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<![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]>
https://www.livescience.com
- Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:43:38 +0000
+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:37:00 +0000en
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+ <![CDATA[ Earth's seasons vary wildly, even at the same latitude, new research finds ]]>
+ Earth's seasonal cycles can vary dramatically across short distances, even at the same latitudes, a new study suggests.
Researchers have compiled a detailed map of seasonal rhythms around the world, which shows that some physically close regions have dramatically different timing for seasonal variations such as the start and end of the growing season. These differences could contribute to high biodiversity in certain ecosystems, the development of new species and even the different types of coffee harvested in Colombia, the team said.
"Seasonality may often [be] thought of as a simple rhythm — winter, spring, summer, fall — but our work shows that nature's calendar is far more complex," study co-author Drew Terasaki Hart, an ecologist and data analyst at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, said in a statement. "This is especially true in regions where the shape and timing of the typical local seasonal cycle differs dramatically across the landscape. This can have profound implications for ecology and evolution in these regions."
The idea of a simple, seasonal growing pattern works well for plants that grow at high latitudes, such as those in much of Europe and North America, researchers wrote in the study, published Aug. 27 in the journal Nature. But it doesn't work quite as well in arid or tropical ecosystems.
In the study, Terasaki Hart and his colleagues used 20 years' worth of satellite data that captured how plants reflected infrared light throughout the year to map vegetation's growth cycles around the world.
Areas on the slopes of mountains in tropical regions or that have a balmy Mediterranean climate frequently exhibited seasonal asynchrony, or differences in their seasonal cycles across short distances, the team found. In these areas, the availability of light and water was more important for the local plants' growth cycles than the temperature.
"Our map predicts stark geographic differences in flowering timing and genetic relatedness across a wide variety of plant and animal species," Terasaki Hart said in the statement. "It even explains the complex geography of coffee harvest seasons in Colombia — a nation where coffee farms separated by a day's drive over the mountains can have reproductive cycles as out of sync as if they were in opposite hemispheres."
These starkly different niches over short distances could explain why tropical regions have such high biodiversity, the team wrote in the study. Plant and animal species on different seasonal cycles would slowly diverge, reproducing at different times and possibly forming new species after many years.
The results could help explain how species evolve in other ecosystems, such as in river or ocean environments, as well as how environments are adapting to climate change, the researchers wrote in the study.
"We suggest exciting future directions for evolutionary biology, climate change ecology, and biodiversity research, but this way of looking at the world has interesting implications even further afield, such as in agricultural sciences or epidemiology," Terasaki Hart added.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/earths-seasons-vary-wildly-even-at-the-same-latitude-new-research-finds
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:37:00 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:57:52 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 18,000 years ago, ice age humans built dwellings out of mammoth bones in Ukraine ]]>
+ Around 18,000 years ago, ice age people in what is now Ukraine likely weathered the extremely harsh climate by building parts of their shelters out of mammoth bones, a new study finds.
The mammoth dwellings show how communities thrived in extreme environments, turning the remnants of giant animals into protective architecture," the archaeologists wrote in a statement.
The bones were originally found near the village of Mezhyrich, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) southeast of Kyiv. When it was excavated between 1966 and 1974, the archaeological team at the time found the mammoth remains arranged in such a way that suggested they had been used to make houses sometime during the ice age. While this interpretation has found much support among archaeologists, questions still remain about exactly when these bone dwellings were used and for how long. Earlier dates from the site gave a broad range from roughly 19,000 to 12,000 years ago, the team noted in their paper.
To investigate these questions, archaeologists re-examined the site to try and get a better idea of when it was built and how long it stayed in use. They dated the remains of about a dozen small animals found near the mammoth dwellings to try and get a more precise chronology.
The largest structure at Mezhyrich dates to 18,323 to 17,839 years ago, the team reported in the study, published on Nov. 21 on the publishing platform Open Research Europe. These dates are just after the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500 to 19,000 years ago), the coldest part of the last ice age. The researchers noted that the dwelling may have been used for up to 429 years. This indicates that the "shelters were practical solutions for survival rather than permanent settlements," they wrote in the statement.
Mammoth bones were used to help make shelters in Ukraine. They would have protected people during the harshest parts of the last ice age. (Image credit: Pavlo Shydlovskyi)
The foundation of the shelters may have had "mammoth skulls and large long bones, set vertically into the ground [which] formed a kind of plinth or 'foundation,'" study co-author Pavlo Shydlovskyi, an archaeology professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, told Live Science in an email.
A wooden framework may have covered parts of the shelter, along with hides from smaller animals or possibly birch bark. In addition, "tusks and large flat bones were placed on the upper part of the structure [the roof] functioning as weights and wind protection," Shydlovskyi said.
Five to seven people likely lived within each shelter, Shydlovskyi said. A variety of activities such as flint knapping, animal skin processing and small animal butchering were likely done inside.
Francois Djindjian, an honorary professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne has done research on other possible mammoth bone shelters but was not involved in the new paper. He was cautious about the team's dates, and said that he thought that more dates were needed from more of the site. Getting more radiocarbon dates from across the site would give a better idea of when it was used.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/18-000-years-ago-ice-age-humans-built-dwellings-out-of-mammoth-bones-in-ukraine
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 19:08:11 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 19:08:11 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Tiny implant 'speaks' to the brain with LED light ]]>
+ A new brain-machine interface (BMI) uses light to "speak" to the brain, mouse experiments show.
The minimally invasive wireless device, which is placed under the scalp, receives inputs in the form of light patterns, which are then conveyed to genetically modified neurons in brain tissue.
In the new study, these neurons activated as if they were responding to sensory information from the mice's eyes. The mice learned to match these different patterns of brain activity to perform specific tasks — namely, to uncover the locations of tasty snacks in a series of lab experiments.
The device marks a step toward a new generation of BMIs that will be capable of receiving artificial inputs — in this case, LED light — independent of typical sensory channels the brain relies on, such as the eyes. This would help scientists build devices that interface with the brain, without requiring trailing wires or bulky external parts.
"The technology is a very powerful tool for doing fundamental research," and it could address human health challenges in the longer term, said John Rogers, a bioelectronics researcher at Northwestern University and senior author of the study, which was published Dec. 8 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Bypassing the sensory system
The device, which is smaller than a human index finger, is soft and flexible, so it conforms to the curvature of the skull. It includes 64 tiny LEDs, an electronic circuit that powers the lights, and a receiver antenna. Additionally, an external antenna controls the LEDs using near-field-communications (NFC) — electromagnetic fields for short-range communications as is done for contactless card payments.
The compact device is designed to be placed under the skin, rather than being implanted directly into the brain. "It projects light directly onto the brain [through the skull], and the response of the brain to that light is generated by a genetic modification in the neurons," Rogers told Live Science.
Brain cells don't normally respond to light that is shone on them, so gene editing is required to make that happen.
"The genetic modification creates light-sensitive ion channels," Rogers explained. When activated by light, these channels allow charged particles to flow into brain cells, tripping a signal that then gets sent to other cells. "Through that mechanism, we create light sensitivity directly in the brain tissue itself," he said. The genetic modification of the brain cells was done using a viral vector, a harmless virus made to deliver the desired genetic tweak into specific cells in different regions of the brain.
The use of light to control the activity of genetically modified cells is called optogenetics, and it's a relatively new science. In past work, the researchers used a similar approach to activate just one group of brain cells, but the new device enabled them to toggle the activity of many neurons across the brain.
"[The genetic modification] is not just stimulating the part of the brain that's naturally responsible for visual perception, but across the entire surface of the cortex," Rogers said. Thus, sending different patterns of illumination creates a corresponding distribution of neural activity. "It's like we can project a series of images — almost like play a movie — directly into the brain by controlling [the] sequence of patterns."
The researchers tested the implant in the mice by wirelessly instructing it to produce various patterned bursts of light. The mice were trained to respond to each pattern with a specific behavior, indicating that they could distinguish between the patterns transmitted. With each type of signal, they had to go to a specific cavity in a wall, and for choosing correctly, they'd get sugar water as a reward.
Bin He, a neuroengineering researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who wasn't involved in the study, called it a novel technique for using light to tune circuits across the brain. "It may have various applications in neuroscience research using animal models … and beyond," he said.
For instance, the researchers see potential for this device in future prosthetics. Applications could include adding sensations, like touch or pressure, to prosthetic limbs, or sending visual or auditory signals to vision or hearing prostheses.
"Optogenetic techniques are just beginning to be used with humans," Rogers said. "There are tremendous advantages [to using light] because you don't need to disrupt the brain tissues. You can use different wavelengths of light to control different regions of the brain."
Rogers said that from a technology standpoint, the platform could scale to cover much larger areas of the brain and contain more micro-LEDs. However, they would have to rethink the power-supply requirements to support a larger device. It should technically work in humans as it does in mice, but further research will be needed before any tests are attempted in humans.
"The biggest hurdle is around the regulatory approval for the genetic modification," he said.
Brain quiz: Test your knowledge of the most complex organ in the body
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/tiny-device-placed-under-the-scalp-uses-light-to-speak-to-the-brain
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:15:00 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:50:22 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Cats meow more at men to get their attention, study suggests ]]>
+ Over 10,000 years of domestication, cats have learned to meow to get exactly what they want from their human servants. Now, researchers in Turkey have found that cats greet men far more vocally than they do women — and this could be another way they manipulate us to get the attention they deserve.
The new research reveals "cats' ability to categorize bonded individuals and modulate their responses," said study co-author Kaan Kerman, principal investigator of the Animal Behavior and Human-animal Interactions Research Group at Bilkent University in Turkey. "This shows that cats are not automata and possess cognitive abilities that enable them to live alongside humans in an adaptive manner," he told Live Science in an email.
Despite their reputation for being aloof and unfriendly, cats are actually highly communicative and masters at fitting into different social groups.
"Both the public imagination and the scientific community for a time viewed cats as loners with little need for social bonds," Kerman said. However, "cats are more social than previously assumed. They do not interact with humans solely to obtain food. They actively seek social contact and form bonds with their caregivers."
Greeting is a key part of that sociability, as it helps reinforce bonds between domestic cats (Felis catus) and their humans, the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Nov. 14 in the journal Ethology.
To find out more about how cats greet humans, the researchers fitted 40 cat owners with cameras. They were asked to film the first 100 seconds of their interactions with their cat after returning home. The participants were told to act normally so they could capture typical interactions. The researchers then analyzed the footage to assess whether certain behaviors are related, and whether different demographic variables influenced the cats' behaviors.
Nine people were excluded from the study for various reasons, but videos from the remaining 31 participants revealed that the cats were far more vocal toward men than women when their humans first walked in. "No other demographic factor had a discernible effect on the frequency or duration of greetings," the researchers wrote.
The researchers then accounted for different factors, such as the animals' sex, pedigree status and number of cats in the household — but found that the sex of the human was the only significant influence on cat vocalizations.
The researchers suggest this could be because women are typically more verbally active with their cats and better at interpreting what their cats want. Men, on the other hand, may need a lot more prompting before they pay sufficient attention to their cats, the researchers hypothesized in the study.
The team also speculate that cultural factors may have influenced their findings. Previous research shows that people in different cultures interact with cats in different ways — and that this also impacts how cats interact with humans. In this case, the participants were in Turkey, and it may be that men in Turkey are less likely to be chatty with their cats, the team wrote. "However, this interpretation remains speculative and warrants further exploration in future research," the team wrote.
The team also found that meowing and other vocalizations didn't fit into a specific pattern of behavior — meaning these vocalizations were not a sign of a specific emotional state or need.
The team acknowledged that the study has several limitations, including the small sample size and the participants being from the same region. The researchers also noted that the study did not control for other potentially important factors, such as how hungry the cats were when their humans returned, the number of other people in the household or the length of time the animals were alone. Previous research suggested that cats react differently to humans — such as by purring and stretching more — when they are separated for longer periods of time, so the results don't necessarily reveal that cats always meow more at men.
"One important next step is to replicate the findings in different cultural contexts. This would help us understand how generalizable the results are," Kerman said.
