oceanic crust itself. It may be shallower than that," Shelly said.
Beyond increasing the surface area of the Pacific Plate that interacts with Cascadia, the Pioneer Fragment might have the potential to cause earthquakes itself. Between the fragment and the North American Plate is a nearly horizontal fault, like the icing in a layer cake.
"We don’t know whether that fault can generate large earthquakes, but it is a fault that isn’t currently in the hazard models," Shelly said. "So it’s something we need to consider in the future."
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/earthquakes/fragment-of-lost-tectonic-plate-discovered-where-san-andreas-and-cascadia-faults-meet
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- VF359GKbdy6nL8qjYQaK2i
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:56:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ New map of Antarctica reveals hidden world of lakes, valleys and mountains buried beneath miles of ice ]]>
- Scientists have mapped the bedrock beneath Antarctica's massive ice sheet in unprecedented detail, revealing hidden structures that form the glacier.
The ice sheet, which spans more than 5.4 million square miles (14 million square kilometers), shrouds underlying mountains, valleys, lakes and basins, according to a new study published in the journal Science on Thursday (Jan. 15).
This polar landscape below the ice has long been one of the inner Solar System's least mapped planetary surfaces, the team wrote in the study. Geological features shape how ice flows from below, sculpting the glacial surface, and a clearer picture of this process could help scientists predict how ice changes in response to warming.
Yet much about the landscape under the ice has been uncertain, because ground and air surveys are difficult in the region. Scientists often estimate information between distant or irregular survey points, for example, which can miss valleys in the bedrock that guide ice flow.
In the new study, researchers addressed this gap by combining high-resolution satellite images of the ice sheet surface with ice thickness measurements, and an ice flow analysis based on the physics of how ice flows over bedrock. The scientists integrated these data to create a continent-scale map of Antarctica's topography under the ice.
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(Image credit: Helen Ockenden)
A new map of the hidden features beneath Antarctica's ice shows the icy continent in unprecedented detail.
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(Image credit: Helen Ockenden)
The new topography map details previously unknown features in the landscape beneath Antarctica, including hills and ridges and even details of entire mountain ranges.
The extensive map revealed features 1.2 to 18.6 miles (2 to 30 kilometers) beneath the ice sheet that were previously unknown or unclear to science, such as river channels stretching hundreds of miles, which could be traces of the landscape predating the ice sheet.
The map also uncovered sharp transitions between highland and lowland terrain, suggesting tectonic boundaries. In one region where previous air surveys had predicted an ancient river landscape covered by ice, the new map actually identified deep valleys underneath.
The map enables scientists to observe how the ice sheet has evolved and interacted with underlying topography. Visualizing the processes affecting these glaciers can improve models of ice sheets and make projections of climate change-driven ice melt and sea-level rise more exact.
Antarctica quiz: Test your knowledge on Earth's frozen continent
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/new-map-of-antarctica-reveals-hidden-world-of-lakes-valleys-and-mountains-buried-beneath-miles-of-ice
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- Cveb3knT7ahLjtwD2dqrGD
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:13:34 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ These genes were thought to lead to blindness 100% of the time. They don't. ]]>
- Genetic variants believed to cause blindness in nearly everyone who carries them actually lead to vision loss less than 30% of the time, new research finds.
The study challenges the concept of Mendelian diseases, or diseases and disorders attributed to a single genetic mutation. The idea is that Mendelian diseases — such as the neurological disease Huntington's and the bleeding disorder hemophilia — are passed down in predictable ways in families, and if a given person carries a disease-causing mutation, they will have it.
These diseases stand in contrast to those caused by multiple genes and environmental factors, which makes their occurence harder to predict in family lines.
"What we suggest is that there is overlap there," senior study author Dr. Eric Pierce, director of the Ocular Genomics Institute at Mass Eye and Ear and an ophthalmologist at Harvard Medical School, told Live Science. In other words, many diseases thought to have simple, Mendelian causes might be a lot more complex than previously thought.
And this doesn't only apply to inherited blindness. Similar results have been found for other genes once thought to be strongly linked to health conditions. A 2023 study on ovarian insufficiency, a condition that causes infertility and early menopause, found that 99.9% of supposedly disease-causing variants were actually present in healthy women. And certain kinds of inherited diabetes also have more complex genetics than previously believed, according to 2022 research.
