EverythingScience

Astronomers detect rare 'free floating' exoplanet 10,000 light-years from Earth Rogue planets — worlds that drift through space alone without a star — largely remain a mystery to scientists. Now, astronomers have for the first time confirmed the existence of one of these starless worlds by pinpointing its distance and mass — a rogue planet roughly the size of Saturn nearly 10,000 light-years from Earth. Source:Space.com @EverythingScience

Here Are 5 Ways In Which Cancer Treatment Advanced In 2025 Source:IFLScience @EverythingScience

The race to mine the moon is on – and it urgently needs some clear international rules Source:Space.com @EverythingScience

Humans May Be Able to Grow New Teeth Within Just 4 Years The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. While we may not think of them much, bones are incredibly resilient. But if they do break, they have this nifty trick of regrowing themselves. Teeth, however, are not bones. Although they’re made of some of the same stuff and are the hardest material in the human body (thanks to its protective layer of enamel), they lack the crucial ability to heal and regrow themselves. But that may not always be the case. Japanese researchers are moving forward with an experimental drug that promises to regrow human teeth. Human trials began in September 2024. Source:Popular Mechanics @EverythingScience

With our "Eyes on the Solar System" site, you can track the location of the planets and moons—and over 160 NASA spacecraft—in real time, using actual NASA data, right from your desktop or phone. eyes.nasa.gov Try "Eyes on Asteroids" and "Eyes on the Earth," too eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids… eyes.nasa.gov/apps/earth/ Source: @NASASolarSystem @EverythingScience

Galápagos penguins are all about working smarter, not harder. For generations, they've taught their young to watch pelicans diving for food, so they can sweep in at the last second for an easy meal. Source: @NatGeo @EverythingScience

Inside the Proton, the ‘Most Complicated Thing’ Imaginable More than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the positively charged particle at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand the proton. High school physics teachers describe them as featureless balls with one unit each of positive electric charge — the perfect foils for the negatively charged electrons that buzz around them. College students learn that the ball is actually a bundle of three elementary particles called quarks. But decades of research have revealed a deeper truth, one that’s too bizarre to fully capture with words or images. “This is the most complicated thing that you could possibly imagine,” said Mike Williams, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In fact, you can’t even imagine how complicated it is.” Source:Quanta Magazine @EverythingScience

New study shows Alzheimer’s disease can be reversed to achieve full neurological recovery—not just prevented or slowed—in animal models For more than a century, people have considered Alzheimer's disease (AD) an irreversible illness. Consequently, research has focused on preventing or slowing it, rather than recovery. Despite billions of dollars spent on decades of research, there has never been a clinical trial of any drug to reverse and recover from AD. A research team from Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals (UH) and the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center has now challenged this long-held dogma in the field, testing whether brains already badly afflicted with advanced AD could recover. The study, led by Kalyani Chaubey, from the Pieper Laboratory, was published online Dec. 22 in Cell Reports Medicine. Using diverse preclinical mouse models and analysis of human AD brains, the team showed that the brain’s failure to maintain normal levels of a central cellular energy molecule, NAD+, is a major driver of AD, and that maintaining proper NAD+ balance can prevent and even reverse the disease. NAD+ levels decline naturally across the body, including the brain, as people age. Without proper NAD+ balance, cells eventually become unable to execute many of the critical processes required for proper functioning and survival. In this study, the team showed that the decline in NAD+ is even more severe in the brains of people with AD, and that this same phenomenon also occurs in mouse models of the disease. While AD is a uniquely human condition, it can be studied in the laboratory with mice that have been genetically engineered to express genetic mutations known to cause AD in people. Source:CWRU Newsroom @EverythingScience

Saturn's biggest moon might not have an ocean after all Careful reanalysis of data from more than a decade ago indicates that Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, does not have a vast ocean beneath its icy surface, as suggested previously. Instead, a journey below the frozen exterior likely involves more ice giving way to slushy tunnels and pockets of meltwater near the rocky core. Data from NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn initially led researchers to suspect a large ocean composed of liquid water under the ice on Titan. However, when they modeled the moon with an ocean, the results didn't match the physical properties described by the data. Source:Phys.org @EverythingScience

This Brilliant Map Has 3D Models Of Nearly Every Single Building In The World - All 2.75 Billion Of Them Google Maps has got fresh competition. Using machine learning, computer engineers have developed an interactive map that shows 3D models of the world's buildings – practically every single one of them. Here's how it works and how you can tinker around with it yourself. Called the GlobalBuildingAtlas, the freely available map features nearly all of the world’s 2.75 billion buildings, which presumably includes your home, your favourite restaurant, the hospital you were born in, and so on. Each structure is displayed with a resolution of 3 x 3 meters (approx. 10 x 10 feet), capturing the shape and size of each building with surprisingly good accuracy. Around 97 percent (2.68 billion) of the buildings are displayed in the highest level of detail, plus the map contains buildings from regions often missing in global maps, such as Africa, South America, and rural areas. Source:IFLScience @EverythingScience

There Is A Very Simple Test To See If You Have Aphantasia It's difficult to work out what is going on in your own mind, let alone anyone else's. That's one of the reasons why people with aphantasia, or who do not have an inner monologue (anendophasia), may not realize that their minds work differently from other people's. Aphantasia is a difference in the way the brain generates mental imagery. When the majority of people are asked to picture a horse, for example, they really do see a horse clearly in their mind's eye. You may see details of the horse you are picturing, its long, flowing mane, or its horrendous white sweat quite clearly. For around 1-4 percent of people worldwide, or around 82-380 million people on Earth, that is not the case. "Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images – a neurological variation that affects how people think, dream, remember, and learn. When someone with aphantasia tries to visualize an apple, a loved one's face, or a childhood memory, they experience no mental pictures," the Aphantasia Network explains. "Instead of mental pictures, your mind works with facts, concepts, and knowledge. You know what a horse looks like – four legs, mane, tail – you just can't see one in your head." Source:IFLScience @EverythingScience

The Year in Physics Source:Quanta Magazine @EverythingScience