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<![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]>
https://www.livescience.com
- Tue, 09 Dec 2025 17:20:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Russia's Bezymianny volcano blew itself apart 69 years ago. It's now almost completely regrown. ]]>
+ A restless Russian volcano sent an ash cloud 32,800 ft feet (10 kilometers) into the air in late November in an eruption that may bring the mountain closer to its original height.
The Bezymianny volcano is a dramatic, cone-shaped stratovolcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. It blew itself apart in 1956, but a 2020 study found that it has nearly grown back — and eruptions like the one that created an ash plume on Nov. 26 are the reason. That study found that the mountain should achieve its pre-collapse height between the years 2030 and 2035.
Seven decades ago, Bezymianny towered at least 10,213 feet (3,113 meters) above sea level. Then, on March 30, 1956, a massive eruption blew out the slope of the volcano, collapsing the summit and turning the cone-shaped mountain into a horseshoe-shaped stone amphitheater.
Almost immediately, though, the mountain started to reform, starting as a lava dome perched in the midst of this amphitheater. Over the years, the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology in Kamchatka, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has monitored the mountain's growth with fieldwork, web cameras and observation flights. A series of photographs taken from flights between 1949 and 2017 shows that the volcano has nearly reached its previous height, the researchers reports in 2020. Between 1956 and 2017, the researchers found, the mountain added 932,307.2 cubic feet (26,400 cubic meters) of rock per day, on average, the researchers found.
"The most surprising thing was the fast growth of the new volcanic edifice," study co-authors Alexander Belousov and Marina Belousova, both volcanologists at the Institute of Volcanology, told Live Science in an email.
The lava dome began growing shortly after the eruption, pictured here in 1988. (Image credit: Photo by Alexander Belousov, 1988 (Institute of Volcanology, Kamchatka, Russia Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0).)
The volcano now produces a couple of explosive eruptions a year, on average. The late-November event featured not only a billowing ash cloud, but also hot avalanches of gas and rock known as pyroclastic flows, Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program reported Dec. 2.
As the volcano reaches its original height, the stability of its slopes is an important question, Belousov and Belousova told Live Science.
"It is known that similar edifices located inside horseshoe-shaped craters can experience one more large scale collapse and, as a result, a large scale explosive eruption," they said.
Bezymianny (pictured here in 2017) is expected to reach its pre-1956 eruption height in the next five to 10 years. (Image credit: Alexandr Piragis/Getty Images)
The flyover images reviewed in 2020 showed that the volcano not only sends out explosive clouds of ash and gas, but that it grows by what scientists called effusive eruptions: non-explosive flows of lava. The first of these was visible in 1977. Over time, this lava has become less rich in the mineral silica and less viscous, or goopy. Layers of this effusive lava have built up to turn Bezymianny back into a cone-shaped stratovolcano.
Researchers are still monitoring the mountain from the ground as well as by satellite, Belousov and Belousova said. Though each volcano has its own trajectory, there are many volcanoes around the world that have experienced collapse and regrowth, such as Mount St. Helens in the U.S.
"The collected dataset is very important because the obtained knowledge allows volcanologists all over the world to make long-term forecasts of the behavior of different volcanoes which experienced large-scale collapses in their history," the researchers said.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/volcanos/russias-bezymianny-volcano-blew-itself-apart-69-years-ago-its-now-almost-completely-regrown
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+ <![CDATA[ The 17 best fitness gifts to buy for gym lovers, hand-picked by a personal trainer ]]>
+ With Christmas less than two weeks away, now is the time to focus on gift shopping. But what should you buy for the gym enthusiast in your life? The standard sweater or scented candle may not cut it, and finding a gift that complements their passion can be truly daunting if you are not versed in an active lifestyle. The best fitness gifts are those that show you understand and support their dedication to self-improvement. They should either enhance their training, optimize their recovery, or simply make their gym life a little more efficient and enjoyable.
Confused? Do not worry. We have curated a list of the 17 best fitness gifts, blending practicality, innovation, and a touch of luxury to help your favorite athlete level up their training routine in the New Year. You can trust us here — we have worked in the fitness industry for more than a decade now, and know a thing or two about what constitutes a great fitness gift. With these ideas, you can skip the guesswork and give your loved one something they will truly make use of.
Massage guns and recovery tools
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Forget basic foam rollers — the real game changers for post-exercise stiffness and muscle knots are percussion massage guns. These powerful handheld devices deliver targeted percussive therapy (rapid pulses or vibrations to the muscles), helping to alleviate soreness, increase blood flow and improve range of motion after intense workouts. If your loved one trains hard for a sporting event and/or tends to struggle with DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), giving them one of the best massage guns will show that you care just as much about their rest and well-being as you do about their effort.
The Hyperice Hypervolt 2 takes the well-deserved top spot in our guide to the best massage guns, and for a good reason. This sleek device features a lightweight, user-friendly design, five attachment heads and a dedicated app packed with guided warm-up and recovery routines. All that, and it costs under $200.
Looking for something more high-end? Then you can't go wrong with the Theragun Pro. Ultra-advanced, smart-enabled and highly customizable, this market-leading massage gun is on every athlete's wish list this holiday season. Thanks to its handy carrying case, it is also a great option for frequent travellers.
The Bob and Brad Q2 mini massage gun is an excellent alternative to the bulky and pricey Theragun and Hyperice devices mentioned above. Plus, it features a red light infrared heating head that can help warm up stiff muscles, relieve pain and boost circulation. Excellent value for less than $99.View Deal
Running headphones and sports earbuds
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Every fitness buff knows that the right soundtrack can turn a good workout into a great one. Noise-cancelling headphones are a perfect gift for a gym lover — they will block out the clanging weights, distracting conversations and underwhelming gym playlists, immersing them fully in their own auditory zone and helping them achieve their best. Make sure that the headphones are fully sweatproof, with a customizable fit and a good battery life, and, most importantly, are compatible with your intended recipient's phone.
Mind you, if your fitness lover is more of an outdoor than an indoor exerciser, they may prefer one of the best bone conduction headphones instead. They have an open-ear design that allows for situational awareness, making them a better choice for runners and hikers. They are also the only headphone type that can be used underwater — if your loved one is a swimmer or triathlete, they will surely appreciate it.
We must have done over a hundred gym workouts wearing those earbuds, and we can't recommend them enough. They excel at blocking background noises, they do not tend to slip out or feel uncomfortable, and they offer excellent battery life and a good degree of waterproofness. Not to mention, they simply sound great.
In a similar price range, we have the Apple AirPods 4. A more budget-friendly alternative to the AirPods Pro 2, these sleek earbuds offer wireless charging, great sound quality and up to 20 hours of battery life. Every iOS user would be happy to get them this Christmas.
Our all-time favorite bone conduction headphones and a 'go-to' pick for runners worldwide, the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 impressed us with their excellent sound quality, long battery life and comfortable fit. Trust us, anyone who trains outdoors would love to have them.
Gym essentials: Gym duffle bags, water bottles and towels
(Image credit: Getty Images)
An active lifestyle is not cheap, and not just because of the steep gym membership costs. The devil is in the details: you may need a reusable water bottle to keep you hydrated between sets, a towel to wipe out your sweat from the cardio machines, an ultra-grippy yoga mat to help you step up your Pilates sessions, a gym bag to keep all your bits and pieces in one place... The list goes on. This is why gym essentials make for fantastic gifts. If you can give your fitness-obsessed loved one something that will help them cut the costs of keeping fit, they will not be disappointed.
We are big fans of our Takeya Insulated Water Bottle. It is durable, leakproof and easy to clean, and most importantly, it keeps our drinks at the right temperature for hours on end. The best part? It comes in seven colors and six sizes, so there is something in store for everyone.
Yes, it is pricey, yes, it looks a bit basic, but you would be hard-pressed to find a gym bag that is more stylish, functional and easy to carry around than the Lululemon 3-in-1 Gym Duffle Bag. With a separate shoe compartment and 30L capacity, it has enough space to keep all your gym essentials.View Deal
A good yoga mat is surprisingly hard to find. If good grip, thick cushioning and durability are at the top of your loved one's priority list, consider splashing out on the premium Lululemon 5mm Reversible Yoga Mat. It is pricey, true, but we named it the best option overall in our guide to the best yoga mats, and can personally vouch for its top-notch build quality.View Deal
Fitness trackers: Smartwatches, skipping ropes and swimming goggles
(Image credit: Getty Images)
It is not just Garmin watches and smart rings — these days, fitness trackers come in all shapes and sizes, from innovative digital skipping ropes that count your jumps to smart goggles that measure your stroke rate and other vital stats when doing laps in a pool. Choosing the best fitness tracker for your loved one can be a daunting task, but it is worth the effort. Gym lovers love to keep track of their workout endeavours, and they will always appreciate a gift that helps them make sense of their fitness stats and identify areas for improvement.
Want to wow your loved one this Christmas? Give them the Garmin Fenix 8, one of the most advanced GPS wearables on the market and our all-time favorite smartwatch for tracking workouts. Ultra-rugged, dive-friendly and packed to the brim with tracking features, it is an ultimate treat for every fitness enthusiast.
This is an excellent pick for fitness nerds. The Renpho Smart Rope measures your skip time, total skip number and calories burned, and it comes with three exercise modes (free jump, time countdown and numbers countdown) as well as a dedicated app that tracks and analyzes your workouts. Fun and functional!View Deal
The Form Smart Swim 2 Swimming Goggles are an excellent alternative to wrist-worn wearables. This innovative gadget can give real-time feedback on heart rate, split times, distance and many other vital swimming stats, all without having to meddle with the buttons or interrupting workouts halfway through.
For those who prefer the old-school ways of tracking workouts, we recommend this hardcover workout journal. Beautifully crafted, thoughtfully designed and tough enough to withstand an unforgiving gym environment, this logbook offers a convenient way to stay on top of your sets and reps.View Deal
Fun fitness gifts: Games and trinkets
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Fitness gifts do not have to be serious, quite the opposite. The tongue-in-cheek presents are a particularly good option if your loved one already has every possible gym item available, or if they are in dire need of workout inspiration. This Christmas, bring a smile to their face with a fun music boxing machine, fitness board game or a set of coasters shaped like weight plates.
Make workouts fun with the top-rated Maitu Music Boxing Machine. This innovative machine combines a punching bag, dynamic LED light shows and intelligent music control for an ultimate rhythm-based gaming experience. Great for training power, stamina and cue reactivity. View Deal
Looking for something more budget-friendly? How about day-to-day items shaped like exercise equipment? Whether it is a mug that resembles a heavy dumbbell or a set of coasters that look like weight plates, these gifts will showcase your thoughtfulness and creativity.View Deal
Designed by military fitness expert Sergeant Volkin, this innovative dice game offers an easy way to combine fun and exercise with your friends and family. With endless combinations of bodyweight exercises and no equipment needed, it is suitable for people of all fitness levels. View Deal
The Boardgains Starter Edition is a classic board game and full-body bootcamp rolled into one. Fun, effective and suitable for people of all fitness levels, it offers a highly enjoyable way to exercise in group settings, without any equipment or complex rules to follow.View Deal
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/exercise/the-best-fitness-gifts-for-gym-lovers-hand-picked-a-personal-trainer
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+ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:30:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ New discoveries at Hadrian's Wall are changing the picture of what life was like on the border of the Roman Empire ]]>
+ Two millennia ago, the Roman Empire reached the limits of its power in Britain. The island marked the northernmost border of the Roman Empire and the point at which the ancient superpower's expansion came to a halt.
The Romans launched several invasions and kept 10% of the entire army in the province but failed to conquer the whole island. Instead, a militarized frontier divided the island in two — marked by the 73-mile-long (118 kilometers) Hadrian's Wall, which was the border for nearly 300 years.
One key source of information we've gleaned about this borderland is a historic fort called Vindolanda, which was built by the Romans in what is now Northumberland in England and once housed units of soldiers from across the empire. The site holds layers of history from the Roman era as it was demolished and rebuilt nine times by its occupants.
While Vindolanda has been studied for decades, new discoveries are changing the picture of what life was like on the edge of the empire. The Roman frontier was far from a forbidding, "Game of Thrones"-like outpost in the middle of nowhere, defended only by men. Instead, clues point to a diverse community that was a demographic snapshot of the entire empire. And the site is shining a light on some of the most understudied groups in Roman society.
The northern frontier
The Romans successfully invaded Britain in A.D. 43 and within a few decades had pushed as far north as Scotland. But after battles with Indigenous groups like the Caledonians, Rome pulled back to northern England. To secure the empire's position, in A.D. 122 Emperor Hadrian constructed a vast wall that spanned from what is now Newcastle in the east to Carlisle near the western coast. Hadrian's Wall, as it is now known, was dotted with forts, spikes, ditches and earthworks, and was guarded by auxiliaries — troops who were not Roman citizens but came from across the empire. (This changed in A.D. 212, when most free people in the empire were granted citizenship.)
These auxiliaries "basically go from being a conquered group living in a conquered province to being part of the very war machine that then conquers more places," Elizabeth Greene, Canada research chair in Roman archaeology at Western University in Ontario, told Live Science.
But the wall was never intended to demarcate the end of Roman influence.
"Hadrian [essentially] says, 'OK, we're going to stop here, the North is not conquered, but we control it from this line,'" Andrew Gardner, a professor of Roman archaeology at University College London, told Live Science.
While the idea of a vast wall spanning the breadth of northern Britain sounds forbidding and desolate, it was anything but, experts told Live Science.
It wasn't "the 'Game of Thrones' model of the frontier, with a great cranking elevator leading you to floor 5 million and then you just pee off the edge of the world," Marta Alberti-Dunn, deputy director of excavations at the Vindolanda Trust, told Live Science. "No, it's a very busy in-and-out space."
Military communities
Early archaeologists in the 19th century believed auxiliaries manned the frontier alone, "living like monks in fortified enclosures," Gardner told Live Science. But research has since revealed they had families with them, even before Hadrian's Wall cemented the frontier.
"Soldiers were legally not allowed to marry," which led early researchers to discount the notion of military families springing up near the frontier, Greene said. "Now does that stop anyone from having a relationship with a woman and having children? It does not. And we have a whole body of evidence that tells us that."
Excavations at Vindolanda and other sites revealed that the military forts were nestled alongside "extramural" settlements, meaning civilian settlements outside the walls. But recent research shows that the military community was even more closely intertwined, with families of officers, and even low-ranking soldiers, likely living and working inside the forts, Greene said. "We absolutely have this open community."
A treasure trove of evidence from Vindolanda has yielded unprecedented glimpses into these communities.
Around 5,000 shoe parts have been unearthed at Vindolanda and nearby Magna. A large percentage of shoes at Magna are extra-large — up to U.S. size 15. (Image credit: The Vindolanda Trust)
Key to modern archaeologists' understanding of life on the frontier are artifacts known as the Vindolanda tablets, Alberti-Dunn said. Around 1,700 of these postcard-size wooden tablets, scribbled on with ink, have been found at Vindolanda. They date to around A.D. 100, before Hadrian's Wall was built and when the fort sat on an important road.
One of the most famous tablets "is from Claudia Severa to Sulpicia Lepidina and is inviting Sulpicia to Claudia's birthday party," Alberti-Dunn said. "It's the earliest example of female handwriting [in Latin]."
A wealth of leather shoes abandoned at Vindolanda also reveal windows into people's lives, including their social status and even where they lived in the settlement.
"The shoes are really great because they tell us exactly who's there," Greene said, including women and children from the earliest occupation of the fort. Around 5,000 shoe parts have been unearthed at Vindolanda and a nearby fort called Magna, Greene noted, including mysteriously large shoes found earlier this year. (It's unclear if some people there had massive feet, or if the shoes were large because people were wearing multiple pairs of socks to stay warm.)
People and society
New discoveries at Vindolanda are also revealing that military settlements along the frontier were complex societies.
"So you've got these 'de facto wives' who are living probably outside in the extramural settlement. They have no status because they're not [Roman] citizens," Greene added. "But you've got elite women as well" who likely played a public role in frontier life, Greene said.
Researchers are also finding more evidence of enslaved people in the forts and settlements. "We know there were enslaved people in the military. Lots of them. But we know so little about them," Greene said.
A birthday invitation written on a thin wood tablet and found at Vindolanda. (Image credit: The Print Collector / Alamy Stock Photo)
For instance, in the past few years, archaeologists used new techniques to finally decipher a Vindolanda tablet that was previously illegible. It turned out to be a deed of sale for an enslaved person, according to a study published earlier this year. Other evidence includes the Regina Tombstone in the frontier fort Arbeia near Newcastle, which depicted an enslaved woman and featured an inscription that described her life.