Dennis Turner, director of the Institute for Applied Ethology and Animal Psychology in Switzerland who was not involved in the study, said he was impressed by the team's findings.
"I liked the authors' speculation about the reason for this finding and suspect that the men either were less attentive to the cats' vocalizations on other occasions or reacted differently (more or less strongly, different voice frequency) to the greeting vocalizations than women," he told Live Science in an email.
"Much of my team's research [h]as shown that men and women (and children) interact differently with cats in the household." For instance, women speak more to cats and are likelier to go down to the cats' level to interact with them, he noted.
However, cats likely have no preference towards men or women, Turner added. Instead, he agreed with the researchers' view that more meowing toward men is a sign of cats' social flexibility.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/animals/domestic-cats/cats-meow-more-at-men-to-get-their-attention-study-suggests
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:58:20 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:58:21 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ See the 100,000th photo of Mars taken by NASA's groundbreaking Red Planet orbiter ]]>
+ A few months from now, a NASA spacecraft called the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) will begin its 20th year of observing the Red Planet from above. And, like most 20-year-olds on Earth, MRO's camera roll is absolutely packed.
According to NASA, MRO has just taken its 100,000th photo of the Martian surface using its HiRISE camera. Put another way, that's an average of 5,000 photos a year, 417 photos a month, or about 14 a day every day since March 2006.
The new milestone image, snapped on Oct. 7, shows a shadowy wasteland of mesas, craters and dunes known as Syrtis Major. This region is just southeast of Jezero Crater, the ancient lakebed where NASA's Perseverance rover is hunting for evidence of life, and appears as an enormous dark spot when seen from afar by space telescopes like Hubble.
MRO has observed the region many times before, and has previously turned up evidence that the sand dunes there are slowly migrating across the planet's surface.
"HiRISE hasn't just discovered how different the Martian surface is from Earth, it's also shown us how that surface changes over time," Leslie Tamppari MRO's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "We've seen dune fields marching along with the wind and avalanches careening down steep slopes."
The full view of Syrtis Major (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Studying how the Red Planet changes over time will help demystify the forces that govern it, and help reveal whether it was ever a lush waterworld like Earth. Launched from Florida on Aug. 12, 2005, and inserted into Mars orbit on March 10, 2006, the MRO will continue its mission to photograph the planet as long as it's able.
Occasionally, MRO does take a break from its primary mission to gaze off into space. In October, the satellite looked skyward to snap a shot of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed about 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) from the spacecraft — significantly closer that the comet got to Earth at its closest point on Dec. 19.
While MRO wasn't designed to observe small, fast-moving objects at such great distances, it nevertheless provided early confirmation that 3I/ATLAS showed the telltale characteristics of a natural comet, including a small nucleus enshrouded in a bright coma of gas and dust.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/see-the-100-000th-photo-of-mars-taken-by-nasas-groundbreaking-red-planet-orbiter
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 14:35:00 +0000Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:54:04 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'A huge surprise': 1,500-year-old church found next to Zoroastrianism place of worship in Iraq ]]>
+ About 1,500 years ago, early Christian monks and adherents of the Persian religion Zoroastrianism lived together without conflict in northern Iraq, according to a new study.
This wasn't the only place where Zoroastrians mingled with people of other faiths; a 2,000-year-old sanctuary discovered in modern Georgia reveals a mixture of Zoroastrian beliefs and those of other religions, another study reports.
Taken together, the finds are more evidence that Zoroastrianism — the official religion of the royal dynasties that governed the Persian empires for more than 1,000 years — often coexisted peacefully with other religions.
In the Iraq finding, a team led by archaeologistsAlexander Tamm, of the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, andDirk Wicke, of Goethe University Frankfurt, examined the ruins of a building complex at the Gird-î Kazhaw site in the Kurdistan region of the country, according toa statement from Goethe University Frankfurt.
They found buried stone pillars and other architectural evidence that the building complex had been a church at the center of a Christian monastery, which was originally discovered in 2015. The monastery was built in about A.D. 500 — "a huge surprise" because it was the first Christian structure ever found there, according to the statement.
The team also unearthed buried fragments of a large jug decorated with an early Christian cross. (Crosses were rarely used as Christian symbols until theRoman Empire legalized Christianity in the fourth century.)
And yet the newly investigated Christian monastery lies only a few yards from a Sasanian Persian fortification where Zoroastrianism was practiced. The two structures' proximity indicates that Christians and Zoroastrians were living peacefully side by side at this location, the statement said.
Buried pillars suggest there was a Christian church and monastery at the site about 1,500 years ago. (Image credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt)
Rival empires
The archaeological team noted that in that era, Christianity was spreading beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, where it had been the official religion since the Edict of Thessalonica by Emperor Theodosius in 380.
The Romans — and, later, the Byzantines — were usually rivals of the Persians, and sometimes allies. The new religion of Christianity, however, was spreading even among the Persians. "The early dating for a church building into the fifth to sixth century AD is not unusual in the region," the statement said. "There are comparable structures in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia."
"Grandiose" temple in Georgia
The finds in northern Iraq come amid new details of a roughly 2,000-year-old sanctuary within a "grandiose" temple complex at Dedoplis Gora in Georgia, less than 400 miles (600 kilometers) north of Gird-î Kazhaw in Iraq.
Dedoplis Gora was under the independent Kartli kingdom at that time. However, the region was heavily influenced by the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and there is extensive evidence that Zoroastrianism was practiced there.
According to a study in the January 2026 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology by David Gagoshidze, an archaeologist at the University of Georgia in Tbilisi, "the kings of Kartli worshiped Iranian (Zoroastrian) gods merged with local Georgian astral deities." The study looks at three sanctuary rooms in the Dedoplis Gora palace that had different religious traditions.
Archaeologists have unearthed pottery fragments in Iraq from a large jug decorated with a Christian cross. (Image credit: Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt)
In one sanctuary, the rites of Zoroastrainism were practiced at an altar where "permanent residents of the palace of Dedoplis Gora offered daily sacrifices and prayed." In another room, it appears the "noble owners of the palace" worshipped the Greek cult of Apollo, "based on the statuettes found there," according to the study.
Finally, in a third room, in what seems to have been a "syncretic" ceremony (that is, a ceremony that combines more than one religious tradition), rituals were likely carried out for a local cult related to "fertility, agriculture and harvest."
History of Zoroastrianism
The studies indicate the official Persian religion of Zoroastrianism was generally tolerant of other beliefs, although there were times during the late Sasanian Persian Empire when followers of rival religions like Christianity or Manicheism (a now-extinct Persian religion centered on the prophet Mani) were persecuted.
Zoroastrianism is named after the Persian prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek), who is thought to have lived about 3,500 years ago, and it is centered on the worship of the "Wise Lord" Ahura Mazda, whose primary symbol is fire. (The phrase "Thus spake Zarathustra" is the title of a book by the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who wasn't Zoroastrian but used Zarathustra as a fictional mouthpiece for his ideas.)
Zoroastrianism sharply declined in Persia (now Iran) after the Islamic conquest of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century, and now there are only about 120,000 practicing Zoroastrians worldwide.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/a-huge-surprise-1-500-year-old-church-found-next-to-zoroastrianism-place-of-worship-in-iraq
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:30:00 +0000Mon, 22 Dec 2025 22:39:11 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Graphene supercapacitor breakthrough could boost energy storage in future EVs and other household devices ]]>
+ Scientists have found a new way to manipulate graphene to create a substance with record-breaking energy and power density.
When incorporated into energy storage devices called supercapacitors, this new form of graphene could be the key to high-capacity, fast-charging energy storage that could deliver power more quickly than conventional batteries, the researchers said in a statement.
The new material, called multiscale reduced graphene oxide (M-rGO), is created from graphite, a globally abundant resource. Researchers incorporated it into pouch cells, a type of rechargeable battery packaged into a thin, flexible, laminated foil envelope instead of rigid metal. The scientists published their findings Sept. 15 in the journal Nature Communications.
Pouch cells are used in electric vehicles, drones, wearable electronics, laptops, smartphones and tablets. Building them from M-rGO could lead to improvements in total capacity, charge time and the ability to power more complex and power-hungry devices with smaller batteries, according to the research team.
Soaking up power
Whereas traditional batteries store energy in chemical bonds, supercapacitors are electrochemical capacitors that store energy as separated electric charge on electrode surfaces. They have the advantage of superior energy density — how much energy can be stored in a given space — and power density — how quickly energy can be delivered per unit volume — over traditional batteries.
Until now, however, supercapacitors have been hamstrung by one significant limitation: only a portion of the potential energy storage of the materials from which they were created was available for use.
This limitation comes from graphene's physical makeup. While it has the advantage of allowing for denser electrodes — the solid conductors in a battery where charge is stored — it's very inefficient at using that space. Simply stacking graphene, for instance, is inefficient because the sheets adhere too closely together and don't leave enough space for the ions that need to move in and out to store energy.
To get around this problem, scientists built messy 3D structures similar to sponges, which provide both large amounts of storage area and pathways for ions to move. While lightweight, the downside is that these structures were large and cumbersome.
This breakthrough overcomes that issue by heating the graphene in a two-step process. This results in a tangled, curved graphene network with multiple levels of structure that still allows for the rapid movement of ions while providing lots of surface area for energy storage.
"This discovery could allow us to build fast-charging supercapacitors that store enough energy to replace batteries in many applications, and deliver it far more quickly," said Mainak Majumder, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Australia's Monash University, in the statement.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/electronics/graphene-supercapacitor-breakthrough-could-boost-energy-storage-in-future-evs-and-other-household-devices
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+ <![CDATA[ Rare dusting of snow covers one of the driest places on Earth and shuts down massive radio telescope — Earth from space ]]>
+
QUICK FACTS
Where is it? Atacama Desert, Chile
What's in the photo? A rare dusting of snow covers parts of one of the driest places on Earth
Which satellite took the photo? Landsat 9
When was it taken? July 10, 2025
This striking satellite photo captured a rare spectacle earlier this year, when "one of the driest places on Earth" experienced a rare snowstorm. This freak event temporarily turned the barren, rocky landscape white — and briefly shut down one of the world's most powerful radio telescopes.
The Atacama Desert is a roughly 40,500-square-mile (105,000 square kilometer) non-polar desert, located within a 1,000-mile-long (1,600 km) strip of land nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains in northern Chile. It is the world's oldest non-polar desert, having remained semi-arid for at least 150 million years. And it is home to the sunniest spot on Earth, the Altiplano Plateau, which experiences sunlight levels equivalent to those on Venus.
The desert is also widely considered to be one of the driest places on Earth, alongside other hyperarid spots, such as Antarctica and the Sahara. Some areas currently experience as little as 0.002 inches (0.5 millimeters) of rain annually, according to Guinness World Records. Previous research has hinted that parts of the Atacama went nearly 400 years without any recorded rain, between 1570 and 1971.
On June 25, a rare snowstorm hit Atacama after a "cold-core cyclone" unexpectedly drifted down from the north, covering over half the desert with white powder, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.
The satellite photo above shows a section of the desert in the Chajnantor Plateau, which rises to around 16,000 feet (5,000 meters) above sea level. This area is home to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory — an array of more than 50 radio dishes that scour the "Dark Universe." (ALMA itself is not visible in the aerial photo.)
Snowfall in the Atacama is very rare. This photo shows the area surrounding ALMA after a similar event in 2013. (Image credit: Ronald Patrick/Getty Images)
This area is well-suited to astronomical research because it is remote, dry and well-elevated, which reduces interference and maximizes the amount of data telescopes like ALMA can collect. But when the snow settled over the observatory, it temporarily forced ALMA into "survival mode," meaning that the dishes were repositioned to stop them from accumulating snow, halting observations.
The icy dust may have also affected the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope, located around 530 miles (850 km) southwest of ALMA, but to a lesser extent, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. The newly constructed Vera C. Rubin Observatory is also located in Atacama, near the SOAR telescope, but was not affected by the storm.
The snow did not last long, and most of it had disappeared by July 16. In some places, the sunlight was so intense that the snow likely sublimated, or turned directly from solid to gas, before it melted, according to the Earth Observatory.
