Today's biggest science news: NASA comet 3I/ATLAS images | SpaceX delays Artemis | Leaking spy satellites
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
Live Science roundup
- Sunken city discovered in Kyrgyzstan lake was a medieval hotspot on the Silk Road — until an earthquake wiped it out
- CTE may stem from rampant inflammation and DNA damage
- Medieval spear pulled from Polish lake may have belonged to prince or nobleman
- New 'Transformer' humanoid robot can launch a shapeshifting drone off its back — watch it in action
I’d like to kiss you monkey man
If comet 3I/ATLAS really is revealed to be an alien probe, I may be kissing my credibility as a comet journalist goodbye. But did you know that the practice of kissing far predates humans?
By pairing a Bayesian model with observations of various modern-day primates pressing lips, scientists have estimated that kissing first evolved in the common ancestor of large apes sometime between 21.5 million and 16.9 million years ago.
With all that said, it’s far from clear how much our human ancestors smooched across the centuries — even in modern humans only about half of cultures engage in it.
Check out the full story by Live Science Contributor Clarissa Brincat here.
NASA comet 3I/ATLAS announcement today
Good morning, science boys and girls. We’re back with yet another day of science news as NASA prepares to release some of the best-quality images yet of comet 3I/ATLAS.
The comet has been capturing an enormous amount of attention recently. Some of it is likely unearned (you know it’s almost definitely not aliens, right?) and some definitely a big deal (the more than 7-billion-year-old space snowball is a fascinating window across cosmic time and space).
We’ll be covering the event live as it happens, so if we’re wrong and little green men really are hopping around on it, we’ll be the first to tell you.
NIH terminates funding for hundreds of trials
Tia here with an update on the state of clinical trials in the U.S.: Funding cuts by the Trump administration have halted 383 clinical trials, or about 1 in 30 funded by the National Institutes of Health, a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine has found.
Most of the terminated trials were in early phases, according to a summary of the new study in American Journal of Managed Care. But that still resulted in 74,000 enrolled patients being removed from trials.
The biggest funding cuts came from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), due in large part to $500 million in mRNA vaccine research being halted in August.
That won't be a surprise to those who have followed public health news. Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now heads the Department of Health and Human Services, and has taken several steps to discredit and hamper vaccine uptake and development.
While the administration has said only mRNA vaccines are in the crosshairs and that other uses of mRNA technology are unaffected by the funding cuts, "the industry doesn't trust that," Jeff Coller, the Bloomberg distinguished professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University, told health editor Nicoletta Lanese in an interview in August.
That's a real pity, because mRNA technology has enormous potential, from attacking hard-to-treat, deadly cancers to curing genetic diseases, Nicoletta reported in October.
Goodnight from across the pond
It’s goodbye from the Live Science staff on the U.K. side. We’ll leave you in the ever-capable hands of our U.S. colleagues for more posts, commentary and breaking news updates.
The Crying of Launch Complex 39
For many amateur astronomers, just taking a picture of a comet or a planet is a great find. But when Scott Tilley clocked off from his day job this year, he uncovered a vast network of puzzling radio signals being shot into space by U.S. government-run Starlink satellites.
It sounds like the setup for a Pynchon novel, but as Harry outlines, it’s all very much true.
Here's what he had to say about the strange signals:
"Amateur astronomer Scott Tilley discovered the new signals while accidentally monitoring the wrong radio wavelengths. What's really weird is that the signals seem to be deliberately using frequencies normally reserved for "uplinking" by satellite operators. But they are actually being used for "downlinking," or sending messages back down to Earth, which not only goes against international regulations but could also potentially disrupt other spacecraft around them.
Not much is known about why they might be doing this or how widespread it is, and we may never know the full story due to the secretive nature of these satellites. Earlier in the year, I also wrote an in-depth report on how private satellites, like Starlink, are emitting radio pollution that overlaps with frequencies used by radio astronomers. If this problem gets worse, it could majorly impact our ability to study the cosmos, experts say."
You can read the full story here.
Comet 3I/ATLAS's tail as old as time
We can't let even half a day go by without a fresh update on 3I/ATLAS at the moment. Senior staff writer Harry has published a write-up on this breathtaking shot of the comet, which was captured over the weekend by astrophotographer Satoru Murata as it photobombed a distant galaxy.
