Science

The Arctic has experienced its hottest year since records began, a US science agency announced Tuesday, as climate change triggers cascading impacts from melting glaciers and sea ice to greening landscapes and disruptions to global weather. Between October 2024 and September 2025, temperatures were 1.60 degrees Celsius above the 1991–2020 mean, the National Oceanic and

WASHINGTON — NASA’s safety advisers are recommending that the agency reconsider its Artemis lunar landing architecture as well as how it handles incidents such as the flawed Starliner test flight. Members of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, held a public meeting Dec. 19 to discuss recommendations for their annual report, to be published

One of the most famous hominin fossils may not be as familiar as we thought. The specimen, affectionately dubbed “Little Foot“, could represent an entirely new species. Discovered in Sterkfontein cave in South Africa, Little Foot is believed to be the most complete skeleton of an ancient human ancestor ever found, but pinning down its

Research conducted by two physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US reveals that clocks on Mars tick 477-millionths of a second (or 477 microseconds) faster per day, on average, compared to Earth clocks. Though small, that difference could be critical in situations where time on Earth, the Moon, and

Hydrogen has long been touted as a possible solution to the climate crisis, but it could also be a small part of the problem, a study warned on Wednesday. Advocates of hydrogen hope it can be produced and used on a large scale in transport and heavy industries in the future, providing a clean alternative

WASHINGTON — The White House issued a sweeping executive order on space policy Dec. 18 covering topics from NASA’s exploration plans to space security. The order, “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” includes a call for returning humans to the moon by 2028 and directs development of a space security strategy to address potential threats to American

How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees? To understand why our perception of time seems to bend and warp, we need to dig into how our brains tell time in the first place. The term “time perception” is

Every now and again, a stellar object is caught zooming across space like a white rabbit, extremely late for a very important date. Now, for the first time, astronomers have confirmed a supermassive black hole at least 10 million times the mass of the Sun, somehow yeeted from its host galaxy at a jaw-dropping 954

Dressed in an orange puffer jacket, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Iizuka stepped into a storage freezer to retrieve an ice core he hopes will help experts protect the world’s disappearing glaciers. The fist-sized sample drilled from a mountaintop is part of an ambitious international effort to understand why glaciers in Tajikistan have resisted the rapid melting

TAMPA, Fla. — Denver-based Lux Aeterna announced plans Dec. 17 to land its debut reusable satellite at the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia, shortly after launching on a SpaceX rideshare mission in early 2027. The agreement with Southern Launch also covers what would be the startup’s first reuse mission for its low Earth orbit

Sticking with a long-term life partner to rear children has long been considered a dominant mating pattern for our species, although reproductive monogamy is not universal across our many cultures and subcultures. Now, a new study by Cambridge evolutionary anthropologist Mark Dyble ranks Homo sapiens among the top 10 mammal monogamists, using sibling status (full

If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That’s the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room

Thousands of glaciers will vanish each year in the coming decades, leaving only a fraction standing by the end of the century unless global warming is curbed, a study showed on Monday. Government action on climate change could determine whether the world loses 2,000 or 4,000 glaciers annually by the middle of the century, according

HELSINKI — China conducted a pair of launches in recent days, sending an experimental commercial cargo spacecraft into orbit, followed by a remote sensing satellite. A Kuaizhou-11 solid rocket lifted off at 8:08 p.m. Eastern, Dec. 12 (0108 UTC, Dec. 13) from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, quickly accelerating into a

Blinking handles essential eye maintenance, and we usually blink multiple times a minute without thinking much about it, though you might be more self-conscious about your own after the results of a new study on their connection to cognitive load. Researchers in Canada found we tend to blink less when we’re listening to someone speak,

About 880 light-years from Earth, a hot mess of an exoplanet is slowly spilling its atmosphere into space, creating two enormous tails of helium that stretch more than halfway around its star. This is the first time such a spectacle has ever been observed, according to the authors of a new study. Astronomers have seen

WASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron rocket successfully launched a technology demonstration satellite for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Dec. 13 as the company reshuffles its launch manifest. The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 10:09 p.m. Eastern. The payload, JAXA’s Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite-4, or

Despite the rapid advances in artificial intelligence in recent years, the humble human brain still has the edge over computers in its ability to transfer skills and learn across tasks. A new study reveals how we likely do this. Led by a team from Princeton University, the researchers behind the new study didn’t actually run

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It’s also one of the largest planets in the Universe. There are planets out there with much more mass, but thanks to gravity, they are generally denser, not “bigger.” This raises an interesting question about massive exoplanets. Do they look similar to Jupiter? A new study

Step aside, Google Maps; stand down, Apple Maps. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany have created a new online atlas that shows the location of 2.75 billion buildings in 3D. It’s a phenomenal technical achievement, and it was made possible by a vast database of satellite imagery and some clever machine-learning

WASHINGTON — SpaceX’s chief financial officer has confirmed the company is considering an initial public offering as soon as next year to raise money for lunar and Mars missions as well as orbital data centers. In a message to employees late Dec. 12, Bret Johnsen, SpaceX’s CFO, said the company is preparing for a possible

The Beatles’ song Yesterday was written in what psychologists refer to as the “hypnagogic state”. This is the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, when we drowsily linger in a semi-conscious state, experiencing vivid mental images and sounds. Waking up one morning in early 1965, Paul McCartney became aware of a long complex melody playing

Earth’s climate has swung between ice ages and warmer periods for millions of years, driven by subtle changes in our planet’s orbit and axial tilt. These variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, occur because Earth doesn’t orbit the Sun in isolation. The gravitational pull of other planets constantly tugs at Earth, slowly altering its orbital path,

WASHINGTON — Intuitive Machines will work with Telespazio on their planned lunar satellite networks to ensure interoperability and improve performance. The companies announced Dec. 11 a strategic cooperation agreement involving their planned constellations. Intuitive Machines is developing at least five data relay satellites in lunar orbit to support NASA’s Near Space Network and other customers,

We often throw caution to the cold, dark wind of December when it comes to spending. The cost-of-living crisis may slip our minds amid the razzle-dazzle of Christmas. We just want a moment to enjoy ourselves, to forget about the winter gloom. It’s natural for us to behave this way. Our brains are wired for

December has arrived, and with it the year’s peak meteor season for the northern hemisphere. It’s during this time that two major meteor showers occur back-to-back, with the Geminids peaking in mid-December, and the Quadrantids hitting their full stride in early January. This year, the Geminid peak falls on the evening of Saturday 13 December,

Glacial earthquakes are a special type of earthquake generated in cold, icy regions. First discovered in the northern hemisphere more than 20 years ago, these quakes occur when huge chunks of ice fall from glaciers into the sea. Until now, only a very few have been found in the Antarctic. In a new study soon

TAMPA, Fla. — Other space companies are likely to move toward the public markets now that Elon Musk is openly signaling plans to pursue a SpaceX IPO next year, hoping to ride the wave of momentum behind a potentially record-breaking listing. Cape Canaveral–based Starfighters Space, which is developing a small satellite air-launch system using a

The taming of fire is credited with sparking humanity’s evolutionary journey towards our modern levels of intelligence. Fire gave early humans access to a broader range of safe foods, fueling the development of larger brains and paving the way for the birth of Homo sapiens, so the cooking hypothesis goes. A new discovery of baked

NASA has officially lost contact with a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014. The MAVEN spacecraft – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – abruptly lost contact with Earth on 6 December 2025 while passing behind the red planet in the normal course of its orbit. When MAVEN re-emerged from behind Mars, however, NASA