"We're in an era of discovering a lot more about the complexity of our genomes," said Anna Murray, a geneticist at the University of Exeter who led the ovarian insufficiency research.
Simple or complex?
Pierce and his colleagues focused on inherited retinal disorders (IRDs), a group of diseases that cause significant vision loss, sometimes as early as age 10 but certainly by age 40, said study co-author Dr. Elizabeth Rossin, a vitreoretinal surgeon and scientist in Mass Eye and Ear’s Retina Service and a Harvard ophthalmologist. Researchers have teased out the genetic roots of these diseases by doing genetic testing on affected patients and their families.
But that method can lead to a problem called ascertainment bias, Pierce said. True, you'll learn that some genetic variants are associated with the disease. But because you're studying only people with the disease and their relatives, you don't get a clear notion of how many people have the same gene variants and don't go blind.
To widen their view, the researchers used data from two large biobanks that contain genetic sequencing data from people, as well as their medical diagnoses and demographic information. One, the All of Us biobank, is a program run by the National Institutes of Health and included nearly 318,000 individuals with both genetic and electronic health record data at the time of the study. The other, the UK Biobank, is comparatively less diverse but contains data from 500,000 individuals, including about 100,000 with images of their retinas submitted to the database.
The researchers picked the 167 genetic variants thought to have the strongest causal link to IRDs and searched for them in the All of Us database. They then used the health record data to see if the people with the variants had vision loss. To their surprise, depending on which diagnostic codes they used, only 9.4% to 28.1% of people with the variants had any indication of a retinal disorder or vision problems.
"You would expect, given what we know about these diseases, that nearly 100% of the people would have blindness," Rossin told Live Science. "But it was far fewer than that."
To validate their findings, the researchers turned to the UK Biobank, this time using the included retinal imagery to seek out evidence of IRDs themselves. They found that only between 16.1% and 27.9% carriers of the gene variants had indications of possible retinal disease.
People who were older who carried these retinal disease genes weren't any likelier to have gone blind. And there was no other evidence that their results were because they were catching people who might later lose their vision. Instead, Pierce says, it seems that the complexity of these presumed Mendelian diseases has been underestimated.
"The mutation we used to think caused disease 100% of the time doesn't exist in isolation," he said. Instead, people carry tens or hundreds of thousands of other genes, some of which may protect against retinal disease, he added.
New avenues for treatment
In theory, those protective gene variants could lead to ways to treat these retinal disorders.
"It's going to take a lot of data in order to find these types of low-effect variants," Pierce said. "There are likely many of them, each contributing a little bit to the protection against disease."
There are good reasons to study the genes of patients with particular disorders, Murray said. For instance, finding genes associated with a condition — even if they don't always cause it — can help researchers pinpoint the biology underlying the disease. In ovarian insufficiency, these kinds of patient-centered studies have shown that genes associated with DNA repair are important for the disorder. But such studies should still be taken with a grain of salt.
"It is only now that we have the ability to look at the granular detail of the genetic sequence in hundreds of thousands of people," she said. To learn more, these databases need to become more diverse, she added. And at the same time, she added, biomedical researchers need better lab models of diseases in which to test certain gene mutations and their effects.
"There are likely some [diseases] where it really is a one-to-one correspondence," Pierce said. "But my prediction would be [that] the majority of these disorders are going to share this new complexity."
Editor's note: This story was updated on Jan. 16, 2026, to add mention of Dr. Eric Pierce's and Dr. Elizabeth Rossin's affiliations with Mass Eye and Ear, where the work was conducted.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/these-genes-were-thought-to-lead-to-blindness-100-percent-of-the-time-they-dont
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- MSouoh69WvP4LZxNQPaXDQ
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:30:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:52:21 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Our model of the universe is deeply flawed — unless space is actually a 'sticky fluid,' new research hints ]]>
- Recent observations have revealed that our understanding of the cosmos is flawed, but it may be because the universe is "stickier" than we assumed, new research proposes.
Viscosity is a measure of how much a fluid resists flowing or changing shape — like the difference between pouring water versus honey. In this case, we are talking about the bulk viscosity of the vacuum itself, a ghostly resistance that occurs when space expands.
A constant problem
Traditionally, scientists have used a simple model to describe the universe. In this model, known as Lambda-CDM, dark energy — the mysterious force responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe — is a steady, unchanging background known as the cosmological constant.
