Dec 5th, 2025 - For many people in the US, winter has come a little early , as a few waves of snow and blisteringly cold temperatures have colored the landscape white. It isn't officially winter yet, and it won't be until Dec. 21 when the winter solstice takes place. So get ready because Earth's shortest day is on its way. What is the winter solstice? The winter solstice has a few different meanings, so here are all of them. The most common definition, and the one you're most likely familiar with, is that it denotes the shortest day and longest night of the year on Earth. These times vary depending on your ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2025 - A paper, published in  Astronomy and Astrophysics , details the discovery of a grand-design spiral galaxy that formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Grand design galaxies are similar to the Milky Way in that they display well-formed spiral arms. Prior to this discovery, astronomers thought such objects took billions of years to achieve grand-design status. Apparently not. Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar, working at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India, ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2025 - Climate crisis and overfishing contributed to loss of 95% of penguins in two breeding colonies in South Africa, research finds More than 60,000 penguins in colonies off the coast of South Africa have starved to death as a result of disappearing sardines, a new paper has found. More than 95% of the African penguins in two of the most important breeding colonies, on Dassen Island and Robben Island, died between 2004 and 2012. The breeding penguins probably starved to death during the moulting period, according to the paper, which said the climate crisis and overfishing were driving declines. ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2025 - Welcome! Log into your account A password will be e-mailed to you. LLMs: Why Quantum Computing Needs Conceptual Brain Science Conceptual brain science has a lot to offer quantum computing, at a fundamental level, to benefit engineering for important use cases before the decade is out. There is a new [December 2025] paper in Nature, , stating that, "Quantum computing (QC) has the potential to impact every domain of science and industry, but it has become increasingly clear that delivering on this promise rests on tightly integrating fault-tolerant quantum hardware with accelerated ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article Mars was a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit while the Gopher State saw a cold snap Minnesota's largest city was briefly colder than Mars last month. A late-November cold snap in Minneapolis sent temperatures tumbling 10 degrees below the historical average, AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Lada explained . High temperatures were in the mid-to-upper 20s, marking the coldest stretch for the city's nearly 430,000 residents since February. But on the Red Planet, some ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. 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 ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is invaluable in the medical world. But despite all the good it does, there is room for improvement. One way to enhance the sensitivity of MRI is called dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), where target molecules for imaging are modified so they form clearer images when scanned with an MRI machine. But this technique requires some special crystalline materials mixed with polarizing agents which are difficult to create. For the first time, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo demonstrate the use of molecules called fullerenes as polarizing ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Speckled across Mars's Jezero Crater's rusty terrain, NASA's Perseverance rover has been spotting pale rocks that stand out like chalk on red clay. A new analysis identifies those light-colored fragments as aluminum-rich kaolinite. On Earth, this white clay forms when rocks are intensely leached by freshwater over long periods. In other words, these Martian clays point to sustained rainfall or long-lived humid conditions in the distant past, not just brief wet spells. "Elsewhere on Mars, rocks like these are probably some of the most important outcrops we've seen from ... [Read More]