Some of the comet's now iconic features, such as its green glow and its tail and anti-tail, are clearly visible in the photo, and it should be more than enough to whet our appetites ahead of NASA's big reveal of its 3I/ATLAS images tomorrow.
You can read the full story here.
A thousand years of solartude
New climate modelling suggests that global warming-fueled heatwaves will continue for 1,000 years after we hit net zero (if we hit net zero), the Guardian reports.
Researchers in Australia simulated heatwaves in a hypothetical net zero world, in which the amount of greenhouse gases humans emit are offset by the amount absorbed from the atmosphere — something many scientists hope for and many countries, in theory, support.
The team found that heatwaves will be more severe and more frequent the longer it takes us to reach net zero. This isn't really a surprise, given that we know greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and warm up the planet.
However, the fact that it could take at least 1,000 years for heatwaves to return to preindustrial levels, even after we get our emissions in check, is a tad ominous for future generations.
"The thing with net zero and heat waves is: we're damned if we do, but we're completely stuffed if we don't," study lead author Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate science professor at the Australian National University, told the Guardian. "We're already locked into a certain amount of warming."
It's quantum o'clock
Researchers have built a teeny tiny quantum clock that requires more energy to read than run.
A team led by scientists at the University of Oxford recently explored timekeeping at the quantum level and its thermodynamic cost. In their findings, published last week and announced yesterday, the scientists describe creating the clock from single electrons that jump between two regions in the nanoscale realm — with each leap acting as the 'tick' of a traditional clock.
In a classic quantum quirk, the researchers found that the energy needed to read the clock far exceeded the energy required to run the thing, suggesting measurement costs in quantum physics are more significant than previously thought.
Ignore your deadlines. Do this crossword instead
Got some important work to do that’s being hamstrung by the Cloudflare outage?
Maybe it’s more important you test your knowledge with this crossword instead. It’s all important science trivia, so you can tell your boss you're upskilling.
Cloud down
An ongoing outage to Cloudflare, a US company which defends millions of websites against hacking attacks, has brought down vast swathes of the web, including X and OpenAI, today.
Company staff are still investigating what caused the crash.
"We saw a spike in unusual traffic to one of Cloudflare's services beginning at 11:20 UTC. That caused some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors," the company wrote in an emailed statement. "We do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure all traffic is served without errors.”
Once they’ve addressed the errors, Cloudflare staff will turn to investigating the cause of the "unusual spike in traffic." Could it be yet another AI-driven cyberattack? Cloudflare writes that it will post updates to cloudflarestatus.com and more in-depth analysis to blog.cloudflare.com.
Until then, Live Science is still online, so where else do you need to go?
Live Science roundup
- High-fiber diet may 'rejuvenate' immune cells that fight cancer, study finds
- 'Sophisticated' Bronze Age city unearthed in Kazakhstan 'transforms our understanding of steppe societies'
- Extreme bloom of toxic algae swirls in Nevada's 'Pyramid Lake' — Earth from space
- Mars orbiter narrows down the exact path of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS by 'ten-fold,' surprising scientists
And you think you have family drama?
With Thanksgiving and the holiday season both around the corner, many of us are already preparing for some raucous family get-togethers.
But no matter how riotous we humans can be, nothing compares to the activities of the worker ants highlighted by this recent study. Ater being tricked by the pheromone spray of a parasitic queen, some ant species band together to dismember their mother and enable the imposter to usurp the throne for herself.
You can read all the gory details in the full story here.
Countdown to NASA's new 3I/ATLAS images
Yesterday, we wrote (at length) about the potential release of NASA's long-awaited comet 3I/ATLAS images. Well, just a reminder that these are coming tomorrow.
NASA will host a live news teleconference on Wednesday (Nov. 19) at 3 p.m. EST. The images are expected to be the clearest yet of comet 3I/ATLAS, and should help scientists learn more about the interstellar visitor.
Nosy Neanderthals
Good morning, science fans! Patrick here to kick off another day of our science news blog coverage. I want to start with a story about Neanderthal noses, which Live Science's Kristina Killgrove reported on yesterday evening. Researchers re-examined perfectly preserved Neanderthal nose bones, and discovered their sizeable schnozzes weren't evolved for the cold.