"She was the slave of an individual named Barates. He was probably a soldier or merchant," Greene explained. "She's Catuvellauni, which is a British tribe. He's from across the empire in Syria, she was his slave and he married her."
Merchants also gathered around the forts, and the Vindolanda tablets chronicle discussions about money and supplies, and even show evidence that local Celtic entrepreneurs profited from the military outpost.
"These are people who serve each other's needs," Alberti-Dunn said. "The people who might reside outside the fort need the people who live inside the fort in order to make money out of them."
Diverse frontier
Auxiliaries on the frontier were recruited from across the empire — from the Netherlands, Belgium, and even Spain and Syria — and they brought diverse cultures to the northern frontier.
That meant people stationed there amalgamated beliefs. "At Vindolanda, we have a stone to De Gallia, the personification of Gaul; we have a stone to a goddess named Ahvardua, which is not known anywhere else but there," Greene said. In the empire religious syncretism — combining different religions or beliefs — was accepted, and there were syncretized deities in Vindolanda, Greene added.
The troops stationed at the forts may have even brought their own unique hierarchies. "The Batavians [a German tribe from what is now the Netherlands] put out that they could cross a river in full armor and not drown," Alberti-Dunn said.
These fearless, bloodthirsty assassins were notoriously hard to rule, and the Batavians addressed their commanding officer as "my king," Alberti-Dunn said. That suggests the commanding officer was Batavian nobility akin to a client king whom the Romans appointed because it was too difficult to control the Batavians otherwise, Alberti-Dunn added.
Danger and boredom
With such a large military presence, it's easy to think the frontier was dangerous. But evidence paints a mixed picture.
There are hints of tumultuous periods, such as the Romans' abandonment of the farther north Antonine Wall in Scotland just 20 years after they built it in A.D. 142, Rebecca Jones, keeper of history and archaeology at National Museums Scotland, told Live Science.
Another moment of danger came during Septimius Severus' invasion of Scotland in A.D. 208. "It's one of the bloodiest times for Britain, it's horrible for the Roman army. [There were] uncounted casualties on the Roman side, uncounted casualties on the non-Roman side," Alberti-Dunn said. "It's just a hot mess."
But for most of the Roman period, frontier life was more mundane. One tablet discusses preparing for storms, while another reveals a soldier, unprompted, sent a fellow soldier socks and underwear. Others concern gardening.
People in the settlements, meanwhile, staved off boredom by playing games and visiting bathhouses.
Vindolanda's military fort and extramural settlement right alongside it. This site has yielded a treasure trove of clues about life in the Roman Empire. (Image credit: makasana photo via Alamy)
Frontier life came with other downsides. New research detailing the excavation of a latrine revealed that many soldiers had worms, Jones noted, while research published last year revealed the widespread presence of bedbugs. "It doesn't make the whole thing particularly glamorous," Jones added.
Ongoing research into what Roman soldiers in Britain ate suggests it was a meat-heavy diet — particularly beef. "I think meat was absolutely core to the Roman military diet," Richard Madgwick, a professor of archaeological science at Cardiff University who is leading the project, told Live Science.
Archaeologists have also found evidence of imported foods, such as wine and fish oil along Hadrian's Wall, as well as North African cooking styles on the Antonine Wall, Jones noted.
The local people
Britain was populated by more than 20 different Celtic groups, such as the Iceni in the east — made famous by Boudica — and the Brigantes and Caledonians farther north. But the Romans rarely mention Britons — one Vindolanda tablet dismissively calls them Britunculi — "wretched little Brits."
Researchers are digging deeper into life in these Celtic communities. "There's a mixture of deprivation, oppression and poverty," Gardner said. "At the same time, in some situations, there's a degree of opportunity."
Yet-to-be-published research indicates Iron Age communities north of the wall saw a population drop between A.D. 200 and 400, during the later Roman Empire period of Britain, Jones said.
"That reduction of population could be for enslavement; it could be through violence and death," Jones added. "It could also be through conscription and enlistment."
The Romans set up camps north of Hadrian's Wall and maintained a military presence to some extent in the north, Gardner noted, which may have contributed to this population decline.
Growing evidence suggests that Celtic people north and south of the frontier profited from the Roman presence. For example, evidence has revealed that Roman forces were being supplied with animals bred in Highland Scotland, Madgwick noted. "Is it trading, or is it raiding? The more I look into it, the more I think there's evidence that these were being bred and raised with Romans in mind. … This was a fantastic economic opportunity."
The auxiliary units guarding the frontier even recruited British men. "This is the paradox of people's lives being shaped by … the imposition of military control, people being killed, people being enslaved," Gardner said. "But local people find ways to live still and sometimes to find opportunities. So even joining the military itself becomes an opportunity," he added.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/new-discoveries-at-hadrians-wall-are-changing-the-picture-of-what-life-was-like-on-the-border-of-the-roman-empire
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+ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:22:33 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Diagnostic dilemma: Man caught rabies from organ transplant after donor was scratched by skunk ]]>
+ The patient: A man in Michigan
The symptoms: The man received a left kidney transplant in an Ohio hospital, and about five weeks later, he began experiencing tremors, weakness in his lower extremities and urinary incontinence, as well as confusion.
What happened next: About a week after these initial symptoms emerged, the man was hospitalized with additional health problems, including fever and difficulty swallowing. He also developed hydrophobia, or an irrational fear of water. Once hospitalized, he required breathing support with a ventilator.
The diagnosis: The man's doctors suspected that his signs and symptoms indicated a rabies infection, so they consulted the Ohio Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the case. Various clinical samples from the patient were sent to the CDC for testing and ultimately came back positive for rabies RNA, the genetic material of the virus, as well as antibodies against the virus.
The treatment: Within a week of being hospitalized, the patient died of his infection. Once a rabies infection is established, there is no effective cure available. There are only about 30 reports of people surviving symptomatic rabies in the medical literature, and doctors can't yet reliably replicate this outcome. As such, rabies is nearly always fatal.
(People who suspect they may have been exposed to rabies — for example, after being bitten by an animal — can be treated with anti-rabies antibodies or vaccines to help prevent the virus from triggering an infection in the first place. This preventative treatment is very effective.)
Upon learning about the suspected infection, the CDC and state- and local-level partners launched an investigation into possible contamination of the donor kidney. The donor had been from Idaho and the investigators got in touch with the donor's family.
It turned out that "in late October 2024, a skunk approached the donor as he held a kitten in an outbuilding on his rural property," the report says. "During an encounter that rendered the skunk unconscious, the donor sustained a shin scratch that bled, but he did not think he had been bitten. According to the family, the donor attributed the skunk’s behavior to predatory aggression toward the kitten."
Five weeks after being scratched, the donor began experiencing symptoms consistent with rabies, including confusion, difficulty swallowing, hallucinations and a stiff neck, a family member said. He then fell unconscious at home and didn't wake up, though he was resuscitated and hospitalized. He was declared brain dead and removed from life support five days later.
Notably, hospital staff members who treated the donor were initially unaware of the skunk scratch and attributed his symptoms to chronic conditions, not to rabies. That said, they took various clinical samples from the patient that the CDC then retroactively tested for the virus.
A biopsy from the donor's right kidney tested positive, but there wasn't a big enough sample from the left kidney to test. Nonetheless, this supported the idea that the donor kidney was likely the source of the Michigan man's rabies.
"This was the fourth reported transplant-transmitted rabies event in the United States since 1978," the case report noted. "However, the risk for any transplant-transmitted infection, including rabies, is low." In short, this chain of events is very unlikely, and hospitals follow extensive protocols to safeguard against transplanting infected organs into patients.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/viruses-infections-disease/diagnostic-dilemma-man-caught-rabies-from-organ-transplant-after-donor-was-scratched-by-skunk
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+ Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ This bright star will soon die in a nuclear explosion — and could be visible in Earth's daytime skies ]]>
+ An incredibly luminous star system that has long baffled astronomers could soon light up the sky with the nuclear brilliance of thousands of suns, new research suggests. When that happens, the results may be visible from Earth with the naked eye — in day or night.
The star system, called V Sagittae, is composed of a white dwarf — the dense core of a dead, sun-like star — and a more-massive stellar companion, located about 10,000 light-years away, in the constellation Sagitta, the arrow. The voracious white dwarf is gorging on material from its companion "at a rate never seen before," the team said in a statement.
These two stars are locked in an extraterrestrial tango so tight that they orbit each other in just 12.3 hours, swinging gradually closer with each orbit, according to the statement. Now, researchers have confirmed that the doomed dance will eventually end with the two stars crashing together and producing a supernova so bright it will be visible during the day.
"The matter accumulating on the white dwarf is likely to produce a nova outburst in the coming years, during which V Sagittae would become visible with the naked eye," Pablo Rodríguez-Gil, a professor at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Spain and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
Understanding the beast
An illustration of a nova: an explosion that occurs when a white dwarf star siphons too much material from its larger stellar companion. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick, M. Zamani)
In a study published in November in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international research team led by the University of Turku in Finland analyzed the light emitted by V Sagittae to better understand exactly what type of beast it may be.
These data were gathered over a 120-day observation period by the X-Shooter spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, situated at an altitude of 8,600 feet (2,600 meters) atop Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert.
Spectrographs like X-Shooter collect incoming light from celestial objects and then separate that light into its constituent wavelengths. This provides a spectrum that reveals the object's chemical composition, since each atom and molecule absorbs and reflects a certain wavelength of light. For perspective, think of how a prism splits white light into its constituent colors to produce a rainbow.
This spectral data helped the researchers re-analyze V Sagittae's characteristics. Previously, in a study from 1965, astronomers calculated that its two stars were 0.7 and 2.8 solar masses, though this is a controversial conclusion.
To constrain stellar sizes, this more recent study considered factors like orbital period to suggest that the entire system may be below 2.1 solar masses, with both the white dwarf and its companion each weighing in at around 1 solar mass.
Phil Charles, a professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, described the confusion surrounding this "very important system." The uncertainty stems from V Sagittae's complicated, constantly fluctuating light emissions, which are "more likely due to fast outflows" rather than the stars' orbital motions, making it hard to pin down their sizes.
"From our study we show that no one has yet been able to uniquely identify the orbital motion of each component, and hence we don't yet have a good measure of each star's mass." Charles told Live Science via email.
An orbiting nuke
The researchers also identified V Sagittae as a supersoft X-ray source (SSS), meaning it generates lower-energy X-rays compared with hard sources like active black holes and colliding neutron stars. Classical SSS are composed of an accreting white dwarf and a more massive star whose gas is overspilling and falling onto the white dwarf.
V Sagittae's prodigious gravitational appetite is causing a sustained thermonuclear reaction on the white dwarf's surface, turning it into an orbiting nuke and the brightest SSS in the galaxy, researchers said in a statement.
In fact, even during its fainter phases V Sagittae is 100 times brighter than other variable star systems. The speed of the infalling material in the white dwarf's accretion disk shifts dramatically and unpredictably, sometimes in just days, as it struggles to consume all the material it pilfers from its partner, the team said in a separate statement.
As a result, a significant amount of material has escaped and formed a ring, or halo, of gas that encircles both stars, composing a "circumbinary disk" with a radius that may span about two to four times the separation between the two stars.
A daytime supernova
V Saggitae's chaotic accretion and extreme brightness are signs of its imminent, violent death, which will be prefaced by an explosive appetizer, as it were, offering a promising scenario for hopeful stargazers: a nova explosion.
Novae occur when an accreting white dwarf engulfs too much material and then explosively ejects it from their surface. These stellar explosions do not destroy their white dwarfs but are nonetheless stunning, with the average nova shining hundreds of thousands of times as brightly as the sun. Since they do not destroy their white dwarfs, these novae can reoccur across thousands or millions of years.
Yet this spectacular sight will only be a prelude to the main event. When the stars spiral into each other and smash together, they'll produce a "supernova explosion so bright it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime," adds Rodríguez-Gil.
This ultimately brilliant finale may occur as early as 2067, according to a 2020 study from Louisiana State University, which predicted V Saggitae's demise based on the decreasing orbital period of its stars. Charles concludes that if the "[observed] period decline continues then it must happen, but stellar evolution is hard to predict exactly, so that might easily change!"
So keep an eye tuned toward Sagitta for a nova and mark your calendars for the supernova that will spectacularly spell the end of one of our galaxy's most tantalizing star systems.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/this-bright-star-will-soon-die-in-a-nuclear-explosion-and-could-be-visible-in-earths-daytime-skies
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+ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:13:09 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'It is simply too hot to handle': 2024 was Arab region's hottest year on record, first-of-its-kind climate report reveals ]]>
+ The Arab region — a vast swath of 22 countries in northern Africa and the Middle East — had its hottest year on record in 2024, according to a first-of-its-kind climate report. In 2024, the region had an alarmingly high average temperature that was 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.08 degrees Celsius) higher than the annual average temperature from 1991 to 2020, the report found.
The rate of warming in the region is accelerating alongside an increase in climate-related events such as flooding and heatwaves, according to the firstState of the Climate in the Arab Region report, published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Dec. 4.
"2024 was the hottest year on record for the Arab region — a continuation of a long-term trend," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. Some heat waves, she said, are "pushing society to the limits. Human health, ecosystems and economies can't cope with extended spells of more than 50° Celsius [122 F] — it is simply too hot to handle."
The Arab region covers 5 million square miles (13 million square kilometers) from Morocco to the United Arab Emirates. It contains 15 of the world's 20 most water-scarce countries. Much of the region is dry and arid, though some areas in North Africa experience wetter winters.
According to the report, the Arab region warmed about 0.77 F (0.43 C) per decade between 1991 and 2024 — twice as fast as the global average during that time period, and about twice as fast as the period from 1961 to 1990.
In the decade from 2015 to 2024, temperatures across the region were about 0.9 F (0.58 C) higher than the 1991 to 2020 average and 2.6 F (1.44 C) higher than the average from 1961 to 1990. In 2024, several countries experienced multiple heatwaves, some lasting up to two weeks. Southeastern parts of the Near East had 12 days in 2024 where the maximum temperature was at least 122 F (50 C).
Air temperature anomalies in the Arab region (Image credit: World Meteorological Organization)
In addition to heat extremes, drought affected parts of North Africa for the sixth year in a row, though this isn't outside the norm for the region. Rains that fell after long drought episodes caused flash flooding in several countries, including Morocco, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.
"Droughts are becoming more frequent and severe in one of the world’s most water-stressed regions," Saulo said. "And at the same time, we have seen some disruptive and dangerous deluges."
Many extreme weather events happened in the Arab region in 2024, a new report found. (Image credit: World Meteorological Organization)
Early warning systems for both severe weather and natural disasters such as flooding could help protect people in the region as these events become more frequent, according to the report.
"Multi-hazard early warning systems are more important than ever before — this is not a cost but an investment in saving lives and livelihoods," Saulo wrote in a foreword to the report. "Nearly 60% of Arab countries have such systems in place, above the global average but still not enough."
Several countries are also investing in strategies to improve water management, including seawater desalination, building new dams and creating new wastewater treatment facilities.
The report is a "qualitative step towards enhancing our collective understanding of climate patterns, associated risks and their social and economic impacts," Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, said in the statement.
The report also included predictions of future climate scenarios in the region from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offering a framework in which to plan for climate impacts in the coming years.
"By incorporating climate projections, the report provides an annual snapshot of current conditions, while also serving as a strategic foresight tool that empowers the region to prepare for tomorrow's climate realities," Rola Dashti, United Nations Executive Secretary of Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, said in the statement.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/the-arab-region-a-swath-from-morocco-to-the-united-arab-emirates-just-had-its-hottest-year-on-record
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+ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 21:08:58 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Earth's crust hides enough 'gold' hydrogen to power the world for tens of thousands of years, emerging research suggests ]]>
+ In 1987, a worker lit a cigarette by a new water well near the village of Bourakebougou in Mali.
But as he did, an explosion reverberated inside the well. We now know this was due to previously undetected clouds of flammable hydrogen wafting from a gas reservoir beneath the hole.
The well was plugged and temporarily abandoned. Then, in 2011, the oil and gas company Petroma (which later became Hydroma) uncemented it to examine whether they could extract hydrogen for profit. By 2012, the company had developed the well to make electricity for Bourakebougou, and the village still relies on this hydrogen for power today.
Bourakebougou's well is the world's first and only productive hydrogen well. Mixed with oxygen in fuel cells, hydrogen — the smallest and simplest molecule in existence — can generate electricity without greenhouse gas emissions and with only heat and water as byproducts. This makes hydrogen a clean source of energy, and demand for it is expected to rise fivefold by 2050 to produce microelectronics, supply industry, and power vehicles and buildings.
