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<![CDATA[ Latest from Live Science ]]>
https://www.livescience.com
- Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:09:09 +0000
+ Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:10:00 +0000en
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+ <![CDATA[ New 'DNA cassette tape' can store up to 1.5 million times more data than a smartphone — and the data can last 20,000 years if frozen ]]>
+ Running out of space on your phone? Don't upgrade your cloud-storage subscription just yet. Scientists in China have discovered that images, text files and other digital data can be stored in strands of DNA fused to a 330-foot-long (100 meters) plastic strip capable of holding the equivalent of 3 billion songs.
It's a far cry from a device that Microsoft built in 2016, which managed to squeeze 200 megabytes of data into a dab of DNA "much smaller than the tip of a pencil."
The new "tape" can even be fed into a cassette-player-like reader that can scan the strip, pinpoint a chosen file, and retrieve it on demand. The team outlined their findings in a study published Sept. 10 in the journal Science Advances.
DNA is a long, double-helical molecule made from a unique sequence of four chemical bases — adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) — that together encode the genetic information of an organism. Similarly, every digital file is ultimately a combination of 1s and 0s that a computer can interpret as a PDF, JPEG or other file type.
If each base were to represent a specific pattern of 0s and 1s, then a piece of artificial DNA could be encoded to contain the binary code for digital files. This type of molecule does not come from a living organism, but is assembled in the lab by linking pre-manufactured nucleotide building blocks together in the desired sequence.
This is what the scientists did before printing the encoded DNA on a long piece of tape. A solution containing the strands was passed over the strip so they adsorbed to the polymer surface.
"DNA has the potential to become the next-generation information storage medium due to its high storage density," the authors wrote in the study. "The rolled configuration of the DNA tape efficiently maximizes the spatial utilization of the material, enabling portability and extending the number of available areas and storage capacity by increasing its length."
Each section of the tape is printed with a barcode indicating which file is held there. A camera on the cassette-player-like machine then scans the tape as it moves between its two rollers, locates a file and dips that spot into a basic solution that releases the DNA. The DNA can then be sequenced, and that sequence of bases can be translated into the file's code.
Data storage for hundreds — if not thousands — of years
The researchers hope their DNA tape could offer a solution to the proliferation of digital data, which has been exacerbated massively by the generative artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They estimate that a piece roughly 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) long could hold up to 362,000 terabytes of data — the equivalent of about 60 billion photos. For reference, laptops often ship with between 0.5 and 2TB of storage, while smartphones usually have a minimum of 128GB or 256GB.
Beyond the high storage capacity, the data the DNA tape encapsulates could be preserved for a long time, the team said. That's because the DNA strands are stored inside metal organic frameworks (MOFs) — molecular-scale cages made of zinc ions — that provide a layer of protection.
DNA is known to keep its form for centuries, and the researchers found that their tape could store data for more than 345 years at room temperature, or about 20,000 years at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Even in the event of breakage, the DNA tape could be fixed using transparent adhesive tape, they said in the study.
In addition to identifying and extracting DNA strands that correspond to a specific file, the reader can encapsulate new DNA strands in MOFs and deposit them onto the tape. It can also autonomously detect when a DNA strand is in the wrong barcoded section and move it to the correct one.
While DNA data storage has been exploredextensivelyover the years, this is one of the first solutions to show elegant "file system" behavior, meaning that files can be retrieved, modified or deleted. It also works robotically, instead of requiring a combination of manual and instrument steps, and can handle "warm" (repeatedly accessed) data as well as "cold" (rarely accessed) data.
However, challenges remain. The actual synthesis of DNA is still costly and time-consuming, and it requires bulky equipment. Plus, the process of recovering a single file from the tape takes about 25 minutes. Therefore, in its current state, the DNA cassette player doesn't offer a feasible method of archiving our digital data.
That being said, the scientists hope that their research could lead to technology that can store huge amounts of both warm and cold data in a compact form, reducing reliance on the massive data centers in use today.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/technology/computing/new-dna-cassette-tape-can-store-up-to-1-5-million-times-more-data-than-a-smartphone-and-the-data-can-last-20-000-years-if-frozen
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+ Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:10:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ China's Great Green Wall: The giant artificial forest designed to slow the expansion of 2 deserts ]]>
+ China's "Great Green Wall" is a huge ecological engineering project to slow the expansion of the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the country's north.
Since 1978, China has planted more than 66 billion trees along its borders with Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan — and Chinese authorities plan to plant 34 billion more over the next 25 years. If they succeed, the Great Green Wall will increase Earth's forest cover by 10% since the late 1970s.
The Great Green Wall, formally known as the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, is designed to slow soil erosion and sand deposition that has been increasing since the 1950s due to huge urbanization and farmland expansion. These changes exacerbated the region's already dry conditions, which in turn created the conditions for more sandstorms. Sandstorms blow away the top layer of soil and deposit sand, degrading the land and increasing particulate matter pollution in cities.
Northern China was dry before the urbanization boom of the 1950s, because the Himalayas create a rain shadow over the country's border with Mongolia that limits precipitation in the region. This is why the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts are so enormous; combined, they cover 618,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers), which is slightly smaller than Alaska, according to the Royal Geographical Society.
Despite China's efforts over the past five decades, the Gobi and Taklamakan are still expanding. The Gobi Desert, for instance, swallows around 1,400 square miles (3,600 square km) of China's grassland every year. Desertification is ruining ecosystems and agricultural land, but it's also making pollution in cities like Beijing worse, according to the Royal Geographical Society.
Last year, government representatives announced China had finished encircling the Taklamakan with vegetation, which has helped stabilize sand dunes and grow forest cover from about 10% of China's area in 1949 to more than 25% today. Tree planting will continue around the Taklamakan to maintain and enlarge the forest, the representatives said.
If everything goes to plan, the Great Green Wall will be 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) long by 2050. The "wall" is the world's largest seeded forest — but it's still unclear just how effective it is at slowing desertification.
Critics say the survival rate of planted trees and shrubs is too low to show robust results, possibly because huge swathes of the wall encompass only one or two tree species — mostly poplar and willow, according to the Royal Geographical Society — making the wall susceptible to disease. For example, in 2000, 1 billion poplar trees were lost to a single pathogen in the Ningxia province.
Tree mortality is also high because China is planting trees in places that don't have enough water to grow them. Without constant human intervention, many of the trees don't survive.
"People crowded into the natural sand dunes and the Gobi to plant trees, which have caused a rapid decrease in soil moisture and the groundwater table," Xian Xue, a leading expert on erosion-driven desertification at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told National Geographic in 2017. "Actually, it will cause desertification [in some regions]."
Because it is a monoculture, the Great Green Wall also doesn't promote biodiversity in the same way that a more diverse mix of indigenous plants would. Nevertheless, the program inspired Africa's Great Green Wall, which will be a 5,000-mile-long (8,000 km) tree belt across the continent to slow land degradation and desertification.
Discover more incredible places, where we highlight the fantastic history and science behind some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth
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+ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/plants/chinas-great-green-wall-the-giant-artificial-forest-designed-to-slow-the-expansion-of-2-deserts
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+ Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'A scale almost too big to imagine': Scientists spot monster black hole roaring with winds at more than 130 million mph ]]>
+ Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole whipping up cosmic winds at record speeds.
The black hole, located 135 million light-years from Earth in the center of the NGC 3783 spiral galaxy, caught researchers' attention after emitting a huge X-ray flare. As the burst died down, it left winds of more than 37,000 miles per second (60,000 kilometers per second) — one-fifth the speed of light — howling in its wake.
"We've not watched a black hole create winds this speedily before,"Liyi Gu, an astronomer at Space Research Organisation Netherlands who led the research, said in astatement.
Gu and his colleagues were studying NGC 3783'sactive galactic nucleus (AGN), the bright, busy region surrounding a galaxy's feeding supermassive black hole. These areas are known to suddenly flare and belch jets of material and wind into space. The researchers think the intense X-ray burst and subsequent gale they observed was powered by the black hole's tangled magnetic field, which suddenly "untwisted."
The team likened the process to how Earth's sun releases enormous eruptions of plasma called coronal mass ejections shortly after our star's magnetic field lines tangle and snap. However, in this case, the supermassive black hole has the mass of 30 million suns, which puts its flares and ejections "on a scale almost too big to imagine," Matteo Guainazzi, a team member and European Space Agency (ESA) astronomer, said in the statement. (For reference, the winds from arecent coronal mass ejection clocked in at a paltry 930 miles, or 1,500 km, per second.)
The discovery was made using ESA'sXMM-Newton andXRISM X-ray space telescopes. Gu's team used the two telescopes in tandem, tracking the initial flare with XMM-Newton's Optical Monitor, and analyzing the resultant winds with XRISM's Resolve instrument. The researchers hope to take a similar collaborative approach to investigate other flaring AGNs.