The new study involved taking a fresh look at the "Altamura Man," which is an exceptionally well-preserved Neanderthal skeleton covered in a thick layer of calcite, sometimes called "cave popcorn." The researchers' findings suggest that the size of Neanderthal noses might not have had anything to do with living in cold temperatures.
You can read the full story here.
NASA sets date to share 3I/ATLAS images
Earthlings eager to see NASA’s newest images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will have to wait a few more days. The space agency just announced a live image viewing event scheduled for Wednesday (Nov. 19) at 3 p.m. EST.
During the event, NASA will share never-before-seen images of the interstellar comet taken during its close approach to Mars in early October. The U.S. government shutdown, which lasted from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, prevented the agency from releasing these images until now.
Space and physics editor Brandon Specktor shared the details on how to watch, and why it matters, in his full story here.
Woman versus goose
A 12,000-year-old clay figurine unearthed in Israel may depict a goose attempting to mate with a squatting woman, archaeologists say.
Staff writer Kristina Killgrove reported on the unusual figurine, which may be the oldest representation of an animal and a human interacting.
But why did the sculptor depict this event, and what does it say about the Natufians, the ancient culture that crafted the object? You can read the full story here.
Dementia more deadly than heart disease?
Dementia is now more deadly than heart disease — at least in Australia. The new trend reflects dramatic improvements in health care which mean people live longer in general, Lauren Moran, the head of mortality statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"People are now more likely to live to an age where they have a higher risk of developing dementia," Moran said.
Whether Australia is a harbinger for the rest of the world remains to be seen. In the U.S., for instance, heart disease remains the top killer, closely followed by cancer. Alzheimer's disease is the sixth-leading cause of death, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dueling climate change impacts
Tia here with news of dueling climate change impacts. A key Atlantic Ocean current system, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could be collapsing, due in large part to climate change.
Meanwhile, climate change is also fueling the rapid melt of Antarctic ice.
Yet the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which some climate scientists say is "all but inevitable" could have a surprising side effect — staving off the AMOC collapse, New Scientist reports.
Still, the ice sheet melting would be catastrophic for sea levels, and the AMOC would still decline by 60% and take 3,000 years to bounce back to its previous strength, according to new research.
Three more Chinese astronauts stranded
Three more astronauts are stranded in China’s Tiangong station following the return of their previously stuck colleagues, Senior Staff Writer Harry reports.
The latest trio — Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang — are the crew of the Shenzhou-21 mission, whose return capsule was taken home by the Shenzhou-20 crew following a potential space debris collision that rendered their original capsule inoperable.
The development could highlight a potential flaw in China’s space protocols that could put astronauts needlessly at risk.
You can read the full story here.
That’s all for today folks
We’re signing off from the U.K. side now. We’ll hand you over to our U.S. colleagues now for updates from Live Science, science across the web, and maybe even NASA if they choose to drop comet images while we’re off the clock. See you all tomorrow!
3I/ATLAS’s trajectory narrowed down ten-fold
Since its initial discovery in July, astronomers have answered many questions about what 3I/ATLAS is made of and where it could have come from in our galaxy. Yet, due to insufficient observations, where it’s heading hasn’t been entirely clear.
Now, thanks to data collected by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter during the comet’s flyby of the Red Planet, scientists have improved their estimates of 3I/ATLAS’s trajectory ten-fold.
The ESA is hoping to repeat the trick with its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which will get a good look at 3I/ATLAS later this month.
You can read Harry’s full story here.
Why are astronomers interested in 3I/ATLAS?
While it is indeed an interstellar visitor from beyond our solar system, most astronomers are confident that 3I/ATLAS is just a normal comet.
Well, normal in the sense that it's natural. 3I/ATLAS is actually pretty amazing as comets go, being the oldest ever seen and the most massive of its kind, not to mention only the third interstellar object ever recorded.
This means that researchers will carefully study new images of the comet for clues to its makeup, origins, and a better understanding of the journey it took to arrive at our cosmic backyard.