Hydrogen is lighter than air and very reactive, so scientists long thought it didn't accumulate inside Earth's crust in the same way fossil fuels do. But the discovery in Bourakebougou, along with more recent finds, has completely shifted this paradigm.
Resource exploration companies are now rushing to find reservoirs of natural hydrogen, also known as "gold" hydrogen. To help them, scientists have identified the key "ingredients" needed to form such accumulations. And thanks to this knowledge, techniques to boost or mimic natural hydrogen generation that were once considered impracticable are gaining traction, experts told Live Science.
"We just keep finding more and more the more we start looking for it," Geoffrey Ellis, a petroleum geochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told Live Science.
Paradigm shift
Hydrogen is a source of energy, but it is also a critical component of fertilizer, refined oil and rocket fuel. Industry produces almost all of its hydrogen by heating natural gas with steam to form a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide from which hydrogen can be extracted.
This method makes "gray" hydrogen, and it pumps about 1 billion tons (920 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year — equivalent to 2.4% of global annual emissions. In theory, renewable energies can replace natural gas to generate "green" hydrogen, while "blue" hydrogen is made from fossil fuels but with carbon capture, meaning carbon doesn't enter the atmosphere. But these collectively make up a tiny fraction of hydrogen production worldwide.
"Hydrogen is a clean source of energy, but how you get your hydrogen is critical," Chris Ballentine, a professor of geochemistry at the University of Oxford, told Live Science.
However, a new source of hydrogen could slash the industry's carbon footprint, as it turns out that huge quantities of hydrogen can accumulate belowground. Scientists have long known that rocks in Earth's crust produce hydrogen, but experts previously concluded that the gas couldn't collect in reservoirs because only tiny concentrations of it were being found in oil and gas wells.
The discovery in Mali toppled that theory. Researchers realized that the places where companies drill for oil and gas are not the best places to find hydrogen.
Massive reservoirs, waiting to be found
The Mali discovery has kicked off a worldwide hunt for hydrogen reservoirs. But before geologists initiate costly exploration projects, they need a sense of just how much hydrogen might be lurking underground.
New estimates suggest it's a staggering amount. Earth's continental crust has produced enough hydrogen over the past 1 billion years to meet society's current energy needs for 170,000 years, a recent review by Ballentine and his colleagues found. Though much of this hydrogen has escaped into the atmosphere, the figure is "a starting point for realizing that the hydrogen generation in the crust is significant," Ballentine said.
Other estimates double the figure in the Ballentine paper. Ophiolites are chunks of oceanic crust that have been thrust onto the continental crust, and some estimates suggest these ocean-crust remnants may produce as much hydrogen as the continental crust does, Ballentine said.
But how much of this hydrogen is left in Earth's crust? In 2024, Ellis and his colleagues calculated that the planet holds 6.2 trillion tons (5.6 trillion metric tons) of hydrogen, or about 26 times the amount of oilknown to be left in the ground. Where these hydrogen stocks are located is largely unknown. Most are likely too deep or too far offshore to be accessed, and some reservoirs might be too small to be worth extracting — but the researchers emphasized that just 2% of the total hydrogen could supplant our current fossil fuels for 200 years.
"The potential that's down there is quite, quite large," Ellis said. What's more, natural hydrogen, unlike the type made via industrial processes, comes with built-in storage because it sits in Earth's crust. It also has a much smaller carbon footprint than manufactured hydrogen, with emissions coming only from extraction, Ellis said.
The ingredients
In January 2025, Ellis and his colleagues published a map showing where hydrogen reservoirs might exist in the lower 48 U.S. states. The researchers used gravity and magnetic signal data to estimate the composition of rocks throughout Earth's crust and determine where hydrogen may have migrated underground.
"This was the first time that anyone had attempted to do this type of mapping exercise," Ellis said.
This USGS map shows where we might find hydrogen reservoirs in the lower 48 U.S. states. Dark blue shows places where the likelihood of finding hydrogen is the highest. (Image credit: U.S. Geological Survey)
The researchers estimated the likelihood of productive hydrogen reservoirs, known as prospectivity, based on six geological requirements that make and trap hydrogen in Earth's crust. On the map, prospectivity ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning there is likely no hydrogen and 1 indicating hydrogen is very likely present.
To form a hydrogen reservoir, the first and second requirements are that a region must have abundant groundwater and hydrogen-producing rocks. The water requirement limits hydrogen production to the top 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the crust, Oliver Warr, an assistant professor of geochemistry at the University of Ottawa, told Live Science.
Natural hydrogen is produced when iron-rich rocks react with water in Earth's crust. (Image credit: Live Science)
The best hydrogen-producing rocks are iron-rich rocks, which generate hydrogen through "hydration reactions," where water reacts with the rocks. Other good sources of hydrogen are uranium- and thorium-rich rocks, which produce alpha particles as the radioactive elements decay. These alpha particles can then split water into oxygen and hydrogen — a process known as radiolysis, Warr said.
Iron-rich rocks include basalt and gabbro. Earth's mantle, the layer beneath the crust, heats groundwater, producing steam that reacts with iron and generates hydrogen. Uranium- and thorium-rich rocks include granites, and these can trigger the radiolysis of water.
The third requirement is that the source rocks be very, very hot — between 480 and 570 degrees Fahrenheit (250 to 300 degrees Celsius), which guarantees rapid rates of reaction, Ellis said.
Fourth, the region must have reservoir rocks that can hold the hydrogen after it is produced and migrates through the crust. Reservoir rocks are typically porous sandstones, but other types of rock can also work if they are highly fragmented, Ellis said.
The fifth criterion to form a hydrogen reservoir is an impermeable "seal" to trap the gas inside the reservoir. "A thing like a shale, or maybe a salt, would be really ideal to be sitting on top of that porous rock," Ellis said. Crucially, the seal must exist when the hydrogen is produced, or else the gas escapes into the atmosphere, he said.
The sixth and final condition is that there must be minimal microbial activity where hydrogen is generated and accumulates, because microbes consume hydrogen, Warr said.
These six conditions, or ingredients, occur across all continents, Ballentine said. Currently, hydrogen companies are drilling exploratory wells mostly on the Midcontinent Rift — where North America started, but ultimately failed, to split apart 1 billion years ago — which is abundant in iron-rich rocks.
Looking ahead
Researchers are also investigating hydrogen deposits in Oman, where there are ophiolites. University of Colorado geologists are running a pilot project in the country to test the feasibility of "stimulated hydrogen" production, Ellis said.
The radiolysis of water can also produce natural hydrogen in Earth's crust. (Image credit: Live Science)
Stimulated hydrogen production takes inspiration from what scientists have learned about the geology that makes and accumulates hydrogen. It involves injecting water into Earth's crust to kick-start either hydration reactions or radiolysis.
One year ago, people in the hydrogen industry were skeptical that stimulated hydrogen production would ever materialize, Ellis said. But now, "I've seen a big shift," he said.
If we can find natural hydrogen and extract it, the gas could reduce emissions across a wide range of sectors. For example, abundant hydrogen is found in mines, because this is where humans drill deepest into the crust, so the gas could power mining operations, Warr said.
Natural hydrogen could also slash emissions from industries such as fertilizer manufacturing. "If we can replace hydrogen generated from hydrocarbons with clean hydrogen, then we can very rapidly make a massive difference," Ballentine said.
Natural hydrogen won't solve the climate crisis, but it can mitigate some of the risks. "It needs to be one of many strategies," Warr said. "We just need to understand the true potential and how it can best be capitalized on."
Some of the key considerations for companies are whether the benefits of developing natural hydrogen reservoirs when we find them would justify the cost of building production plants on-site, or shipping the gas to the industries that need it.
"If you're remote and you find a really big gas field, it still may not be worthwhile producing it, because the costs of getting hydrogen to market are too great," Ballentine said. "There's a trade-off."
But overall, experts are optimistic. "There have been, I think, over a dozen wells that have been drilled now in the U.S.," Ellis said. "They've found a lot of hydrogen."
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/earths-crust-hides-enough-gold-hydrogen-to-power-the-world-for-tens-of-thousands-of-years-emerging-research-suggests
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+ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 20:01:33 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Widespread cold virus you've never heard of may play key role in bladder cancer ]]>
+ Scientists think a very common childhood infection may be linked to bladder cancer — and now, they're figuring out the chain reaction that connects the two diseases.
It's known that people who get kidney transplants are three times more likely to develop bladder cancer than the general population. Researchers have hypothesized that because transplant patients are immunosuppressed, dormant viruses lurking in the body are given the opportunity to reactivate.
These sleeping pathogens include BK virus (BKV), also called human polyomavirus type I, a common cold virus that 95% of people pick up as children. After an infection, the virus then lies dormant in the kidney. This introduces a question: Can the BK virus cause cancer years after it infects someone?
In a study published Dec. 3 in the journal Science Advances, researchers showed that the virus can cause the type of DNA damage that is also seen in bladder cancer that occurs later in life. But instead of finding DNA mutations directly caused by the virus, the researchers found that the culprit was the body's own immune system.
"This is a nicely-done laboratory study to show a possible way that BKV could have a larger role in bladder cancer than previously thought," Dr. Patrick Moore, a tumor virology researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email.
Connecting the dots
There are several types of viral infections that can lead to cancer. Some viruses, such as HPV, hijack the host cells of the infected person and insert their viral genetic material into the human genome, which causes the host cell to become cancerous. However, in some cancers, like those originating in the bladder, no detectable virus is present —but nonetheless, there are genetic signs of a previous viral infection.
"The long-running narrative since the 1950s has been that smoking and industrial exposures are the big cause of bladder cancer," said senior study author Simon Baker, a cancer researcher at the University of York in the U.K. But the patterns of DNA mutation seen in bladder cancers are different from those resulting from chemical carcinogens.
Instead, the cancers bear mutational signatures known to be caused by a family of enzymes called APOBEC. Normally, these enzymes help form the body's first-line defense against viruses and other pathogens. "They have these signatures from APOBECs, and we know APOBECs are part of the antiviral host defense," Baker explained.
Baker and his team took healthy human bladder cells and infected them with the BK virus in lab dishes. They found that the cells not only exhibited mutations similar to those seen in bladder cancer but also boosted the activity of APOBEC3, an enzyme that damages viral genomes in response to infection.
When the scientists turned off APOBEC3 and then infected the cells with the BK virus, the DNA damage didn't occur. This finding suggests that the enzyme made by the host cell was causing the damage, not the virus itself.
Additionally, the researchers found increased APOBEC3 expression and cancer-like genetic mutations in nearby "bystander" cells that hadn't been infected with the virus. So, a cell doesn't have to contain the actual virus to accumulate genetic mutations caused by an infection elsewhere in the body.
"That was a surprise," Baker said. "But the reason it makes perfect sense is that … bladder cancers don't have viruses in them." This finding starts to unravel the connection between early-life viral infections and cancers diagnosed decades later.
A starting point
Although these initial data are impactful, Moore said he would like to see whether patients with bladder cancer are infected more often with the BK virus than people without the cancer.
"It is intriguing," he said, "but only a starting point and work needs to be done to show its actual importance to human cancer."
When a person contracts the BK virus in childhood, they generally experience common cold symptoms before recovering. The virus then stays inactive, or dormant, in the kidney, bladder and tubes between the two organs. For most people, it never becomes an issue, and it's not routinely tested for outside of hospital settings.
For those about to have a kidney transplant, however, the immunosuppressants that prevent the rejection of their new kidney can also result in the reactivation of the BK virus, possibly damaging the kidneys, ureter and bladder in the process.
Tim Tavender, a kidney transplant patient from Southampton, developed a BK virus infection following his procedure and eventually had bladder cancer.
"Seeing this research makes me hopeful," Tavender told The Independent. "If scientists like Dr. Baker can find new ways to control BK virus, it could spare other people from going through what I did — and that would be life changing."
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/health/cancer/widespread-cold-virus-youve-never-heard-of-may-play-key-role-in-bladder-cancer
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+ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 19:15:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Gray hair may have evolved as a protection against cancer, study hints ]]>Graying hair could be a sign that the body is effectively protecting itself from cancer, a new study suggests.
Cancer-causing triggers, such asultraviolet (UV) light or certain chemicals, activate a natural defensive pathway that leads to premature graying but also reduces the incidence of cancer, the research found.
The researchers behind the study tracked the fate of the stem cells responsible for producing the pigment that gives hair its color. In mouse experiments, they found that these cells responded to DNA damage either by ceasing to grow and divide — leading to gray hair — or by replicating uncontrollably to ultimately form a tumor.
The findings, reported in October in the journalNature Cell Biology, underline the importance of these sorts of protective mechanisms that emerge with age as a defense against DNA damage and disease, the study authors say.
Graying hair as cancer defense
Healthy hair growth is dependent on a population of stem cells that constantly renews itself within the hair follicle. A tiny pocket within the follicle contains reserves of melanocyte stem cells — precursors to the cells that produce the melanin pigment that gives hair its color.
"Every hair cycle, these melanocyte stem cells will divide and produce some mature, differentiated cells," said Dot Bennett, a cell biologist at City St George's, University of London who was not involved in the study. "These migrate down to the bottom of the hair follicle and start making pigment to feed into the hair."
Graying occurs when these cells can no longer produce sufficient pigment to thoroughly color each strand.
"It's a sort of exhaustion called cell senescence," Bennett explained. "It's a limit to the total number of divisions that a cell can go through, and it seems to be an anti-cancer mechanism to prevent random genetic errors acquired over time propagating uncontrollably."
When the melanocyte stem cells reach this "stemness checkpoint," they cease to divide, meaning the follicle no longer has a source of pigment to color the hair. Ordinarily, this occurs with old age as the stem cells naturally reach this limit. However,Emi Nishimura, a professor of stem cell age-related medicine, and colleagues at the University of Tokyo were interested in how this same mechanism operates in response to DNA damage — a key trigger for cancer development.
In mouse studies, the team used a combination of techniques to track the progress of individual melanocyte stem cells through the hair cycle after exposing them to different harmful environmental conditions, including ionizing radiation and carcinogenic compounds. Intriguingly, they found that the type of damage influenced how the cell reacted.
Ionizing radiation caused the stem cells to differentiate and mature, and ultimately activated the biochemical pathway responsible for cell senescence. As a result, the melanocyte stem cell reserves were rapidly depleted over the hair cycle, thus halting the production of further mature pigment cells and leading to gray hair.
Meanwhile, by essentially switching off cell division, this senescence pathway prevented the mutated DNA from passing into a new generation of cells, thus lowering the likelihood of those cells forming cancerous tumors.
Exposure to chemical carcinogens — such as 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene (DMBA), a tumour initiator widely used in cancer research — appeared to bypass this protective mechanism. Instead of switching on senescence, it toggled on a competing cellular pathway.
This alternative chemical sequence blocked cell senescence in the team's mouse studies, enabling the hair follicles to retain their stem cell reserves and the ability to produce pigment, even after DNA damage. That meant that the hair retained its color, but in the long term, the unchecked replication of damaged DNA led to tumor formation and cancer, the team said in a statement.
These findings reveal that the same stem cell population can meet opposite fates depending on the type of stress they're exposed to, lead study author Nishimura said in the statement. "It reframes hair graying and melanoma [skin cancer] not as unrelated events, but as divergent outcomes of stem cell stress responses," Nishimura added.
The next step will be to translate this understanding into human hair follicles, to see whether these observations in mice carry over to people, Bennett said.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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- <![CDATA[ Today's biggest science news: Japan earthquake | Comet 3I/ATLAS X-ray | Robot kicks CEO ]]>
- Here's the biggest science news you need to know.
The remotely operated camera filmed its own demise inside the Halema'uma'u crater on Saturday (Dec. 6) as a wall of volcanic debris approached and knocked it offline.
Kilauea volcano is one of the world's most active volcanoes and has erupted almost continuously on Hawaii's Big Island for more than 30 years.
The latest activity marked the 38th episode of the Kilauea summit's eruption cycle, which began on Dec. 23, 2024. We've seen plenty of lava fountains before, but the USGS's cameras are rarely this close to the action.
'Hobbit' extinction
A reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. (Image credit: Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post. via Getty Images)
A drought may have doomed the small ancient human species Homo floresiensis, nicknamed "the hobbit," Live Science contributor Owen Jarus reports.
New research suggests that declining rainfall could have reduced the population of Stegodon (extinct elephant relatives) that H. floresiensis relied on for food, and, in turn, forced the Hobbit to compete with modern humans (us).
H. floresiensis lived in Indonesia from at least 100,000 years ago until about 50,000 years ago. Researchers still have a lot to learn about these enigmatic ancient humans, the remains of which have only ever been found in one cave, and it remains uncertain whether they interacted with us.