However, data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is mounted on the Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, released last year hinted that something may be fundamentally wrong with our understanding of dark energy. The new observations showed a slight mismatch between our standard theories and the actual, observed rate at which galaxies are zipping away from us.
To explain this discrepancy, Khan has proposed a model involving spatial "phonons." In solid-state physics, phonons are essentially the collective vibrations of atoms in a crystal. But Khan applied this idea to the fabric of space itself. He suggested that these longitudinal vibrations, which would act as sound waves of the vacuum, could be responsible for a viscous effect that slowed the expansion of the cosmos just enough to match what we see in the sky.
By treating the universe as a viscous fluid, this model introduces a drag on cosmic expansion. As space stretches, these spatial phonons slosh around, creating a pressure that opposes the outward push. In fact, the study shows that this simple, data-based model fits the DESI data with great precision, potentially solving some of the headaches caused by the standard cosmological constant.
But we should tread lightly — this is merely a guess. Viscous dark energy would be a foundational shift in how we view the vacuum of space, and the hard data from DESI are still being analyzed by the scientific community. We aren't yet sure if this viscosity is a fundamental property of nature or just a sluggish artifact of our current measurements.
So, where do we go from here? The next decade of data from missions like the Euclid space telescope and continued monitoring by DESI will be the ultimate test. We need more observations to see if these ghostly vibrations are truly ruling the cosmos, or if space is as smooth as we once believed.
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- https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-energy/our-model-of-the-universe-is-deeply-flawed-unless-space-is-actually-a-sticky-fluid-new-research-hints
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- caJJndyGoUwr7Lx4fF48yS
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:00:00 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:13:34 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Rare nocturnal parrots in New Zealand are breeding for the first time in 4 years — here's why ]]>
- A critically endangered, flightless parrot species is breeding for the first time in four years in New Zealand, officials announced Jan. 6.
Kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus) are large, flightless, nocturnal parrots with mottled green and yellow plumage that only breed every two to four years. Their breeding seasons are triggered by the mass fruiting of the rimu tree (Dacrydium cupressinum), a native conifer that can live for more than 600 years.
"It's always exciting when the breeding season officially begins, but this year it feels especially long-awaited after such a big gap since the last season in 2022," Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for kākāpō recovery at New Zealand's Department of Conservation, said in a statement.
The birds became critically endangered by the mid-1900s due to human expansion across New Zealand. Intensive management has raised kākāpō numbers from just 51 individuals over the last 30 years, but only 236 kākāpōs remain in the wild today, including 83 breeding females. All of them wear backpack radio transmitters to monitor their location and activities. Most kākāpō females raise one chick each breeding season.
The 2026 breeding season could produce the most chicks since records began 30 years ago, according to the statement. But the kākāpō recovery program is focusing on ensuring the birds can sustain themselves — not just the number of chicks they produce.
"Kākāpō are still critically endangered, so we'll keep working hard to increase numbers, but looking ahead, chick numbers are not our only measure of success," Vercoe said. "We want to create healthy, self-sustaining populations of kākāpō that are thriving, not just surviving. This means with each successful breeding season, we're aiming to reduce the level of intensive, hands-on management to return to a more natural state."
In previous years, being hand-raised by humans has led some kākāpō to imprint on people rather than other members of their own species. One, named Sirocco, made headlines when he attempted to mate with the head of a zoologist filming a documentary on the birds in 2009. That prompted creative rangers to develop a latex "kākāpō ejaculation helmet,"Stuff reported in 2018.
This season, to reduce interference, the team plans to leave more eggs to hatch in kākāpō nests rather than in incubators, and limit how much they interact with the nests that hold more than one chick.
During the breeding season, male kākāpō come together to build networks of paths and depressions that amplify their booming mating calls. Each night, for weeks or months, their calls attract females to this communal area, called a lek. After mating, the female kākāpō incubates the eggs and raises the chicks alone.
Officials expect the first chicks of the season to hatch around mid-February.
Bird quiz: How much do you know about our feathered friends?
