Dec 12th, 2025 - You know how it goes: You're trying to get some shut-eye in your bunk after a long shift of scraping samples of prebiotic material from red rocks in Utopia Planitia, and before you know it, your alarm bell rings. And then you see it woke you up a full 477 microseconds early! Life on Mars is tough. Figuring out the exact time isn't much easier. Even on the larger end of the timescale, Martian chronometry is not exactly simple; the planet takes about 687 Earth days to go around the sun, making calendrical coordination with Earth pretty hairy . It also spins on its axis—completing one ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Scientists say bears in southern Greenland differ genetically to those in the north, suggesting they could adjust Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species. Climate breakdown is threatening the survival of polar bears. Two-thirds of them are expected to have disappeared by 2050 as their icy habitat melts and the weather becomes hotter. Now scientists at the ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - There's a less than 5 percent chance that earlier anomalies can be explained by fourth neutrino "flavor." Since the 1990s, physicists have pondered the tantalizing possibility of an exotic fourth type of neutrino, dubbed the "sterile" neutrino, that doesn't interact with regular matter at all, apart from its fellow neutrinos, perhaps. But definitive experimental evidence for sterile neutrinos has remained elusive. Now it looks like the latest results from Fermilab's MiniBooNE experiment have ruled out the sterile neutrino entirely, according to a paper published in the journal Nature. How ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Coral reefs are under relentless strain. Warming seas, polluted runoff, and heavy fishing are steadily chipping away at their resilience. Coral reefs are undeniably struggling, yet the ways they react and adapt as a connected community remain unexpectedly complex. A new study brings that complexity into view and hints at a strategy that could support their long-term resilience. Advantages for connected reefs Reefs aren't isolated. They exchange larvae , support nearby ecosystems, and move in step as conditions shift. That basic idea becomes striking once you realize ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Mars lacks the plate tectonics that drive Earth's river systems, yet it once hosted massive waterways. We've known for a while that Mars was once a wet world. But there's always been a geological puzzle regarding how and where that water moved. On Earth, rivers are largely driven by plate tectonics. The shifting of our planet's crust builds mountains and basins, creating the slopes necessary for water to flow. Mars, however, never had an active tectonic system like ours. Yet, even without it, the Red Planet managed to sustain impressive waterways. A new study reveals that ancient Martian ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 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. Scientists say they've developed a breakthrough 3D wiring solution that allows a 100-fold increase in the number of quantum bits (qubits) a quantum computing chip can support. Typical quantum computing processors (QPUs) are built with two-dimensional, horizontal wiring, just like the central processing units (CPUs) in our classical devices. But this traditional wiring limits the number of ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Across multiple sites in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers have identified a relationship between large herbivores and the amount of sodium available in local plants. According to the study, plant sodium availability spans a 1,000-fold range across sub-Saharan Africa for large herbivores such as elephants, giraffes, rhinos. The team compared plant sodium levels with animal counts and with results of fecal analyses. When plants run low, the largest herbivores face shortages that can influence habitat choice and risky travel routes. Salt shapes diet needs of animals Sodium ... [Read More]

Dec 11th, 2025 - Back in the summer this year, scientists were studying unusual objects hovering around Earth. ATLAS, one of the telescopes in NASA's planetary defense network, displayed something that left them scratching their heads. When they first spotted it, the  mysterious interstellar comet was travelling at about 137,000 miles per hour. After getting pulled by Sun's gravity, in October, it sped up at 153,000 miles per hour. Eventually, they realized that the comet, named 3I/ATLAS , was too fast to be bound by the Sun's gravity, and it seemed that it was just passing through our solar system, ... [Read More]