Species typically go extinct for multiple reasons. In the case of H. floresiensis, a volcanic eruption may have also been a significant factor in their demise.
A natural disaster evacuation point in Japan. (Image credit: HABesen via Getty Images)
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has hit off the northeastern coast of Japan's main island, Honshu. The earthquake struck at 11:15 p.m. local time (9:15 a.m. EST).
The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued tsunami warnings in three regions: the central part of the Pacific Coast of Hokkaido region, the Pacific Coast of Aomori Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture. The expected maximum tsunami height is between 3.2 and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 meters).
The earthquake was most intense in Hachinohe City where there was a seismic intensity of 6+ — such intensity means it is "impossible to remain standing or to move without crawling," according to the Japan Meteorological Agency's explanation of seismic intensity.
Tsunami Info Stmt: M7.6 Hokkaido, Japan Region 0615PST Dec 8: Tsunami NOT expected; CA,OR,WA,BC,and AKDecember 8, 2025
The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center tweeted at 9:32 a.m. EST that a tsunami was not expected in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia or Alaska.
Rare sacrificial complex found in Russia
Researchers have reported the discovery of a "sacrificial complex" in Russia. (Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
Russian archaeologists recently discovered a collection of hundreds of horse bridle bits and bronze beads near the burial mounds of high-status nomads from the fourth century B.C.
While the artifacts themselves are not exactly surprising — after all, these nomadic peoples relied on horses for travel — their collection as a kind of "sacrifice" is unusual.
To learn more about this discovery, which oddly included a gold plaque depicting a tiger, check out my coverage here.
Look out for Northern Lights
Geomagnetic storms can result in visible auroras, like those pictured here over Cypress Island in the U.S. (Image credit: Joel Askey / 500px via Getty Images)
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch for tomorrow (Dec. 9), with the potential for visible auroras over many U.S. states from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
The aurora forecast comes as multiple blasts of plasma, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), hurtle toward Earth from the sun. CMEs have the potential to clash with Earth's magnetic field and trigger geomagnetic storms.
Tomorrow's strong geomagnetic storm forecast is associated with the eruption of a solar flare on Saturday. The resulting CME is predicted to arrive at midday tomorrow.
The Space Weather Prediction Center noted that the CME could also have limited, minor effects on technological infrastructure, but this can usually be mitigated.
And tonight…
Parts of the Northern Hemisphere could see some auroras on Monday, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.
The Space Weather Prediction Center has forecast a less intense G1 geomagnetic storm as a result of a separate CME that left the sun on Dec. 4, while the U.K.'s Met Office has the more intense G3 watch in place for tonight and tomorrow.
Our sun is very active at the moment. The Space Weather Prediction Center recorded another powerful solar flare earlier today. The X1.1-level flare triggered high-frequency radio disruptions over parts of Australia and southern Asia, according to NOAA.
Tsunami hits Japan
Japan issued a tsunami warning earlier today. (Image credit: GREG BAKER / AFP via Getty Images)
A tsunami has hit Japan following a magnitude 7.6 earthquake off the northeastern coast of Honshu, the country's main island, earlier today.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has recorded tsunami waves hitting Japan's eastern coastline. The precise height of the waves is unclear at this time, but most are in the 3-foot-tall (1 meter) or less category.
There are no reported deaths at this time, although there are some reports of injuries.
Japan downgrades tsunami warning
Japan has downgraded its tsunami warning to a tsunami advisory. The initial warning meant that the authorities expected a maximum tsunami height of between 3.3 feet and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 m).
However, an "advisory" level means that the expected maximum height has been reduced to 3.3 feet, in keeping with the wave heights recorded thus far.
Earthquake injuries and damage
The Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, addressed the media following a major earthquake off the country's main island earlier today. (Image credit: JIJI PRESS / AFP via Getty Images)
There have been some reports of injuries and damage in Japan as a result of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck off Japan's main island earlier today. However, these initial reports are limited.
Sky News reported that several people have been injured in coastal communities, but that it was unclear how many.
A hotel employee in Hachinohe City told the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, NHK, of multiple injuries. In this case, everyone involved was conscious.
Japan's Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, told reporters on Tuesday morning local time that seven injuries had been reported, according to Reuters. The government has set up a task force in response to the earthquake.
Nuclear power plants appear to be working normally, according to NHK.
This is a developing story and we expect more details to emerge over the next 24 hours.
U.K. sign off
I'm signing off on the U.K. side, but as always, there's more to come from my U.S. colleagues.
You blockhead!
The "cube" shaped skull shown on the left, along with 3D scans (middle and right). (Image credit: INAH; Technical Archive of the Physical Anthropology Section of CINAH Tamaulipas)
In Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip, Lucy often calls Charlie Brown a "blockhead." Archaeologists in Mexico recently discovered another kind of blockhead — a man whose skull had been shaped as an infant into something resembling a cube.
While head-shaping (also called cranial vault modification) is a practice that people around the world and through time have done to their kids, this particular shape was a surprise to researchers, who'd never seen it in that area of Mexico before.
For more information on the skull and the man it belonged to over a millennium ago, check out my coverage here.
Dark matter hunt fails — and scientists are excited
A simulation of the cosmic web. Scientists think some of these filaments are held together by dark matter. (Image credit: ESA)
A Herculean effort to search for dark matter has found no evidence for the elusive substance. That's the takeaway from a gigantic particle detector located a mile underground in South Dakota.
The 417-day-long experiment, known as LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), looked at the light signatures released as particles collide with xenon atoms in a giant vat, which is placed deep underground so that most particles from space cannot muddy the results.
Dark matter, which emits no light yet exerts gravitational force, is thought to make up most of the universe. And the new findings tightly constrain the properties of one the leading candidates for dark matter.
You can read all about why scientists are actually happy about these negative results in contributor Elizabeth Howell's story here.
Watch 3 astronauts return from the ISS
Jonny Kim of NASA and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy of Roscosmos bidding adieu to Earthbound people at the Cosmonaut Hotel ahead of their launch on April 8, 2025 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. They are returning to Earth today after eight months in space. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Three astronauts — NASA's Jonny Kim and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky — will be making the long journey home tonight. The trio has orbited Earth together 3,920 times, traveling a mind-boggling 104 million miles (167 million kilometers) since they launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in April, according to NASA.
The trio is scheduled to leave the ISS via a Soyuz spacecraft today at 8:41 p.m. EST (0141 GMT on Dec. 9) and will land in Kazakhstan near the city of Dzhezkazgan, Live Science's sister site Space.com is reporting.
The journey is scheduled to last around 3.5-hours — a speedy trip when you consider that it takes about 6 hours to fly between New York and San Francisco on a commercial plane.
Can waste cooking oil be used as an ultra-sticky glue? (Image credit: Getty Images (background) / Mahadas et al. (inset))
What should you do with the leftover cooking oil in your pot after dinner? Pour it down the drain and feed the growing fatberg under your town? Or maybe do what a team of chemists just did, and use it to make a super-sticky adhesive polymer with unbelievable strength.
As described in a recent study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers devised a way to break down waste oil molecules, then recombine them in a variety of ways. One recombination resulted in a super-adhesive polyester plastic.
When the team used this polyester to glue two metal plates together, they found it could hold up hundreds of pounds of weight, and even tow a car. Read all about the amazing discovery in contributor Mason Wakley's new story on Live Science.
See you later
The U.S. is signing off for the night, but check back here tomorrow for the latest science news from our U.K. team.
Japan earthquake update
Good morning, science fans. Patrick here to kick off the day's science news blog coverage.
I want to begin with an update on Japan, which was rocked by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake off the northeastern coast of Honshu, the country's main island, yesterday.
More than 30 people were injured in the earthquake, Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK reports. However, there haven't been any reports of major damage, according to Reuters.
Japanese authorities issued a tsunami warning immediately following the quake. The initial warning meant that the authorities expected a maximum tsunami height of between 3.3 and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 meters). However, this was subsequently downgraded to an advisory before being lifted altogether.
Officials issued a tsunami warning immediately after the earthquake, which has since been lifted. (Image credit: Bedirhan Demirel/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Megaquake advisory
A collapsed bookshelf at a high school library in Aomori Prefecture, following the major earthquake off northeastern Japan yesterday. (Image credit: JIJI Press / AFP via Getty Images)
Japan is now on "mega-quake" alert for a week, with the Japan Meteorological Agency warning that a magnitude 8 or higher earthquake could strike over the next few days.
The northeastern region of Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2011, the deadliest in its history, just two days after it experienced an earthquake in the magnitude 7 range.
The government, therefore, issues a mega-quake warning whenever the region is hit by a significant earthquake, according to Reuters.
However, earthquakes are notoriously unpredictable.
A Christmas star
Skywatchers have many theories about the "Star of Bethlehem." (Image credit: Getty Images)
Jupiter is shining bright in the night sky this winter, with Live Science contributor Jamie Carter drawing comparisons between it and the "Star of Bethlehem."
Does this biblical star have any astronomical origins? Find out more by reading Carter's full story here.
Auroras incoming
The northern lights can produce dazzling night sky displays, like the one pictured here over Wisconsin on Nov. 11. (Image credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch in place for today (Dec. 9), with the potential for visible auroras over many U.S. states from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
The geomagnetic storm is associated with the eruption of a solar flare on the sun, which is thought to have sent a blast of plasma (coronal mass ejection, or CME) toward Earth.
Space weather forecasters have been expecting the CME to clash with Earth's magnetic field and trigger the geomagnetic storm, along with the potentially visible auroras.
The CME could also have limited, minor effects on technological infrastructure, but this can usually be mitigated, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
Kick me with your best shot
A Chinese robotics company has released a promotional video of a humanoid robot kicking its CEO boss to the floor.
In the video, EngineAI's Zhao Tongyang gears up to take a strike from the T800 robot. The robot misses its first kick, but connects cleanly with the second, knocking the CEO off his feet.
75kg class head-on brawl! EngineAI T800 kicks the boss: Is this kick personal?#EngineAI #robotics #newtechnology #newproduct pic.twitter.com/UCRrP0qBazDecember 6, 2025
EngineAI said that the purpose of the simulated fight was to counter claims that its latest model was a CGI creation, CNN reports.
While the T800 appears to have a decent kick, it doesn't go unnoticed that Tongyang was standing still, waiting patiently for his robot to strike.
With that in mind, don't expect to see robots beating UFC fighters anytime soon.
Another climate milestone
Global warming is fuelling wildfires and having a variety of other adverse environmental impacts. (Image credit: LBochev via Getty Images)
As of November, this year is tied with 2023 for annual global surface temperature, but the temperature is slightly cooler than it was in 2024, the warmest year on record.
The latest data suggests that next month we'll be able to say that the last three years were the warmest on record — an ominous consequence of global warming.
Researchers measure global temperature rise above the estimated average temperature between 1850 and 1900, known as pre-industrial levels.
World leaders promised to limit this warming to preferably below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) and well below 3.6 F (2 C) in the 2015 Paris Agreement, adopted at the United Nations' COP21 climate conference. Unfortunately, they're failing.
The latest Copernicus data reveals that 2025 was another hot year for annual global surface air temperature. (Image credit: C3S/ECMWF)
"For November, global temperatures were 1.54 C above pre-industrial levels, and the three-year average for 2023–2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 C for the first time," Samantha Burgess, the strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which implements the Copernicus program, said in a statement.
"These milestones are not abstract ��� they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess added.
It's worth remembering that last month, climate deliberations at the COP30 conference in Brazil ended in an underwhelming compromise. The final text of the COP30 agreement didn't contain any clear mention of fossil fuels, which are the primary source of increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Comet 3I/ATLAS gets an X-ray
An X-ray image of comet 3I/ATLAS reveals a faint emission structure stretching about 250,000 (400,000 kilometers) around the comet. (Image credit: JAXA)
Comet 3I/ATLAS has been viewed through an X-ray space telescope for the first time, revealing an X-ray glow stretching about 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) around the interstellar visitor.
This is the first time researchers have been able to detect X-rays emanating from an interstellar comet.
The comet was observed as part of the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Researchers across the globe are scrambling to learn all they can about comet 3I/ATLAS before this rare interstellar visitor exits our solar system next year.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope got a great view of comet 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30. (Image credit: NASA / Hubble)
XRISM observed comet 3I/ATLAS between Nov. 26 and Nov. 28, just as the comet moved far enough away from the sun to be visible to the telescope’s instruments.
"Comets are enveloped by clouds of gas produced as sunlight heats and vaporizes their icy surfaces," XRISM representatives wrote in a statement. "When this gas interacts with the energetic stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun — the solar wind — a process called charge-exchange reaction occurs, producing characteristic X-ray emission."
The researchers described the glow in the X-ray image as a "faint emission structure" and said it was potentially the result of a diffuse cloud of gas.
However, the researchers also noted that instrumental effects such as vignetting or detector noise can create similar structures in images, so they'll have to do follow-up analysis to confirm whether the extensive emission structure belongs to the comet.
"Moving forward, the XRISM team will continue refining its data processing and analysis to further reveal the activity of this interstellar comet and the nature of its interaction with the solar wind," the representatives wrote.
Over and out
I'm signing off now with the rest of the U.K. team. As always, keep checking back for more science news from my U.S. colleagues. Patrick out.
More parents refusing the vitamin K shot for their babies
Newborns in the U.S. are recommended to get a shot of vitamin K at birth to prevent a dangerous vitamin deficiency. (Image credit: Image taken by Mayte Torres via Getty Images)
New research in JAMA finds that more parents are opting out of giving their babies a recommended vitamin K shot at birth. And that puts babies at risk, experts say.
"We know unequivocally that infants that don't receive vitamin K are at significantly higher risk of getting serious bleeding," the lead study author told Scientific American.
All newborns are recommended to receive an injection of vitamin K, a nutrient that helps the body form blood clots. Older children and adults get vitamin K from their diets and their gut microbiomes, but babies are born with very little.
The nutrient doesn't easily pass through the placenta and babies' microbiomes are too immature to make it; breast milk also contains relatively little vitamin K, and regardless, vitamin K given to babies by mouth isn't absorbed well. That means babies are vulnerable to vitamin K deficiency, which can lead to dangerous bleeding, and in turn, permanent brain damage or death.
The one-time vitamin K shot protects babies from this deficiency extremely effectively and safely. Since universal administration of the vitamin was started in 1961, the U.S. has "nearly eliminated" vitamin K deficiency bleeding. But now, our numbers are slipping.
The JAMA analysis found that, between 2017 and 2024, the rate of vitamin K shot refusal has risen nearly 80%, with the proportion of newborns not given the shot rising from 2.92% to 5.18%.
Anecdotally, I've seen my share of breathless, online influencers spreading misinformation about vitamin K shots. Their efforts are closely tied to — if not indistinguishable from — the anti-vaccine movement, despite vitamin K shots not being vaccines. Often, the influencers promote unproven alternatives to the shot, which they personally happen to sell.
But to put it plainly: when vitamin K administration goes down, the rate of babies dying goes up. The new JAMA study calls attention to that disturbing trend. You can learn more about the vitamin K shot from the American Academy of Pediatrics and their informational site, Healthy Children.
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+ <![CDATA[ Today's biggest science news: James Webb sees earliest supernova | Monogamy 'league table' | Comet 3I/ATLAS X-ray ]]>
+ Here's the biggest science news you need to know.
The remotely operated camera filmed its own demise inside the Halema'uma'u crater on Saturday (Dec. 6) as a wall of volcanic debris approached and knocked it offline.
Kilauea volcano is one of the world's most active volcanoes and has erupted almost continuously on Hawaii's Big Island for more than 30 years.
The latest activity marked the 38th episode of the Kilauea summit's eruption cycle, which began on Dec. 23, 2024. We've seen plenty of lava fountains before, but the USGS's cameras are rarely this close to the action.
'Hobbit' extinction
A reconstruction of Homo floresiensis. (Image credit: Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post. via Getty Images)
A drought may have doomed the small ancient human species Homo floresiensis, nicknamed "the hobbit," Live Science contributor Owen Jarus reports.
New research suggests that declining rainfall could have reduced the population of Stegodon (extinct elephant relatives) that H. floresiensis relied on for food, and, in turn, forced the Hobbit to compete with modern humans (us).
H. floresiensis lived in Indonesia from at least 100,000 years ago until about 50,000 years ago. Researchers still have a lot to learn about these enigmatic ancient humans, the remains of which have only ever been found in one cave, and it remains uncertain whether they interacted with us.
Species typically go extinct for multiple reasons. In the case of H. floresiensis, a volcanic eruption may have also been a significant factor in their demise.