This is not the first time that snow has fallen in the Atacama. Similar events also occurred in 2011, 2013 and 2021.
The region has also experienced several intense bouts of rain in recent years. When this happens, it can trigger deadly mudflows. In March 2015, at least 31 people were killed after heavy rainfall triggered Atacama's largest ever flood, according to a 2016 study.
ALMA was forced into "survival mode" as snow fell on its array of radio dishes. This meant realigning the dishes to be perpendicular to the ground to stop snow gathering on them. (Image credit: ALMA)
Rain can also cause desert flowers, which normally appear in spring, to unexpectedly bloom during winter months, creating fields of vibrant petals to sprout up around the desert. This most recently happened in 2024, after a surprise rain shower caught the plants off guard.
Precipitation is rare in the Atacama for two reasons. Firstly, it sits within the "rain shadow" of the Andes, which block clouds moving in from the east. And second, cold ocean currents off the region's western Pacific coastline prevent water from evaporating into the air over the desert. This makes Atacama inhospitable to most lifeforms, aside from hardy desert flowers and extreme microbes that live well below its dry surface.
However, the recent instances of extreme precipitation in the region could be a sign that human-caused climate change is making it more likely for snow and rain to fall there. If this continues, the Atacama may one day no longer be one of the driest places on Earth.
For more incredible satellite photos and astronaut images, check out our Earth from space archives.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weather/rare-dusting-of-snow-covers-one-of-the-driest-place-on-earth-and-shuts-down-massive-radio-telescope-earth-from-space
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000Fri, 19 Dec 2025 15:03:48 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Science history: Anthropologist sees the face of the 'Taung Child' — and proves that Africa was the cradle of humanity — Dec. 23, 1924 ]]>
+
Milestone: "Taung Child" skull revealed
Date: Dec. 23, 1924
Where: Taung, South Africa
Who: Raymond Dart's anthropological team
At the end of 1924, an anthropologist began chipping away rock around an old primate skull — and rewrote the story of human evolution.
The diminutive skull — about the size of a coffee mug — clearly belonged to a creature very different from us and yet also quite distinct from other apes and monkeys.
But the man credited with its discovery, Raymond Dart, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, hadn't actually excavated the skull.
Rather, it came to Dart because his student had brought another skull from a quarry to his class. Local workers at the Buxton Limeworks in Taung had previously blasted a baboon skull out of the rock and had brought it to the attention of the company. From there, the baboon skull landed with Dart's student, Josephine Salmons. She recognized it for what it was and brought it to his class.
Dart was excited about the possibility that other ancient primate fossils would be embedded in the same sediments, and he showed the baboon skull to his geologist colleague Robert Young. Young knew the quarry and made contact with the quarryman, a Mr. de Bruyn, and asked him to keep an eye out for more skulls. In late November, de Bruyn identified a brain cast in a piece of rock and set it aside for Young, who then hand-delivered the cranium to Dart.
In his 1959 memoir, "Adventures with the Missing Link," Dart makes no mention of Young hand-delivering the skull. Instead, he implies that he had pulled the skull out of rubble in crates that were delivered from Buxton Limeworks.
In Dart's telling, he immediately recognized what he had found.
"As soon as I removed the lid a thrill of excitement shot through me. On the very top of the rock heap was what was undoubtedly an endocranial cast or mold of the interior of the skull," Dart recounted in his memoir. "I stood in the shade holding the brain as greedily as any miser hugs his gold … Here, I was certain, was one of the most significant finds ever made in the history of anthropology."
On Dec. 23, "the rock parted. I could view the face from the front, although the right side was still embedded," Dart wrote in his 1959 memoir.
Over the next 40-odd days, he feverishly analyzed the skull. In a paper published in the journal Nature on Feb. 7, 1925, he described a newfound human ancestor and named it Australopithecus africanus, or "The Man-Ape of South Africa."
The discovery of the "Taung Child" was the first time scientists had ever found a near-complete fossil skull of an ancient human ancestor. It was longer than other primate skulls, and the molars in the skull suggested "it corresponds anatomically with a human child of six years of age," according to the study, though later estimates would suggest the child died at around age 3 or 4. We don't know for sure, but most researchers think the Taung Child was a girl.
Because the skull was taken out of its "context," it was difficult to peg its age. Over the years, some researchers have estimated it to be 3.7 million years old, but more recent research suggests it was around 2.58 million years old.
For nearly 50 years, A. africanus was thought to be our direct human ancestor. Then, in 1974, scientists digging in Afar, Ethiopia, unearthed another fossil skull from a related species. This one, dated to 3.2 million years ago, was the iconic "Lucy," and her species, Australopithecusafarensis, wound up dethroning the Taung Child as our direct common ancestor.
But there's a twist ending to this story, as scientists found a few fossil fragments that raise the possibility that Lucy's species isn't our direct ancestor after all, with some even suggesting A. africanus could regain its title.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/science-history-anthropologist-sees-the-face-of-the-taung-child-and-proves-that-africa-was-the-cradle-of-humanity-dec-23-1924
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+ xivMxyuK9CDgHrAS9jC3b8
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+ Tue, 23 Dec 2025 07:00:00 +0000Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:14:56 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 2,300-year-old Celtic gold coins found in Swiss bog ]]>
+ While surveying a Swiss bog, two volunteer archaeologists discovered what may be two of the oldest Celtic coins ever found in the country, and they may have been offerings to ancient gods.
The two gold coins were minted almost 2,300 years ago, around the mid-third century B.C. "This makes them part of a very small group of just over 20 known examples of the oldest Celtic coins from Switzerland," Swiss archaeologists said in a translated statement released Dec. 18.
One coin is a stater that weighs 0.28 ounces (7.8 grams), and the other is a one-fourth stater with a weight of 0.06 ounces (1.86 grams). The term "stater" derives from ancient Greek coins. As mercenaries, the Celts of mainland Europe were increasingly given Greek coins as payment at the end of the fourth century B.C. These coins later served as inspiration for Celtic coinage at the beginning of the third century B.C., when the imitation started, as noted in the statement.
In this case, gold staters minted during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, were imitated. Both coins showcase the profile of the Greek god Apollo on the "heads" side (obverse) and a two-horse chariot on the "tails" side (reverse).
However, the two newfound coins were modified slightly from their Greek originals. For example, on the smaller one's reverse, a triple spiral can be seen beneath the horses. This symbol, known as a triskele (also called a triskelion), appears frequently in Celtic art.
The rare coins were unearthed largely on a hunch. Between 2022 and 2023, volunteer archaeologists with Archaeology Baselland, the local archaeological department, discovered 34 Celtic silver coins found in the same area — the Bärenfels bog near the municipality of Arisdorf. This prompted Wolfgang Niederberger and Daniel Mona, also volunteer archaeologists with Archaeology Baselland, to do follow-up investigations there in spring 2025, when they discovered the two gold coins, according to the statement.
It's possible these two coins were deposited as an offering to the gods, according to the statement.
"Experts assume that Celtic gold coins were not used for everyday transactions. They were too valuable for that," the statement noted. Including salary payments, they may also have been used as diplomatic gifts, gifts to followers, to achieve political goals, or as dowries.
Celtic coins are frequently found near moors and bodies of water. This pattern is also evident in Arisdorf, where water-filled sinkholes form the Bärenfels bog. The Celts considered such places to be sacred and dedicated to gods, so it seems reasonable to assume that the coins were deliberately placed there as offerings, the statement noted.
Both coins will go on display together, along with the silver coins from the same site, in a special showcase in Basel starting in March 2026.
Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2-300-year-old-celtic-gold-coins-found-in-swiss-bog
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+ SHsKXJAeGz44StL2cHUoWU
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+ Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:51:31 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:37:13 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Best space photos of 2025 ]]>
+ The final frontier is an unendingly beautiful expanse filled with unimaginable wonders, making it the perfect sandbox for photographers, astronomical observatories and space-based telescopes to capture incredible images that we can hardly fathom. And 2025 was no different.
This year, we covered a range of stunning space images, from an eye-catching alien comet and a planetary parade portrait to the first Vera C. Rubin photos and otherworldly animal lookalikes. Here are 10 of our absolute favorites.
Alien visitor transforms into a "cosmic rainbow"
A new timelapse photo transforms 3I/ATLAS into a giant "cosmic rainbow." (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/K. Meech (IfA/U. Hawaii)Image Processing: Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani (NSF NOIRLab))
The biggest space news story this year was undoubtedly the arrival of the third-ever interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which has dominated headlines and astronomers' attention ever since it was first spotted speeding through the solar system in early July. As a result, there has been no shortage of stunning shots of the alien comet.
Our favorite is this timelapse image captured by the Gemini North telescope on the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano. The image was created by combining 16 different photos using multiple colored filters to create a giant cosmic rainbow.
This striking photo shows a skydiver perfectly aligned with the sun's fiery surface, around 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth. (Image credit: Andrew McCarthy/cosmicbackground.io)
One of the most unbelievable photos of 2025 was this solar spectacle, dubbed The Fall of Icarus, which perfectly captured the moment a skydiver fell directly in front of the sun.
Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured this shot in early November, at a distance of around 8,000 feet (2,440 meters) from the skydiver, YouTuber Gabriel C. Brown. It took six attempts to properly line up Brown with the solar surface before the thrill-seeker leapt from a small propeller-powered craft at an altitude of around 3,500 feet (1,070 m).
"It was a narrow field of view, so it took several attempts to line up the shot," McCarthy told Live Science. "Capturing the sun is something I'm quite familiar with, but this added new challenges."
In its debut image, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has revealed a vast stellar stream coming from the nearby galaxy M61. (Image credit: Romanowsky et al. 2025, RNAAS)
In June, the most powerful digital camera on Earth winked on. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile's Atacama desert revealed its first-ever images in June. These debut photos were chock-full of cosmic treasures, including the spiral galaxy M61 (shown here), which researchers noticed was being trailed by a massive stellar tail around the same size as the Milky Way.
We can look forward to many more spellbinding shots from Rubin in the coming years as it begins its decade-long survey of the night sky.
An astrophotographer captured shots of seven solar system worlds during an 80-minute period on Feb. 2 and arranged them into a straight line. (From left to right: the moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.) (Image credit: Gwenaël Blanck)
In late January and early February, up to six of the solar system's planets were simultaneously visible in the night sky in what astronomers refer to as a "planetary parade." This particular parade was one of the best in recent years, allowing astrophotographers to snap several stunning pics of the event.
Our favorite pick of the bunch is this planetary portrait from French astrophotographer Gwenaël Blanck, which he digitally edited to show each planet alongside the sun in the order of distance from Earth. Blanck snapped each of the individual worlds within 80 minutes of one another.
The mysterious 'diamond ring' in Cygnus may be the remnants of a burst bubble, new research hints. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)
All that glitters is not gold, and in this scintillating starscape, released in November, it is high-energy X-rays that sparkle like a giant ring.
This object, dubbed a "diamond ring," is an expanding bubble of gas in a star-forming region of the Cygnus constellation. The glowing bubble is around 20 light-years across and is around 400,000 years old. It was photographed by NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which previously scanned the night sky from a telescope onboard a Boeing 747SP aircraft, at an altitude of more than 45,000 feet (13,700 m).
The cosmic ring is not to be confused with Einstein rings, which are rings of light created by gravitational lensing.
The insect imposter's shining wings are made from a mini nebula of stellar material leftover from a supernova. This nebula is bisected by a protoplanetary disk that surrounds the baby star like a cosmic cocoon, and just happens to be aligned with Earth so that the two halves of the nebula are seen from side-on. It is located around 525 light-years away, in a star-forming region, known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud.
The gargantuan shield volcano Arsia Mons pierces the clouds of Mars in this new NASA orbital image. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Speaking of Mars, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter also captured this stunning shot of a giant dead volcano peeking above the clouds on the Red Planet, as eerie green lights dance above the Martian horizon.
The mountain in the image is Arsia Mons, which stands at more than 12 miles (19 kilometers) above the surface of the previously volcanic Tharsis plateau. The extinct volcano is more than twice as tall as Mount Everest, but around 4 miles (6 km) shorter than Mars' tallest peak, Olympus Mons.
