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Science news this week: Revived permafrost microbes spew CO2, scientists image object 'moving' at 99.9% the speed of light, and James Webb telescope spots something exciting blasting from black hole M87*
Oct. 18, 2025: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.
In this week's science news, we reported on the revival of greenhouse gas belching microbes from the permafrost, an optical illusion that appears to break special relativity, black hole M87* spewing a giant counter-jet, and blood tests that can detect cancer earlier than before.
This week's science news was led by a spate of climate stories that were as worrying as they were fascinating. Topping the bill are microbes that were woken up after lying frozen in the Alaskan permafrost for up to 40,000 years, only for them to begin churning out carbon dioxide.
The ability of these microbes, some of which have been dormant since the last ice age, to return to their regular functioning within months is fascinating. But it's also a frightening portent of a potential climate doom loop, whereby global warming causes the permafrost to thaw, unleashing the bugs to then accelerate the heating of the planet further.
We're careening to dangerous levels of warming even without the greenhouse gas-spewing microbeasts, however. A new report published this week revealed that the CO2 entering Earth's atmosphere increased by a record amount in 2024, which was attributed not just to a record rise in humanity's burning of fossil fuels but also to a surge in wildfires and less absorption from Earth's carbon sinks.
It's called the Terrell-Penrose effect, and it comes from the observation that a camera capturing an object moving at the speed of light wouldn't see it squashed along its direction of motion — as Einstein's theory states. Instead, the camera would view the speeding object as partially rotated due to light's varying travel times to different parts of the object.
It's important to note that the sphere in the experiment wasn't actually accelerated to the speed of light, but was simulated to do so by clever camerawork. Nonetheless, the bizarre effect was captured beautifully.
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Our solar system began forming some 4.6 billion years ago. But not every planet came together at the same time.
(Image credit: SCIEPRO/Getty Images)
Our solar system formed when a giant celestial cloud collapsed, which birthed our sun and the planets in turn. But which planets came first? Turns out the answer is messy, and depends on the method scientists use to guess the age of planets.
This clearest ever view, captured by JWST, shows the black hole's forward jet and a massive counter-jet that's ricocheting through space in the opposite direction. The images are stunning, and could enable astrophysicists to study the near-light-speed belches in greater detail. That's all the better for figuring out how jets like these sculpt the regions surrounding them and the wider cosmos.
Liquid biopsy breakthroughs promise to catch cancer faster and earlier.
(Image credit: CSA Images via Getty Images)
Four years ago, when 77-year-old John Gormly went for what was supposed to be a standard blood test, he received results that saved his life. The newly approved test was called Shield, and it diagnosed Gormly with colon cancer that was quickly treated at stage 2. In this week’s long read, Live Science reported on the new test and a growing wave of liquid biopsies that promise to rapidly accelerate early cancer detection.
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best news analyses, crosswords and opinion pieces.
The winner of the 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition was announced this week, and it was an incredible shot. The image, a rare brown hyena (Parahyaena brunnea) stalking the gutted ruins of a diamond mining town in Namibia, took winner Wim van den Heever 10 years to capture.
Brown hyenas, the rarest hyenas on Earth, are known to pass through the town Kolmanskop while traveling to hunt for Cape fur seal pups or scavenge for carrion washed ashore along the Namib Desert coast.
The moody, metal album-like photo isn't the only incredible shot featured by the competition — there were also ones of a caracal hunting a flamingo; a ladyfish snatching its prey from right under an egret's beak; and a "Mad Hatterpillar" with a tower of exoskeleton shells balanced on its head.
Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
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