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If someone says they need to use the bathroom, does it make you want to go too? "Contagious peeing" is a known phenomenon in humans, but new research shows that it happens in chimpanzees too, suggesting a deep evolutionary origin for this social behavior.
And that's not the only wacky wildlife story in this week's science news. Researchers have uncovered the breeding secrets of the world's smallest penguins, revealing that "divorce" is rampant among these small sea birds.
But if you thought that was extreme, scientists in China have broken a new fusion record after their "artificial sun" maintained temperatures six times hotter than the center of our star for a staggering length of time.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor on Jan. 15, 2025 in China.
(Image credit: Zhang Dagang/VCG via Getty Images)
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers our sun — and if we could efficiently recreate it on Earth, it would offer a near-limitless supply of clean energy. For this reaction to take place, you need a lot of energy and very high temperatures.
At these extreme temperatures, hydrogen gas enters a fourth state of matter known as plasma, in which the atoms' electrons are ripped away from their nucleus and exist in a soup of positively and negatively charged ions. However, this plasma is notoriously hard to maintain.
Now, scientists at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor in China — often described as China's "artificial sun" — have successfully maintained this plasma for 1,066 seconds, more than doubling their previous world record set in 2023. But we still have work to do before commercial fusion energy is available on Earth.
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Organ donation saves thousands of lives every year. But despite donor numbers being at an all time high, demand for organ transplant consistently outstrips supply.
In 2023, more than 46,000 organ transplants were performed in the U.S. alone — but could any of these organs be recycled again if their owner was done with them and they were needed by someone else?
The visiting object was probably eight times as heavy as Jupiter, according to the new study.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL)
An interstellar object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have permanently altered our cosmic neighborhood by warping the orbits of the four outer planets.
For decades, astronomers have debated how our solar system's planets formed, and why the four outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — have subtle idiosyncrasies in their orbits compared with those closest to the sun.
Skulls of a Neanderthal (front) and early Homo sapiens (back).
(Image credit: Alamy)
When our species first journeyed out of Africa, our red blood cells underwent a rapid evolution to help us survive. But this could have also led to the downfall of Neanderthals.
We often talk about our blood type — the combination of molecular flags on the surface of our red blood cells that let our immune systems know that these cells belong to us. When you get a blood transfusion, it's important that the donor's blood is compatible with your own blood type — otherwise your immune system will flag the cells as foreign and attack them.
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.
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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