The green lights look like auroras. But they are actually just an effect of the image being partially captured using infrared light, which emanates from the planet's wispy atmosphere.
The new image, dubbed the "Eye of Sauron," shows the complex magnetic field of a high-energy jet being shot directly at Earth by a distant blazar. (Image credit: Y.Y. Kovalev et al.)
There is no escaping the dark lord of Mordor's malevolent gaze, even from halfway across the universe. That's the impression given by this photo, dubbed the "Eye of Sauron," which playfully references J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings."
The "eye" is actually the magnetic field of a supercharged energy jet being shot into space by a quasar — a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. This quasar, dubbed PKS 1424+240, is billions of light-years from Earth and has one of its jets pointed almost directly at our planet, allowing researchers to peer directly through its "jet cone" and map out the magnetic swirls within.
The structure called Ua ʻŌhiʻa Lani, which means the Heavenly ʻŌhiʻa Rains, echoes the legendary 'Pillars of Creation'. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/ NOIRLab /NSF /AURA)
This ethereal image shows a set of stellar structures reminiscent of the famous "Pillars of Creation," first seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. The structure is named Ua 'Ōhi'a Lani, which means the "heavenly rains" in Hawaiin, and this image of it was taken by the Gemini North telescope.
What you are seeing is two distinct regions: the twinkling blue stars of a star cluster, named NGC 6823, overlapping the veil of red gas that comprises a more distant emission nebula, dubbed NGC 6820. The ethereal pillars are made from additional gas and dust that have been sculpted by the foreground stars' intense radiation.
The original pillars of creation were also recently given a glow-up by JWST, which captured the iconic cosmic structures using infrared light.
Nichole Ayers snapped a giant red sprite sprawling out over an upward-shotting bolt of lightning during a massive thunderstorm on July 3. (Image credit: NASA/ISS/Nichole Ayers)
As incredible as it is to point our cameras out into the universe, space also provides a unique angle of our own planet. And that's exactly the case in our final photo, which shows off a giant, electrifying "jellyfish" hovering above Earth.
The luminous branching structure was snapped by NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers in July, while onboard the ISS. It shows a type of transient luminous event that researchers commonly call sprites. In this case, the red jellyfish-like sprite formed at the summit of a rare upward-shooting "gigantic jet" of lightning, up to 50 miles (80 km) above the U.S.-Mexico border.
If you liked this photo, then be sure to check out Live Science's weekly Earth from space series for more incredible images of our planet from above.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/space/best-space-photos-of-2025
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+ BnGkiYBfwBm8whtLMBYVQe
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+ Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:38:00 +0000Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:07:22 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 3,300-year-old cremations found in Scotland suggest the people died in a mysterious catastrophic event ]]>Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old cremated remains of at least eight people who were buried in five urns in Scotland. While it's unknown how they died, it was likely during some sort of catastrophic event.
The finding is unusual because, although many Bronze Age burial spots in Scotland were reused over the years, the newfound cremations "tell a different story," the researchers wrote in a new study, published recently in the journal Archaeology Reports Online. In this case, the urns were "tightly arranged, giving the impression of being buried collectively, and then remaining undisturbed except for modern plough damage," the team wrote.
The individuals were found in the remains of a barrow, a burial mound made of earth and rocks. The urns were in the center of the barrow, in a 3-foot-wide (1 meter) burial pit, and were surrounded by a ring of rocks, the archaeologists noted in the study. Organic materials in the burial, including charcoal, enabled the team to radiocarbon-date it to about 1439 to 1287 B.C.
Three of the urns each contain the remains of an adult and a juvenile, while the other two each contain only one adult. The burial was found at Twentyshilling Hill, which is near Twentyshilling Hill Wind Farm in southwest Scotland, during excavations conducted in 2020 and 2021 while an access road to the wind farm was being built. The excavations were conducted by a team from Guard Archaeology, a company that undertakes archaeological excavations during or before construction.
"The discovery of five urns tightly packed together at the same time in one mass burial event is very rare and distinguishes the Twentyshilling Barrow from other barrows in Scotland," the researchers wrote in the report.
The team suspects these eight individuals likely died around the same time, during a terrible event. It's unclear what that event was, but it could have been a famine, disease or war, Ronan Toolis, CEO of Guard Archaeology, told Live Science in an email.
They suspect the individuals died around the same time because the urns appear to have been made by the same craftsperson, Toolis said. Also, during that time, it was common for deceased people in this region to be left out long enough for their flesh to decompose before they were cremated. In this instance, however, the team found that the individuals still had some of their flesh when the cremation was done, which indicates that they had to be cremated in a hurry, the team noted.
These people would have been farmers, Toolis said. He noted that they likely lived near the burial spot, although their settlement has not been found.
This is "an area of Scotland where few such archaeological remains have so far been discovered, so future research may reveal much more about the context of this barrow," Toolis said.
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@@ -21,7 +230,7 @@
UfYcULZEFwzZWGjx7KSdGC
- Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:43:38 +0000Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:43:39 +0000
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pqGcV4j2ZpCfvCDDPHC9tR
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M54bNyX4kgbaWS3xtfq2uE
- Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000Fri, 12 Dec 2025 17:00:30 +0000
+ Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000Tue, 23 Dec 2025 10:15:26 +0000
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-
- <![CDATA[ Science news this week: Japan laser weapon trial, comet 3I/ATLAS bids farewell, and AI solves 'impossible' math problems ]]>
- This week's science news has featured some mind-blowing technological innovations, with the development of a new kind of quantum processor that lasts 15 times longer than those used by Google and IBM.
Fabricated from the rare earth element tantalum, the processor is an important step on the road to stable quantum computing. However, scientists still need to overcome key challenges, such as the processors' millisecond decoherence time and the extreme scarcity of tantalum.
The comet, which is up to several miles wide and 7 billion years old, is now traveling at 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) on a path out of our solar system.
But that doesn't mean it's the last we'll be hearing of the interstellar object, which has generated a frenzy of speculation surrounding its (incredibly doubtful) alien origins. 3I/ATLAS will leave our solar system after passing Pluto in 2029, giving scientists and spacecraft plenty of time to observe it.
Or could we chase down 3I/ATLAS before it leaves our solar system? As farfetched as it may sound, some scientists are eager to send a spacecraft after the comet before it leaves.
Doing so would not only reveal further clues as to how the comet formed, but also help to answer whether we're alone in our universe, Live Science reveals in this fascinating Science Spotlight.
Turtles' bodies are protected by hard shells that are surprisingly varied between species. But how did these natural suits of armor evolve in the first place? And can turtles really hide their heads inside their shells?
The strange behavior of pumas (Puma concolor) in Monte León National Park in Patagonia, Argentina shone a light on the surprising knock-on effects of conservation efforts this week. Pumas were forced out of the region by sheep farmers in the 20th century, but the apex predators returned when the national park was established in 2004.
So far, so typical, but scientists were surprised after the pumas set their sights on a colony of roughly 40,000 Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) that had settled in their absence. The pumas that ate the penguins began tolerating each other more than usual.
The new behavior suggests that restoring wildlife in changed habitats does more than just reset the clock — it creates entirely new behaviors and ecosystems.
Artificial intelligence models are making steady progress in cracking increasingly difficult math problems, but will they soon eclipse humans in cracking the hardest unsolved conjectures? Or is it all just hype? Live Science spoke with some of the world's best mathematicians to find out.
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best crosswords, skywatching guides and opinion pieces published this week.
This week’s science photo displays one of the most powerful, and longest lasting, cosmic explosions ever detected — a seven-hour blast that ripped from a dying star at 99% the speed of light.
The event, dubbed GRB 250702B, is the longest-duration gamma-ray burst ever recorded and may have been caused by a supernova, a star being torn to shreds by a black hole, or a black hole and helium star merging.
]]>
- https://www.livescience.com/tec/science-news-this-week-japan-laser-weapon-trial-comet-3i-atlas-bids-farewell-and-ai-solves-impossible-math-problems
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- Sat, 20 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:10:18 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Scientists build 'most accurate' quantum computing chip ever thanks to new silicon-based computing architecture ]]>Physicists at Silicon Quantum Computing have developed what they say is the most accurate quantum computing chip ever engineered, after building a new kind of architecture.
Representatives from the Sydney-based startup say their silicon-based, atomic quantum computing chips give them an advantage over other kinds of quantum processing units (QPUs). This is because the chips are based on a new architecture, called "14/15," that places phosphorus atoms in silicon (named as such because they are the 14th and 15th elements in the periodic table). They outlined their findings in a new study published Dec. 17 in the journal Nature.
SQC achieved fidelity rates between 99.5% to 99.99% in a quantum computer with nine nuclear qubits and two atomic qubits, resulting in the world’s first demonstration of atomic, silicon-based quantum computing across separate clusters.
Fidelity rates measure how well error-correction and mitigation techniques are working. Company representatives say they have achieved a state-of-the-art error rate on their bespoke architecture.
This might not sound as exciting as quantum computers with thousands of qubits, but the 14/15 architecture is massively scalable, the scientists said in the study. They added that demonstrating peak fidelity across multiple clusters serves as a proof-of-concept for what, theoretically, could lead to fault-tolerant QPUs with millions of functional qubits.
The secret sauce is silicon (with a side of phosphorous)
Quantum computing is performed using the same principle as binary computing — energy is used to perform computations. But instead of using electricity to flip switches, as is the case in traditional binary computers, quantum computing involves the creation and manipulation of qubits — the quantum equivalent of a classical computer’s bits.
Qubits come in numerous forms. Google and IBM scientists are building systems with superconducting qubits that use gated circuits, while some labs, such as PsiQuantum, have developed photonic qubits — qubits that are particles of light. Others, including IonQ, are working with trapped ions — capturing single atoms and holding them in a device referred to as laser tweezers.
The general idea is to use quantum mechanics to manipulate something very small in such a way as to conduct useful computations from its potential states. SQC representatives say their process for doing this is unique, in that QPUs are developed using the 14/15 architecture.
They create each chip by placing phosphorus atoms within pure silicon wafers.
"It's the smallest kind of feature size in a silicon chip," Michelle Simmons, CEO of SQC, told Live Science in an interview. "It is 0.13 nanometers, and it's essentially the kind of bond length that you have in the vertical direction. It's two orders of magnitude below typically what TSMC does as its standard. It's quite a dramatic increase in the precision."
Increasing tomorrow’s qubit counts
In order for scientists to achieve scaling in quantum computing, each platform has various obstacles to overcome or mitigate.
One universal obstacle for all quantum computing platforms is error correction (QEC). Quantum computations happen in extremely brittle environments, with qubits sensitive to electromagnetic waves, temperature fluctuations and other stimuli. This causes the superposition of many qubits to "collapse," and they become unmeasurable — with quantum information lost during calculations.
To compensate, most quantum computing platforms dedicate a number of qubits to error mitigation. They function in a similar way to check or parity bits in a classical network. But as qubit counts increase, so too does the number of qubits required for QEC.
"We have these long coherence times of the nuclear spins and we have very little what we call "bit flip errors." So, our error correction codes themselves are much more efficient. We're not having to correct for a bit flip and phase for errors,” Simmons said.
In other silicon-based quantum systems, bit flip errors are more prominent because qubits tend to be less stable when manipulated with coarser accuracy. Because SQC’s chips are engineered with high precision, they’re able to mitigate certain occurrences of errors experienced in other platforms.
"We really only have to correct for those phase errors," added Simmons. "So, the error correction codes are much smaller, therefore the whole overhead that you do for error correction
is much, much reduced."
The race to beat Grover’s algorithm
The standard for testing fidelity in a quantum computing system is a routine called Grover’s algorithm. It was designed by computer scientist Lov Grover in 1996 to demonstrate whether a quantum computer can demonstrate "advantage" over a classical computer at a specific search function.
Today, it’s used as a diagnostic tool to determine how efficiently quantum systems are operating. Essentially, if a lab can reach quantum computing fidelity rates in the range of 99.0% and above, it’s considered to have achieved error-corrected, fault-tolerant quantum computing.