They also think studying AGNs and the intense flares they produce could help further our understanding of how galaxies evolve.
"Because they're so influential, knowing more about the magnetism of AGNs, and how they whip up winds such as these, is key to understanding the history of galaxies," Camille Diez, an astrophysicist and ESA fellow who was part of the research, said in the statement.
The scientists detailed their discovery in apaper published Dec. 9 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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+ https://www.livescience.com/space/black-holes/a-scale-almost-too-big-to-imagine-scientists-spot-monster-black-hole-roaring-with-winds-at-more-than-130-million-mph
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+ Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000
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+ <![CDATA[ 'They had not been seen ever before': Romans made liquid gypsum paste and smeared it over the dead before burial, leaving fingerprints behind, new research finds ]]>Around 1,800 years ago in Roman Britain, people preparing bodies for burial created a plaster-like paste and smeared it over the corpses, leaving behind fingerprints that are still visible today, researchers reported in a recent blog post.
These newfound prints reveal a hands-on approach to funerary practices in the third and fourth centuries A.D., the archaeologists said.
This team of researchers, involved in the "Seeing the Dead" project at the University of York, have been investigating the mysterious practice of using liquid gypsum to fill stone and lead coffins of people who lived in Yorkshire during the Roman Empire.
Gypsum is a calcium-based mineral that was a key ingredient in ancient plaster and cement. When heated and mixed with water, gypsum becomes a pourable liquid sometimes called plaster of paris. This thick liquid, when poured over a dead body, hardens into a plaster and leaves behind a casing or impression of the deceased, much like the casts at Pompeii.
At least 45 liquid gypsum burials have been discovered in the Yorkshire area to date. When investigating one of them — a stone sarcophagus found in the 1870s that had not been properly studied before — the team found a surprising clue to the method of applying the liquid gypsum: Someone had spread it by hand.
"When we lifted the casing and began cleaning and 3D scanning, we discovered the hand print with fingers and were astounded," Maureen Carroll, a Roman archaeologist at the University of York and principal investigator of the Seeing the Dead project, told Live Science in an email. "They had not been seen ever before, nor had anyone ever removed the casing from the sarcophagus."
Image 1 of 4
(Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
Researchers discovered a handprint in the hardened gypsum.
Image 2 of 4
(Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
A close-up of the hand print showing individual fingers.
Image 3 of 4
(Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
A person demonstrates how a Roman-era person would have touched the plaster.
Image 4 of 4
(Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
A 3D scan of the plaster reveals fingerprints (orange) and drag marks (yellow).
In a Dec. 10 blog post, Carroll explained that the team had previously assumed the liquid gypsum was heated to at least 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius) and poured over the body. But the presence of fingerprints means that the gypsum mixture was probably a soft paste that someone smoothed over the body in the coffin. The gypsum had been spread very close to the edges of the coffin, so the fingerprints were not visible until the team removed the casing from the coffin.
The fingerprints and hand marks reveal the close, personal contact the Romans had with their dead, according to Carroll. "They are a striking trace of human activity that is not otherwise known to survive on a body in a Roman funerary context," she wrote in the blog post.
The marks might preserve additional clues about the person or people who buried the dead — revealing, for example, whether a professional undertaker or a family member last touched the deceased.
"We are hoping to extract potential DNA remains from the handprint for examination at the Francis Crick Institute in London," Carroll said. It's a long shot, but "the best case scenario is that we may be able to infer genetic sex, which would be a huge result!"
Roman Britain quiz: What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles?
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- <![CDATA[ 'It is the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career': Archaeologists uncover evidence that Neanderthals made fire 400,000 years ago in England ]]>
- Neanderthals were the world's first innovators of fire technology, tiny specks of evidence in England suggest. Flecks of pyrite found at a more than 400,000-year-old archaeological site in Suffolk, in eastern England, push back archaeologists' evidence for controlled fire-making and suggest that key human brain developments began far earlier than previously thought.
"We're a species who've used fire to really shape the world around us," study co-author Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, said in a news conference on Tuesday (Dec. 9). "The ability to make fire would have been critically important" in human evolution, Davis said, "accelerating evolutionary trends" such as developing larger brains, maintaining larger social groups, and increasing language skills.
Since 2013, Davis and colleagues have been excavating an archaeological site in England called Barnham, which yielded stone tools, burnt sediment and charcoal from 400,000 years ago. In a study published Wednesday (Dec. 10) in the journal Nature, the researchers revealed that the site contained the world's earliest direct evidence of fire-making — and that this fire technology was likely pioneered by Neanderthals.
A big turning point
Barnham was first recognized as a Paleolithic human site in the early 1900s due to the presence of stone tools. But recent excavations uncovered evidence of ancient human groups occupying the area more than 415,000 years ago, when Barnham was a small, seasonal watering hole in a woodland depression.
In one corner of the site, archaeologists found a concentration of heat-shattered hand axes as well as a zone of reddened clay. Through a series of scientific analyses, the researchers discovered that the reddened clay had been subjected to repeated, localized burning, which suggested the area may have been an ancient hearth.
"The big turning point came with the discovery of iron pyrite," study co-author Nick Ashton, curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, said in the news conference.
Pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is a naturally occurring mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint. While pyrite is found in many locations around the world, it is extremely rare in the Barnham area, meaning someone specifically brought pyrite to the site, probably with the aim of making fire, the researchers said in the study.
Discovery of the first fragment of iron pyrite in 2017 at Barnham, Suffolk, U.K. (Image credit: Jordan Mansfield/Pathways to Ancient Britain Project)
Humans' use of fire
Because of the importance of controlled fire, paleoanthropologists have long debated the timing of this invention.
"There are so many obvious advantages to fire, from cooking to protection from predators to its technological use in creating new types of artifacts to its ability to bring people together," April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "We only have to think of our own childhoods gathering around a campfire to understand its emotional resonance."
Researchers believe that early humans first used wildfires for cooking food. This was a crucial step in human evolution because cooking widened the range of food available and made it more digestible, which in turn provided more nutrients needed to grow a larger brain, Davis said.
But there is limited evidence for deliberate early fire technology, and that evidence is often ambiguous, the researchers noted in the study.
For example, scientists unearthed reddened sediment at Koobi Fora in Kenya that dated to about 1.5 million years ago. Researchers suggested it could hint at early fire use because the key hominin at the site — Homo erectus — had a fairly large brain. And at twosites in Israel dated to about 800,000 years ago, burnt animal bones and stone tools suggest possible control of fire by the human ancestors who lived there.
Fire technology then exploded around 400,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence of burning at cave sites in France, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the U.K., and then more widespread use of fire in Europe, Africa and the Levant (the region around the east Mediterranean) by 200,000 years ago.
But these previous examples do not show the same kind of conclusive geochemical evidence of fire making that was found at Barnham, Ashton argued. He called the team's careful analysis of the Barnham sediment and identification of pyrite "the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career."
Researchers excavate at the site of Barnham in the U.K. (Image credit: Jordan Mansfield/Pathways to Ancient Britain Project)
Neanderthals are "fully human"
However, any bones at Barnham have since disintegrated, so the "smoking gun" of butchered and burned animal bones that could prove the site was used for cooking has not been found.
This also means there are no skeletal remains of the fire producers themselves at Barnham — but study co-author Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the National History Museum in London, has a guess about their identity.
"We assume that the fires at Barnham were being made by early Neanderthals," Stringer said in the news conference, based on a nearby site called Swanscombe, where Neanderthal skull bones were discovered that dated to the same time period as Barnham.
While experts have known for about a decade that some Neanderthals could make fire, that evidence goes back only 50,000 years. The Barnham finds push that date 350,000 years further back, suggesting Neanderthals were much smarter than most people give them credit for.
Neanderthals "are fully human," Stringer said. "They have complex behavior, they're adapting to new environments, and their brains are as large as ours. They're very evolved humans."
Nowell said that the study's results add fuel to a larger debate about Neanderthals' control of fire and their social and cultural use of it.
"There is a lot of discussion right now about whether all Neanderthals made fire or if it is only some Neanderthals at some times and places that made fire," Nowell said. The new study "is another important data point in our understanding of Neanderthal pyrotechnical capabilities with all that implies cognitively, socially and technologically."
Who made fire first?
If the researchers are correct that Neanderthals made fire from flint and pyrite more than 400,000 years ago in England, this raises additional questions, Nowell said.
"Despite its obvious advantages, questions remain about the nature of early fire use: When did fire use become a regular part of the human behavioral repertoire? Were early humans dependent on the opportunistic use of wildfires and lightning strikes? Was fire rediscovered multiple times?" Nowell said.
The ancestors of Homo sapienswere living in Africa 400,000 years ago and not likely interacting with early Neanderthals half a world away.
"We don't know if Homo sapiens at that date had the ability to make fire," Stringer said, because to date there is no clear evidence for control of fire any earlier than Barnham.
