Science news this week: The CDC in turmoil, NASA releases anticipated 3I/ATLAS images, and how to thwart an insect apocalypse

This week's science news has been fraught with controversy, as the three former leaders of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took to a webinar to describe the chaos unfolding at the agency since the start of the second Trump administration.

Claims of dysfunction at the CDC have been accompanied by worrying disease developments across the U.S., which experts announced this week could be on track to lose its measles free status as soon as January. The news has led to calls by scientists for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign.

In basic medical research, we've also reported on the causes for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) that could lead to better therapies; a new, early-stage drug that could prevent diabetes complications; a treatment that could stop diabetes outright by slaying zombie cells; and how high-fiber diets can boost immune cells to fight cancer.

3I/ATLAS is a comet, NASA announces

'3I/ATLAS is a comet': NASA finally releases new 3I/ATLAS images and addresses alien rumors

What week of science news in 2025 is complete without a controversial statement about comet 3I/ATLAS? This week saw perhaps the most contentious announcement of all, and it came from NASA: 3I/ATLAS is a comet.

The announcement, accompanied with a raft of new images captured by the space agency's spacecraft in orbit around the sun and Mars, was made as the space agency emerged from the U.S. government shutdown.

And while NASA may have summarily deflated the hopes of those who expected the comet to be teeming with little green men, it did reveal some fascinating details about the comet's peculiar speed and trajectory — both of which point to the comet being more than 7 billion years old.

Discover more space news

—Three more Chinese astronauts are now stranded in space following successful rescue of their colleagues

—Secretive SpaceX satellites operated by US government are shooting disruptive radio signals into space, astronomer accidentally discovers

—Scientists put moss on the outside of the International Space Station for 9 months — then kept it growing back on Earth

Life's Little Mysteries

Were there female gladiators in ancient Rome?

Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife — we get it, Ridley Scott, gladiatorial combat was for the fellas. But is that really true? Were any of the fighters in Rome's famed Colosseum women? We traced the lines of evidence and found a surprising answer.

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Ants tricked into dismembering their mom

'Nothing but a nightmare': Worker ants are tricked into murdering their mom by an imposter queen — who quickly takes the throne for herself

With Thanksgiving and the holiday season both around the corner, many of us are already preparing for some raucous family get-togethers.

But if you think you have family drama, none of it can compare to the activities of the worker ants highlighted by this recent study. After 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.

Discover more animals news

—'A forest with bonobos has never been so quiet': Most extreme case of violence in 'hippie' species recorded, with females ganging up on male in unprecedented attack

—Human trash is 'kick-starting' the domestication of city-dwelling raccoons, study suggests

—How did metamorphosis evolve?

Also in science news this week

—Viking Age woman found buried with scallop shells on her mouth, and archaeologists are mystified

—Diagnostic dilemma: Woman had her twin brother's XY chromosomes — but only in her blood

—Sunken city discovered in Kyrgyzstan lake was a medieval hotspot on the Silk Road — until an earthquake wiped it out

—New 'Transformer' humanoid robot can launch a shapeshifting drone off its back — watch it in action

Science Spotlight

A looming 'insect apocalypse' could endanger global food supplies. Can we stop it before it's too late?

Gone are the days when a summertime highway drive will leave your windshield peppered with bug splats. In their place, the insect apocalypse is here.

A combination of climate change, habitat loss and pesticides are causing Earth's insect populations to plummet, and that could have serious downstream impacts on our food supplies.

But can anything be done to bring the bugs back? And is there still cause for hope?

Live Science investigated this fascinating Science Spotlight story.

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 polls published this week.

—Science history: 'Patient zero' catches SARS, the older cousin of COVID — Nov. 16, 2002 [Science history]

—Live Science crossword puzzle #19: Tallest mountain in Africa — 12 across [Crossword]

—How to see a rare conjunction of Mercury and Venus this month [Skywatching]

Science in pictures

First Vera Rubin Observatory image reveals hidden structure as long as the Milky Way trailing behind a nearby galaxy — Space photo of the week

Working in science news presents us with a daily glut of wowsome images, but this one takes the cake — or maybe an entire galaxy of them.

Released among the first images to be taken by Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, this shot captures the entirety of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61) with a 163,000-light-year-long stream of stars emerging from it.

The stellar breadcrumb trail is the result of a dwarf galaxy eviscerated by M61, its entrails left to burst into a stream of new stars. That's probably bad news for any being with real estate in the vicinity, but for us cosmic rubberneckers, it makes for a heck of a pretty picture.

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