Comets heat up as they fly closer to stars, causing ice on their surface to sublimate into gas, which researchers can then detect and study. Previous observations have already revealed that comet 3I/ATLAS appears to be unusually rich in carbon dioxide, with potentially a thick irradiated crust from billions of years of exposure to cosmic rays.
The comet’s irradiated nature could make it more difficult to decipher the properties of its material that would otherwise reveal more about the conditions of its home star system. Still, researchers still have a lot to learn about interstellar comets, and just having more data on this one is as good a start as any.
Other images taken by HiRISE
HiRise has imaged vast areas of the Martian landscape in unprecedented detail, according to NASA. Check out the HiRise website, hosted by The University of Arizona, to scroll through hundreds of previous HiRise images.
Live Science roundup
- First Vera Rubin Observatory image reveals hidden structure as long as the Milky Way trailing behind a nearby galaxy — Space photo of the week
- The more that people use AI, the more likely they are to overestimate their own abilities
- A gulf separating Africa and Asia is still pulling apart — 5 million years after scientists thought it had stopped
- Medieval Hungarian duke was murdered in a brutal and coordinated attack, forensic analysis reveals
What is HiRISE?
The as-of-yet unreleased comet 3I/ATLAS images were taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbiter has been flying around Mars since 2006, searching for signs of water on the Red Planet. The HiRISE camera managed to get images of comet 3I/ATLAS as it zoomed past Mars in early October.
The images are expected to be the highest-resolution images of comet 3I/ATLAS yet, and even clearer than the Hubble Space Telescope's comet snaps taken in July, the New York Post has reported.
Here's a selection of some of our 3I/ATLAS stories so far
- 'Interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS could be the oldest comet ever seen — and could grow a spectacular tail later this year
- Is it aliens? Here's why that's the least important question about 3I/ATLAS.
- Comet 3I/ATLAS has been transformed by billions of years of space radiation, James Webb Space Telescope observations reveal
- NASA spacecraft reveal interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS brightened rapidly as it swooped behind the sun
- NASA's Hubble telescope reveals most detailed photos of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS to date
Everything you need to know about 3I/ATLAS
So what is 3I/ATLAS? And why do people care?
3I/ATLAS, which was first discovered in early July, is the third interstellar object ever found in our solar system. That means it doesn't come from our cosmic neighbourhood, but from somewhere else in our Milky Way galaxy.
Where exactly in our galaxy the comet came from is unclear — scientists aren't sure whether it came from the Milky Way's 'thin' disk or its 'thick' disk — but depending on its origins it could be more than 7 billion years old, making it more than 3 billion years older than our sun. Tracing 3I/ATLAS’s origins is made even more challenging by its material, which has been transformed by billions of years of exposure to cosmic rays.
Telescope observations suggest the comet is roughly 7-mile-wide (11 kilometers) and zooming at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). Having passed perihelion, or the closest point to our sun, roughly two weeks ago, 3I/ATLAS is now zipping toward its closest point to Earth on Dec. 19.
The exotic comet has many peculiar properties, from its chemical composition to its large size. This, alongside radio signals coming from it that are typical of all comets, has fuelled a frenzy of speculation that the 3I/ATLAS is an alien probe.
That's almost certainly not the case, but it doesn't mean that astronomers aren't excited to study it. Investigating the comet could yield fresh insights into the conditions around other stars, our early galaxy, and the vast frontier of interstellar space.
NASA set to share best images of comet 3I/ATLAS yet
Good morning, science fans. We’re back with more updates on the comet 3I/ATLAS. Following the end of the U.S. government shutdown, we’re seeing reports that NASA is set to release some of the best-quality images yet of the comet.
The images were taken by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and could have significantly better resolution than those by the Hubble Space Telescope on July 21, 2025.
We’re getting to work on what all of this could mean for the rapidly-brightened comet, which is roughly 7-miles (11 kilometers) wide, more than 7 billion years old, and traveling at 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) as it sheds its highly-irradiated coma across our solar system.
That's more like it! Marvelous new image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, taken by photographer Satoru Murata before dawn this morning, captures intricate structure in its tail(s). On the right you can also see galaxy NGC 4691. https://t.co/7rP3S4ysa5 pic.twitter.com/KrjhOSCgLcNovember 16, 2025