This means that Neanderthals may have invented ways to make and control fire somewhere in continental Europe, which then enabled our human cousins to move further north into England, heating and lighting their way with fire.
"It's plausible that fire became more controlled in Europe and spread to Africa," Ashton said. "We have to keep an open mind."
Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
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- https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/it-is-the-most-exciting-discovery-in-my-40-year-career-archaeologists-uncover-evidence-that-neanderthals-made-fire-400-000-years-ago-in-england
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- Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:00:00 +0000
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- <![CDATA[ Scientists create new solid-state sodium-ion battery — they say it'll make EVs cheaper and safer ]]>A breakthrough battery technology could vastly improve the safety of batteries used for electric vehicles (EVs) and could enhance the stability of energy grids, scientists say.
Researchers made the breakthrough while developing solid-state sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries, which could one day supplement and replace the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries used in many everyday devices today.
The new batteries promise greater safety and lower cost, provided researchers can crack the problem of producing them at scale and in such a way that they have long lifecycles. The researchers published their findings in two studies; the first was released May 19 in the journal Advanced Materials and the second Aug. 15 in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
Li-ion batteries, the dominant battery technology found in products ranging from the phones in your hand to electric cars, can suffer from a process known as "thermal runaway." This occurs when a battery experiences a short circuit or physical damage, which sparks a self-sustaining chain reaction that greatly increases heat inside the cells.
Commercial Li-ion batteries also typically contain organic liquid electrolytes, which are an essential component for energy density, as well as efficient charging and discharging. These liquid electrolytes are highly flammable and can lead to batteries catching fire or even exploding when damaged.
Na-ion batteries could be a safer alternative because they contain more stable cathode materials and sodium ions have less electrochemical potential than lithium ions, making them less prone to thermal runaway.
The downside is that Na-ion batteries have a relatively low energy density compared to Li-ion batteries, meaning that they last less time between charges. In addition, Na-ion batteries may presently degrade faster, resulting in a lower overall lifespan. Both of these factors have historically held Na-ion batteries back from becoming mainstream.
But as outlined in the new research, scientists produced a solid material containing sulfur and chlorine that assists conductivity in a similar manner to liquid electrolytes while providing far superior stability. The new battery exhibited a Coulombic efficiency of 99.26% after 600 charging cycles at 0.1C (a 10-hour discharge), nearing the 99% or more that lithium batteries achieve.
Challenging lithium dominance
"We replaced the liquid electrolyte in the battery into a solid-state electrolyte — it’s non-flammable," Yang Zhao, professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Western University, said in a video uploaded to YouTube.
The team also used the Canadian Light Source, Canada's national synchrotron facility, to examine the movement of ions inside their solid electrolyte, which confirmed their results.
"These X-ray tools allow us to see the local chemical environment, ion pathways, and bonding structures in ways that regular lab instruments can’t," Zhao said in a further statement. "They’re absolutely essential for developing solid-state battery materials."
The new battery technology could help lead to the widespread use of Na-ion batteries, particularly for critical workloads currently filled by more volatile Li-ion batteries, the researchers said. Next, they will have to demonstrate their approach provides the right balance between safety and energy density, as well as a manufacturing method that can be scaled to meet the immense demand for batteries seen around the world.
Despite accounting for around 70% of the world’s rechargeable batteries, Li-ion batteries are primarily used in just a handful of critical applications.
For example, recent International Energy Agency (IEA) data found that the energy sector accounts for over 90% of Li-ion demand.
Currently, battery energy storage systems (BESS) at a national level are under increased scrutiny, particularly after repeated fires at California BESS sites, and require the construction of fire suppression systems. Na-ion could help ease these concerns and speed up the deployment of BESS, which stores the intermittent supply of renewable energy to be delivered later on demand.
Because sodium is plentiful compared with lithium, the mass production of Na-ion batteries could greatly reduce the overall cost of the battery supply chain.
Na-ion batteries also come with the added benefit of being easier to recycle than Li-ion batteries, as covered in a 2023 study, because they contain fewer hazardous materials and no heavy metals.
A number of well-known car brands are already working on Na-ion batteries. In April, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL), announced that it is mass-producing Na-ion batteries using its new "Naxtra" battery platform. The product is expected to be used in cars from 2026. Chinese auto giant BYD is also developing Na-ion batteries for grid-scale storage purposes.
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+ <![CDATA[ 'It is the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career': Archaeologists uncover evidence that Neanderthals made fire 400,000 years ago in England ]]>
+ Neanderthals were the world's first innovators of fire technology, tiny specks of evidence in England suggest. Flecks of pyrite found at a more than 400,000-year-old archaeological site in Suffolk, in eastern England, push back archaeologists' evidence for controlled fire-making and suggest that key human brain developments began far earlier than previously thought.
"We're a species who've used fire to really shape the world around us," study co-author Rob Davis, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the British Museum, said in a news conference on Tuesday (Dec. 9). "The ability to make fire would have been critically important" in human evolution, Davis said, "accelerating evolutionary trends" such as developing larger brains, maintaining larger social groups, and increasing language skills.
Since 2013, Davis and colleagues have been excavating an archaeological site in England called Barnham, which yielded stone tools, burnt sediment and charcoal from 400,000 years ago. In a study published Wednesday (Dec. 10) in the journal Nature, the researchers revealed that the site contained the world's earliest direct evidence of fire-making — and that this fire technology was likely pioneered by Neanderthals.
A big turning point
Barnham was first recognized as a Paleolithic human site in the early 1900s due to the presence of stone tools. But recent excavations uncovered evidence of ancient human groups occupying the area more than 415,000 years ago, when Barnham was a small, seasonal watering hole in a woodland depression.
In one corner of the site, archaeologists found a concentration of heat-shattered hand axes as well as a zone of reddened clay. Through a series of scientific analyses, the researchers discovered that the reddened clay had been subjected to repeated, localized burning, which suggested the area may have been an ancient hearth.
"The big turning point came with the discovery of iron pyrite," study co-author Nick Ashton, curator of Paleolithic collections at the British Museum, said in the news conference.
Pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is a naturally occurring mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint. While pyrite is found in many locations around the world, it is extremely rare in the Barnham area, meaning someone specifically brought pyrite to the site, probably with the aim of making fire, the researchers said in the study.
Discovery of the first fragment of iron pyrite in 2017 at Barnham, Suffolk, U.K. (Image credit: Jordan Mansfield/Pathways to Ancient Britain Project)
Humans' use of fire
Because of the importance of controlled fire, paleoanthropologists have long debated the timing of this invention.
"There are so many obvious advantages to fire, from cooking to protection from predators to its technological use in creating new types of artifacts to its ability to bring people together," April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "We only have to think of our own childhoods gathering around a campfire to understand its emotional resonance."
Researchers believe that early humans first used wildfires for cooking food. This was a crucial step in human evolution because cooking widened the range of food available and made it more digestible, which in turn provided more nutrients needed to grow a larger brain, Davis said.
But there is limited evidence for deliberate early fire technology, and that evidence is often ambiguous, the researchers noted in the study.
For example, scientists unearthed reddened sediment at Koobi Fora in Kenya that dated to about 1.5 million years ago. Researchers suggested it could hint at early fire use because the key hominin at the site — Homo erectus — had a fairly large brain. And at twosites in Israel dated to about 800,000 years ago, burnt animal bones and stone tools suggest possible control of fire by the human ancestors who lived there.
Fire technology then exploded around 400,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found evidence of burning at cave sites in France, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the U.K., and then more widespread use of fire in Europe, Africa and the Levant (the region around the east Mediterranean) by 200,000 years ago.
But these previous examples do not show the same kind of conclusive geochemical evidence of fire making that was found at Barnham, Ashton argued. He called the team's careful analysis of the Barnham sediment and identification of pyrite "the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career."
Researchers excavate at the site of Barnham in the U.K. (Image credit: Jordan Mansfield/Pathways to Ancient Britain Project)
Neanderthals are "fully human"
However, any bones at Barnham have since disintegrated, so the "smoking gun" of butchered and burned animal bones that could prove the site was used for cooking has not been found.
This also means there are no skeletal remains of the fire producers themselves at Barnham — but study co-author Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the National History Museum in London, has a guess about their identity.
"We assume that the fires at Barnham were being made by early Neanderthals," Stringer said in the news conference, based on a nearby site called Swanscombe, where Neanderthal skull bones were discovered that dated to the same time period as Barnham.
While experts have known for about a decade that some Neanderthals could make fire, that evidence goes back only 50,000 years. The Barnham finds push that date 350,000 years further back, suggesting Neanderthals were much smarter than most people give them credit for.
Neanderthals "are fully human," Stringer said. "They have complex behavior, they're adapting to new environments, and their brains are as large as ours. They're very evolved humans."
Nowell said that the study's results add fuel to a larger debate about Neanderthals' control of fire and their social and cultural use of it.