In February 2025, SQC published a study in the journal Nature in which the team demonstrated a 98.9% fidelity rate on Grover’s algorithm with its 14/15 architecture.
In this regard, SQC has surpassed firms such as IBM and Google; although they have shown competitive results with dozens or even hundreds of qubits versus SQC’s four qubits.
IBM, Google and other prominent projects are still testing and iterating their respective roadmaps. As they scale up the qubit count, however, they’re forced to adapt their error mitigation techniques. QEC has proven to be among the most difficult to overcome bottlenecks.
But SQC scientists say their platform is so "error deficient" that it was able to break the record on Grover’s without running any error correction on top of the qubits..
"If you look at the Grover's result that we produced at the beginning of the year, we've got the highest fidelity Grover album [algorithm] at 98.87% of the theoretical maximum and, on that, we're not doing any error correction at all," Simmons said.
Simmons says the qubit "clusters" featured in the new 11-qubit system can be scaled to represent millions of qubits — although infrastructure bottlenecks may yet slow down progress..
"Obviously as we scale towards larger systems, we are going to be doing error correction," said Simmons. "Every company has to do that. But the number of qubits we will need will be much smaller. Therefore, the physical system will be smaller. The power requirements will be smaller."
]]>
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+
+ <![CDATA[ Science news this week: Japan laser weapon trial, comet 3I/ATLAS bids farewell, and AI solves 'impossible' math problems ]]>
+ This week's science news has featured some mind-blowing technological innovations, with the development of a new kind of quantum processor that lasts 15 times longer than those used by Google and IBM.
Fabricated from the rare earth element tantalum, the processor is an important step on the road to stable quantum computing. However, scientists still need to overcome key challenges, such as the processors' millisecond decoherence time and the extreme scarcity of tantalum.
The comet, which is up to several miles wide and 7 billion years old, is now traveling at 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) on a path out of our solar system.
But that doesn't mean it's the last we'll be hearing of the interstellar object, which has generated a frenzy of speculation surrounding its (incredibly doubtful) alien origins. 3I/ATLAS will leave our solar system after passing Pluto in 2029, giving scientists and spacecraft plenty of time to observe it.
Or could we chase down 3I/ATLAS before it leaves our solar system? As farfetched as it may sound, some scientists are eager to send a spacecraft after the comet before it leaves.
Doing so would not only reveal further clues as to how the comet formed, but also help to answer whether we're alone in our universe, Live Science reveals in this fascinating Science Spotlight.
Turtles' bodies are protected by hard shells that are surprisingly varied between species. But how did these natural suits of armor evolve in the first place? And can turtles really hide their heads inside their shells?
The strange behavior of pumas (Puma concolor) in Monte León National Park in Patagonia, Argentina shone a light on the surprising knock-on effects of conservation efforts this week. Pumas were forced out of the region by sheep farmers in the 20th century, but the apex predators returned when the national park was established in 2004.
So far, so typical, but scientists were surprised after the pumas set their sights on a colony of roughly 40,000 Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) that had settled in their absence. The pumas that ate the penguins began tolerating each other more than usual.
The new behavior suggests that restoring wildlife in changed habitats does more than just reset the clock — it creates entirely new behaviors and ecosystems.
Artificial intelligence models are making steady progress in cracking increasingly difficult math problems, but will they soon eclipse humans in cracking the hardest unsolved conjectures? Or is it all just hype? Live Science spoke with some of the world's best mathematicians to find out.
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best crosswords, skywatching guides and opinion pieces published this week.
This week’s science photo displays one of the most powerful, and longest lasting, cosmic explosions ever detected — a seven-hour blast that ripped from a dying star at 99% the speed of light.
The event, dubbed GRB 250702B, is the longest-duration gamma-ray burst ever recorded and may have been caused by a supernova, a star being torn to shreds by a black hole, or a black hole and helium star merging.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/tec/science-news-this-week-japan-laser-weapon-trial-comet-3i-atlas-bids-farewell-and-ai-solves-impossible-math-problems
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+ <![CDATA[ Scientists spot 'unprecedented celestial event' around the 'Eye of Sauron' star just 25 light-years from Earth ]]>Astronomers hoping to observe a planet around a nearby star have witnessed a much rarer "unprecedented celestial event," the team said: The violent aftermath of not one, but two collisions between the rocky building blocks of planets.
Over the past two decades, astronomers witnessed two separate catastrophic collisions around the star Fomalhaut, located just 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. The detections occurred after planetesimals (rocky pieces of unformed planets) measuring much larger than the dinosaur-killing asteroid smashed each other into massive clouds of glittering debris.
The Fomalhaut system is no stranger to such crashes. It's famously known as the "Eye of Sauron" due to its resemblance to the fiery, all-seeing eye from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of The Rings franchise. The likeness comes from the spectacular dust belt that surrounds Fomalhaut at a distance of 133 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being equal to 93 million miles (150 million km) — the average distance between the sun and Earth.
Formed from countless rocky, icy collisions, this belt of dust and debris provides a dustier analog of our early solar system as it appeared more than 4 billion years ago, the team said — offering a glimpse of our neighborhood's chaotic infancy, when planets were being created, destroyed, and reassembled.
False planet syndrome
A new study, conducted by an international team of researchers and led byPaul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, described these two collision events in destructive detail to help solve a planetary mystery.
In the early 2000s, astronomers observing the Fomalhaut system spotted a large, luminous object that many assumed to be a dust-covered exoplanet reflecting light. They designated this exoplanet candidate Fomalhaut b.
Yet when this supposed planet blinked out of existence and another bright point of light appeared nearby, all in the span of approximately 20 years, researchers realized they weren't viewing planets, but the shining debris clouds formed by what they call a "cosmic fender bender."
An artist’s illustration tracks the creation of dust cloud cs2 around the star Fomalhaut. In panel 1, the star appears in the top left corner while two white dots, located in the bottom right corner, represent the massive objects about to collide. In panel 2, the objects approach each other. In panel 3, they collide. In panel 4, dust cloud cs2 becomes visible and starlight pushes the dust grains away. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
Fomalhaut forensics: a history of catastrophic crashes
The two collision events, now known as Fomalhaut cs1 and Fomalhaut cs2, appear to be incredibly serendipitous. Theory suggests that collisions of this size should only happen once every 100,000 years or so, but the Fomalhaut system surprised scientists with two such smash-ups in just 20 years.
Indeed, based on this timeline, the study infers that 22 million similar events may have occurred during the Fomalhaut system's relatively young, 440-million-year-old life so far. Even if one could rewind only the past 3,000 years or so, "Fomalhaut's planetary system would be sparkling with these collisions," Kalas explained in astatement.
Reverse engineering the collisions based on factors like the mass of the debris clouds and the size of the dust grains suggests that Fomalhaut cs1 and cs2 were the result of colliding planetesimals around 37 miles (60 km) in diameter, or around four to six times the size of the asteroid that devastated the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
It's an alien event with a relatable twist: "These larger bodies are like the larger bodies that comprise our own asteroid and Kuiper belts," study co-authorJason Wang, an astronomer at Northwestern University, told Live Science via email.
And there are a lot of these bodies. Based on their reconstruction of the event, the researchers suggest that the Fomalhaut system may host 1.8 Earth masses of these primordial planetesimals. This may amount to about 300 million such bodies, according to a separate statement.
Furthermore, the system holds another 1.8 Earth masses in smaller bodies measuring less than 0.186 miles (0.3 kilometers) across. These relative runts constantly replenish the tiny dust grains, many just a few 10,000ths of an inch in size, that swirl and shimmer in Fomalhaut's dust belt. Without this rocky reservoir, the dust belt would disappear as its grains are blown out of the system by stellar wind or engulfed by its star.
An illustration of the violent collision between two planetesimals orbiting Fomalhaut. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
The planet that never was, still may be
Even though Fomalhaut b no longer exists — as a planet, at least — this "planet that never was" may actually still be hiding within the system.
Researchers calculated that, given the specific conditions, there's about a 10% chance that Fomalhaut cs1 and cs2 are not random collisions. Their similar timing and location may point to a hidden influence, such as the ghostly gravitational pull of an unseen exoplanet.
"For example, something — like planets — should be responsible for carving out the planetesimals into a dust belt that we see," Wang told LiveScience. "Additionally, we speculate that the proximity in location of the cs1 and cs2 impact sites may be driven by a planet that preferentially causes planetesimals to collide there."
Playing planetary peek-a-boo
This exoplanetary confusion highlights an important consideration for planet-hunters, and for next-generation facilities like NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory that are designed to directly image habitable-zone exoplanets in the nearby universe: "Fomalhaut cs2 looks exactly like an extrasolar planet reflecting starlight," explained Kalas.
As a result, this unique study not only informs our ideas about planetary formation, such as collision rates and debris belt mechanics, but can also help astronomers more precisely identify planetary bodies from among all the other shining celestial objects with which the universe continually dazzles us.
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- <![CDATA[ 'We were amazed': Scientists using James Webb telescope may have discovered the earliest supernova in the known universe ]]>
- Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have discovered the most distant supernova in the universe. This stellar explosion, hosted by a very faint galaxy, occurred when the universe was only 730 million years old.
Besides adding a new potential record to JWST's already-impressive list, this detection provides insight into the origin of a superbright gamma-ray burst observed in March. These sudden, short-lived outbursts of gamma-rays are among the most powerful explosions in the universe.
Dubbed GRB 250314A, the burst of energy was discovered by the Space Variable Objects Monitor, a small X-ray telescope developed by China and France. Within a couple of days of the initial alert, scientists estimated that the intense flash originated from a very distant object that existed just 730 million years after the Big Bang.
Because not many of these high-energy events have been discovered within the first billion years of the universe, this was a rare chance for astronomers to understand how early-universe stars and galaxies evolve.
When two research teams examined the properties of this gamma-ray burst, they found evidence that it may have been produced by an exploding star at the edge of the universe — confirming one of the team's predictions.
"We were amazed that our predictions worked so well, and that we had been able to demonstrate that JWST could see individual exploding stars at such extreme distances," A.J. Levan, lead author of one of the two papers and a professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, told Live Science in an email.
Short gamma-ray bursts, which last less than two seconds, are thought to arise from mergers of neutron stars, the ultradense remnants of dead stars. Long gamma-ray bursts, by contrast, are produced when massive stars collapse to form a neutron star or a black hole.
The initial burst from GRB 250314A lasted around 10 seconds, placing it comfortably in the long-duration category. Therefore, researchers were curious to know if the gamma-ray burst was produced by a supernova — the catastrophic death of a massive star.
Although gamma-ray bursts last only a few seconds to minutes, they leave behind an afterglow — smoothly fading light with energy lower than gamma-rays (X-rays, optical light, radio and infrared) that lasts several days. Because gamma-ray bursts are so brief, most of the information about them is revealed by their longer-lasting afterglows.
To confirm their predictions, the researchers had to separate the light from the afterglow, the supernova and the host galaxy. GRB 250314A produced a detectable infrared and X-ray afterglow, but luckily, it faded by the time JWST observed the site months later. Hence, this glow was expected to be too faint to explain the observed light, indicating that another source contributed to it.
"This leaves us to disentangle the [light from the] galaxy and the supernova," Levan said. If most of the light was produced by the host galaxy, then the galaxy should have been a very compact and unusually old galaxy with stars that formed at close to 200 million years after the Big Bang.
"This would be an interesting result in its own right because we don't see many galaxies like this, and in particular, this isn't the sort of galaxy you'd expect to find a gamma-ray burst in," he added.
Therefore, the gamma-ray burst's properties could be explained only by a supernova, the team concluded.
An illustration of supernova GRB 250314A as it was exploding (left) and then three months later, when Webb studied it (right). (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, L. Hustak (STScI); CC BY 4.0 INT)
The distant twin
The brightness of a supernova depends on how much radioactive material is expelled during the explosion. This, in turn, is determined by the mass of the star's core when it explodes.
