Dec 19th, 2025 - An infrared atlas reveals how the universe grew up, and where life's ingredients hide. In the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang, the universe ballooned outward at a speed that still defies explanation, stretching space itself before stars or even atoms had a chance to form. Cosmologists call this moment inflation, and for decades it has remained frustratingly abstract, etched into equations but with no reference in physical observations. Now, a new space telescope has begun to trace inflation's fingerprints across the modern universe. Just months after launch, NASA's SPHEREx ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 2025 - Researchers at Oxford University and Tokyo University of Science published separate studies on December 17 detailing advances in battery materials. The Tokyo team showed that sodium-ion batteries using hard-carbon electrodes can charge faster than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Oxford researchers developed electrolytes that retain ionic conductivity when shifting from liquid to solid states. Professor Shinichi Komaba's team at Tokyo University of Science used a "diluted electrode method" to assess hard-carbon charging limits. This approach mixes hard-carbon particles with ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 2025 - Astronomers have witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge debris cloud, unlike anything in our own solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare collision in a nearby planetary system. The image was obtained after astronomers directly imaged two separate collisions between rocky objects in the Fomalhaut star system. The reason this has attracted interest in the astronomical field is because these rare, observable collisions provide unprecedented insights into the processes of planet formation. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 2025 - There are no working artists in Vince Gilligan's Pluribus . Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), the show's protagonist, used to be a successful romantasy novelist, but then a virus of unknown origin swept across the globe, killing millions and uniting its infected survivors into a kind of peaceful, planetary hive mind. Carol was inexplicably spared, along with 12 otherwise unrelated individuals, but she hasn't really been in a writing mood since the end of the world/dawn of the utopia. The hive mind—which is what I'll call the shared consciousness of most of the other people on Pluribus ... [Read More]

Dec 18th, 2025 - Researchers have developed a new compact Raman imaging system that is sensitive enough to differentiate between tumor and normal tissue. The system offers a promising route to earlier cancer detection and to making molecular imaging more practical outside the lab. The new Raman system is designed to detect very faint signals from special surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoparticles that bind to tumor markers. After the particles are applied to a sample or the area being examined, the imaging system reads their signal and automatically highlights spots that are likely to contain ... [Read More]

Dec 18th, 2025 - Throughout its five seasons, the Netflix show Stranger Things follows a ragtag group of teenagers and their parents as monsters from another universe — unleashed by the secret work of a government laboratory — wreak havoc on a quaint, fictional town in Indiana. Don't worry, Demogorgons, Shadow Monsters and psychokinetically gifted 12-year-olds are strictly fictional creations. But the 'parallel universe' concept at the core of the show — which is set to conclude its nearly decade-long run at the end of this year — comes from a real scientific theory. And it's been ... [Read More]

Dec 18th, 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. Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Roman soldiers defending Hadrian's Wall in Britain were well acquainted with diarrhea and stomachaches, according to a new study that found evidence of at least three different intestinal parasites in the soil near centuries-old toilets. The finding shows ... [Read More]

Dec 18th, 2025 - Astronomers are scratching their heads at the odd chemistry, which hints at soot clouds and possibly diamond formation deep inside. Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have found an exoplanet that is a bit out of the ordinary. The team found a Jupiter-mass world stretched into a lemony shape by a nearby pulsar, wrapped in an atmosphere dominated not by water vapor or methane, but by molecular carbon. The object, coined PSR J2322-2650b, circles its dead-star host in a blistering 7.8 hours — so close that its orbit spans only about a million miles. The researchers report ... [Read More]