"There is a lot of discussion right now about whether all Neanderthals made fire or if it is only some Neanderthals at some times and places that made fire," Nowell said. The new study "is another important data point in our understanding of Neanderthal pyrotechnical capabilities with all that implies cognitively, socially and technologically."
Who made fire first?
If the researchers are correct that Neanderthals made fire from flint and pyrite more than 400,000 years ago in England, this raises additional questions, Nowell said.
"Despite its obvious advantages, questions remain about the nature of early fire use: When did fire use become a regular part of the human behavioral repertoire? Were early humans dependent on the opportunistic use of wildfires and lightning strikes? Was fire rediscovered multiple times?" Nowell said.
The ancestors of Homo sapienswere living in Africa 400,000 years ago and not likely interacting with early Neanderthals half a world away.
"We don't know if Homo sapiens at that date had the ability to make fire," Stringer said, because to date there is no clear evidence for control of fire any earlier than Barnham.
This means that Neanderthals may have invented ways to make and control fire somewhere in continental Europe, which then enabled our human cousins to move further north into England, heating and lighting their way with fire.
"It's plausible that fire became more controlled in Europe and spread to Africa," Ashton said. "We have to keep an open mind."
Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
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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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- <![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
]]>
+ <![CDATA[ The 21 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 21 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.
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.
We are big fans of the CMF Buds 2a (our orange pair has been in particularly heavy use recently) and can't recommend them enough. While it may not have the same top-notch sound quality as the models mentioned above, it is still one of the best budget-friendly ANC earbuds we have ever owned.
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.
Shaker bottles are indispensable for quick and efficient mixing of protein powders, sports supplements and meal replacement shakes. This one from BlenderBottle is our favorite. It has never leaked or broken, it is easy to clean, and it comes in a wide range of sleek designs. Plus, it is now on sale.
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.
Looking for something on the opposite side of the budget spectrum? Then you can't go wrong with the Fitbit Inspire 3. This sleek-looking and reliable watch has been at the top of our guide to the best budget fitness trackers for three years straight, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. View Deal
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
How about a fitness video game? The Ring Fit Adventure is one of the best-rated options for Nintendo enthusiasts, and a real treat for fans of immersive, gamified workout experiences. Plus, it is suitable for players of all fitness levels.View Deal
Looking for something more budget-friendly? How about day-to-day items shaped like exercise equipment? Whether it is a water bottle that resembles a heavy dumbbell or a kettlebell espresso mug, these gifts will showcase your thoughtfulness and creativity. We particularly like this set of coasters that look like weight plates.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
]]>
https://www.livescience.com/health/exercise/the-best-fitness-gifts-for-gym-lovers-hand-picked-a-personal-trainer
@@ -482,21 +537,21 @@
- <![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))
Live Science news roundup
Here are some of the best Live Science stories from yesterday that we didn't cover on the blog:
The volcanic eruption of Bezymianny on March 30, 1956. (Image credit: Photo by I. V. Yerov, 1956 (courtesy of G.S. Gorshkov, published in Green and Short, 1971, Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0).)
Bezymianny volcano blew itself apart in 1956. Now, thanks to frequent eruptions, it's almost completely regrown, Live Science contributor Stephanie Pappas reports.
Bezymianny is an active cone-shaped volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Last month, the volcano ejected a massive ash cloud that rose 32,800 feet (10 kilometers) into the air.
Researchers say that eruptions like this spurred the volcano to reform, and draw closer to its pre-1950s height of at least 10,213 feet (3,113 meters). The volcano is currently 9,455 feet (2,882 m), according to the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program.
Hadrian's Wall served as the Roman Empire's northern frontier for around 300 years. (Image credit: by Marc Guitard via Getty Images)
Hadrian's Wall in northern England marked the border of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years. But far from a "Game of Thrones"-style wall, where isolated (and cold) soldiers pee off the end of the world, experts told Live Science the Roman frontier was actually a diverse region of danger, boredom and even opportunity. (It was definitely cold though.)
To find out more about life on the edge of the Roman world, read the full story here.
Monogamy 'league table'
Meerkats and humans are similarly monogamous, according to a new study. (Image credit: Martin Harvey via Getty Images)
What do humans, meerkats and beavers have in common? We all tend to be relatively monogamous.
Mark Dyble, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, has unveiled a monogamy "league table" after investigating the varying levels of exclusive mating in different animals.
Humans came out with a monogamy rate of 66%, which was closer to that of meerkats (60%) and beavers (73%) than most of our primate cousins, according to the researcher's findings, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives, yet the study highlighted that they have a more polygynandrous approach to mating. Males and females mate with multiple different partners, giving them a monogamy rate of 4%.
California deermice topped the table with a monogamy rate of 100%. This species pairs for life as part of its mating strategy. Scotland’s Soay sheep, on the other hand, were at the bottom of the table. Ewes (females) of this breed mate with several rams (males), resulting in a monogamy rate of 0.6%.
"There is a premier league of monogamy, in which humans sit comfortably, while the vast majority of other mammals take a far more promiscuous approach to mating," Dyble said in a statement.
Dyble used a computer model to calculate the scores, based on sibling data from genetic studies and known reproductive strategies. It's worth noting that a higher or lower monogamy rate doesn't mean that a species is any more or less successful. The score is merely an indicator of reproduction habits.
Of course, humans are a varied bunch, and we're well known for having a variety of different mating norms.
Neanderthal Prometheus
An artist's impression of a Neanderthal making sparks from pyrite and flint. (Image credit: Craig Williams/The Trustees of the British Museum)
Researchers in England have discovered the earliest and clearest evidence of purposeful fire-making in the world, settling — for now — a long-running debate about human control of fire. And it turns out that it was Neanderthals, not humans, who invented the technology.
Archaeologists identified a series of tiny pyrite chips as the "smoking gun" of fire control at Barnham, an ancient pond site in Suffolk that was occupied more than 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals likely imported the pyrite from elsewhere in England to strike against flint, making sparks.
Read my coverage of the new study to find out why archaeologist Nick Ashton called it "the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career."
The next naked-eye supernova?
The star system GK Persei, home of an infamous nova explosion, seen by the Chandra X-ray telescope. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)
Astronomers have taken a fresh look at an infamous star system veering toward catastrophe — and found the best evidence yet that it's due for a historic supernova explosion.
The binary star system V Saggitae, located 10,000 light-years from Earth, contains a white dwarf (the smoldering core of a dead star) and a larger, still-burning companion star whipping around one another every 12 hours. The dwarf star regularly rips material off its companion, triggering frequent X-ray flashes as thermonuclear reactions erupt on the white dwarf's surface.
The new research, based on 120 days of observations, confirms that a double-whammy light show is currently in production at V Saggitae. First, we'll see a nova: a bright explosion unleashed after the white dwarf has consumed too much of its companion, and violently ejects that excess matter into space. Then, once the two stars finally collide, the main event: A supernova explosion so bright "it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime," study co-author Pablo Rodríguez-Gil told Live Science.
European Union members have agreed on new emissions targets. (Image credit: ImageBROKER/Sunny Celeste via Getty Images)
The European Union has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, Reuters reports.
The new, legally binding climate target aims to cut emissions from European industries by 85%. The remaining 5% will come from the purchase of foreign carbon credits. Essentially, Europe will pay developing countries to cut emissions on its behalf.
The European Parliament and E.U. country negotiators agreed on the climate deal in the early hours of this morning (Dec. 10).
The target is among the most ambitious in the world, though still not as strong as what the E.U.'s climate science advisors recommended. It's also meant to help ensure that Europe reaches its 2050 net-zero emissions pledge, according to Reuters.
The E.U. wants to become the "first climate-neutral continent," where the amount of greenhouse gas it emits into the atmosphere is offset by the amount it removes, for example, through natural and artificial carbon sinks.
The U.K. side is closing up shop for the day. But keep checking back for more science news today from my U.S. colleagues.
Here's a joke from Reader's Digest. It explains why outer space is full of space cadets.
Why couldn't the star stay focused?
He kept spacing out.
Rare side effect of COVID vaccines unraveled
In very rare cases, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can trigger a side effect that inflames the heart. (Image credit: Olga Pankova via Getty Images)
Myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — is a rare side effect of COVID-19 vaccines, specifically those made using mRNA technology. A new study may have pinpointed how this side effect occurs and how to potentially stop it in its tracks, STAT reported.
"I want to emphasize this is very, very rare. This study is purely to understand why," the senior study author told STAT. As mRNA medicines, especially vaccines, face scrutiny and funding cuts from the U.S. federal government, researchers must carefully navigate how to study and call attention to aspects of the technology that still need improvement without putting fuel on the fire of anti-mRNA conspiracy theories.
The new study uncovered two immune signaling proteins, called cytokines, that appear in higher quantities in the blood of vaccine recipients with myocarditis than in those who didn't experience the side effect. The heart-damaging effects of these cytokines — CXCL10 and interferon-gamma — can be blocked with antibodies and with an anti-inflammatory compound found in soybeans, the study authors found in lab-dish experiments and in mice with myocarditis.