For several reasons, astronomers think stars in the early universe may have had more massive cores than those seen today. The supernova associated with GRB 250314A, therefore, offered a rare opportunity to study the nature of early-universe stars. Because GRB 250314A was possibly the earliest supernova ever observed, the researchers compared it with supernovas seen in the nearby universe. Surprisingly, it turned out to be remarkably similar to modern stellar explosions.
"This may be a chance; after all, it is only one object," Levan said. "However, it could also suggest that the exploding stars [in the early universe] — and thus the overall stellar population — aren't as different as we think.."
To confirm that it is a supernova, researchers still need to reestimate how much of the observed light comes from the supernova itself and how much originates from the afterglow or the host galaxy. They plan to carry out follow-up observations next year, after the supernova has faded, which will make it much easier to separate the contributions from these different sources.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/we-were-amazed-scientists-using-james-webb-telescope-may-have-discovered-the-earliest-supernova-in-the-known-universe
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:46:41 +0000Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:28:29 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Brain scans reveal 'dial' that helps keep us from getting lost ]]>
- Scientists have identified a "dial" in the human brain that ramps up when we explore a new area — and the finding could help us understand why getting lost is often an early symptom of dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease.
Imagine you're walking a well-worn route home, but you accidentally take a wrong turn. It doesn't take long for your brain to sound alarms to tell you that you've gotten lost.
The new study, published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature Communications, combined high-powered brain imaging and virtual reality (VR) to reveal what happens in the brain when we explore both familiar and unfamiliar environments.
"When you move to a new city or travel somewhere, it doesn't happen that you just become familiar," study co-author Deniz Vatansever, a neuroscientist at Fudan University in China, told Live Science. "You have to explore your environment to become familiar with it." Vatansever and his team aimed to re-create this experience in VR.
They recruited 56 healthy volunteers ages 20 to 37, each of whom navigated a virtual world while inside a scanner. They explored the virtual environment — a grassy field surrounded by mountains — while looking for six "items" hidden throughout it. Vatansever's team monitored the volunteers' brain activity with functional MRI, a technique that tracks blood flow through the brain, as they explored familiar and unfamiliar areas of this world.
The team zoomed in on the hippocampus, a brain region that's important for memory and navigation. The seahorse-shaped hippocampus is rich with place cells, which light up in response to specific locations. Previous research had shown that one end of the hippocampus contains cells that fire when we think about location in a broad sense, such as where landmarks are in a nearby city. At the other end, place cells activate when we think about specific locations, like where we keep a box of cereal in our kitchen.
Between the "head" and "tail" of the hippocampus seahorse is a gradient of activity linking these broad and fine-tuned representations of locations. But no one had previously examined the organization of cells that respond to the newness or familiarity of a place.
Vatansever's team found that the head of the hippocampus contains cells that fired when their participants explored areas they had been in previously. Cells at the tail responded to new locations. And the whole region was arranged in a gradient, from familiar to unfamiliar.
"You could see that there's this shift in level of novelty versus familiarity as you go from one end to the other," Vatansever said.
Previous research produced mixed results on which areas of the hippocampus respond to novelty or familiarity in the environment, said Zita Patai, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London who was not involved with the research. "What they're showing is that [the discrepancy] might partially be due to the fact that it's a gradient," she told Live Science.
Other brain areas also responded differently to new and familiar locations. A region in the cortex — the brain's higher-thinking hub — had a cone-shaped gradient. "At the very center of it are bits that 'prefer' more familiarity. And as you move out, then there is greater and greater preference for being active for novelty," Vatansever said.
The team also probed whether navigating familiar and unfamiliar areas activated broader brain networks, or groups of cells spread throughout the brain that often activate in sync. Familiar areas activated networks previously linked to motor control and memory, whereas novel areas activated networks associated with focus and perception.
This division may help the brain adapt to new environments by focusing on and absorbing relevant details, Vatansever said. Then, memory and motor control combine to help navigate familiar areas, he proposed.
The findings may explain some of the earliest signs of dementia, Vatansever suggested. The cells within the gradients in the cortex and hippocampus happen to be among the first brain areas affected by Alzheimer's disease. Both the front and rear regions of the hippocampus are equally vulnerable in the condition's early stages.
Louis Renoult, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of East Anglia who was not involved with the research, said the paper demonstrated the strong links between navigation and memory.
The brain areas that help us navigate are also key for episodic memory, which relates to specific events in our lives rather than to factual knowledge, Renoult told Live Science. Episodic memory is also especially vulnerable in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
A better understanding of how navigation is encoded in the brain could reveal measurable signs of dementia's earliest stages, when the ability to navigate begins to falter.
"If you wanted to enhance people's ability to be independent, you'd want them to be able to go to new places and understand new things," Patai said. "In that sense, the link between spatial novelty and memory is really interesting."
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/neuroscience/brain-scans-reveal-dial-that-helps-keep-us-from-getting-lost
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- iWyMFowwa6LAbFZ7wSa85f
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:30:00 +0000Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:28:29 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Ancient Egyptian valley temple excavated — and it's connected to a massive upper temple dedicated to the sun god, Ra ]]>
- Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of a 4,500-year-old valley temple. The structure is part of a sun temple that ancient Egyptians built in honor of the sun god Ra, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a translated statement.
The temple is located at Abu Ghurab, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. The sun temple has two parts: an upper temple, which the archaeologists excavated several years ago, and the newly excavated valley temple, which the team started working on in 2024. The valley temple is positioned near the Nile River, and two temple parts are connected through a causeway.
The valley temple, along with the rest of the sun temple, is not an entirely new find. German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt excavated part of it in 1901, but the groundwater was higher at that time and he had to stop excavating, said Massimiliano Nuzzolo, an archaeologist with the Italian Archaeological Mission in Egypt who is co-directing the excavation team with archaeologist Rosanna Pirelli. Today the groundwater is lower and the team has managed to excavate half the valley temple since 2024.
The recent excavations have led to several discoveries, including the remains of a columned entrance portico, a public calendar of religious events carved into blocks, and dozens of decorated blocks with inscriptions that mention Pharaoh Niuserre (reign circa 2420 B.C. to 2389 B.C.), the ruler who had the temple built.
The upper temple was the main place of worship, but the valley temple made it easier for people to reach. The valley temple "was used as a landing stage for the boats approaching it from the Nile or, more likely, from one of its side channels," Nuzzolo told Live Science in an email. The "most convenient way to reach the upper temple was to enter the valley temple and go up on the hill where the upper temple was located through a ramp [the causeway]."
Part of the valley temple from an overhead view. (Image credit: Courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)
Public calendar
The valley temple had a calendar of religious events inscribed on decorated blocks. Borchardt found part of the calendar in 1901, and more of it was uncovered by the modern-day archaeological team. The events mentioned include the feasts of Sokar, a falcon-headed god associated with the Egyptian city of Memphis — a capital during the Old Kingdom. The blocks also mention the festival of Min, a god associated with fertility, and the procession of Ra.
"What is really important here is however the location of these blocks," Nuzzolo said. "They were all found in the area of the entrance portico and this seems to indicate that the façade of the temple, on the outside, was inscribed with this long calendar of feasts, possibly one of the first [examples] of 'public calendars' known so far to us."
Inscriptions found in the valley temple, which include a "public calendar" telling of religious events. (Image credit: Courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)
Stars and games
The team also found a staircase that went up to the roof of the valley temple, the ministry statement said. Ancient Egyptians likely accessed the roof to observe the sky.
"The roof of the valley temple was probably used for astronomical observations but not for the celebration of the festivals," Nuzzolo said.
After about a century of use, the valley temple was turned into a residential area, the researchers found. They discovered two wooden pieces dating to this time that were used to play a board game known as "senet." Many senet pieces have been found at other sites in Egypt, including in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, but the exact rules of the game are unclear.
"The sanctuary thus became a dwelling and one of the favourite local [games] was probably playing senet," Nuzzolo said.
Ancient Egypt quiz: Test your smarts about pyramids, hieroglyphs and King Tut
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-egyptians/ancient-egyptian-valley-temple-excavated-and-its-connected-to-a-massive-upper-temple-dedicated-to-the-sun-god-ra
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- dmCvwmCRRdrinp3KBaQWuc
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:20:56 +0000Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:28:29 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Polar bears in southern Greenland are 'using jumping genes to rapidly rewrite their own DNA' to survive melting sea ice ]]>
- Temperature stress may be driving genetic mutations in polar bears in southern Greenland, a new study reports.
But a group of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in southern Greenland may be evolving to cope with their challenging environment. Researchers have found a link between changes in polar bear DNA and rising temperatures.
The study, published Dec. 12 in the journal Mobile DNA, "shows, for the first time, that a unique group of polar bears in the warmest part of Greenland are using 'jumping genes' to rapidly rewrite their own DNA, which might be a desperate survival mechanism against melting sea ice," lead author Alice Godden, a senior research associate at the University of Anglia in the U.K., said in a statement.
The researchers analyzed the DNA of 17 adult polar bears in Greenland — 12 from the cooler northeast and five from the group in the warmer southeast. They compared transposon activity in the two populations, and then linked that with climate data.
In the Southeastern population, there were changes to genes linked to heat stress, aging, and metabolism, as well as fat processing, which is important when food is scarce. According to the study, this suggests the bears "might be adjusting to their warmer conditions."
"By comparing these bears' active genes to local climate data, we found that rising temperatures appear to be driving a dramatic increase in the activity of jumping genes within the southeastern Greenland bears' DNA," Godden said. "Essentially this means that different groups of bears are having different sections of their DNA changed at different rates, and this activity seems linked to their specific environment and climate."
Despite the bears' potential ability to adapt to warmer climates and less ice, Godden warned that climate change remains a real threat to polar bears.
"We cannot be complacent; this offers some hope but does not mean that polar bears are at any less risk of extinction," she said. "We still need to be doing everything we can to reduce global carbon emissions and slow temperature increases."
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- https://www.livescience.com/animals/polar-bears/polar-bears-in-southern-greenland-are-using-jumping-genes-to-rapidly-rewrite-their-own-dna-to-survive-melting-sea-ice
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- KmqpuNvq5K66GskKoYUYNP
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:45:39 +0000Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:19:47 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ City-size 'cosmic butterfly' carved into Mars' surface contains traces of ancient water ]]>
- A giant, city-size "butterfly" that was carved into the surface of Mars millions of years ago just got a new photo op thanks to European Space Agency (ESA) scientists. The beautiful Martian bug, which sports a pair of smooth rocky wings, is a stunning reminder of the Red Planet's violent and watery past, experts say.
The so-called butterfly is an asymmetrical impact crater, created when a hefty asteroid smashed into Mars in the distant past at an unusually low angle. It is located in the Idaeus Fossae region — an extremely uneven and previously volcanic region in Mars' northern lowlands — and is around 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) from east to west and 9.3 miles (15 km) from north to south. This makes the crater almost large enough to fit the island of Manhattan across its floor.
The latest images of the oval crater, which remains unnamed, were digitally created using topographical data collected by ESA's Mars Express orbiter, which has been scanning the Red Planet since 2003. The data was also used to create a short video that calls the crater a "cosmic butterfly" and shows what it would look like if you were to circle it in a helicopter (see below).
"The collision caused two distinct lobes of material to be flung outwards to the crater's north and south, creating two outstretched 'wings' of raised ground," ESA representatives wrote in a statement describing the butterfly. This uneven impact also sculpted the crater's floor into an "irregular," walnut-like shape, they added.
Craters like this are commonly known as butterflies because of their rounded shape and rocky wings, and they are exceedingly rare. However, this is not the first one to be spotted on Mars.
In 2006, around three years into the Mars Express orbiter's mission, the ESA spacecraft snapped a butterfly crater in the Hesperia Planum region in Mars' southern highlands. This crater is much more elongated than the Idaeus Fossae crater and arguably has a much more bug-like appearance. (Mars' southern highlands and northern lowlands lie on either side of a geographical anomaly that "splits" the planet near the equator.)
Studying these anomalous craters helps scientists better understand the angle and force of the impacts that formed them. It can also reveal clues about the hidden layers of Mars' surface and what conditions existed when the collisions occurred, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.