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- https://www.livescience.com/animals/birds/rare-nocturnal-parrots-in-new-zealand-are-breeding-for-the-first-time-in-4-years-heres-why
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- WDDEb7sQZm4SsMZYFm5o7V
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:36:12 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:13:34 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ NASA's powerful new Roman Space Telescope is complete — and will soon begin mission to find 100,000 alien worlds ]]>
- NASA recently revealed the first pictures of its newly constructed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which could soon help researchers hunt for exoplanets, map the Milky Way and unravel some of the universe's biggest mysteries, such as the true nature of dark matter.
Experts have also revealed the most probable launch date for the next-generation spacecraft, confirming that it will likely lift off ahead of schedule — and could begin collecting data before the end of 2026.
Roman is NASA's next flagship space telescope, following on from the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990, and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched in 2021. The orbital observatory is named after pioneering scientist Nancy Grace Roman — who served as NASA's first chief astronomer between 1960 and 1962 — and will work alongside Hubble and JWST, rather than replacing the existing telescopes.
New photos, released Dec. 4, show Roman standing upright in a clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The telescope is around 42 feet (12.7 meters) tall and weighs a hefty 9,184 pounds (4,166 kilograms). It began construction in February 2016, and the project has so far stayed within its initial budget of $4.3 billion, researchers say.
Once launched, Roman will be positioned around 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth at a Lagrange point — a fixed point relative to our planet where the gravity of two objects cancels out. Its specific Lagrange point will be Sun-Earth L2, where JWST and the European Space Agency's Gaia and Euclid space telescopes already reside.
Image 1 of 3
(Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
Roman's 7.9-foot (2.4 meters) mirror will focus light from the cosmos toward a powerful 288-megapixel camera.
Image 2 of 3
(Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
Researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have been assembling Roman piece by piece for several years.
Image 3 of 3
(Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde)
Roman will be powered by six massive solar panels that will harness the energy of the sun.
"Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said in a statement. "Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered — piece by piece, test by test — an observatory that will expand our understanding of the universe."
"With Roman's construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery," Julie McEnery, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard and Roman's senior project scientist, said in the statement. "In the mission's first five years, it's expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies."
What will Roman do?
Roman is equipped with two key instruments, which will define its objectives throughout its initial five-year mission. (Roman will likely remain operational beyond five years, but researchers have only planned what it will do until then.)
The first is the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), a 288-megapixel camera attached to a 7.9-foot (2.4 meters) mirror, capable of capturing high-definition photos of the outer solar system, the edges of the visible universe and anything in-between in infrared light too faint to be seen by human eyes.
One of Roman's main goals will be to create the most detailed map of the Milky Way's center yet in the Galactic Plane Survey, which will account for at least 25% of its total observing time. But it will also search the wider universe for things like distant galaxy clusters and giant "cosmic voids," which could help reveal the identity of dark matter and dark energy, NASA recently announced.
Roman will capture some of the most detailed photos of the Milky Way to date, and aims to find thousands of new exoplanets lurking in our galaxy. (Image credit: NASA)
But the telescope's secret weapon is arguably its Coronograph Instrument, which will block out the light from distant stars, allowing WFI to snap photos of their surrounding exoplanets, which would normally be obscured by stellar glare.
As of September 2025, scientists have discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets in roughly 30 years. However, Roman is expected to find more than 15 times as many in half a decade, which would be a huge boon to scientists exploring the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
"The question of 'Are we alone?' is a big one, and it's an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it," Feng Zhao, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California and the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager, said in the statement. This device could "bring us one step closer to that goal," Zhao added.
In total, Roman is expected to collect more than 20,000 terabytes of data over the course of its initial five-year mission, which is equivalent to the storage space of around 3,000 iPhones: "The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling," Dominic Benford, a NASA researcher and Roman's program scientist, said in the statement.
When will Roman launch?
For years, Roman's prospective launch has been earmarked for May 2027, with some predicting this date would be pushed back, like other previous NASA missions. For example, JWST was originally planned to launch in 2014, according to the Planetary Society.
However, early last year, rumors began to spread that Roman would not only meet its deadline but may actually launch early.
Roman will launch onboard one of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets later this year. This photo shows one of these rockets, equipped with NASA's Europa Clipper probe, lifting off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 14, 2024. (Image credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
And on Jan. 5, at the 247th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix, Arizona, project scientists confirmed that these rumors were true, revealing that, as it stands, the earliest likely launch date for Roman is Sept. 28, according to Space News.