A natural disaster evacuation point in Japan. (Image credit: HABesen via Getty Images)
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake has hit off the northeastern coast of Japan's main island, Honshu. The earthquake struck at 11:15 p.m. local time (9:15 a.m. EST).
The Japan Meteorological Agency has issued tsunami warnings in three regions: the central part of the Pacific Coast of Hokkaido region, the Pacific Coast of Aomori Prefecture and Iwate Prefecture. The expected maximum tsunami height is between 3.2 and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 meters).
The earthquake was most intense in Hachinohe City where there was a seismic intensity of 6+ — such intensity means it is "impossible to remain standing or to move without crawling," according to the Japan Meteorological Agency's explanation of seismic intensity.
Tsunami Info Stmt: M7.6 Hokkaido, Japan Region 0615PST Dec 8: Tsunami NOT expected; CA,OR,WA,BC,and AKDecember 8, 2025
The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center tweeted at 9:32 a.m. EST that a tsunami was not expected in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia or Alaska.
Rare sacrificial complex found in Russia
Researchers have reported the discovery of a "sacrificial complex" in Russia. (Image credit: Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
Russian archaeologists recently discovered a collection of hundreds of horse bridle bits and bronze beads near the burial mounds of high-status nomads from the fourth century B.C.
While the artifacts themselves are not exactly surprising — after all, these nomadic peoples relied on horses for travel — their collection as a kind of "sacrifice" is unusual.
To learn more about this discovery, which oddly included a gold plaque depicting a tiger, check out my coverage here.
Look out for Northern Lights
Geomagnetic storms can result in visible auroras, like those pictured here over Cypress Island in the U.S. (Image credit: Joel Askey / 500px via Getty Images)
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch for tomorrow (Dec. 9), with the potential for visible auroras over many U.S. states from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
The aurora forecast comes as multiple blasts of plasma, or coronal mass ejections (CMEs), hurtle toward Earth from the sun. CMEs have the potential to clash with Earth's magnetic field and trigger geomagnetic storms.
Tomorrow's strong geomagnetic storm forecast is associated with the eruption of a solar flare on Saturday. The resulting CME is predicted to arrive at midday tomorrow.
The Space Weather Prediction Center noted that the CME could also have limited, minor effects on technological infrastructure, but this can usually be mitigated.
And tonight…
Parts of the Northern Hemisphere could see some auroras on Monday, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.
The Space Weather Prediction Center has forecast a less intense G1 geomagnetic storm as a result of a separate CME that left the sun on Dec. 4, while the U.K.'s Met Office has the more intense G3 watch in place for tonight and tomorrow.
Our sun is very active at the moment. The Space Weather Prediction Center recorded another powerful solar flare earlier today. The X1.1-level flare triggered high-frequency radio disruptions over parts of Australia and southern Asia, according to NOAA.
Tsunami hits Japan
Japan issued a tsunami warning earlier today. (Image credit: GREG BAKER / AFP via Getty Images)
A tsunami has hit Japan following a magnitude 7.6 earthquake off the northeastern coast of Honshu, the country's main island, earlier today.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has recorded tsunami waves hitting Japan's eastern coastline. The precise height of the waves is unclear at this time, but most are in the 3-foot-tall (1 meter) or less category.
There are no reported deaths at this time, although there are some reports of injuries.
Japan downgrades tsunami warning
Japan has downgraded its tsunami warning to a tsunami advisory. The initial warning meant that the authorities expected a maximum tsunami height of between 3.3 feet and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 m).
However, an "advisory" level means that the expected maximum height has been reduced to 3.3 feet, in keeping with the wave heights recorded thus far.
Earthquake injuries and damage
The Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, addressed the media following a major earthquake off the country's main island earlier today. (Image credit: JIJI PRESS / AFP via Getty Images)
There have been some reports of injuries and damage in Japan as a result of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck off Japan's main island earlier today. However, these initial reports are limited.
Sky News reported that several people have been injured in coastal communities, but that it was unclear how many.
A hotel employee in Hachinohe City told the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, NHK, of multiple injuries. In this case, everyone involved was conscious.
Japan's Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, told reporters on Tuesday morning local time that seven injuries had been reported, according to Reuters. The government has set up a task force in response to the earthquake.
Nuclear power plants appear to be working normally, according to NHK.
This is a developing story and we expect more details to emerge over the next 24 hours.
U.K. sign off
I'm signing off on the U.K. side, but as always, there's more to come from my U.S. colleagues.
You blockhead!
The "cube" shaped skull shown on the left, along with 3D scans (middle and right). (Image credit: INAH; Technical Archive of the Physical Anthropology Section of CINAH Tamaulipas)
In Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip, Lucy often calls Charlie Brown a "blockhead." Archaeologists in Mexico recently discovered another kind of blockhead — a man whose skull had been shaped as an infant into something resembling a cube.
While head-shaping (also called cranial vault modification) is a practice that people around the world and through time have done to their kids, this particular shape was a surprise to researchers, who'd never seen it in that area of Mexico before.
For more information on the skull and the man it belonged to over a millennium ago, check out my coverage here.
Dark matter hunt fails — and scientists are excited
A simulation of the cosmic web. Scientists think some of these filaments are held together by dark matter. (Image credit: ESA)
A Herculean effort to search for dark matter has found no evidence for the elusive substance. That's the takeaway from a gigantic particle detector located a mile underground in South Dakota.
The 417-day-long experiment, known as LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), looked at the light signatures released as particles collide with xenon atoms in a giant vat, which is placed deep underground so that most particles from space cannot muddy the results.
Dark matter, which emits no light yet exerts gravitational force, is thought to make up most of the universe. And the new findings tightly constrain the properties of one the leading candidates for dark matter.
You can read all about why scientists are actually happy about these negative results in contributor Elizabeth Howell's story here.
Watch 3 astronauts return from the ISS
Jonny Kim of NASA and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy of Roscosmos bidding adieu to Earthbound people at the Cosmonaut Hotel ahead of their launch on April 8, 2025 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. They are returning to Earth today after eight months in space. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Three astronauts — NASA's Jonny Kim and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky — will be making the long journey home tonight. The trio has orbited Earth together 3,920 times, traveling a mind-boggling 104 million miles (167 million kilometers) since they launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in April, according to NASA.
The trio is scheduled to leave the ISS via a Soyuz spacecraft today at 8:41 p.m. EST (0141 GMT on Dec. 9) and will land in Kazakhstan near the city of Dzhezkazgan, Live Science's sister site Space.com is reporting.
The journey is scheduled to last around 3.5-hours — a speedy trip when you consider that it takes about 6 hours to fly between New York and San Francisco on a commercial plane.
Can waste cooking oil be used as an ultra-sticky glue? (Image credit: Getty Images (background) / Mahadas et al. (inset))
What should you do with the leftover cooking oil in your pot after dinner? Pour it down the drain and feed the growing fatberg under your town? Or maybe do what a team of chemists just did, and use it to make a super-sticky adhesive polymer with unbelievable strength.
As described in a recent study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers devised a way to break down waste oil molecules, then recombine them in a variety of ways. One recombination resulted in a super-adhesive polyester plastic.
When the team used this polyester to glue two metal plates together, they found it could hold up hundreds of pounds of weight, and even tow a car. Read all about the amazing discovery in contributor Mason Wakley's new story on Live Science.
See you later
The U.S. is signing off for the night, but check back here tomorrow for the latest science news from our U.K. team.
Japan earthquake update
Good morning, science fans. Patrick here to kick off the day's science news blog coverage.
I want to begin with an update on Japan, which was rocked by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake off the northeastern coast of Honshu, the country's main island, yesterday.
More than 30 people were injured in the earthquake, Japan Broadcasting Corporation NHK reports. However, there haven't been any reports of major damage, according to Reuters.
Japanese authorities issued a tsunami warning immediately following the quake. The initial warning meant that the authorities expected a maximum tsunami height of between 3.3 and 9.8 feet (1 and 3 meters). However, this was subsequently downgraded to an advisory before being lifted altogether.
Officials issued a tsunami warning immediately after the earthquake, which has since been lifted. (Image credit: Bedirhan Demirel/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Megaquake advisory
A collapsed bookshelf at a high school library in Aomori Prefecture, following the major earthquake off northeastern Japan yesterday. (Image credit: JIJI Press / AFP via Getty Images)
Japan is now on "mega-quake" alert for a week, with the Japan Meteorological Agency warning that a magnitude 8 or higher earthquake could strike over the next few days.
The northeastern region of Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake in 2011, the deadliest in its history, just two days after it experienced an earthquake in the magnitude 7 range.
The government, therefore, issues a mega-quake warning whenever the region is hit by a significant earthquake, according to Reuters.
However, earthquakes are notoriously unpredictable.
A Christmas star
Skywatchers have many theories about the "Star of Bethlehem." (Image credit: Getty Images)
Jupiter is shining bright in the night sky this winter, with Live Science contributor Jamie Carter drawing comparisons between it and the "Star of Bethlehem."
Does this biblical star have any astronomical origins? Find out more by reading Carter's full story here.
Auroras incoming
The northern lights can produce dazzling night sky displays, like the one pictured here over Wisconsin on Nov. 11. (Image credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch in place for today (Dec. 9), with the potential for visible auroras over many U.S. states from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
The geomagnetic storm is associated with the eruption of a solar flare on the sun, which is thought to have sent a blast of plasma (coronal mass ejection, or CME) toward Earth.
Space weather forecasters have been expecting the CME to clash with Earth's magnetic field and trigger the geomagnetic storm, along with the potentially visible auroras.
The CME could also have limited, minor effects on technological infrastructure, but this can usually be mitigated, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
Kick me with your best shot
A Chinese robotics company has released a promotional video of a humanoid robot kicking its CEO boss to the floor.
In the video, EngineAI's Zhao Tongyang gears up to take a strike from the T800 robot. The robot misses its first kick, but connects cleanly with the second, knocking the CEO off his feet.
75kg class head-on brawl! EngineAI T800 kicks the boss: Is this kick personal?#EngineAI #robotics #newtechnology #newproduct pic.twitter.com/UCRrP0qBazDecember 6, 2025
EngineAI said that the purpose of the simulated fight was to counter claims that its latest model was a CGI creation, CNN reports.
While the T800 appears to have a decent kick, it doesn't go unnoticed that Tongyang was standing still, waiting patiently for his robot to strike.
With that in mind, don't expect to see robots beating UFC fighters anytime soon.
Another climate milestone
Global warming is fuelling wildfires and having a variety of other adverse environmental impacts. (Image credit: LBochev via Getty Images)
As of November, this year is tied with 2023 for annual global surface temperature, but the temperature is slightly cooler than it was in 2024, the warmest year on record.
The latest data suggests that next month we'll be able to say that the last three years were the warmest on record — an ominous consequence of global warming.
Researchers measure global temperature rise above the estimated average temperature between 1850 and 1900, known as pre-industrial levels.
World leaders promised to limit this warming to preferably below 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) and well below 3.6 F (2 C) in the 2015 Paris Agreement, adopted at the United Nations' COP21 climate conference. Unfortunately, they're failing.
The latest Copernicus data reveals that 2025 was another hot year for annual global surface air temperature. (Image credit: C3S/ECMWF)
"For November, global temperatures were 1.54 C above pre-industrial levels, and the three-year average for 2023–2025 is on track to exceed 1.5 C for the first time," Samantha Burgess, the strategic lead for climate at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which implements the Copernicus program, said in a statement.
"These milestones are not abstract — they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess added.
It's worth remembering that last month, climate deliberations at the COP30 conference in Brazil ended in an underwhelming compromise. The final text of the COP30 agreement didn't contain any clear mention of fossil fuels, which are the primary source of increased greenhouse gas emissions.
Comet 3I/ATLAS gets an X-ray
An X-ray image of comet 3I/ATLAS reveals a faint emission structure stretching about 250,000 (400,000 kilometers) around the comet. (Image credit: JAXA)
Comet 3I/ATLAS has been viewed through an X-ray space telescope for the first time, revealing an X-ray glow stretching about 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) around the interstellar visitor.
This is the first time researchers have been able to detect X-rays emanating from an interstellar comet.
The comet was observed as part of the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Researchers across the globe are scrambling to learn all they can about comet 3I/ATLAS before this rare interstellar visitor exits our solar system next year.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope got a great view of comet 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 30. (Image credit: NASA / Hubble)
XRISM observed comet 3I/ATLAS between Nov. 26 and Nov. 28, just as the comet moved far enough away from the sun to be visible to the telescope’s instruments.
"Comets are enveloped by clouds of gas produced as sunlight heats and vaporizes their icy surfaces," XRISM representatives wrote in a statement. "When this gas interacts with the energetic stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun — the solar wind — a process called charge-exchange reaction occurs, producing characteristic X-ray emission."
The researchers described the glow in the X-ray image as a "faint emission structure" and said it was potentially the result of a diffuse cloud of gas.
However, the researchers also noted that instrumental effects such as vignetting or detector noise can create similar structures in images, so they'll have to do follow-up analysis to confirm whether the extensive emission structure belongs to the comet.
"Moving forward, the XRISM team will continue refining its data processing and analysis to further reveal the activity of this interstellar comet and the nature of its interaction with the solar wind," the representatives wrote.
Over and out
I'm signing off now with the rest of the U.K. team. As always, keep checking back for more science news from my U.S. colleagues. Patrick out.
More parents refusing the vitamin K shot for their babies
Newborns in the U.S. are recommended to get a shot of vitamin K at birth to prevent a dangerous vitamin deficiency. (Image credit: Image taken by Mayte Torres via Getty Images)
New research in JAMA finds that more parents are opting out of giving their babies a recommended vitamin K shot at birth. And that puts babies at risk, experts say.
"We know unequivocally that infants that don't receive vitamin K are at significantly higher risk of getting serious bleeding," the lead study author told Scientific American.
All newborns are recommended to receive an injection of vitamin K, a nutrient that helps the body form blood clots. Older children and adults get vitamin K from their diets and their gut microbiomes, but babies are born with very little.
The nutrient doesn't easily pass through the placenta and babies' microbiomes are too immature to make it; breast milk also contains relatively little vitamin K, and regardless, vitamin K given to babies by mouth isn't absorbed well. That means babies are vulnerable to vitamin K deficiency, which can lead to dangerous bleeding, and in turn, permanent brain damage or death.
The one-time vitamin K shot protects babies from this deficiency extremely effectively and safely. Since universal administration of the vitamin was started in 1961, the U.S. has "nearly eliminated" vitamin K deficiency bleeding. But now, our numbers are slipping.
The JAMA analysis found that, between 2017 and 2024, the rate of vitamin K shot refusal has risen nearly 80%, with the proportion of newborns not given the shot rising from 2.92% to 5.18%.
Anecdotally, I've seen my share of breathless, online influencers spreading misinformation about vitamin K shots. Their efforts are closely tied to — if not indistinguishable from — the anti-vaccine movement, despite vitamin K shots not being vaccines. Often, the influencers promote unproven alternatives to the shot, which they personally happen to sell.
But to put it plainly: when vitamin K administration goes down, the rate of babies dying goes up. The new JAMA study calls attention to that disturbing trend. You can learn more about the vitamin K shot from the American Academy of Pediatrics and their informational site, Healthy Children.
'Gold hydrogen' sufficient to power human civilization for 170,000 years
Hydrogen could lurk in massive quantities in areas throughout the U.S., research is revealing. (Image credit: Marilyn Perkins)
Staff writer Sascha Pare has a fascinating feature on the hunt for "gold hydrogen," or hydrogen that's naturally found in large quantities separate from natural gas.
Hydrogen could power a green economy, but the naturally occurring stuff has historically been found with natural gas, which produce greenhouse gases when burned. But a 2016 find in Mali changed our understanding of how much hydrogen is lurking in Earth's crust, and where it's likely to be found.
Ubiquitous cold virus may raise risk of bladder cancer
An illustration of the BK virus, which may be little known to the general public, but which researchers think may raise the risk of bladder cancer. (Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)
Cancer isn't infectious — but we now know that several types of infections do raise the risk of cancer down the line. Among the well-known microbes known to fuel cancer are HPV, the primary cause of cervical cancer; hepatitis B, which causes liver cancer; and Helicobacter pylori, which raises stomach cancer risk.
Live Science contributor Jennifer Zieba has a fascinating new piece on another cancer which may be fueled, at least in part, by past infection.
Although most of us have never heard about the virus, it is a common infection that tons of us get as kids. To learn more about the virus, and how researchers think it may raise cancer risk, read the full story here.