Notably, the myocarditis side effect is most often seen in teen boys and young men. The soybean compound, which is chemically similar to estrogen, lends credence to the idea that the female sex hormone might protect against the effect, Scientific American reported.
More work is needed to translate these findings into humans and to fully understand why mRNA vaccines, specifically, sometimes trigger this chain reaction. Read more in STAT, SciAm, or in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
When did complex life evolve?
A 3D illustration of a eukaryotic cell. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Complex life may have evolved more than 1 billion years earlier than previously thought, a new Nature study suggests.
Previously, scientists thought that the first eukaryotes, or cells that include a nucleus, cell membrane and organelles, first emerged around 2 billion years ago. The new study looked at the genomes of a wide range of organisms from across the tree of life. They used gene duplication events, in which sections of DNA are doubled, to calibrate a molecular clock.
Their estimates suggest that the first cells with nuclei emerged 2.9 billion years ago — roughly a billion years before the organisms that would give rise to mitochondria were assimilated by eukaryotes. Scientists believe that our mitochondria — cellular powerhouses that are responsible for "breathing" oxygen — evolved from primitive bacteria and were absorbed via endosymbiosis.
"The process of cumulative complexification took place over a much longer time period than previously thought," study co-author Gergely Szöllősi, Head of the Model-Based Evolutionary Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), said in a statement.
Intriguingly, the rise in mitochondria corresponds to a rise in atmospheric oxygen, during what's known as the "Great Oxidation Event." The findings suggest ancient life forms were accomplishing complex cellular functions in oceans devoid of oxygen, according to the statement. It's also more evidence that life shapes the geochemistry of the planet.
Meanwhile, primitive life has been here almost since the beginning. The planet is around 4.5 billion years old, and the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms, known as LUCA, emerged 4.2 billion years ago. And LUCA wasn't alone; there were other viruses and bacteria filling its primeval ecosystem, genetic traces suggest. That means life likely emerged even earlier than LUCA, but just didn't pass on its genes to any creatures living today.
Spaghetti for two
Black holes routinely "spaghettify" stars that orbit too closely. Sometimes, more than once. (Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab)
In 1999, astronomers saw a deep space object go haywire. Watching with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team saw a well-known X-ray source called XID 925 suddenly brighten by nearly 30-fold, then start to fade again.
Scientists have struggled to explain the event for decades, but now — according to research accepted for publication in the journal The Innovation — there's a solution that fits the data nicely: A hapless star was shredded into stellar spaghetti by not one, but two black holes in the same region of space.
Sperm donor gives 200 children rare cancer mutation
An illustration of sperm. (Image credit: LYagovy/Getty Images)
A sperm donor from Denmark who fathered around 200 children passed on a rare cancer-causing mutation to many of them. Some of the children conceived with his sperm have already died.
The disturbing case of "donor 7069" was made by the EBU Investigative Journalism Network, a consortium of journalists from across Europe who do cross-border investigations.
The man, known as "Kjeld," began donating sperm as a student and continued to do so for 17 years. He carries a mutation in a gene known as TP53, which codes for the tumor suppressor protein p53. This protein works by enabling DNA repair and by preventing uncontrolled cell division, Ars Technica reported. People inherit one copy of TP53 from each parent, but inheriting a dysfunctional copy leads to Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which comes with a 90% chance of developing cancer by age 60. (As an aside, elephants, which very rarely get cancer, inherit 20 copies of TP53 from each parent.)
The man's sperm passed all the initial screenings, and rare mutations such as this are not typically screened for when it comes to sperm donation.
Many European countries have caps on how many children can be conceived from a single sperm donor, but this man's sperm was sold across 14 countries to 67 clinics, which meant those limits often didn't apply. In Denmark alone, "Kjeld" fathered at least 49 children up until 2013, despite a non-binding cap of 25 children being in place at the time, according to the EBU story.
The doctors who revealed the case are currently trying to track down all the children conceived with Kjeld's sperm and to inform them of the greater cancer risk.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
The U.S. West Coast is heading out for some holiday festivities, but the Live Science crew will be back first thing U.K. time with fresh science news.
We'll leave you with this joke from U.K. kid's site Beano.
What do you call a fish with no eyes?
Fsh!
Killer whales team up with dolphins to hunt
Orcas and dolphins (potentially) teaming up to hunt salmon. (Image credit: University of British Columbia (A.Trites), Dalhousie University (S. Fortune), Hakai Institute (K. Holmes), Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (X. Cheng))
Tia here with a new story from contributor Chris Simms on a pod of very intriguing orcas off the coast of British Columbia that seems to team up with dolphins to hunt salmon, underwater footage reveals.
What's even more intriguing is that the two types of cetaceans seem to share their salmon spoils. It's not clear exactly why the killer whales — who are adept at hunting Chinook salmon — feel the need to follow dolphins on hunts, and it's also not clear why the dolphins, who are hunted by orcas in other locales, aren't skittish as a result. Basically, the whole interaction is somewhat mysterious, experts told Live Science.
Whatever the case may be, it's just one more strange activity in a suite of odd, mystifying and disturbing things orcas like to do — including but not limited to wearing dead salmon as hats in a bizarre fashion trend. This mix of silly, strange, affectionate, playful and macabre behaviors is the reason that orcas are the animals I'd most love to communicate with in some future world — just to see what was going on inside those blubbery heads of theirs.
To learn why orcas and dolphins seem to be teaming up and what it tells us about killer whales, read the whole story.
Fingerpainting the dead
Pieces of gypsum from a Roman burial have human fingerprints in them. (Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
While excavating inside a sarcophagus full of hardened liquid gypsum — a kind of plaster — the archaeologists discovered fingerprints and hand marks, which meant someone had smoothed and patted down the wet plaster over the corpse. This surprised the researchers, who had assumed that the hot plaster was simply poured into the coffin before it was closed and buried.
"We discovered the handprint with fingers and were astounded," Roman archaeologist Maureen Carroll told me.
The research team now wants to try DNA analysis on the prints, to see if they can extract any biological information about the undertaker.
NASA once again discovers a scary hellscape in space
TOI-601 b is a planet covered in a magma ocean enveloped in a thick blanket of gases. (Image credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again spotted a distant exoplanet that I have exactly zero interest in visiting. The ultrahot super-Earth, descriptively named TOI-561 b, is surrounded by a thick blanket of hot gas that churns above a broiling magma ocean. Fun!
If its star is so cool, why is TOI-561 b so hot? Well, that's because the planet orbits incredibly close to its parent star — just 1/40th the distance between Mercury and the sun, the statement noted.
"TOI-561 b is distinct among ultra-short period planets in that it orbits a very old (twice as old as the Sun), iron-poor star in a region of the Milky Way known as the thick disk," study lead author Johanna Teske, staff scientist at Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Laboratory said in the statement. “It must have formed in a very different chemical environment from the planets in our own solar system.”
What's also intriguing about the planet is that it has an atmosphere at all. Planets that have been orbiting so close to their star for so long are expected not to have an atmosphere, because eons of radiation from the parent star should have blasted it away. Yet TOI-561 b is slightly cooler than it would be if it had no protective gases surrounding it. That doesn't mean the planet is habitable, though; it's still a scorching 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,800 degrees Celsius).
How is this possible? The authors aren't quite sure.
"What's really exciting is that this new data set is opening up even more questions than it's answering," said Teske.
Measles outbreak in South Carolina is accelerating
An illustration of the measles virus. (Image credit: CDC/ Allison M. Maiuri, MPH, CHES)
Around 280 students in South Carolina are in quarantine after being exposed to measles, officials are reporting. The students come from eight schools and from the "Upstate" region. So far, 111 people have caught the highly infectious disease in the state, with no end in sight, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported.
“We are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Wednesday (Dec. 11), according to NBC News.
Around 90% of the students in Spartanburg County are vaccinated against measles — which is below the 95% threshold needed to confer "herd immunity" and prevent outbreaks, an NBC data analysis shows. Neighboring Greenwood county had a vaccination rate of 90.5%.
Some of the unvaccinated children who are currently quarantined are in their second 21-day quarantine since the school year began, according to NBC.
Measles is one of the most infectious diseases on Earth; if 10 unvaccinated people are exposed to the virus, nine will go on to develop the disease. It's also a potentially deadly virus, with 1 to 3 of every 1,000 people infected dying of it in the acute phase. It's also associated with a bevy of complications, including deafness, encephalitis, and immune amnesia.
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+ <![CDATA[ Today's biggest science news: Second earthquake hits Japan | Geminids to peak | NASA loses contact with Mars probe ]]>
+ 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))
Live Science news roundup
Here are some of the best Live Science stories from yesterday that we didn't cover on the blog:
The volcanic eruption of Bezymianny on March 30, 1956. (Image credit: Photo by I. V. Yerov, 1956 (courtesy of G.S. Gorshkov, published in Green and Short, 1971, Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0).)
