Dec 5th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . I t might not sound too tasty to us, but some animals snack on hornets, stingers and all, including certain spiders, birds, and frogs. Hornet stings can trigger powerful pain, heart issues, and even death in some species, yet others seem to eat them up without issue. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. It's unclear how such daring predators stomach these venomous victuals—they might endure the stings, or just manage to evade them before swallowing. Researchers have found hornets in frogs' stomachs, for example, but scientists ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2025 - If your cherished memories include watching whales breach, spy-hop, and fluke off the coast of Massachusetts on Stellwagen Bank , have we got the island for you. The sheltered bays and sheer underwater drop-offs off the western shore of Dominica serve as feeding grounds for six different species of cetaceans. About 16 more species show up occasionally. The list includes humpbacks, pygmy sperm whales, melon head whales, false killer whales, short-fin, and pilot whales — and, drumroll please — the world's largest toothed animal, the sperm whale. There's good news for sperm whales ... [Read More]

Dec 5th, 2025 - Welcome! Log into your account A password will be e-mailed to you. LLMs: Why Quantum Computing Needs Conceptual Brain Science Conceptual brain science has a lot to offer quantum computing, at a fundamental level, to benefit engineering for important use cases before the decade is out. There is a new [December 2025] paper in Nature, , stating that, "Quantum computing (QC) has the potential to impact every domain of science and industry, but it has become increasingly clear that delivering on this promise rests on tightly integrating fault-tolerant quantum hardware with accelerated ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Swipe for next article Mars was a balmy 30 degrees Fahrenheit while the Gopher State saw a cold snap Minnesota's largest city was briefly colder than Mars last month. A late-November cold snap in Minneapolis sent temperatures tumbling 10 degrees below the historical average, AccuWeather meteorologist Brian Lada explained . High temperatures were in the mid-to-upper 20s, marking the coldest stretch for the city's nearly 430,000 residents since February. But on the Red Planet, some ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - across multiple states and territories, and stubborn lows lingering in the mid to high 20s. Authorities warn the conditions will be felt most acutely in New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, with the heat expected to linger for several days. NSW and Queensland are set to be particularly impacted, with parts of Sydney tipped to bake in "extreme" temperatures reaching around 40C in some suburbs. The Hunter, Sydney Metro, Illawarra, Central Tablelands, Southern Tablelands and Snowy Mountains are among the regions placed under official heatwave warnings in ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 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. The most prolific meteor shower of the year is about to deliver more "shooting stars" than any other in near-perfect conditions for skywatchers. The annual Geminid meteor shower starts Thursday (Dec. 4), and remains active for the next two weeks. But this year's peak will be the night to watch. During the peak of the Geminids, on Saturday, Dec. 13 through Sunday, Dec. 14 , as many as 150 ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is invaluable in the medical world. But despite all the good it does, there is room for improvement. One way to enhance the sensitivity of MRI is called dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), where target molecules for imaging are modified so they form clearer images when scanned with an MRI machine. But this technique requires some special crystalline materials mixed with polarizing agents which are difficult to create. For the first time, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo demonstrate the use of molecules called fullerenes as polarizing ... [Read More]

Dec 4th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Speckled across Mars's Jezero Crater's rusty terrain, NASA's Perseverance rover has been spotting pale rocks that stand out like chalk on red clay. A new analysis identifies those light-colored fragments as aluminum-rich kaolinite. On Earth, this white clay forms when rocks are intensely leached by freshwater over long periods. In other words, these Martian clays point to sustained rainfall or long-lived humid conditions in the distant past, not just brief wet spells. "Elsewhere on Mars, rocks like these are probably some of the most important outcrops we've seen from ... [Read More]