RFK's FDA takes aim at RSV preventative treatments
RSV is notorious for causing serious infections in young children. Antibody treatments can help ward off severe disease. (Image credit: CDC/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has informed pharma executives that it will be reevaluating already-approved treatments designed to protect infants from RSV, according to exclusive reporting from Reuters.
RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) is an infection that spreads seasonally and is particularly dangerous to young children, standing as the most common cause of hospitalization in infants. Annually, 100 to 300 children under 5 die from the infection in the U.S. To drive that number down, in recent years, scientists have invented, tested and earned FDA approval for antibody-based drugs that protect infants during RSV season. These treatments have been thoroughly researched in large clinical trials and shown to be both safe and effective at lowering the risk of serious RSV that requires a doctor's appointment, ER visit or hospitalization.
The treatments are recommended to all infants under 8 months old in their first RSV season, excluding babies whose mothers got an RSV vaccine before birth. (The vaccine prompts the mother to make antibodies that get passed to the baby.) Additionally, select kids with health conditions are recommended another dose during their second RSV season.
The antibody shots are sometimes lumped into conversations and controversy surrounding vaccines, despite not being vaccines themselves. They supply the body with ready-made antibodies; they do not teach the immune system to make its own, as a vaccine would.
The FDA has informed makers of the antibody drugs that it will be asking further safety questions about the treatments, and for now, it's unclear if that reevaluation might lead to changes in the drugs' availability or approval status.
What we do know is that the pattern is reminiscent of a move made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, in which the agency overturned established guidance about the hepatitis B vaccine with no data suggesting they should make the change — and ample data suggesting they should not. Such moves align with the stance of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who posits that the risks of many pharmaceutical products have not been properly studied and casts doubt on established science.
An illustration of multiple drones, sample collectors and rovers on Mars. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech)
Our top priority when humans reach Mars should be to hunt for past or present life on the Red Planet, a new report from leading U.S. scientists argues.
The report, released by the National Academy of Sciences today (Dec. 9), lays out a road map of scientific priorities for the (hopefully) coming crewed mission to Mars.
If we do make it to the Red Planet in the next decade, we should also look for evidence of CO2 and water cycles, investigate the geological history of Mars, and study the physiological and psychological effects of both spaceflight and the Martian environment on potential astronauts living there, the report says.
Lower down on the list, scientists say we should explore Mars searching for resources we could exploit for future colonies, analyze the effects of the Martian environment on DNA and its replication, and characterize microbial communities that may be brought along for the ride through the solar system. As part of the new road map, they also lay out which types of measurements and instrumentation may be required to address each of those priorities.
It's a big and somewhat daunting list, but it's hard to imagine investing the staggering amount of money and technological innovation required to reach the Martian surface if we're not going to learn as much as we can from the process.
Catch you on the flip side!
The U.S. West Coast team is heading out for the evening, but we'll leave you with this tuff question, courtesy of sciencefun.org:
What did the limestone say to the geologist?
Don't take me for granite!
Aurora no-show
The northern lights can produce dazzling night sky displays, like the one pictured here over Wisconsin on Nov. 11. (Image credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Good morning, science fans! Patrick here to launch another day of our science news blog coverage.
Yesterday's northern lights forecast turned out to be a bit of a let-down for skywatchers.
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center had issued a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch for Tuesday, which had the potential to produce visible auroras over many U.S. states from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
However, this storm was expected to be triggered by a blast of plasma from the sun (coronal mass ejection, or CME), which didn't arrive as forecast.
Live Science's sister site Space.com reports that the CME only brushed Earth or missed us altogether.
Space weather forecasters are still seeing moderate to high solar activity, but for now, aurora activity is likely to be limited.
Supernova surprise
This two-part illustration reveals what supernova GRB 250314A might have looked like as it was exploding and how it appeared when JWST observed it three months later. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI))
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has identified the earliest supernova on record, according to a statement released by the space agency yesterday.
The ancient and distant supernova exploded when the universe was in its infancy at just 730 million years old. For context, the universe is thought to be around 13.8 billion years old.
JWST turned its attention to the supernova in July after an international group of telescopes detected a rare gamma-ray burst (bright flash of light) in March, according to the statement.
"Only Webb could directly show that this light is from a supernova — a collapsing massive star," Andrew Levan, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the U.K., said in the statement.
"This observation also demonstrates that we can use Webb to find individual stars when the universe was only 5% of its current age," Levan added.
Surprisingly, the supernova looked very similar to modern supernovae that have occurred much closer to Earth. Researchers will need to collect more data to explore why this might be the case.
The James Webb Space Telescope's view of supernova GRB 250314A, highlighted in a box. (Image credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Andrew Levan (Radboud University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)) ]]>
https://www.livescience.com/news/live/latest-science-news-week-beginning-dec-8-2025
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+ <![CDATA[ Ash Pendant: The only known depiction of a pregnant Viking woman ]]>
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- <![CDATA[ Could aging eggs be 'rejuvenated'? New tool may help pave the way to fertility-extending treatments ]]>
- Scientists have taken an important step toward understanding why human eggs grow more prone to chromosomal errors as they age and whether that decline could be circumvented someday.
The research, published in November in the journal Nature Aging, introduces a new tool that enables scientists to replicate changes seen in eggs during the aging process. The technique, which uses mouse egg cells, doesn't require researchers to wait for the mice to age or to collect aged human eggs for study, and it enables them to zero in on different forces that might contribute to an egg's decline.
"They have created a tool that's going to allow them to unpick this really beautifully," said Bettina Mihalas, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of New South Wales in Sydney who was not involved in the research. "Being able to tease these mechanisms apart gives you a better scope of what's going on, and allows you to more [precisely] intervene," Mihalas, who is studying strategies to improve fertility in aging, told Live Science.
This research is in its early days, but eventually, the study authors hope it could help extend the reproductive windows of women who plan to have children later in life.
"Female reproductive aging is a major source of inequity," said senior study author Binyam Mogessie, an assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. "Women have to make choices men don't have to make" when it comes to weighing when to start a family. Notably, the rate of under-30 births is now trending down as over-30 births trend up in the U.S. In short, more women are having babies at older ages, when the rate of chromosomal abnormalities begins to rise.
"Even if we can extend this reproductive window by three years, it would be so consequential to the lives of so many people," Mogessie told Live Science.
A model of aging eggs
Women are born with all the egg cells they'll ever carry, and over time, those eggs are released via the menstrual cycle. Eggs that have yet to be released hang out in the ovaries, where many will stay for decades.
Around age 30, this waiting egg supply shows a sharp uptick in aneuploidy risk, meaning the eggs are more likely to carry an abnormal number of chromosomes — either more or less than 46. Studies show that the risk of egg aneuploidy grows almost exponentially after age 35, and then jumps again at 40 and at 45. These chromosomal abnormalities can contribute to infertility and pregnancy loss in women, as well as genetic disorders in children, some of which can cause severe disability or death.
Scientists are still unsure why aneuploidy risk goes up so much with age. "The leading theory is that the forces that hold these chromosomes together, before they are separated at fertilization, those forces are failing progressively with age," Mogessie said.
At various points in an egg's cell cycle, each of its chromosomes contains two "sister chromatids" held together by molecular glue, and those sisters later get pulled apart. That glue is known to weaken with age and thus lead to chromatid separation issues that contribute to aneuploidy. But that doesn't tell the whole story; it doesn't explain why we see a sharp rise in chromosomal errors starting around age 30, Mogessie said.
To investigate this mystery, the researchers developed an experimental setup to trigger "aging-like" changes in eggs and watch how the eggs changed afterward, using high-resolution time-lapse microscopy. A key part of the model was the use of the gene-editing system CRISPR to tweak a critical component of the molecular glue that holds chromosomes together: a protein called REC8.
This tweak added a switch to REC8, and once that switch was toggled "on," the protein would degrade. Using this system, the scientists could tightly control the degree of REC8 breakdown in an egg, simulating what would happen naturally during aging.
"In animals, it can take years; in humans, it can take decades for these processes to arise," Mogessie said. But the new technique "allows us to do this within 60 to 90 minutes."
Previously, Mogessie and collaborators had used antibodies to mess with REC8 in a similar way, but this involved injecting the antibodies into delicate egg cells — a finicky and labor-intensive process — and the degree of degradation was difficult to control, Mihalas noted. Some benefits of the new system are that you avoid injecting the eggs and can tune REC8 levels much more precisely. "It is quite elegant," she said.
Paving the way to future treatments
The team demonstrated that degrading REC8 to varying degrees led to errors in chromosome splitting and to aneuploidy, as you'd expect to see in naturally aged eggs. This also enabled them to pinpoint a specific threshold of REC8 loss at which the rate of errors suddenly spiked.
While the loss of REC8 could trigger these issues, scientists know that eggs decline in additional ways with age. To model this, the team messed with other proteins involved in holding chromosomes together, as well as with filaments that pull them apart when the time is right. These perturbations boosted the rate of chromosomal errors beyond what was seen with REC8 loss alone.
Taken together, these results suggest that the breakdown of chromosomes' molecular glue likely sets the stage for aneuploidy. But the sudden spike seen in people in their 30s and 40s likely stems from the "synergistic failure" of multiple parts of this chromosome-separating machinery, the team said.
More research is needed to fully understand the impact of aging on eggs, but the new model should enable such work to be done. "The mouse model provides consistency," Mihalas noted. Given the ethical challenges and limitations of working with human eggs, "it's the best model we have," Mihalas added.
In the long run, the model could be used to screen for and test the effects of potential treatments. There may be a way to turn back the clock and help eggs to reliably divide with fewer chromosomal errors, as they would have at younger ages.
"It really does set the scene for preventive measures aimed at improving the quality of eggs, at least in an IVF [in vitro fertilization] clinic setting," Mogessie said. "I think that would have a huge impact."
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
]]>
- https://www.livescience.com/health/fertility-pregnancy-birth/could-aging-eggs-be-rejuvenated-new-tool-may-help-pave-the-way-to-fertility-extending-treatments
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- <![CDATA[ 'Intelligence comes at a price, and for many species, the benefits just aren't worth it': A neuroscientist's take on how human intellect evolved ]]>In his book "One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind" (Prometheus/Swift Press, 2025), New York University neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin traces the evolution of human consciousness. He starts the story with the emergence of the first DNA on Earth and then highlights key evolutionary landmarks that paved the way to us — namely, modern-day humans. In the following excerpt, Kukushkin describes the "social brain hypothesis," which posits that human intelligence arose, in part, to help us keep track of our increasingly complex social groups.
What made us human
In the past, many explanations of human uniqueness focused on what gave us the ability to become as intelligent as we are, rather than why we would want to be so intelligent. We often take it for granted that intelligence is what every animal obviously wants, and we just figured out a better evolutionary path toward it. One classic explanation for this involves, for example, walking on two legs, caused by a transition from trees to grasslands, which freed the hands from climbing and allowed us to do more complicated things. Another explanation focuses on our increasingly meat-based diet, which allowed for larger brain sizes. These factors certainly played critical roles in allowing us to become who we are. But they alone don't necessarily explain what is so good about being intelligent in the first place. We just assume that to be self-evident.
I think it's a bit of a self-serving assumption, like jellyfish wondering why no one else has managed to evolve stinging cells. We like to believe that we somehow won evolution — a notion we discussed in chapter 3 when talking about complexity and perfection. We have this image of an ape standing up, picking up a stick, and being rewarded for this achievement with a massive brain.
But the truth is, intelligence comes at a price, and for many species, the benefits just aren't worth it. A brain such as our own takes prodigious amounts of energy away from a body already burning through its fuel: a gram of brain tissue uses ten times the amount of nutrients as an average gram of the human body. Besides, a bigger brain is heavier and easier to damage. So there are considerable evolutionary costs to an enlarged brain. For any given species, these costs eventually outweigh the diminishing returns of brain enlargement. All brains have an evolutionary stage at which they are large enough. If a double-sized brain provided rhinos with a survival advantage, over millions of years their brain would have certainly doubled in size — you have to have very little awareness of evolutionary history to believe that we alone cracked some code that eluded everybody for eons. For rhinos, there wasn't any extra advantage in larger brains, so their brains turned out just as they did. The question is not why humans succeeded where others failed — as we tend to think — but why we needed supercomputers when others were fine with calculators.
There's an interesting pattern that may explain it. If you measure the size of the cerebral cortex — the brain's "machine of understanding"— in different primate species relative to the rest of their brain and plot it against the number of group members typical for each of those species, the two numbers fall on a straight line: the more members, the bigger the cortex. Humans are number one on both accounts — our cortex is the largest relative to the rest of the brain, as is our typical group size, estimated around 150 — that's the number of people in a typical hunter-gatherer society and a typical cap on the number of active social acquaintances that we moderns can maintain. For example, corporate organizations often naturally fragment into units of about 150 people.
Why would that be? This is far from a resolved question, but the proponents of the so-called social brain hypothesis say that reason is that social behavior is a uniquely demanding task, putting unprecedented strain on our brain's capacities. All mammals, to some extent, use their brain as a mirror, understanding others' behavior by modeling it inside their own mind. But primates, whose defensive groups swell into the tens and even hundreds, had to contend with tens and hundreds of these complex, interconnected models of other group members — their personalities, their emotions, their mutual relationships — which one of them did what to whom at what point and so on, a tremendous trove of complex data that we, humans, take to be as natural as eating dinner but that would befuddle even the smartest non-primate. In short, the social brain hypothesis states that social life is what pushed us to become intelligent.
The way this explanation differs from others is by offering an incentive rather than simply means to achieve it: yes, free hands, meat diet, and many other factors made our brain possible, but the reason we needed it in the first place was to remember all our friends who helped us fight monsters.
As cheesy as it sounds, I think about it all the time. There have been many different fables told about the birth of the human species: that it was work that made us human (this was the communist narrative — an ape picking up a tool) or maybe that it was violence (this is the narrative from "2001: A Space Odyssey" — an ape picking up a weapon). Those were not just scientific theories — they were origin stories, as important for a modern mind to make sense of itself as myths were to an ancient mind. An origin story is told to explain what you are really about, and in doing so, it doesn't simply describe the past but provides a template for the present. If you are about work, then work is the pillar on which your life should naturally stand. If you are about violence, then there is no sense trying to avoid it. But the more we learn about ourselves, the clearer it becomes that we are really about others. Our entire essence is to carry tens and even hundreds of peers inside our brains, to navigate the vicissitudes of their emotions and relationships, to derive both meaning and joy from living life together. It has long been recognized, for example, that happiness depends far less on individual well-being than on the richness of social contacts. Social life has a profound effect on us, and not just mentally but physically: for example, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which began in 1938 and tracked hundreds of people for several decades, famously showed that close relationships are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. Too often, modern lives let us forget a firmly established fact: friends are worth living for. The social brain hypothesis puts an origin story behind this simple truth.
It also puts the birth of our species in a broader context. Our brains started swelling in size long before the first Homo sapiens. All primates share the relationship between group size and the cerebral cortex, which means that it always took a large brain to handle many peers.
And that, in turn, means that sooner or later, something like a human was inevitable.
When eukaryotes first started extracting energy from other organisms, this set the trajectory toward the human species — eventually there was bound to be someone who could control fire and even nuclear fission. There's something similar that the social brain hypothesis points to, at the deepest level. Once primates were swept in a drive to enlarge their groups and brains, eventually there was bound to be someone with groups large enough and with brains advanced enough to start talking to each other, inventing symbols and abstract categories — and from that, finally, there was bound to arise some form of culture, art, and civilization.
It is this final essence — an abstract, symbolic language passed from person to person by cultural transmission — that completes the design of a human being that we had seen gradually crystallize over billions of years. But to understand why language was so important for our species, we must now take a detour. Most books about human evolution begin right about here and proceed through the past few million years to the present, during which apes gradually evolved into several species of Homo, of which today only one survives — the "wise" one, or sapiens. But our quest instead takes us inward, into the human brain, into the sea of electrical signals pulsing through this astounding machine that runs our conscious minds.
One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind
"One Hand Clapping" draws from neuroscience, evolution, philosophy and a rich tapestry of cultural references to examine how Earth's history led to the formation of our own minds. The book reveals the deep continuity between our consciousness and nature itself.View Deal
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+ <![CDATA[ Could aging eggs be 'rejuvenated'? New tool may help pave the way to fertility-extending treatments ]]>
+ Scientists have taken an important step toward understanding why human eggs grow more prone to chromosomal errors as they age and whether that decline could be circumvented someday.
The research, published in November in the journal Nature Aging, introduces a new tool that enables scientists to replicate changes seen in eggs during the aging process. The technique, which uses mouse egg cells, doesn't require researchers to wait for the mice to age or to collect aged human eggs for study, and it enables them to zero in on different forces that might contribute to an egg's decline.