Roman will launch onboard one of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, meaning it will need to be transported more than 900 miles (1,450 km) from Goddard before lift-off. This is scheduled to occur in June, and whether or not this happens on time will give us a better indication of how likely a September launch date really is.
Once Roman is in orbit, it will take approximately 90 days for mission scientists to carry out the necessary steps to start collecting data, according to NASA. Therefore, if the telescope does launch on Sept. 28, it will likely start collecting data around Dec. 27.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/nasas-powerful-new-roman-space-telescope-is-complete-and-will-soon-begin-mission-to-find-100-000-alien-worlds
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- 2xPTVygbnirNWLVYtG4JoY
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:08:03 +0000Thu, 15 Jan 2026 17:08:03 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Scientists watch microscopic plant 'mouths' breathing in real time with palm-sized tool ]]>
- Scientists have created a new tool to watch plants breathe in real time. The new tech could help identify the genetic traits that make crops more resilient to global climate change, the researchers say.
"It's very important for us to understand stomata better," study co-author Andrew Leakey, a plant biologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Live Science. "I, and many other people, are looking to find ways to use either breeding or biotechnology to alter the way stomata are performing in order to produce better crops, in particular ones that need less water."
Specialized cells surround the pore openings, and they expand and contract to open and close the stomata. But scientists still don't know exactly how individual stomata regulate what the plant moves in and out.
"Despite the fact that we have studied stomata for a very, very long time, and we do know a great deal about them, we really struggle to connect understanding the amount of these oxygen, water and carbon going in and out of the stomata with how many stomata there are, how big they are, and how they open," Leakey said.
To understand this process better, researchers developed the Stomata In-Sight tool, which they described in a study published Nov. 17, 2025 in the journal Plant Physiology. The Stomata In-Sight instrument combines a microscope, a system to measure the stomatal gas flux, and machine-learning image analysis. "It measures the collective activity of thousands upon thousands of stomata in terms of these carbon dioxide and water fluxes," Leakey said.
To use Stomata In-Sight, small pieces of leaf are placed in a climate-controlled chamber about the size of a human palm, which is connected to a gas exchange system, Leakey explained. Researchers can change the conditions inside the chamber to see how the stomata respond to variations in temperature, water availability and other parameters. The microscope sits outside the chamber, looking in, while the machine-learning analysis identifies stomata from the microscope's images, speeding up analysis.
It has taken the team several years to develop the new tool. A major issue was that tiny vibrations — such as the fan in a gas-exchange system — can lead to blurry images. "This actually took us about five years, and we had probably three prototypes that failed when we got to the final solution," Leakey said.
The team has already used the system to look at the stomata of maize (Zea mays) and other crops. It also used the insights about stomata to engineer sorghum (Sorghum bicolor, a type of plant cultivated for grain) to use less water. They identified the genes responsible for the density of stomata on sorghum leaves and engineered plants with more spread-out stomata.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has patented the technology, and while it is not commercially available, Leakey hopes that there may be companies interested in producing the instrument for other research groups.
Not all scientists are convinced, however. Alistair Hetherington, an emeritus professor of botany at the University of Bristol in the U.K., doubts that the new tool will revolutionize the study of stomata.
"We have been able to use conventional microscopy to measure changes in stomatal aperture for well over hundred years, confocal microscopy for probably 25 years, and the so-called gas exchange techniques for 50 years," he told Live Science. The new study puts the techniques together, but researchers are likely to stick to "tried and tested existing techniques that deliver," Hetherington added.
Nevertheless, Leakey is looking at improving the tool to broaden its usefulness. The main challenge at the moment is that watching the stomata "breathe" is very time consuming. "When you're looking through the microscope, you see on average two to three stomata in the little piece of leaf you're looking at," he explained. "But you actually need to measure 40 or 50 stomata in order to account for the variation." This has to be done manually.
Also, it can take a few minutes for stomata to respond to changing conditions. This means that scientists have to wait for the stomata to finish opening or closing before they take another image.
"It's quite labour intensive, but it's possible we could use robotics and artificial intelligence to turn it into a production-line process," he said. "There's a lot of excitement in the scientific community about how we can accelerate biological research using those sorts of tools."
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/scientists-watch-microscopic-plant-mouths-breathing-in-real-time-with-palm-sized-tool
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- xuRGreVWxTfXHowb6oTWjJ
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- Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:25:35 +0000Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:59:46 +0000
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