Dec 22nd, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A new megashark fossil from northern Australia reveals the first-known giant mackerel shark, dating back 115 million years. That shark would have been around 20 feet (6 meters) long, and appears in the fossil record 15 million years earlier than expected. The work was led by Dr. Mohamad Bazzi, a paleobiologist at Stanford University who studies shark evolution and body size. His research focuses on using fossils and statistics to understand when large predators emerged and how they shaped marine ecosystems. For this project, the team reexamined five huge vertebrae ... [Read More]

Dec 22nd, 2025 - An analysis of the expansion of cracks in the Thwaites Glacier over the past 20 years suggests that a total collapse could be only a matter of time. Known as the "Doomsday Glacier," the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers on Earth, and its future evolution is one of the biggest unknowns when it comes to predicting global sea level rise. The eastern ice shelf of the Thwaites Glacier is supported at its northern end by a ridge of the ocean floor. However, over the past two decades, cracks in the upper reaches of the glacier have increased rapidly, ... [Read More]

Dec 21st, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google About 20,000 years ago, a cave on a Caribbean island quietly filled with bones. Owls hunted by night, returned to their rocky shelter, and regurgitated pellets packed with the remains of rodents, birds, and other prey. Over generations, those bones piled up, layer by layer, sealed by time and rain. Long after the owls disappeared, another tenant arrived. Bees began using the ancient jaws as nurseries, laying eggs inside empty tooth sockets and sealing them with mud and pollen. Until now, no one had ever documented bees nesting inside animal bones. The discovery reveals ... [Read More]

Dec 21st, 2025 - Yes the darkest day of the year is here, but that means brighter days are ahead. Sunday is the shortest day of the year north of the equator, where the solstice marks the start of astronomical winter. It's the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the longest day of the year and summer will start. The word "solstice" comes from the Latin words "sol" for sun and "stitium" which can mean "pause" or "stop." The  solstice is an end of the sun's annual march  higher or lower in the sky. The winter solstice is when the sun makes its shortest, lowest arc. The good news for sun ... [Read More]

Dec 21st, 2025 - – Thousands of people cheered and danced around as the sun rose over the prehistoric stone circle on Sunday, the The crowds, many dressed as druids and pagans, had gathered before dawn, waiting patiently in the dark and cold field in southwest England. Some sang and beat drums, while others took time to reflect among the huge stone pillars. Many make the pilgrimage to the stone circle every summer and winter and consider it a spiritual experience. The ancient monument, erected between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago, was built to align with the movement of the sun on the solstices — ... [Read More]

Dec 21st, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Astronomers spotted an object that looks like a planet, weighs about as much as Jupiter, and yet behaves like nothing anyone has seen before. This strange world sits dangerously close to a dead star. Its air is filled with carbon instead of water vapor. Sooty clouds drift through its skies. Even its shape is warped, stretched by gravity into something closer to a lemon than a sphere. It is the kind of find that makes scientists stop, stare, and admit they don't have a neat explanation. Meet PSR J2322-2650b All known planets have some basic properties. Gas giants have ... [Read More]

Dec 21st, 2025 - The U.S. government calculates the country's official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver. But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesday and a backup generator subsequently failed, time ever so slightly slowed down. The lapse "resulted in NIST UTC [universal coordinated time] being 4.8 microseconds slower than it should have been," NIST spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson said in an email.  That's just under 5 millionths of a second. To ... [Read More]

Dec 20th, 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 Astronomers hoping to observe a planet around a nearby star have witnessed a much rarer "unprecedented celestial event," the team said: The violent aftermath of not one, but two collisions between the rocky building blocks of planets. Over the past two ... [Read More]