"They have created a tool that's going to allow them to unpick this really beautifully," said Bettina Mihalas, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of New South Wales in Sydney who was not involved in the research. "Being able to tease these mechanisms apart gives you a better scope of what's going on, and allows you to more [precisely] intervene," Mihalas, who is studying strategies to improve fertility in aging, told Live Science.
This research is in its early days, but eventually, the study authors hope it could help extend the reproductive windows of women who plan to have children later in life.
"Female reproductive aging is a major source of inequity," said senior study author Binyam Mogessie, an assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. "Women have to make choices men don't have to make" when it comes to weighing when to start a family. Notably, the rate of under-30 births is now trending down as over-30 births trend up in the U.S. In short, more women are having babies at older ages, when the rate of chromosomal abnormalities begins to rise.
"Even if we can extend this reproductive window by three years, it would be so consequential to the lives of so many people," Mogessie told Live Science.
A model of aging eggs
Women are born with all the egg cells they'll ever carry, and over time, those eggs are released via the menstrual cycle. Eggs that have yet to be released hang out in the ovaries, where many will stay for decades.
Around age 30, this waiting egg supply shows a sharp uptick in aneuploidy risk, meaning the eggs are more likely to carry an abnormal number of chromosomes — either more or less than 46. Studies show that the risk of egg aneuploidy grows almost exponentially after age 35, and then jumps again at 40 and at 45. These chromosomal abnormalities can contribute to infertility and pregnancy loss in women, as well as genetic disorders in children, some of which can cause severe disability or death.
Scientists are still unsure why aneuploidy risk goes up so much with age. "The leading theory is that the forces that hold these chromosomes together, before they are separated at fertilization, those forces are failing progressively with age," Mogessie said.
At various points in an egg's cell cycle, each of its chromosomes contains two "sister chromatids" held together by molecular glue, and those sisters later get pulled apart. That glue is known to weaken with age and thus lead to chromatid separation issues that contribute to aneuploidy. But that doesn't tell the whole story; it doesn't explain why we see a sharp rise in chromosomal errors starting around age 30, Mogessie said.
To investigate this mystery, the researchers developed an experimental setup to trigger "aging-like" changes in eggs and watch how the eggs changed afterward, using high-resolution time-lapse microscopy. A key part of the model was the use of the gene-editing system CRISPR to tweak a critical component of the molecular glue that holds chromosomes together: a protein called REC8.
This tweak added a switch to REC8, and once that switch was toggled "on," the protein would degrade. Using this system, the scientists could tightly control the degree of REC8 breakdown in an egg, simulating what would happen naturally during aging.
"In animals, it can take years; in humans, it can take decades for these processes to arise," Mogessie said. But the new technique "allows us to do this within 60 to 90 minutes."
Previously, Mogessie and collaborators had used antibodies to mess with REC8 in a similar way, but this involved injecting the antibodies into delicate egg cells — a finicky and labor-intensive process — and the degree of degradation was difficult to control, Mihalas noted. Some benefits of the new system are that you avoid injecting the eggs and can tune REC8 levels much more precisely. "It is quite elegant," she said.
Paving the way to future treatments
The team demonstrated that degrading REC8 to varying degrees led to errors in chromosome splitting and to aneuploidy, as you'd expect to see in naturally aged eggs. This also enabled them to pinpoint a specific threshold of REC8 loss at which the rate of errors suddenly spiked.
While the loss of REC8 could trigger these issues, scientists know that eggs decline in additional ways with age. To model this, the team messed with other proteins involved in holding chromosomes together, as well as with filaments that pull them apart when the time is right. These perturbations boosted the rate of chromosomal errors beyond what was seen with REC8 loss alone.
Taken together, these results suggest that the breakdown of chromosomes' molecular glue likely sets the stage for aneuploidy. But the sudden spike seen in people in their 30s and 40s likely stems from the "synergistic failure" of multiple parts of this chromosome-separating machinery, the team said.
More research is needed to fully understand the impact of aging on eggs, but the new model should enable such work to be done. "The mouse model provides consistency," Mihalas noted. Given the ethical challenges and limitations of working with human eggs, "it's the best model we have," Mihalas added.
In the long run, the model could be used to screen for and test the effects of potential treatments. There may be a way to turn back the clock and help eggs to reliably divide with fewer chromosomal errors, as they would have at younger ages.
"It really does set the scene for preventive measures aimed at improving the quality of eggs, at least in an IVF [in vitro fertilization] clinic setting," Mogessie said. "I think that would have a huge impact."
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
]]>
+ https://www.livescience.com/health/fertility-pregnancy-birth/could-aging-eggs-be-rejuvenated-new-tool-may-help-pave-the-way-to-fertility-extending-treatments
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+ Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ Male human heads found in a 'skull pit' in an ancient Chinese city hint at sex-specific sacrifice rituals ]]>Just outside the gate of a 4,000-year-old city in China, archaeologists found a pit full of 80 skulls from human sacrifice victims. Now, a new study has revealed a surprising fact about the victims: Nine out of 10 were men.
In the study, published Nov. 26 in the journal Nature, researchers analyzed DNA collected from skeletons found in the ancient city of Shimao and its satellite towns to figure out the social and kinship structure of this Neolithic society.
The ancient stone-walled city of Shimao was first discovered in Shaanxi province in 2018. Occupied between about 2300 and 1800 B.C., Shimao was roughly 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers). The city featured a large step pyramid, craft specialization areas and two cemeteries.
An elite burial at the Zhaishan site in China, showing a male tomb occupant and a female sacrificed victim. (Image credit: IVPP/CAS)
Archaeologists also found two different forms of human sacrifice: one involving the heads of decapitated individuals, buried in "skull pits" near the city gate; and another involving the entombing of a lower-status individual — usually a female — as a sacrifice in a higher-status person's burial.
In the new study, the researchers used DNA analysis to figure out the biological sex of the skulls in the pit discovered beneath the foundation of Shimao's Dongmen (East Gate).
"In contrast to previous archaeological reports that identified these sacrifices as female-based," the researchers wrote in the study, the new DNA results "showed no evidence of female bias, with 9 out of 10 victims being men."
This finding surprised archaeologists, because the sacrifices associated with the elite burials at Shimao and its satellite towns were predominantly female.
"These patterns of mostly female sacrifices starkly contrast with Dongmen, in which decapitation and mass burial involved mostly sampled men," the researchers wrote. "This suggests Shimao's sacrificial practices were highly structured, with gender-specific roles tied to distinct ritual purposes and locations," according to a statement from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Additionally, when the researchers looked at the sacrificed men's DNA, they found no differences in their ancestry compared to the ancestry of the elite tomb occupants, meaning the sacrificial victims were not "outsiders."
Although the reason for the sex-specific sacrifice customs is still unclear, researchers have offered some possible explanations.
The cemetery-based sacrifices "may represent ancestor veneration, in which women were sacrificed to honour elite nobles or rulers," according to the researchers, while the sacrificed skulls in the pit "were probably connected to a construction ritual of the walls or gate."
Terracotta Army quiz: What do you know about the 'warriors' in the 2,200-year-old tomb of China's 1st emperor?
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- <![CDATA[ Elaborate 2,700-year-old tomb in Greece contains burial of a woman with an upside-down crown ]]>
- Archaeologists in Greece have uncovered the grave of an ousted noblewoman whom they are calling "The Lady with the Inverted Diadem." The seventh-century-B.C. burial is notable for the elaborate bronze crown placed upside down on the woman's head, which may have signified a final end to her power.
The noblewoman's grave was unearthed at an ancient cemetery that was recently discovered in east-central Greece, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) northwest of Athens, during construction work, according to a Nov. 27 translated statement from the Greek Ministry of Culture. The 40 graves recovered thus far appear to be the burials of people of high social status who died in the Archaic and Classical periods (800 to 323 B.C.).
One grave stood out above the rest, according to the statement. Within the burial of a woman who was about 20 to 30 years old when she died, archaeologists discovered numerous bronze grave goods, including a pin with geometric-style horses, a necklace with a vase-shaped amulet, bone and ivory beads, copper earrings, a bracelet and several spiral rings.
Image 1 of 6
(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
The back of the bronze diadem, with images of lions.
Image 2 of 6
(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
The front of the bronze diadem, with a large rosette.
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(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
A large bronze pin with geometric-style horses found in the woman's grave.
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(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
A necklace with a vase-shaped amulet found in the woman's grave.
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(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
An aerial photo of the woman's grave during excavation.
Image 6 of 6
(Image credit: Greek Ministry of Culture)
A child with similar jewelry was buried near the woman.
The woman's bronze diadem, in particular, caught the archaeologists' attention. It featured a large rosette on the front and a scene of facing pairs of male and female lions on the back. But the crown had been placed upside down on the woman's head so that the lions appeared to be lying down.
Lions symbolized royal power and authority, according to the statement, as can be seen in earlier iconography from the southern Greek city of Mycenae, where the so-called Lion Gate was a potent symbol of the king's power in the 13th century B.C.
An inverted crown, though, symbolizes the resignation or fall of a ruler. Therefore, this woman may have lost her privileged position during a time of social and political upheaval in the mid-seventh century B.C., according to the statement. That difficult time in Greek history was eventually resolved by the lawmaker Solon's reforms that laid the foundation for Athenian democracy in the early sixth century B.C..
Archaeologists also found the burial of a 4-year-old child near the woman. The child was crowned with a bronze diadem with small rosettes and dates to the same time period as the woman, suggesting they may have been related in some way.
Research at the site is ongoing and may reveal more graves in the near future.
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/elaborate-2-700-year-old-tomb-in-greece-contains-burial-of-a-woman-with-an-upside-down-crown
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- Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:29:07 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 'We do not know of a similar case': 4,000-year-old burial in little-known African kingdom mystifies archaeologists ]]>
- An isolated burial in Sudan has revealed the first evidence of an unknown funeral ritual that took place nearly 4,000 years ago in a little-known African kingdom, a new study finds.
In the grave, archaeologists discovered a ceramic vessel that contained charred plant and wood remains, animal bones and pieces of insects, all of which the team thinks were the remains of a funeral feast.
"We do not know of a similar case," study co-author Henryk Paner, an archaeologist at the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw, told Live Science in an email, "and this is precisely what makes our discovery mysterious and even unusual, as we do not know the significance of this ritual."
In the study, published Nov. 13 in the journal Azania, researchers described the burial of a middle-aged man, which they found in 2018 during an archaeological survey project in the Bayuda Desert in northeast Sudan. The grave was dated to between 2050 and 1750 B.C., meaning the man was likely part of the Kingdom of Kerma, an early Nubian civilization that neighbored ancient Egypt. Within the burial, which had an oval mound of dirt on top of it, archaeologists discovered a male skeleton, two ceramic vessels placed behind his head, and 82 blue-glazed ceramic disc beads around his neck.
"The burial mound is not particularly impressive, and the grave goods, including beads and ceramic vessels, are quite common," Paner said, all of which suggest the man did not have elite social status. But "the contents of one of the vessels are unusual," he said, possibly "relics of the fire associated with a funeral ritual."
Within a medium-sized ceramic jug, the researchers discovered a treasure trove of charred remains of plants, wood, animals, insects and coprolites (fossilized feces). Most of the wood was determined to have come from acacia trees, and the researchers identified two legumes — likely a lentil and a bean — and cereal grains among the charred botanical remains. The jug also contained a few weevils, which likely hitched a ride on the plants in ancient times.
"Since the vessel does not show any signs of having been burned, these remains, along with the fragments of animal bones found, were probably simply inserted into it," the researchers explained in the study. "The bones in question are likely evidence of consumption during a funeral feast, some of the remains from which were then thrown into the fire."
The botanical remains also indicate that this geographic area was a more humid savanna-type environment when the man was buried, compared with the open desert it is now. "Even a seemingly modest site" like this isolated burial "can provide important clues for reconstructing past environments and climates," the researchers wrote.
The other vessel found in the burial was placed upside down near the individual, but it was empty, the researchers noted.
This burial is the first from the Kingdom of Kerma to reveal evidence of a funeral ritual that took place four millennia ago. But the lack of similar known burials could point to the area's complex cultural exchange processes, the researchers wrote, meaning more work is needed to understand the trade of goods and ideas in ancient Africa.
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/we-do-not-know-of-a-similar-case-4-000-year-old-burial-in-little-known-african-kingdom-mystifies-archaeologists
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- Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:44:45 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ 'Cold Supermoon' 2025: It's not too late to see the last, highest full moon of the year ]]>
- Update (Dec. 5, 10:30 a.m. ET): December's full 'Cold Supermoon' reached peak fullness on Thursday (Dec. 4) just after 6:00 p.m. EST. However, it's not too late to enjoy the highest (and one of the biggest) full moons of the year; the moon will also appear bright and full all night Friday (Dec. 5). Make sure to look up at the year's final supermoon!
Skywatchers are in for a stunning spectacle this week when the second-biggest full moon of 2025, the Cold Supermoon, rises in the east at dusk and appears higher in the night sky than any other full moon of the year.
Officially full at 6:14 p.m. EST on Thursday (Dec. 4), the moon will rise in the east within the constellation Taurus. Although the moon is technically full at a specific moment, it's most visually impressive at the time of moonrise where you are, when it appears largest near the horizon.
It's the third of four "supermoons" in a row, and the second largest of the year after November's Beaver Moon. A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the moon's closest approach to Earth, called perigee. Supermoons appear about 10% larger than average.
Although it will be closest to being full at dusk on Dec. 4, the Cold Moon will also appear bright and full the day before and after, looking particularly impressive on Friday (Dec. 5), when it rises an hour or so after sunset. That's perfect timing for skywatchers who want to try out a new pair of binoculars or a small beginner telescope this holiday season.
December's Cold Moon always climbs higher in the sky than any other full moon of the year. As the winter solstice nears on Dec. 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun appears at its lowest in the sky during the day. In contrast, the full moon — which, by definition, is opposite the sun — rises to its highest at night.
According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, Native American names for December's full moon include the Frost Exploding Trees Moon (Cree), the Moon of the Popping Trees (Oglala), the Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers (Dakota), the Winter Maker Moon (Western Abenaki), the Cold Moon (Mohawk) and the Long Night Moon (Mohican). The latter comes from this full moon's closeness to the winter solstice, which occurs on Dec. 21 this year. Old English and Anglo-Saxon names for December's full moon are the Moon Before Yule and the Long Night Moon, according to Time and Date.
The next full moon will be the Wolf Moon on Jan. 3, 2026, the fourth and final supermoon in a row. It will be the first of 13 full moons in 2026, thanks to a Blue Moon — the second full moon in a calendar month — occurring in May 2026.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/cold-supermoon-2025-why-the-final-full-moon-of-the-year-also-towers-highest
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- Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Trio of 'black mesas' leftover from Paleozoic era spawn rare sand dunes in the Sahara — Earth from space ]]>
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What's in the photo? Three black mesas surrounded by unusual sand dunes in the Sahara Desert
Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS)
When was it taken? May 3, 2023
This intriguing astronaut photo shows a trio of ancient "black mesas", which sit side-by-side in the Sahara desert. The dark structures have enabled a series of rare sand dunes to form around them while also creating a surprising "dune-free zone."
The three mesas, or flat-topped hills, are located around 8 miles (13 kilometers) northwest of the town of Guérou in southern Mauritania, which is home to around 22,000 people. The mesas are made from sandstone and rise steeply above the surrounding plains, reaching between 1,000 and 1,300 feet (300 and 400 meters) above the ground. The largest of the trio is approximately 6 miles (9.5 km) across at its widest point, while a fourth mesa is located just north of the trio, but is positioned just out of frame.
The dark color of these circular hills is the result of "rock varnish" — a black, clay-based coating, rich in manganese and iron oxides, that forms on exposed and arid rocks over thousands of years, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. This coating was likely partly fixed in place by microorganisms and is made up of multiple micrometer-thick laminations, according to Science Direct.
To the west of the mesas (on the left of the photo) is a barren rocky plain with a surprising lack of sand dunes. But to the east of the flattened hills, you can see several sizable dunes that are seemingly flowing away from the black rocks like a rippling tail.
There are two main types of sand dunes visible in the image. The first type are rare "climbing dunes," which are the larger, ridge-like piles of sand that have piled up along the mesas' eastern walls. The second type are "barchan dunes," which are more common and make up the mesas' stripy tail. In both cases, the dunes have a distinctive reddish-yellow hue.
