Science News: Recent scientific discoveries and expert analysis

LIVE Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.

A new study reveals the likely origin of a mysterious spider-like pattern first spotted on Jupiter's moon Europa in 1998. The finding could have implications for a NASA spacecraft en route to the frozen world.

These Anglo-Saxon accessories were recovered from the side of a hill in England and may be from a hoard, a ritual deposit or a collection of stolen items.

Decades ago, a spacecraft suggested Saturn's largest moon, Titan, had an ocean. New observations suggest that the liquid may look more like slush.

The discovery of a hidden supermassive black hole inside an ancient galaxy suggests that some of our universe's most extreme objects could be invisible unless observed in infrared wavelengths, James Webb telescope observations reveal.

The human eye can only detect wavelengths in the visible light range, but a new imaging system will let us "see" infrared radiation using smartphones.

Some of the victims at Pompeii were wearing woolen cloaks when they died, even though it was August, new research finds.

Scientists made a unique discovery in a cave on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola: dozens of fossilized bee nests inside rodent bones that were deposited by owls thousands of years ago.

Controlling immune cells' internal clocks helped reduce inflammatory damage in conditions like heart attack and sickle cell disease, a mouse study found.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope report that a powerful gamma-ray burst detected in March may have been produced by the explosion of a massive star just 730 million years after the Big Bang.

A brain-scan study reveals key components of the brain's navigation system, which may help us better understand early symptoms of dementia.

The newly excavated 4,500-year-old valley temple from ancient Egypt holds a "public calendar" and a roof for astronomical observation.

Warming temperatures appear to be driving genetic mutations in some polar bears to help them survive the shifting climatic conditions.

The European Space Agency has released new images of a rare "butterfly" crater on the Red Planet. The bug-like structure sports a pair of smooth, rocky wings, which were likely "fluidized" by buried Martian ice.

The novel design for the new qubit uses the chemical element tantalum in tandem with a special silicon substrate, creating what researchers say are the most coherent superconducting qubits to date.

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile has released its final batch of data after 15 years — and it proves that the Hubble tension, a rift in our understanding of the universe, is very real.

Five millennia ago, ancient fishers buried a dog alongside a dagger in a lake bed. Archaeologists are trying to figure out why.

An ancient fingerprint and several chemical clues from a 2,400-year-old sea raiders' boat are revealing secrets about where some mysterious attackers came from during the Iron Age.

A study suggests psychiatric disorders can share the same genetic signatures and that they may stem from shared biological mechanisms.

Tracking comets accurately is hard. A new effort with the U.N. and NASA aims to better chart these visitors using 3I/ATLAS.