In the latest case, the ESA team noticed that the wings of the butterfly are much smoother than its bobbly, walnut-like floor. This suggests that this material has been "fluidized," meaning that it has been mixed with water. This most likely happened when Martian ice buried beneath the crater was melted by the impact and released into the resulting explosion, ESA representatives wrote.
It is currently unclear exactly when the newly imaged insect crater was formed or how large and fast the meteor that birthed it was. However, fragments of the space rock could potentially remain within the crater.
The Mars Express orbiter has been scanning the surface of Mars since 2003. This image shows the varying topography of the new butterfly crater. (Greens, blues and yellows represent depressions in the landscape, while reds and oranges represent elevated terrain.) (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin)
Animals on Mars
This is not the first time that scientists have found animal impostors lurking on Mars' surface.
NASA's various Mars rovers have found multiple rocks that bear a striking similarity to living creatures, including a turtle poking its head out from its shell, which was snapped by Perseverance in August, and a coral-like structure photographed by the Curiosity rover in 2022.
In September 2024, the Mars Express orbiter also helped to reveal a hidden dog-shaped blob lurking beneath Mars' North Pole.
These animal associations are often made due to pareidolia — a psychological phenomenon in which the human mind perceives a familiar pattern, such as a face or image, in random objects or structures.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/city-size-cosmic-butterfly-carved-into-mars-surface-contains-traces-of-ancient-water
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:06:26 +0000Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:19:47 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Record-breaking feat means information lasts 15 times longer in new kind of quantum processor than those used by Google and IBM ]]>
- Scientists have developed a new fabrication method for creating superconducting quantum bits (qubits) that could remain coherent for three times longer than current state-of-the-art systems in labs — allowing them to conduct more powerful quantum computing operations.
The new technique, described in a study published Nov. 5 in the journal Nature, relies on the use of a rare earth element called tantalum. This belongs to the "transition metals" group of the periodic table and is "grown" on minerals such as tantalite and silicon by building up a metallic film atom-by-atom.
Researchers used tantalum grown on silicon to create qubits capable of remaining coherent for up to 1.68 milliseconds. This is roughly three times longer than the coherence times reported in a lab setting, and up to 15 times longer than in the superconducting qubits used by the likes of Google and IBM in their quantum processing units (QPUs), the scientists said in a statement.
"The real challenge, the thing that stops us from having useful quantum computers today, is that you build a qubit and the information just doesn’t last very long," said Andrew Houck, Princeton’s dean of engineering and co-principal investigator of the study, in the study. "This is the next big jump forward."
Decoherence and imperfection
Coherence in quantum computing is a measure of how long a qubit can maintain its wave state. When qubits decohere, they lose information. This makes maintaining coherence one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing.
Scientists have spent some years trying to harness tantalum as a material to develop qubits. When a superconducting material such as tantalum is cooled to near absolute zero, circuits built within the material can operate with close to no resistance. This allows for faster quantum operations, but the speed and number of operations are fundamentally limited by how long qubits can maintain their information states.
An advantage of tantalum is that it’s easier to scrub free of contaminants that can lead to imperfections in the manufacturing process, where any irregularity can cause affected qubits to decohere faster. Tantalum’s inert resilience protects it from certain state changes related to corrosion and molecular displacement; it won’t even absorb acid when immersed. This makes it a perfect candidate for use as a superconducting material for quantum computing, the scientists said in the study.
But keeping the qubit material free from defects is only half the battle. The manufacture of a quantum processor requires both a base layer material and a substrate. In previous experiments, scientists achieved state-of-the-art quantum computing results using processors built with a tantalum base layer and a sapphire substrate. These experiments were successful, but coherence rates were still under one millisecond.
The Princeton team replaced the sapphire substrate used in those experiments with a high-resistivity silicon developed using proprietary techniques. According to the study, they achieved coherency rates as high as 1.68 milliseconds on systems as large as 48 qubits — marking an all-time best for superconducting qubits.
The new qubit design is similar to those used in superconducting quantum processors developed by leading companies such as Google and IBM. Houck even added that "swapping Princeton’s components into Google’s best quantum processor, called Willow, would enable it to work 1,000 times better."
What this means for the quantum computing industry remains unclear. While the scientists have progressed the coherence rates of qubits significantly, challenges remain. Chief among them is the availability of tantalum. As of 2025, tantalum is considered a scarce metal with most mining taking place in Africa.
While the new qubits significantly increase coherence, they still need to be tested at larger sizes using wafer-scale chipsets before they can be integrated with today’s commercially deployed quantum computers.
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- https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/record-breaking-feat-means-information-lasts-15-times-longer-in-new-kind-of-quantum-processor-than-those-used-by-google-and-ibm
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 12:15:00 +0000Tue, 16 Dec 2025 11:13:34 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Soocas NEOS II electric 2-in-1 sonic toothbrush review ]]>
- The Soocas NEOS II, released in October 2024, isn't just another electric toothbrush. It is a sleek, all-in-one oral care upgrade designed for people who value simplicity and efficiency and want something that looks the part, too.
Rather than cluttering your bathroom with multiple gadgets, this clever device combines high-frequency sonic brushing and powerful water flossing into a single unit. The result is a system that looks good and performs well.
We've been using this sonic toothbrush meets water flosser for around a month, and we've already given our separate flosser away — no, really. Our last water flosser was a novel idea at first, but in reality, after a couple of days' use it was sent to the cupboard — probably when the battery first died — where it stayed gathering dust, bar the odd occasion when we remembered we had one! With the Soocas NEOS II, we found it much easier to maintain a consistent routine.
For us, it replaced the electric toothbrush and separate water-flossing combo, and now the NEOS II sits proudly on the sink, always charged and ready to go. There are some drawbacks but overall, we were pleasantly surprised by this unique bit of kit.
Soocas NEOS II 2-in-1 toothbrush review
Soocas NEOS II 2-in-1 toothbrush review: Design
IPX8 Waterproof rating
Available in two colorways
Packaged in recycled sugarcane
The Soocas Neos II's packaging is repurposed sugarcane. In the box, you get two heads, a charger and a water tank cleaning brush. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
Key specs
Type: 2-in-1 sonic toothbrush and dental flosser.
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 1.91 x 1.75 (H x W x D)
Dimensions (cm): 21.6 x 4.86 x 3.64 (H x W x D)
Handle weight:7.9 oz (225 g)
Finish: Aluminum
Colors: Deep Violet (looks like navy blue) and Pearl White
Battery life: 30 days
Brushing modes: Deep Clean, Quick Floss
Waterproof rating: IPX8
Travel case: Not included (available as upgraded bundle)
Smart features: None
Warranty: Two years
The first thing we'll acknowledge is the packaging, which is made from recycled sugarcane — something we hope to see more of across the board. Sugarcane husk is an existing waste product: it's the dry, fibrous pulp left over after sugarcane stalks are crushed to extract their juice. A natural, plant-based material, it doesn't require extra land or deforestation, requires less energy than paper and cardboard made from wood pulp, and biodegrades in around 90 days.
A great first impression, even though the toothbrush itself isn't made from recyclable materials (as the SURI is, for example).
The Soocas Neos II charges with a magnetic cable (USB-A, no mains adapter provided) (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
The Soocas NEOS II looks like a normal, albeit chunky, electric toothbrush. That's because a 50 ml water tank built into the handle feeds the flosser. Sure, this isn't as compact as having a "regular-sized" electric toothbrush, but it certainly beats having a separate brusher, flosser and a different charger for each.
The only thing we will say about the water tank is that we wish it were accessible from the front. A couple of times, we loaded up our toothbrush with toothpaste, forgetting to fill up with water. You can guess what happened when we turned the toothbrush upside down to fill the tank.
We tested the Deep Violet version of this toothbrush, though we'd consider it more like a navy blue. It also comes in Pearl White. Both designs are discreet and would blend with any decor, but the noticeably large handle does make it stand out; you'll likely get questions from house guests who haven't seen one before.
Soocas decided to build the NEOS II to IPX8 waterproofing, meaning it can be submerged to a depth of 6.5 feet (2 meters). So if you really want to multitask your way through your morning routine, you can safely use it while showering.
Soocas NEOS II: Features
Built-in water flosser
Two modes with three pressure modes each
No smart features
Indicator lights identify the pressure setting and battery level. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
Obviously, the main feature of this 2-in-1 water flosser is that it combines a sonic toothbrush and a water flosser. One handheld device that does both jobs, so you only need one charger and one step in your teeth-cleaning routine.
There isn't an accompanying app or any particular smart features, but there are two programs.
The first, Quick Floss, is described as a 60-second "brush and flush" cycle with a fixed intensity, and is recommended for quick refreshes after mealtimes or snacks. The other mode is Deep Clean, which provides two minutes of brushing time, followed by a one-minute brush and flush. You can adjust the intensity of this mode from one to three. It is recommended that new users start on the gentle setting and gradually build up to the most intense setting as their gums adjust to the new routine.
The best way to use this toothbrush is to let it do all the hard work. Move it slowly along your teeth. Vibration reminders remind you when to move to a different part of your mouth, then a more intense vibration reminder alerts you when the flosser is about to start. You can pause the program by quickly pressing any button, then press it again to restart, or you can long-press any button to turn the toothbrush off.
The standard Soocas NEOS II ships with a water tank cleaner, two brush heads (so you can share immediately if you wish) and a magnetic charger. There is no plug adapter (the bit that goes into the wall), but we didn't mind — we have plenty around the house. There is also an "Ultimate" set that ships with two extra heads and a handy travel case. Replacement heads cost around $30 for a pack of two, and it is recommended that you replace them every three months.
We were quite happy with the functionality of this toothbrush, and we felt it did a good job – without needing an app to tell us exactly where we've brushed and flossed and where we might have missed, though perhaps some users would like this functionality. We typically brushed for as long as each program lasts (three minutes or one minute), so there's no need to use a separate timer.
Soocas NEOS II: Performance
More than 30 days of battery life
No brush-only mode
Noticeable results after a short amount of use
The water tank holds 50 ml of water, long enough for 60 seconds of flossing. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
The Socas NEOS II has a built-in, rechargeable 2600mAh lithium-ion battery that lasts more than 30 days. At around 28 days in, we're still using it on its first charge, and the battery indicator is still showing a breathing green light, which means there's still somewhere between 30% and 100% charge.
When it changes to a breathing red light, we know there is less than 30%. A constant flashing red light means there's less than 10%, and we need to plug it in. It takes about 8 hours to fully charge, so it's best to do this overnight, ready for the morning.
A water tank cleaning brush is supplied with the Soocas Neos II (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
We were very happy with the Soocas NEOS II's brushing performance, and noticed a change in the feel of our teeth after just a few days. Remember, we went from not flossing very often, or only when we remembered, to flossing every time we brush thanks to the convenience.
There is no brush-only mode. Instead, you have to stop the deep clean program partway through, before the flosser kicks in. Sometimes you just want to give your teeth a good old-fashioned scrub, so it might be worth keeping a manual toothbrush aside for these occasions, but overall, your teeth will definitely feel like they're getting extra care and attention, and they will feel and look cleaner in the gaps, too!
Sooca NEOS II toothbrush: User reviews
There were 688 global ratings on Amazon at the time of writing, and the NEOS II scored an admirable 4.5 out of 5, with over 74% of users awarding it 5 stars.
The worst ratings weren't particularly helpful, with one being "rubbish that's all I can say" and someone else saying they "didn't feel like it does a good job at cleaning or flossing."
On the other hand, there were plenty of reviews raving about the toothbrush. One user said: "This 2-in-1 toothbrush is a game-changer for oral hygiene." Another claimed, "It’s perfect for my busy lifestyle," while a third said, "The built-in water-flosser makes my teeth feel extra clean without needing a separate device."
Should you buy the Soocas NEOS II toothbrush?
Though it is bigger than a normal toothbrush, it takes up less space than a toothbrush and a separate flosser. (Image credit: Tantse Walter)
✅ Buy it if: You want to improve your dental hygiene routine but keep things simple. With one device to brush and floss, there's no excuse for skipping flossing, as we often did before.
❌ Don't buy it if: You want something with app functionality. Some users want visual feedback from an accompanying app, but you won't get that with the NEOS II.