The three mesas in the astronaut photo sit alongside a fourth mesa (the one on the left) that is not included in the aerial image. This photo shows all four from the west of the mesas, from beyond the dune-free zone they have created. (Image credit: Google Maps/Street View )
The sand dunes only form on the eastern side of the mesas because the wind predominantly blows from that direction, carrying sand that then gets caught on the sloped elevations surrounding the black rocks.
Sand does not accumulate to the west of the mesas because of a phenomenon known as "wind scour," which results from superfast vortices within the wind that gets squeezed in between the mesas, which blow sand away from the flattened hills, according to the Earth Observatory.
Another astronaut photo, taken in 2014, shows this odd effect over a larger area (see below). In this shot, you can see the barchan dunes extend much further away from the mesas in the photo, as well as another larger mesa further east.
During the Paleozoic era, which lasted from 541 million to 251.9 million years ago, all these mesas were likely part of a single massive rock formation that has since been broken up by millennia of water and wind erosion, according to the Earth Observatory.
This astronaut photo, taken in 2014, shows that the three mesas and their dunes are part of a much larger system leftover from an ancient Paleozoic feature. (Image credit: NASA/ISS program)
This formation may have been similar to the Richat Structure — a massive set of concentric rings of rock, also known as the "Eye of the Sahara," which is located in Mauritania around 285 miles (460 km) north of Guérou.
Mesas can be found across the globe but there is a particularly high concentration of them in the Sahara, as well as throughout parts of the U.S., such as Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, according to the National Park Service.
Elsewhere in the solar system, mesas are a prominent geological feature on Mars, having been carved out of the Red Planet by billions of years of wind erosion, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.
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/geology/trio-of-black-mesas-leftover-from-paleozoic-era-spawn-rare-sand-dunes-in-the-sahara-earth-from-space
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- Tue, 02 Dec 2025 08:00:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Science history: Computer scientist lays out 'Moore's law,' guiding chip design for a half century — Dec. 2, 1964 ]]>
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Milestone: Moore's law introduced
Date: Dec. 2, 1964
Where: San Francisco Bay Area
Who: Gordon Moore
At a low-key talk for a local professional society in 1964, computer scientist and chemist Gordon Moore laid out a prediction that would define the world of technology for more than 50 years.
In the presentation for The Electrochemical Society, titled, "The Evolving Technology of the Semiconductor Integrated Circuits," Moore predicted that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year.
The final version of this prediction would become known as "Moore's law," and it would drive progress in the semiconductor industry for decades.
Although it's called a law, it was a prediction based more on economic dictates and industry trends than on the physical laws of nature.
Moore was a director of research and development at Fairchild Semiconductors when he gave the talk, and his goal was ultimately to sell more chips. At the time, computers were gigantic machines that took up a whole room, and integrated circuits, known as microchips, had somewhat limited practical applications.
The silicon transistor, the workhorse that does calculations in a computer, had been invented just a decade earlier, and the integrated circuit, which allowed computers to be miniaturized, had been patented just five years earlier. In 1961, the electronics company RCA had built a 16-transistor chip, and by 1964, General Microelectronics had built a 120-transistor chip.
Moore witnessed this dramatic progress and noticed that a mathematical rule seemed to be governing that progress. This mathematical correlation was later given the name "Moore's law" by other people.
Although Moore laid out the principle to The Electrochemical Society in 1964, it gained widespread traction in April of the following year, when he was asked to write an editorial in Electronics magazine. In it, he boldly predicted that as many as 65,000 components could be squeezed onto a single chip — an unheard-of number at the time. It's a charmingly small-potatoes number now, given that in 2024, a company unveiled a 4 trillion-transistor chip.
In 1968, Moore would co-found the chipmaker Intel, where his doubling law would go from a casual observation to a motivation for innovation.
Despite its name, Moore's law was never an ironclad rule. In 1975, Moore downgraded the pace of progress to transistor doubling every two years, rather than every year. That more modest doubling rate would become the official Moore's law, which would hold for years after. This relentless drive toward more computing power and miniaturization is what enables virtually all modern electronics, from the personal computer to the smartphone.
For years, people predicted that the law would become outdated, but it proved remarkably resilient for quite some time.
"The fact that we've been able to continue [Moore's law] this long has surprised me more than anything," Moore said in an interview with The Electrochemical Society in 2016. "There always seems to be an impenetrable barrier down the road, but as we get closer to it, people come up with solutions."
However, eventually, the principle would no longer hold. It's not clear exactly when Moore's law became defunct. In its canonical form, the standard likely died in 2016, as it took Intel five years to go from the 14-nanometer-size technology to 10 nanometers. Moore saw this happen, as this was years before he died at the ripe old age of 94 in 2023.
Eventually, Moore's "law" had to peter out because it runs up against the actual laws of physics. As transistors became ever smaller, quantum mechanics, the physics that governs the very small, began to play an outsize role. The world's smallest transistors can face problems with "quantum tunneling," wherein electrons in one tiny transistor can tunnel into another, thereby allowing current to flow in transistors that should be in the "off" position.
As a result, chipmakers are looking at designing chips with new materials and new architecture. The next Moore's law may apply to quantum computers, which harness quantum mechanics as a feature, not a bug, of calculations.
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- https://www.livescience.com/technology/science-history-computer-scientist-lays-out-moores-law-guiding-chip-design-for-a-half-century-dec-2-1964
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- Tue, 02 Dec 2025 07:00:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ An extra solar system planet once orbited next to Earth — and it may be the reason we have a moon ]]>
- The catastrophic collision that forged the moon, and marked one of the most consequential events in Earth's early history, may have been triggered not by a distant interloper, but by a sibling world that grew up right next door, according to a new study.
About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-size world slammed into the young Earth with such tremendous force that it melted huge swaths of our planet's mantle and blasted a disk of molten debris into orbit. That wreckage eventually clumped together to form the moon we know today. Scientists have long favored this "giant impact" origin story, but where the long-lost world, nicknamed Theia, came from and what it was made of remain a mystery.
But the new analysis of moon samples from Apollo missions, terrestrial rocks and meteorites now argues that Theia, much like Earth, was a rocky world that formed in the inner solar system — likely even closer to the sun than our planet.
"Theia and proto-Earth come from a similar region of the inner solar system," Timo Hopp, a geoscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who led the research, told Live Science.
The findings, detailed in a paper published Nov. 20 in the journal Science, reinforce the classical picture of how rocky planets assembled billions of years ago, Hopp said.
"Our results do not predict a new twist in the mechanism," Hopp said. Instead, they "are in very good agreement from what we expect from the classical theory of terrestrial planet formation."
Violent youth of the planets
In the turbulent first 100 million years after the sun formed, the inner solar system was crowded with dozens to hundreds of planetary embryos — moon- to Mars-size worlds that frequently collided, merged or were kicked into new orbits by the gravitational chaos of early planet formation, as well as by Jupiter's immense pull.
"Theia was one of 10-100s of planetary embryos from which our planets formed," said Hopp. But lunar samples from the Apollo missions have shown that Earth and moon are nearly chemically identical, a similarity that scientists say has made pinpointing Theia's birthplace extremely difficult.
To investigate, Hopp and his colleagues searched for minuscule chemical clues left behind from the impact in Earth's mantle — traces of elements such as iron and molybdenum that should have sunk into Earth's core if they had been present early in the planet's formation. Their survival in mantle rocks today suggests these elements arrived later, likely delivered by Theia during the giant impact, and therefore carry valuable information about the lost planet's composition, the researchers say.
Lunar rocks collected during the Apollo 17 mission, like this one, helped the researchers probe the history of Earth, the moon, and Theia. (Image credit: NASA)
Clues from the moon
The researchers analyzed six lunar samples from the Apollo 12 and 17 missions alongside 15 terrestrial rocks that included specimens from Hawaii's Kīlauea volcano, as well as meteorites recovered from Antarctica and curated in major museum collections.
The team focused on extremely subtle differences in iron isotopes (different versions of elements), which recent research shows can pinpoint where material formed relative to the sun. They combined these iron measurements with isotopic signatures of molybdenum and zirconium, then compared the results with known meteorite compositions to deduce which kinds of planetary "building blocks" could have formed Theia.
Across hundreds of modeled scenarios, from small impactors to bodies nearly half the mass of Earth, the only configuration that successfully reproduced the chemistry of Earth and the moon was the one in which Theia formed in the inner solar system, the study reports. Theia was likely a rocky, metal-cored world containing roughly 5 to 10% of Earth's mass, the team notes.
The models also reveal that both proto-Earth and Theia contain material from an "unsampled" inner-solar-system reservoir, a type of matter absent from all known meteorite collections. This mysterious component likely formed extremely close to the sun, in a region where early material was either swept up by Mercury, Venus, Earth and Theia — or never survived as free-floating bodies capable of becoming meteorites.
"It might be only sample bias," Hopp acknowledged. Samples from Venus or Mercury, he added, may someday reveal larger fractions of this missing material and could ultimately "confirm or reject our conclusion."
While the study clarifies that Earth and Theia were likely local siblings, how the giant impact mixed the two worlds so thoroughly that their chemical identities became nearly indistinguishable remains an open question, Hopp said.
Cracking that mystery may reveal the last missing chapter in the moon's violent origin story — and could be the key to fully understanding how our moon and Earth came to be.
Comet 3I/ATLAS appears to have spiral jets shooting off its surface, which the authors of a new preprint interpret as a type of cryovolcanism. (Image credit: Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez/B06 Montseny Observatory)
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS could be covered in erupting "ice volcanoes," new observations suggest.
Researchers found evidence that as the comet approached the sun, a series of cryovolcanoes (nicknamed "ice volcanoes") erupted on its surface. The activation of these icy jets can be explained by what the strange comet is made of, according to a study posted Nov. 24 to the preprint server arXiv.
The study's findings, which have yet to be peer-reviewed, suggest that comet 3I/ATLAS is similar to icy trans-Neptunian objects — dwarf planets and other objects that orbit the sun beyond Neptune. If this is confirmed, it means that despite coming from another solar system, comet 3I/ATLAS has a surprising amount in common with objects in our own cosmic neighborhood.
"We were all surprised," study lead author Josep Trigo-Rodríguez, a staff leading researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (CSIC/IEEC) in Spain, told Live Science. "Being a comet formed in a remote planetary system, it is remarkable that the mixture of materials forming the surface of the body has resemblance with trans-Neptunian objects, bodies formed at [a] large distance from the Sun but belonging to our planetary system."
There has been endless speculation about the origins of comet 3I/ATLAS since astronomers first spotted it in July. Much of the online speculation has centered around whether this interstellar visitor could be an alien spacecraft. However, most astronomers are confident that 3I/ATLAS is a comet from an unknown star system.
Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever recorded, and offers researchers a rare opportunity to learn more about conditions around other stars and in the deep past (comet 3I/ATLAS could be billions of years older than our system). This means that scientists are scrambling to study the object before it departs our solar system forever next year.
For the new study, Trigo-Rodríguez and his colleagues studied the comet using the Joan Oró Telescope at the Montsec Observatory in the northeastern Catalonia region of Spain, pairing its observations with those made by other observatories in the region. The astronomers watched the comet carefully as it approached its closest point to our star, known as perihelion, on Oct. 29. Comets heat up as they fly closer to stars, causing ice on their surface to sublimate into gas, which researchers can then detect and study.
The researchers found that the comet entered a more intense sublimation stage when it got within about 235,000,000 miles (378 million kilometers) of the sun, while also brightening rapidly. Using the Joan Oró Telescope, they snapped the highest-resolution images yet of jets of gas and dust particles coming off the comet, which they interpreted as clear signs of cryovolcanism.
Cryovolcanoes are typically found in planetary bodies that are rich in ice, like trans-Neptunian objects. Trigo-Rodríguez noted that these planetary bodies have internal heat that melts the ice and produces the cryovolcanoes, which release vapor and dust into space.
PRE-PERIHELION STUDY OF #COMET #3IATLAS with our findings about its spectroscopic similitude with CR carbonaceous chondrites. Manuscript submitted for publication in which we propose it is a #TNO-like body experiencing #cryovolcanismNow in Cornell Univ. @arxiv repository:➡️ arxiv.org/abs/2511.19112
In the case of comet 3I/ATLAS, the researchers believe that the cryovolcanism is driven by the corrosion of pristine material locked inside the comet. As the sun heated the comet, the threshold at which solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) sublimated into gas was breached. This then enabled an oxidizing liquid to flow into the comet's interior and react with reactive iron and nickel metallic grains and sulfides.
To test their theories about the comet's composition, the researchers ran a spectroscopic comparison (analyzing how matter interacts with light) using primitive and pristine rocky meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites that NASA collected from Antarctica.
One of these Antarctic samples contained what the researchers believe is a piece of a trans-Neptunian object. The analysis revealed that comet 3I/ATLAS was similar to these remnants from the earliest days of our solar system, and is likely rich in natural metal.
Carbonaceous chondrites are believed to have played a role in life's origins on Earth, bringing volatile materials that helped establish our atmosphere and other conditions necessary for life, according to the Natural History Museum in London.
Comet 3I/ATLAS origins
While 3I/ATLAS’s exact size is still uncertain, Hubble Space Telescope observations suggest that it's somewhere between 1,400 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) wide. Rodriguez and his colleagues calculated that if the comet is 0.6 miles (1 km) wide and has the rocky composition they suspect it has, then its mass would be more than 660 million tons (600 million metric tons).
However, even if 3I/ATLAS has a similar composition to carbonaceous chondrites and behaves like trans-Neptunian objects approaching the sun, it's still without a doubt not from our solar system. That's because of its hyperbolic trajectory, along which scientists first noticed it zooming at around 137,000 miles per hour (221,000 kilometers per hour) — too fast to be bound to our sun's gravity, according to NASA.
Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez and his colleagues are observing jet spiral structures on the comet from Spain. (Image credit: Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez/B06 Montseny Observatory)
Researchers don't know which star system comet 3I/ATLAS originated from, but it has certainly travelled a long way. The comet is likely billions of years old and potentially more than 3 billion years older than our own solar system. In fact, the comet has spent so much time in space that it could be extremely irradiated, which would make deciphering its origins even more difficult.
Trigo-Rodríguez noted that it's important to study and track interstellar comets because they are a potential collision hazard for Earth. However, he also described them as "extraordinary objects" in their own right and worthy of consideration.
They "are space capsules, containing valuable information about the chemistry ongoing in another location of our galaxy," Trigo-Rodríguez said.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-is-erupting-in-ice-volcanoes-new-images-suggest
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- Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:02:29 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ The 7 best running headphone deals that remain for Cyber Monday ]]>
- There are just a few hours left of Cyber Monday, and some of the best running headphone deals have already expired. Below are 7 deals that are still live and still worth parting with your hard-earned cash for.
Why did we choose these models? Well, they have all been tested by our in-house and contributing experts, and all score highly in our hands-on reviews. All of them feature in at least one of our 'best of' guides, including best running headphones and best bone conduction headphones.
We have checked each of the prices below to make sure we are showing you the cheapest option. No need to scour the internet for a better deal, we have already found them.
Best Cyber Monday deals on running headphones
Save 31% on the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2. They sit at the top of our best bone-conduction headphones, and for good reason. You will be hard-pressed to find a better combination of sound quality, battery life and comfort. We like that you can still be aware of your surroundings when running. If you want to take your bone conduction headphones swimming too, we wouldn't hesitate to recommend the waterproof OpenSwim Pro, also discounted to $124.95.
Save $40��on the Apple AirPods Pro 2. You missed out on saving $100, but that just shows these deals really won't hang around forever. These are an older model of AirPods, but they are still some of the best options for Apple users. These earbuds are dust, sweat, and water resistant (IP54-protected from water splashes from any direction), plus they come with 30 hours of battery life and four pairs of spare silicone tips.
Save 25% on the Beats Fit Pro. While the battery 'only' lasts six hours, we thought the noise cancellation was more than adequate. Perfect when you're pounding away on a treadmill.
Save 20% at several retailers on the second iteration of our favorite Beats Powerbeats Pro. Thanks to their secure-fitting earhooks, easy-to-operate buttons, built-in heart rate monitoring, and a huge 45 hours of battery life, they are a solid choice for outdoor runners and gym-goers. Be mindful that there isn't Active Noise Cancellation, though, if this is something that is important to you.
Save $20. Sure, this isn't the biggest discount compared to others, but these are our favorite bone-conduction headphones for runners. They are especially great if you already own a Suunto watch. Get real-time running feedback straight into your ears.
Save a huge 40% on these well-reviewed running headphones. We scored the older model of this earbud 4 out of 5 stars in our hands-on review, and this version offers even better noise cancelling, better battery life, and simpler controls. There's also a built-in display in the case to check your battery status without needing your phone.
