Dec 18th, 2025 - Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN NEW YORK (AP) — The last major meteor shower of the year, known as the Ursids , peaks soon, bringing glowing streaks to nighttime and early morning skies. Compared to other meteor showers , it's more subdued, but experts say it's still worth a glimpse. Meteor showers happen when space rocks hit Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds and burn up, gaining fiery tails — the end of a "shooting star." Random meteors are visible from Earth on any given clear night, but more predictable meteor showers happen yearly ... [Read More]

Dec 18th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google A massive predator's tooth turned up in North Dakota, a place better known for dinosaurs than sea monsters. The discovery raised eyebrows right away. Mosasaur fossils usually come from ocean sediments. These reptiles were built for life at sea, patrolling ancient waters during the age of dinosaurs. Finding one inland is not just unusual. It feels almost wrong. What makes this discovery even stranger is where the tooth was found. It came from a river deposit, mixed in with fossils of land dinosaurs and freshwater animals. That kind of setting does not happen by ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google When microbes make the news, they are usually cast as threats. Bacteria and viruses are framed as enemies to eliminate, hazards to control, or risks to fear. But a growing body of research suggests that this view is incomplete. Many microbes – and the natural compounds they produce – actively support human health, help regulate immune systems, and strengthen ecosystems. Ignoring them may be costing us resilience. Now, a team led by Flinders University microbial ecologist Jake Robinson is pushing for a shift in perspective. In a new study, the researchers ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Saturn's giant moon Titan may not have a vast underground ocean after all. Titan instead may hold deep layers of ice and slush more akin to Earth's polar seas, with pockets of melted water where life could possibly survive and even thrive, scientists reported Wednesday. The team led by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory challenged the decade-long assumption of a buried global ocean at Titan after taking a fresh look at observations made years ago by NASA's Cassini spacecraft around Saturn. They stress that no one has found any signs of life at ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - Solitary bees repurposed the skulls of extinct mammals as multi-generational nurseries. The floor of the Cueva de Mono, a cave in the Dominican Republic, is a gruesome graveyard. For thousands of years, it served as the dining room for a massive family of now-extinct owls called Tyto ostologa . The owls would swoop down upon the tropical landscape, snatch up hutias (guinea-pig-like rodents) or sloths, and return to the dark to feed. They'd regurgitate the indigestible bits like bones and teeth, creating a grim carpet of skeletal remains. But this story isn't about the owls. It's about bees. ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - Canadian researchers tracking bear known as X33991 noticed she had gained a second cub who likely needed help Scientists in Canada have documented a rare case of female polar bear adopting a new cub, in an episode of "curious behaviour" that highlights the complex relationships among the apex Arctic predators. Polar Bears International, a non-profit conservation group, said on Wednesday that when they first placed a GPS collar on a female polar bear in the spring, she had one young cub. But when she was spotted with two cubs of roughly the same age last month, they realized they were ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - NASA scientists say Titan's hidden water may be trapped in pockets not an ocean. For years, Saturn's largest moon Titan has worn the label "ocean world." Beneath its orange smog and methane rain, many planetary models placed a vast, planet-encircling sea of liquid water under an icy crust — a hidden reservoir that could, at least in theory, mingle minerals, water, and chemistry over geologic time in a way that might be conducive to life. Yet, a reanalysis of Cassini data in a new Nature study reveals that Titan likely lacks a vast, global subsurface ocean. Instead, the moon may contain ... [Read More]

Dec 17th, 2025 - A fresh analysis of tidal perturbations on Titan challenges a long-held hypothesis: that the cloud-shrouded Saturnian moon harbors an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface ice. But the scientists behind the analysis don't rule out the possibility that smaller pockets of subsurface water could nevertheless provide a home for extraterrestrial life. "The search for extraterrestrial environments is fundamentally a search for habitats where liquid water coexists with sustained sources of energy (chemical, sunlight, etc.) over geological time scales. Our new results do not preclude the ... [Read More]