Bezymianny volcano blew itself apart in 1956. Now, thanks to frequent eruptions, it's almost completely regrown, Live Science contributor Stephanie Pappas reports.
Bezymianny is an active cone-shaped volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Last month, the volcano ejected a massive ash cloud that rose 32,800 feet (10 kilometers) into the air.
Researchers say that eruptions like this spurred the volcano to reform, and draw closer to its pre-1950s height of at least 10,213 feet (3,113 meters). The volcano is currently 9,455 feet (2,882 m), according to the Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program.
Hadrian's Wall served as the Roman Empire's northern frontier for around 300 years. (Image credit: by Marc Guitard via Getty Images)
Hadrian's Wall in northern England marked the border of the Roman Empire for nearly 300 years. But far from a "Game of Thrones"-style wall, where isolated (and cold) soldiers pee off the end of the world, experts told Live Science the Roman frontier was actually a diverse region of danger, boredom and even opportunity. (It was definitely cold though.)
To find out more about life on the edge of the Roman world, read the full story here.
Monogamy 'league table'
Meerkats and humans are similarly monogamous, according to a new study. (Image credit: Martin Harvey via Getty Images)
What do humans, meerkats and beavers have in common? We all tend to be relatively monogamous.
Mark Dyble, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, has unveiled a monogamy "league table" after investigating the varying levels of exclusive mating in different animals.
Humans came out with a monogamy rate of 66%, which was closer to that of meerkats (60%) and beavers (73%) than most of our primate cousins, according to the researcher's findings, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives, yet the study highlighted that they have a more polygynandrous approach to mating. Males and females mate with multiple different partners, giving them a monogamy rate of 4%.
California deermice topped the table with a monogamy rate of 100%. This species pairs for life as part of its mating strategy. Scotland’s Soay sheep, on the other hand, were at the bottom of the table. Ewes (females) of this breed mate with several rams (males), resulting in a monogamy rate of 0.6%.
"There is a premier league of monogamy, in which humans sit comfortably, while the vast majority of other mammals take a far more promiscuous approach to mating," Dyble said in a statement.
Dyble used a computer model to calculate the scores, based on sibling data from genetic studies and known reproductive strategies. It's worth noting that a higher or lower monogamy rate doesn't mean that a species is any more or less successful. The score is merely an indicator of reproduction habits.
Of course, humans are a varied bunch, and we're well known for having a variety of different mating norms.
Neanderthal Prometheus
An artist's impression of a Neanderthal making sparks from pyrite and flint. (Image credit: Craig Williams/The Trustees of the British Museum)
Researchers in England have discovered the earliest and clearest evidence of purposeful fire-making in the world, settling — for now — a long-running debate about human control of fire. And it turns out that it was Neanderthals, not humans, who invented the technology.
Archaeologists identified a series of tiny pyrite chips as the "smoking gun" of fire control at Barnham, an ancient pond site in Suffolk that was occupied more than 400,000 years ago. Neanderthals likely imported the pyrite from elsewhere in England to strike against flint, making sparks.
Read my coverage of the new study to find out why archaeologist Nick Ashton called it "the most exciting discovery in my 40-year career."
The next naked-eye supernova?
The star system GK Persei, home of an infamous nova explosion, seen by the Chandra X-ray telescope. (Image credit: NASA Goddard)
Astronomers have taken a fresh look at an infamous star system veering toward catastrophe — and found the best evidence yet that it's due for a historic supernova explosion.
The binary star system V Saggitae, located 10,000 light-years from Earth, contains a white dwarf (the smoldering core of a dead star) and a larger, still-burning companion star whipping around one another every 12 hours. The dwarf star regularly rips material off its companion, triggering frequent X-ray flashes as thermonuclear reactions erupt on the white dwarf's surface.
The new research, based on 120 days of observations, confirms that a double-whammy light show is currently in production at V Saggitae. First, we'll see a nova: a bright explosion unleashed after the white dwarf has consumed too much of its companion, and violently ejects that excess matter into space. Then, once the two stars finally collide, the main event: A supernova explosion so bright "it'll be visible from Earth even in the daytime," study co-author Pablo Rodríguez-Gil told Live Science.
European Union members have agreed on new emissions targets. (Image credit: ImageBROKER/Sunny Celeste via Getty Images)
The European Union has agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040, Reuters reports.
The new, legally binding climate target aims to cut emissions from European industries by 85%. The remaining 5% will come from the purchase of foreign carbon credits. Essentially, Europe will pay developing countries to cut emissions on its behalf.
The European Parliament and E.U. country negotiators agreed on the climate deal in the early hours of this morning (Dec. 10).
The target is among the most ambitious in the world, though still not as strong as what the E.U.'s climate science advisors recommended. It's also meant to help ensure that Europe reaches its 2050 net-zero emissions pledge, according to Reuters.
The E.U. wants to become the "first climate-neutral continent," where the amount of greenhouse gas it emits into the atmosphere is offset by the amount it removes, for example, through natural and artificial carbon sinks.
The U.K. side is closing up shop for the day. But keep checking back for more science news today from my U.S. colleagues.
Here's a joke from Reader's Digest. It explains why outer space is full of space cadets.
Why couldn't the star stay focused?
He kept spacing out.
Rare side effect of COVID vaccines unraveled
In very rare cases, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can trigger a side effect that inflames the heart. (Image credit: Olga Pankova via Getty Images)
Myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle — is a rare side effect of COVID-19 vaccines, specifically those made using mRNA technology. A new study may have pinpointed how this side effect occurs and how to potentially stop it in its tracks, STAT reported.
"I want to emphasize this is very, very rare. This study is purely to understand why," the senior study author told STAT. As mRNA medicines, especially vaccines, face scrutiny and funding cuts from the U.S. federal government, researchers must carefully navigate how to study and call attention to aspects of the technology that still need improvement without putting fuel on the fire of anti-mRNA conspiracy theories.
The new study uncovered two immune signaling proteins, called cytokines, that appear in higher quantities in the blood of vaccine recipients with myocarditis than in those who didn't experience the side effect. The heart-damaging effects of these cytokines — CXCL10 and interferon-gamma — can be blocked with antibodies and with an anti-inflammatory compound found in soybeans, the study authors found in lab-dish experiments and in mice with myocarditis.
Notably, the myocarditis side effect is most often seen in teen boys and young men. The soybean compound, which is chemically similar to estrogen, lends credence to the idea that the female sex hormone might protect against the effect, Scientific American reported.
More work is needed to translate these findings into humans and to fully understand why mRNA vaccines, specifically, sometimes trigger this chain reaction. Read more in STAT, SciAm, or in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
When did complex life evolve?
A 3D illustration of a eukaryotic cell. (Image credit: Getty Images)
Complex life may have evolved more than 1 billion years earlier than previously thought, a new Nature study suggests.
Previously, scientists thought that the first eukaryotes, or cells that include a nucleus, cell membrane and organelles, first emerged around 2 billion years ago. The new study looked at the genomes of a wide range of organisms from across the tree of life. They used gene duplication events, in which sections of DNA are doubled, to calibrate a molecular clock.
Their estimates suggest that the first cells with nuclei emerged 2.9 billion years ago — roughly a billion years before the organisms that would give rise to mitochondria were assimilated by eukaryotes. Scientists believe that our mitochondria — cellular powerhouses that are responsible for "breathing" oxygen — evolved from primitive bacteria and were absorbed via endosymbiosis.
"The process of cumulative complexification took place over a much longer time period than previously thought," study co-author Gergely Szöllősi, Head of the Model-Based Evolutionary Genomics Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), said in a statement.
Intriguingly, the rise in mitochondria corresponds to a rise in atmospheric oxygen, during what's known as the "Great Oxidation Event." The findings suggest ancient life forms were accomplishing complex cellular functions in oceans devoid of oxygen, according to the statement. It's also more evidence that life shapes the geochemistry of the planet.
Meanwhile, primitive life has been here almost since the beginning. The planet is around 4.5 billion years old, and the last universal common ancestor of all living organisms, known as LUCA, emerged 4.2 billion years ago. And LUCA wasn't alone; there were other viruses and bacteria filling its primeval ecosystem, genetic traces suggest. That means life likely emerged even earlier than LUCA, but just didn't pass on its genes to any creatures living today.
Spaghetti for two
Black holes routinely "spaghettify" stars that orbit too closely. Sometimes, more than once. (Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab)
In 1999, astronomers saw a deep space object go haywire. Watching with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team saw a well-known X-ray source called XID 925 suddenly brighten by nearly 30-fold, then start to fade again.
Scientists have struggled to explain the event for decades, but now — according to research accepted for publication in the journal The Innovation — there's a solution that fits the data nicely: A hapless star was shredded into stellar spaghetti by not one, but two black holes in the same region of space.