If this product is not for you
If you want a toothbrush with smart features, the Oclean X Pro Digital Sonic gives you detailed feedback on brushing coverage. During our review, we were impressed by its brushing efficiency and by how immaculately clean our teeth were, which is ultimately what we strive for in any toothbrush.
If you'd prefer visual and vocal feedback over using an app, consider the Oclean X Ultra S. The world's first talking toothbrush, it is also customizable to a wide range of brushing needs and offers an impressive 40-day battery life.
For a great value-for-money option, have a look at the Bitvae R2. This oscillating toothbrush costs just $34.99 and is often further discounted during sales events like Prime Day and Black Friday. It comes with seven spare brush heads, features five cleaning modes and includes a pressure sensor, a feature usually only found on more expensive models.
Soocas NEOS II Toothbrush: How we tested
We spent almost a month testing the Soocas Neos II toothbrush daily. We wanted to see how easy it would slot into or change our morning routine, and considered the design, brushing performance, battery life, functionality and value for money. We also tested its IPX8 waterproof rating by submerging the toothbrush for the full three-minute deep clean cycle.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/soocas-neos-ii-electric-2-in-1-sonic-toothbrush-review
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:24:37 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Need some gift inspiration? Our favorite noise-cancelling headphones just hit their lowest-ever price ]]>
- With just 10 days to Christmas, many of us are embarking on the annual last-minute gift hunting. But what should you get your loved one this year? If you are completely lost for ideas about what the recipient would actually want to get, we have a deal that may come to the rescue — the noise-cancelling Bose QuietComfort headphones are now at their lowest-ever price and even cheaper than they were during Black Friday. That's an excellent way to give some much-needed peace and quiet, and that is something we all could use this holiday season.
We are big fans of these headphones and have been using them regularly over the past year. We even gave them a strong 4-star rating and included them in our guide to the best sleep headphones as the best option for napping on the plane. Trust us, everyone would love to get them this Christmas.
Save 51% on the Bose QuietComfort Headphones. With its efficient active noise cancellation, snug fit and up to 24 hours of battery life, they offer an excellent way to cut out background noise and drift off to your favorite tunes. Available in seven different colors.View Deal
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We reviewed the Bose QuietComfort Headphones a year ago and have been using them regularly ever since. (Image credit: Anna Gora)
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(Image credit: Anna Gora)
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(Image credit: Anna Gora)
The Bose QuietComfort headphones not only offer some of the best noise-cancelling features out there, but they are also exceptionally stylish and ultra-comfortable to wear. We have worn them in many different circumstances, from studying to long flights, and they have never failed to keep us cosy and relaxed. Not to mention, the Bose QuietComfort headphones deliver great sound quality and come in seven different colors. Now, you can get this gem for just $170.
That said, these headphones may not be the best option for fitness enthusiasts, outdoor athletes and those who need to stay aware of their surroundings. If you are shopping for a marathon runner or a seasoned hiker, consider getting them one of the best bone conduction headphones instead. The Bose QuietComfort headphones are perfect for chilling to your favorite tunes in the comfort of your bed or dozing off while on an international flight, but they are not secure-fitting and waterproof enough to withstand the demands of intense exercise.
Key features: Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity, 24 hours of battery life, foldable design, active and passive noise cancellation, Quiet and Aware Modes, dedicated app, multi-point toggle feature
Product launched: September 2023
Price history: Before today's deal, the lowest price on the Bose QuietComfort Headphones was $199.99, and for the better part of this year, the price fluctuated between $249.99 and $349.99. Today's offer from Amazon and other major retailers brings the price down to $170.05, which is the lowest price we have ever seen.
Reviews consensus: Stylish, snuggly and ultra-comfortable to wear, the Bose QuietComfort headphones offer an excellent way to cut out background noise and drift off to your favorite tunes. Reviewers across the board praised these headphones for their rich sound, efficient noise cancellation and great fit, and some testers also provided positive feedback on their touch controls and app features. On the other hand, the Bose QuietComfort Headphones were often criticised for their relatively high price, chunky case or voice control issues.
✅ Buy it if: You are looking for a snug pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
❌ Don't buy it if: You want something more durable, waterproof and sports-focused (such as the excellent Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 bone conduction headphones, now 22% off at Amazon).
What's in the photo? A perfectly white blanket of snow covering Yellowstone Lake
Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS)
When was it taken? Jan. 26, 2022
This eye-catching astronaut photo shows Yellowstone's eponymous lake covered in a thick blanket of snow, making it look like a colorless, featureless void in the surrounding landscape. But below this freezing, blank expanse lies some of the most active and hottest hydrothermal vents anywhere on Earth.
Yellowstone Lake is the largest body of water in Yellowstone National Park and the largest high-elevation lake in North America, sitting at 7,733 feet (2,357 meters) above sea level, according to the National Park Service (NPS). It is around 20 miles (32 kilometers) across at its widest point and has a maximum depth of 410 feet (125 m).
The lake freezes over every winter, around late December or early January, with an ice sheet that ranges from a few inches to around 2 feet (0.6 m) thick. But the blanket of snow on top of this ice can reach up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) deep by March, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. The lake is usually snow- and ice-free by late May or early June.
The thick covering of snow means Yellowstone Lake is remarkably resilient to human-caused climate change, maintaining its surface ice thickness despite rising atmospheric temperatures. This makes it a major outlier among high-altitude lakes across the globe.
This astronaut photo shows one of these deep snowdrifts, mostly undisturbed aside from a few islands, the largest of which is Stevenson Island.
The snow covering Yellowstone Lake can reach up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) deep. This photo of the lake was taken in February 2014. (Image credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
While the surface of Yellowstone Lake may seem cold and lifeless during the winter months, the water below remains surprisingly mild thanks to a series of hydrothermal vents across its floor. This enables aquatic animals, including the lake's cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) population — the largest of its kind anywhere in North America — to survive the long months under the ice, according to NPS.
One of the vents, right next to Stevenson Island, releases water that’s a remarkable 345 degrees Fahrenheit (174 degrees Celsius), making it hotter than Old Faithful and every other geyser or hot spring in Yellowstone National Park.
"This is much hotter than any surface hot spring at Yellowstone because the weight from the overlying lake water acts like a pressure cooker lid and allows temperatures higher than boiling to be reached," representatives from the U.S. Geological Survey wrote in an article about the lake's vents. "These are the hottest hydrothermal vents measured in a lake anywhere in the world."
Yellowstone Lake was formed shortly after a similar eruption 640,000 years ago, which carved out the 1,500-square-mile (3,900 square kilometers) caldera that the lake currently sits within. Around 130,000 years ago, a smaller eruption then carved out the doorknob-shaped handle of the lake, dubbed West Thumb (visible near the top of the astronaut photo).
For more incredible satellite photos and astronaut images, check out our Earth from space archives.
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- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/deep-snow-blanket-transforms-yellowstone-lake-into-a-giant-white-void-earth-from-space
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- Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000Tue, 16 Dec 2025 11:30:04 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 30 models of the universe proved wrong by final data from groundbreaking cosmology telescope ]]>
- After a multi-decade-year mission to understand the nature of the universe, a telescope perched in the mountain plateaus of northern Chile said goodbye in 2022. Now, its final data release is revealing the telescope's legacy: a field in tension.
In October 2007, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) saw its first light. But it was not light from a star, or even a distant galaxy. Instead, ACT was designed to hunt for microwaves, especially the kind of microwaves left over from some of the earliest epochs of the universe. This "fossil" light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), was emitted when the universe was just 380,000 years old.
The CMB offers cosmologists a pristine look at the infant cosmos. ACT was designed to complement other surveys, like the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. The Planck mission launched an orbiting spacecraft to provide a whole-sky census of the CMB. But its resolution was limited, especially in studies of the CMB's polarization (the direction in which oscillations in the CMB's magnetic and electric field point as the light travels). In contrast, even though ACT is ground-based, it could search deeper into smaller pockets of the CMB sky at a very high resolution.
ACT was especially good at looking at the CMB's polarization, which tells us a lot about the state of the early universe. If you change the amount of dark matter in the cosmos, how it's distributed, how many neutrinos there are, or any of another dozen or so properties of the cosmos, you change what the CMB's light looks like.
Final ACT
In November, the ACT team released their sixth and final public dataset as threearticlespublished in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. While cosmologists will continue to mine the data for many years to come, the core team also provided their final suite of analyses and studies before saying farewell for good.
Their findings matched what surveys like Planck had already identified: that something funny is going on with the expansion of the universe. Measurements of the present-day expansion rate, known as the Hubble rate or Hubble constant, taken with early-universe probes like Planck and ACT, reveal a number that is quite a bit slower than estimates based on nearby measurements, like supernova dimming.
This discrepancy has come to be known as the Hubble tension, and it is perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery in modern cosmology. But ACT didn't just confirm the existence of the tension; it also destroyed some very good ideas.
A map of microwave intensity (orange to blue) overlaid with the direction of magnetic polarization in those microwave emissions. Studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is helping astronomers fine tune measurements of the universe's expansion. (Image credit: The Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration)
ACT axes 30 cosmic models
Cosmologists have been busy concocting many theoretical explanations for the Hubble tension. Many of these are called "extended" cosmological models, since they take the standard cosmological picture and add a few extra ingredients or forces to the universe.
But these ingredients and forces don't just exist today; they also must have existed when the CMB was first emitted. So ACT's exquisite view of the CMB allowed the team to put many of these models — around 30, in fact — to the test.
All of them failed.
But in science, you only lose if you don't learn anything, and ACT's negative results help cosmologists in their search. In other words, you can only know the right answer once you've crossed off all the wrong answers.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/30-models-of-the-universe-proved-wrong-by-final-data-from-groundbreaking-cosmology-telescope
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- Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:50:29 +0000Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:18:35 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 5,000-year-old dog skeleton and dagger buried together in Swedish bog hint at mysterious Stone Age ritual ]]>
- Archaeologists have found the skeleton of a dog alongside a bone dagger at the bottom of a bog in Sweden. The remains are thought to be 5,000 years old and may be from a mysterious Stone Age ritual.
The unique dog burial was identified during construction work for a high-speed railway in the hamlet of Gerstaberg, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) southwest of Stockholm. Experts with the Swedish group Arkeologerna (The Archaeologists) announced the find in a statement and blog post Monday (Dec. 15).
Five millennia ago, this swampy bog was a clear lake that Stone Age people fished in. Wooden pilings and pieces of an ancient pier were discovered on the lake bed, along with a structure made from intertwined willow branches and a woven fishing basket.
But the dog skeleton and nearby dagger surprised the archaeologists.
"Finding an intact dog from this period is very unusual, but the fact that it was also buried together with a bone dagger is almost unique," Linus Hagberg, a project manager at Arkeologerna, said in the translated statement.
While the exact breed of dog is not yet known, it was a large and powerful 3- to 6-year-old male that stood about 20 inches (52 centimeters) tall. The dog had been placed in a leather bag weighted down with stones to sink it to a depth of about 5 feet (1.5 m).
Directly adjacent to the dog skeleton, the archaeologists found a well-preserved, 10-inch-long (25 cm) dagger made of elk or red deer bone. According to the Arkeologerna blog post, "daggers of this type should be considered a symbolically charged object," and other examples have been discovered in wet and boggy places in Stone Age Sweden.
The dog and dagger appear to have been deposited in the lake at the same time, which suggests that the ancient fishers who lived in this area 5,000 years ago buried them in some sort of ceremonial act, according to the blog post.
Additional work will be done on the remains, Hagberg said, including carbon dating and DNA analysis, to confirm the antiquity of the finds and to learn more about the dog and its owners.
"For example, we can see when the dog lived, its age, and what it has eaten," Hagberg said. "The dog's life history can in turn tell us more about how the people who owned the dog lived and ate."
Stone Age quiz: What do you know about the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic?
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/5-000-year-old-dog-skeleton-and-dagger-buried-together-in-swedish-bog-hint-at-mysterious-stone-age-ritual
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- Mon, 15 Dec 2025 21:23:00 +0000Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:18:35 +0000
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