Dec 26th, 2025 - Follow Earth on Google Whales travel across vast oceans and connect distant marine regions. Along these long routes, viruses and bacteria can also move between animals, oceans, and ecosystems. For a long time, scientists learned about whale diseases only after animals died and washed ashore. Such an approach leaves large gaps in knowledge, especially in remote Arctic waters. Drone-based research now offers a safer way to track whale health while animals remain alive and active. Why whale health matters Large whales face many pressures at once. Warming oceans change food availability. ... [Read More]

Dec 25th, 2025 - Experts and novices alike hunt for specimens that could change our understanding of evolution – and all only a short day trip from Melbourne Between the cliffs and the sea at Jan Juc, on Victoria's Surf Coast, researchers scour the shore platform for evidence of life from 25m years ago, as beachgoers revel in the sand and surf nearby. "You can be there discovering a fossil that might change our understanding of the evolution of life on Earth. And you're sharing it with a family that's just gone down to the beach for the day," says Dr Erich Fitzgerald, senior curator of vertebrate ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - The Looming Quantum Threat to AI Model Confidentiality Okay, so, quantum computers? Not exactly here yet, but they're close enough that we gotta start sweating, especially when it comes to ai models and their secrets. It's like prepping for a hurricane, but instead of wind and rain, it's code-cracking superpowers we're worried about. Here's the thing with ai models – it ain't just the algorithm itself that's valuable. It's the context around it, too. Training data, the model's architecture, even how it's set up for specific tasks – all that stuff is gold to someone looking to ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - Long before flowers dazzled insects with colors, ancient plants used a different signal. We tend to think of plants as passive, vulnerable actors. But in their partnership with insects, it's plants that often play the leading role. Sometimes, this can get pretty surprising. As evening approaches, certain tropical plants raise the temperature of their reproductive cones well above the surrounding air. The heat produces infrared radiation that nocturnal beetles can sense, even though humans cannot. A new study published in Science shows that these plants—called cycads—use infrared ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 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 A distant exoplanet appears to sport a sooty atmosphere that is confusing the scientists who recently spotted it. The Jupiter-size world, detected by the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST ), doesn't have the familiar helium-hydrogen combination we are used ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 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 Scientists may have witnessed a massive, dying star split in two and then crash back together, triggering a never-before-seen double explosion. The explosion sent ripples through space-time and forged some of the universe's heaviest elements. Most massive ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - A new theory of "dark photons" attempted to explain a centuries-old experiment in a new way this year, in an effort to change our understanding of the nature of light A core tenet of quantum theory was imperilled this year when a team of researchers put forward a radical new interpretation of an experiment about the nature of light. At the centre of the new work was the double-slit experiment, which was first conducted in 1801 by physicist Thomas Young, who used it to confirm that light acts like a wave. Classically, something that is a particle can never also be a wave, and vice versa, but ... [Read More]

Dec 24th, 2025 - How centuries of human pressure quietly reshaped a rare brown bear Bears are one of the big victims of deforestation. As more and more forests get cut down, bears keep retreating to remote corners, keeping their distance from people. In a small stretch of central Italy, however, bears have followed a different path. A new genetic study suggests that Apennine brown bears have gradually become less aggressive over thousands of years of living alongside people. Rather than retreating entirely from human activity, this isolated population appears to have adapted to it. The research, published in ... [Read More]