Sperm donor gives 200 children rare cancer mutation
An illustration of sperm. (Image credit: LYagovy/Getty Images)
A sperm donor from Denmark who fathered around 200 children passed on a rare cancer-causing mutation to many of them. Some of the children conceived with his sperm have already died.
The disturbing case of "donor 7069" was made by the EBU Investigative Journalism Network, a consortium of journalists from across Europe who do cross-border investigations.
The man, known as "Kjeld," began donating sperm as a student and continued to do so for 17 years. He carries a mutation in a gene known as TP53, which codes for the tumor suppressor protein p53. This protein works by enabling DNA repair and by preventing uncontrolled cell division, Ars Technica reported. People inherit one copy of TP53 from each parent, but inheriting a dysfunctional copy leads to Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which comes with a 90% chance of developing cancer by age 60. (As an aside, elephants, which very rarely get cancer, inherit 20 copies of TP53 from each parent.)
The man's sperm passed all the initial screenings, and rare mutations such as this are not typically screened for when it comes to sperm donation.
Many European countries have caps on how many children can be conceived from a single sperm donor, but this man's sperm was sold across 14 countries to 67 clinics, which meant those limits often didn't apply. In Denmark alone, "Kjeld" fathered at least 49 children up until 2013, despite a non-binding cap of 25 children being in place at the time, according to the EBU story.
The doctors who revealed the case are currently trying to track down all the children conceived with Kjeld's sperm and to inform them of the greater cancer risk.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
The U.S. West Coast is heading out for some holiday festivities, but the Live Science crew will be back first thing U.K. time with fresh science news.
We'll leave you with this joke from U.K. kid's site Beano.
What do you call a fish with no eyes?
Fsh!
Killer whales team up with dolphins to hunt
Orcas and dolphins (potentially) teaming up to hunt salmon. (Image credit: University of British Columbia (A.Trites), Dalhousie University (S. Fortune), Hakai Institute (K. Holmes), Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (X. Cheng))
Tia here with a new story from contributor Chris Simms on a pod of very intriguing orcas off the coast of British Columbia that seems to team up with dolphins to hunt salmon, underwater footage reveals.
What's even more intriguing is that the two types of cetaceans seem to share their salmon spoils. It's not clear exactly why the killer whales — who are adept at hunting Chinook salmon — feel the need to follow dolphins on hunts, and it's also not clear why the dolphins, who are hunted by orcas in other locales, aren't skittish as a result. Basically, the whole interaction is somewhat mysterious, experts told Live Science.
Whatever the case may be, it's just one more strange activity in a suite of odd, mystifying and disturbing things orcas like to do — including but not limited to wearing dead salmon as hats in a bizarre fashion trend. This mix of silly, strange, affectionate, playful and macabre behaviors is the reason that orcas are the animals I'd most love to communicate with in some future world — just to see what was going on inside those blubbery heads of theirs.
To learn why orcas and dolphins seem to be teaming up and what it tells us about killer whales, read the whole story.
Fingerpainting the dead
Pieces of gypsum from a Roman burial have human fingerprints in them. (Image credit: Seeing the Dead Project/University of York and York Museums Trust)
While excavating inside a sarcophagus full of hardened liquid gypsum — a kind of plaster — the archaeologists discovered fingerprints and hand marks, which meant someone had smoothed and patted down the wet plaster over the corpse. This surprised the researchers, who had assumed that the hot plaster was simply poured into the coffin before it was closed and buried.
"We discovered the handprint with fingers and were astounded," Roman archaeologist Maureen Carroll told me.
The research team now wants to try DNA analysis on the prints, to see if they can extract any biological information about the undertaker.
NASA once again discovers a scary hellscape in space
TOI-601 b is a planet covered in a magma ocean enveloped in a thick blanket of gases. (Image credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again spotted a distant exoplanet that I have exactly zero interest in visiting. The ultrahot super-Earth, descriptively named TOI-561 b, is surrounded by a thick blanket of hot gas that churns above a broiling magma ocean. Fun!
If its star is so cool, why is TOI-561 b so hot? Well, that's because the planet orbits incredibly close to its parent star — just 1/40th the distance between Mercury and the sun, the statement noted.
"TOI-561 b is distinct among ultra-short period planets in that it orbits a very old (twice as old as the Sun), iron-poor star in a region of the Milky Way known as the thick disk," study lead author Johanna Teske, staff scientist at Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Laboratory said in the statement. “It must have formed in a very different chemical environment from the planets in our own solar system.”
What's also intriguing about the planet is that it has an atmosphere at all. Planets that have been orbiting so close to their star for so long are expected not to have an atmosphere, because eons of radiation from the parent star should have blasted it away. Yet TOI-561 b is slightly cooler than it would be if it had no protective gases surrounding it. That doesn't mean the planet is habitable, though; it's still a scorching 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,800 degrees Celsius).
How is this possible? The authors aren't quite sure.
"What's really exciting is that this new data set is opening up even more questions than it's answering," said Teske.
Measles outbreak in South Carolina is accelerating
An illustration of the measles virus. (Image credit: CDC/ Allison M. Maiuri, MPH, CHES)
Around 280 students in South Carolina are in quarantine after being exposed to measles, officials are reporting. The students come from eight schools and from the "Upstate" region. So far, 111 people have caught the highly infectious disease in the state, with no end in sight, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy reported.
“We are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Wednesday (Dec. 11), according to NBC News.
Around 90% of the students in Spartanburg County are vaccinated against measles — which is below the 95% threshold needed to confer "herd immunity" and prevent outbreaks, an NBC data analysis shows. Neighboring Greenwood county had a vaccination rate of 90.5%.
Some of the unvaccinated children who are currently quarantined are in their second 21-day quarantine since the school year began, according to NBC.
Measles is one of the most infectious diseases on Earth; if 10 unvaccinated people are exposed to the virus, nine will go on to develop the disease. It's also a potentially deadly virus, with 1 to 3 of every 1,000 people infected dying of it in the acute phase. It's also associated with a bevy of complications, including deafness, encephalitis, and immune amnesia.
Time moves more quickly on Mars, because it is lighter than Earth. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)
Add one more point to the Einstein scoreboard: new evidence has yet again confirmed his space-and-time bending theory of relativity. The list of data pointsthatconfirmrelativityislong — andgrowing.
This time, the data comes from Mars, where time ticks faster — by a whopping 477 microseconds each Earth day — compared to the passage of time on Earth, contributor Deepa Jain reports. That speed-up is a consequence of Mars' lighter mass in relation to Earth's, as time ticks slower when gravity is bigger.
But while the find is good news for relativity, it's potentially bad news for future Mars missions.
The U.S. is signing out for the day, but the U.K. will be back online in the A.M. with frequent updates.
In the meantime, we'll leave you with this joke via Reddit:
Why didn't Joseph Fourier ever get married?
He couldn't find anyone who was on the same wavelength as him.
Please stand by
Good morning, science fans! Patrick here with an update on our science news blog coverage.
You may have noticed that we've been experiencing some technical issues overnight. Most of yesterday's posts have disappeared, and the blog seems to think it's Wednesday.
Our technical team is investigating the issue and we hope to have it resolved soon. In the meantime, I'll gather more science news for another day's coverage.
Gremlins in the system
We're blaming our technical issues on gremlins. (Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures/Amblin E/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
We need to pause the blog so our team can investigate the technical issues we've been experiencing. That means we'll go quiet now until Monday.
Live Science will continue operating as normal, so keep checking the homepage for all of our latest science news. And don't forget the Geminids!
A reminder that the Geminid meteor shower peaks this weekend with up to 150 "shooting stars" per hour in excellent skywatching conditions.
The Geminids represent the most prolific meteor shower of the year. While the shower has been ongoing since Dec. 4, this weekend will be the best time to see its meteors.
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- <![CDATA[ Geminids 2025: The year's best meteor shower peaks this week, with a second shower hot on its tail ]]>
- The most prolific meteor shower of the year is about to deliver more "shooting stars" than any other in near-perfect conditions for skywatchers.
The annual Geminid meteor shower starts Thursday (Dec. 4), and remains active for the next two weeks. But this year’s peak will be the night to watch. During the peak of the Geminids, on Saturday, Dec. 13 through Sunday, Dec. 14, as many as 150 meteors per hour may be visible in the night sky, and the best views will be from the Northern Hemisphere.
This year, the show will be extra special because the peak night will take place in a dark, mostly moonless sky. A 28%-illuminated waning crescent moon will rise in the east at about 2:30 a.m. local time across the Northern Hemisphere. That's about the same time the radiant point of the Geminids — near the bright stars Castor and Pollux, in the constellation Gemini — rises highest in the sky.
However, anytime from 10 p.m. onward is a good time to look for Geminids, and the later you stay up, the better it will be, according to the American Meteor Society.
