Dec 19th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Supernova explosions are part of how the universe builds matter, but they're not the only cosmic blasts that shape what we're made of. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it ends its life as a supernova. The star's core collapses, its outer layers blast outward, and the explosion scatters heavy elements like carbon and iron into space. There is also a second, much rarer kind of explosion. In a kilonova, two neutron stars collide and produce even heavier elements, including gold and uranium. Over time, those materials become part of new stars, rocky planets , and ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 2025 - Scientists are flying drones through whale breath to monitor ocean health. Humpback whales are mammals, which means they have to surface to breathe a few times an hour. When they do, they exhale a thunderous, explosive cloud of mist. Decades ago, marine biologists hoping to study the health of these giants had to rely on crude, invasive methods, or worse — wait for the animal to wash up dead on a beach. Now, they can just fly a drone through the cloud. This innovative technique, colloquially known as "snot-bot" sampling, allows us to understand whale health better than ever before. But ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 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 Kids as young as 18 months old were given facial tattoos in the Nile Valley region 1,400 years ago, archaeologists discovered while studying mummified bodies in Sudan. What's more, the practice coincided with the introduction of Christianity to the region ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 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 19th, 2025 - Saturnian moon may be the solar system's biggest slushie According to a NASA study, Saturn's moon Titan may be the most fantastically large slushie of all time. Based on a reexamination of data from the Cassini probe collected in 2012, the moon's long-suspected global ocean may actually be a slurry of ice and rock. Many icy moons in the outer solar system are believed to harbor vast subsurface oceans sandwiched between thick ice shells and rocky cores. Since 2008, the methane-shrouded moon Titan has been thought to host such a global ocean beneath its frozen surface. However, a fresh look at ... [Read More]

Dec 19th, 2025 - A multimillion-pound research project will see some of the world's leading experts use artificial intelligence to create the first-ever 3D movies of black holes. Kazunori Akiyama is joining Heriot-Watt University for the TomoGrav project, which is being funded through a £4 million fellowship. He was previously involved in creating the first images of black holes, stellar bodies which are so dense nothing – including light – can escape. The team will create 3D movies showing how plasma flows around black holes, demonstrating how time and space is bent by their extreme ... [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]