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But in the present day, our home star has had a particularly active week, with the strongest solar flare of 2025 so far recorded on Wednesday morning (May 14). Solar flares are sudden, intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation released from regions of intense magnetic activity on the sun's surface.
The X2.7 flare came less than 24 hours after another powerful X-class flare on May 13, with two significant M-class flares reported on either side. The solar activity triggered radio blackouts across North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and more flares could be heading our way in the coming days.
The infant was born with a rare genetic disorder called carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) deficiency. This disorder arises from a mutation in the gene that carries the instructions to make CPS1, an enzyme that helps break down toxic cellular waste products in the liver. If the CPS1 gene isn't working properly, the body partially or completely loses the ability to make the enzyme, and toxic compounds build up, injuring vital organs like the brain. Roughly half of children born with the most severe form of this condition die in early infancy.
CRISPR technology enables scientists to edit genes very precisely. Two CRISPR therapies have been approved to date, but these have a one-size-fits-all approach: They work by completely disabling a specific gene. However, in some genetic diseases, you need to fix a broken gene and the mutation behind the dysfunction can vary between people. So treating those conditions would require targeting a person's unique mutation.
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At around 6 to 7 months old, KJ became the first person to receive such a personalized treatment and, after three doses of the therapy, the 9.5 month-old is now thriving, according to his doctors.
The Ishango bone, from Africa's Congo region, has dozens of parallel notches cut into its surface that may have been a tally of something that ancient humans were counting.
Researchers have suggested a new hypothesis for how Yosemite Valley formed.
(Image credit: Yiming Chen/Getty Images)
Yosemite National Park is famous for its grand meadows and deep valleys, with walls towering up to 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) above the valley floor.
It's long been thought that these deep canyons were formed by 10 million years of uplift in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. But new research suggests this might not be the case. Instead, researchers believe the landscape may have been carved out by a long-lost river meandering down the slopes of an ancient volcano.
Researchers have claimed trees communicate hours before a solar eclipse after detecting bioelectric signals in spruce trees just before the celestial event.
(Image credit: George Frey/Stringer via Getty Images)
Several news outlets reported that during an eclipse, trees begin to synchronize their behavior. It's a compelling idea, and one that sprung from research in spruce trees (Picea abies) growing in Italy's Dolomite mountains.
The researchers attached remote sensors to three healthy spruce trees and five tree stumps to measure their electrical activity during a two-hour partial solar eclipse. What they found was that the trees appeared to exhibit synchronized changes in their bioelectric activity in anticipation of the eclipse, the researchers told Live Science.
But outside experts say the research is flawed, with many questioning whether we can actually take anything from these findings.
Something for the weekend
If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best long reads, book excerpts and interviews published this week.
On March 28, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Myanmar, causing thousands of deaths and leaving many more injured. New, striking security camera footage shows the ground splitting apart across a driveway near the town of Thazi in central Myanmar.
The footage is thought to be the first-of-its-kind to show a ground fissure forming during a major earthquake.
Pandora is the trending news editor at Live Science. She is also a science presenter and previously worked as Senior Science and Health Reporter at Newsweek. Pandora holds a Biological Sciences degree from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in biochemistry and molecular biology.
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