In addition to being one of the few major meteor showers that's active before midnight, the Geminids are often bright, slow-moving and colorful. That's because the Geminids originate from a blue, rocky object about 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers) in diameter. The asteroid, called 3200 Phaethon, orbits the sun every 1.4 years and gives the meteors a denser composition.
The Geminid meteor shower is the only annual meteor shower known to be caused by an asteroid rather than by a comet. The colors are due to traces of elements like sodium and calcium in the meteors, according to the BBC.
For the best views, get as far from artificial lights as possible, and allow about 20 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Avoid looking at phone screens, or use red-light mode to preserve your night vision. You don't need to look directly at the radiant point to see meteors; they can appear anywhere overhead. Meteor showers are best viewed with the naked eye; no skywatching binoculars or backyard telescopes are necessary, though they will help you get the best views of the year’s last supermoon.
Although the rates of "shooting stars" from the Geminids will quickly reduce after the peak night, the meteor shower will be active through Dec. 17. That same night marks the beginning of the less-impressive Ursid meteor shower, which will produce around 10 meteors per hour on its peak night of Dec. 21-22.
Although they're not as strong as the Geminids, the Ursids will occur in the completely dark skies of a new moon. These back-to-back meteor showers are a fine way to round out the year’s stargazing.
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- https://www.livescience.com/space/meteoroids/geminids-2025-the-years-best-meteor-shower-is-coming-with-a-second-shower-hot-on-its-tail
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- Researchers think they may have found a way to reverse "lazy eye," even in adults who've typically had the condition since childhood.
The technique has so far been tested only in animals, though, so it needs further study before it can be used in human patients.
A lazy eye, or amblyopia, develops when the brain favors one eye over the other in early childhood, causing vision in the less-favored eye to decline. The standard treatment involves placing a patch over the stronger eye to force the brain to rely on the weaker one. However, this method is effective only during infancy and early childhood, when the neural connections that regulate vision are still being formed.
Now, a mouse study published Nov. 25 in the journal Cell Reports introduces a method for temporarily shutting down the weak eye, which can lead to recovery from amblyopia, even after long-term vision issues. "Rebooting" the lazy eye seems to come from a burst of activity in neurons that pass visual signals from the retina to the visual cortex, a hub for processing visual information in the brain.
"The finding that inactivation of the amblyopic eye enables vision recovery in a mouse model of amblyopia is encouraging," said Ben Thompson, a professor and the director of the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who was not involved in the study.
But more research is needed to see whether the method will be safe and effective in humans, too, Thompson told Live Science in an email.
Dr. Dennis Levi, a professor of optometry and vision science at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the study, was also cautiously optimistic about the findings. Historically, scientists have tried various methods of reversing lazy eye in mice, but they "failed to produce significant improvements in humans with amblyopia," he told Live Science in an email. But this new technique seems to hold promise.
So, how might temporarily shutting down the weak eye help to restore its vision?
Earlier work from MIT neuroscientist Mark Bear and colleagues showed that anesthetizing the non-lazy eye triggered visual recovery in the lazy eye in older animals, including cats and mice. Similar results have been foundin monkeys, which may spell good news for humans, Levi noted.
In the new study, the team hypothesized that blocking input from one retina causes neurons to fire in synchronized bursts in the thalamus, a part of the brain that handles incoming sensory information. Specifically, these bursts are seen in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), part of the brain that relays information from the eyes to the visual cortex.
Similar bursts happen in the LGN before birth and help the visual system develop in the womb. That led the team to wonder whether re-creating this early activity pattern could help treat amblyopia.
They tried injecting a local anesthetic called tetrodotoxin (TTX) into the retinas of mice and then monitored the rodents' LGN neurons. TTX is a neurotoxin found in animals like pufferfish, but it also has potential therapeutic uses, including anesthesia and the treatment of severe pain. Research into these uses in humans is ongoing, but in the context of this study, TTX was useful for rebooting the retinas of mice.
The researchers found that shutting down either eye triggered the same burst pattern in the LGN. In a second experiment, they genetically modified the mice so their LGN neurons couldn't produce this burst firing. The activity stopped, and the anesthetic treatment no longer improved amblyopia. That showed that the bursts themselves were crucial for recovery.
Next, the team tested whether they could treat amblyopia by inactivating only the weak eye. They ran an experiment in which some mice with amblyopia got an injection in their weak eye while others did not. The injection stopped the retina from sending signals for about two days.
A week after the injection, the scientists measured how much each eye influenced activity in the visual cortex and found that the treated mice had a much more balanced input from both eyes than the untreated mice did. This showed that shutting down the weak eye for a short time helped it "catch up" with the other eye.
Thompson said this result is encouraging "because the fellow eye does not have to be exposed to any risks of the treatment." But he emphasized that "more work is needed to assess whether tetrodotoxin will be safe and effective in humans."
Previous studies suggest that the effects of TTX on amblyopia generalize to cats and monkeys, raising hope that the approach may one day help humans as well.
The discovery that burst firing can help boost the brain's ability to rewire and form new networks is "extremely interesting," Thompson said. Noninvasive tools used to stimulate the brain might eventually be harnessed to trigger similar neural responses, without the need for TTX injections, he added.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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- https://www.livescience.com/health/injecting-anesthetic-into-a-lazy-eye-may-correct-it-early-study-suggests
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- <![CDATA[ Volcanic eruption triggered 'butterfly effect' that led to the Black Death, researchers find ]]>
- An unknown volcanic eruption in the mid-14th century may have set the stage for the spread of the Black Death in Europe, according to a new study. By triggering a cool and overcast period in the Mediterranean, the eruption started a domino effect that led to a downturn in agricultural production, which required merchants to import grain — and the bacterium Yersinia pestis that causes bubonic plague — via the Black Sea.
The bubonic plague pandemic, more commonly known as the Black Death, reached Europe in 1347 and quickly affected Italian port cities. The plague then spread throughout Europe over the next few years, resulting in the deaths of between 30% and 60% of the population.
Martin Bauch, a historian at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Germany, told Live Science in an email that one very specific aspect of the plague pandemic intrigued him: "How and why did the Black Death reach Italy from the Black Sea at precisely this moment?"
To answer this question, Bauch and Ulf Büntgen, a geographer at the University of Cambridge, investigated climate-driven changes in the Mediterranean that could explain the sudden appearance of the Black Death in 1347. Their research was published Thursday (Dec. 4) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
When combing through contemporaneous historical accounts, the researchers noticed reports of reduced sunshine, increased cloudiness and a dark lunar eclipse, all independently reported by observers in parts of Asia and Europe between 1345 and 1349. All of these astronomical and weather phenomena could be attributed to a large-scale volcanic aerosol layer, which has been known to cause cold spells as the sulfate aerosols reflect sunlight back into space.
Paleoclimate data gave the researchers a clue: High amounts of sulfur in polar ice cores suggested one or more eruptions of a previously unknown volcano around 1345.
"We cannot say very much about the volcanic eruption," Bauch said. "From the ice cores, we know that the eruption must have taken place in the tropics, because sulfate was found in similar concentrations in the ice of both the North and South Poles."
The researchers also looked at tree-ring data from around Europe and discovered that the summers of 1345, 1346 and 1347 were much colder than normal while the autumns were much wetter, causing soil erosion and flooding. Historical records also confirmed that changes in the environment had decreased the yield of a number of crops, including the grape harvest and grain production in Italy, requiring merchants to begin importing products from the Black Sea area to prevent famine.
"Upon return in the second half of 1347 CE, the Italian trade fleets, however, not only brought grain back to the Mediterranean harbours, but also carried the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis most likely via fleas that were feeding on grain dust during their long journey," the researchers wrote in the study.
The first cases of plague in humans were reported in Venice just a few weeks after the arrival of the last grain ships. "This initiates the typical infection cycle," Bauch said. "Rodent populations are infected first; once they die off, the fleas shift to other mammals and ultimately to humans."
Importing grain after several years' worth of volcano-induced climate change therefore prevented a Mediterranean-wide famine but also introduced the Black Death into Europe, the study authors proposed.
"This study brings in new information on the 1345 volcano, which helps explain why the Black Death — that is, the epidemic well-documented in sources from 1346 to 1350 — happened when it did," Monica H. Green, an independent scholar and expert on the Black Death who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "But it happened how it did — with a 'plague infrastructure' of rodents and insect vectors already established — because local reservoirs had already been established."
The onset of the Black Death resulted from a unique-but-random combination of short-term factors, like climate, and long-term factors, like the grain distribution system in Italy, the researchers wrote in the study.
Even though the Black Death resulted from a rare confluence of environmental and social factors, it's important to gain a better understanding of the causes of past pandemics, the researchers wrote, because "the probability of zoonotic infectious diseases to emerge and translate into pandemics is likely to increase in both a globalised and warmer world."
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