China is rounding off what has been a year of big progress in space, including major crewed lunar landing tests, new rockets and booster landing attempts, a new deep space mission and even successfully resolving its first human spaceflight emergency.

The country has already smashed its previous record for launches in a calendar year (68, set in 2024), amassing more than 80 orbital launch attempts at time of reporting, with a couple of weeks still to go. Two of these launches ended in failure, both from commercial launch providers, but the venerable Long March rocket series continued a long, failure-free run dating back to 2020.

China hit a major milestone in 2025 with the country’s first launch and landing attempt of a reusable orbital rocket. Commercial company Landspace successfully sent its first Zhuque 3 rocket into orbit, but the first stage landing effort ended in spectacular failure during the landing burn. To end the year, China is looking to launch its new reusable Long March 12A rocket in late December as China closes in on attaining reusable launch capabilities, a decade after SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time.

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Chinese space successes in 2025

Driving some of this growth in launches are the country’s two megaconstellations: the national Guowang project and the Shanghai-backed Thousand Sails constellation, both of which are to consist of more than 10,000 satellites each. These are China’s response to SpaceX’s Starlink and other Western low Earth orbit communications constellations. There were 15 launches this year for Guowang alone, but expect launches for these projects to increase in 2026.

One area of major progress for China in 2025 was its crewed lunar program. The country aims to land a pair of its astronauts on the moon before 2030 and this year saw some of the first major hardware tests for the ambitious project. Key tests included testing a shortened stage of the new moon rocket, a liftoff and landing test in simulated lunar conditions for the Lanyue crew lander, and a pad abort test for the crew spacecraft. This progress has contributed to concerns in the U.S. that China will land its astronauts on the moon before America can return to the lunar surface with Artemis 3.

China also made a launch to deep space, with the Tianwen 2 near-Earth asteroid sample return mission launching in May and now on its way to the mysterious asteroid Kamo’oalewa. The spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid in July 2026, providing us with images and eventually samples of another new world. Tianwen 2 is China’s second deep space exploration mission, following the 2020 Tianwen 1 Mars rover and orbiter. Incidentally, the orbiter for that mission is still active and in October, captured images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS; one of the major space events of the year.

A series of photos of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, captured from Mars orbit by Tianwen 1 in early October 2025.  (Image credit: CNSA)

Closer to Earth, China also appeared to have completed a pioneering satellite refueling in geostationary orbit, high above the equator. The test could mark a breakthrough for extending spacecraft lifetimes, reducing debris, and bringing strategic flexibility.

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China resolves 1st spaceflight emergency

Not everything went according to plan for China in 2025. The country planned three missions to its Tiangong space station in 2025: the crewed Shenzhou 20 and Shenzhou 21 missions, which launched in April and October respectively, and the Tianzhou 9 cargo spacecraft in July.

These plans were upended, however, when routine checks found an external crack in a Shenzhou 20 spacecraft viewport window on Nov. 5, likely caused by space debris, just before it was due to carry its three astronauts back to Earth. The spacecraft was deemed not to be safe to carry astronauts through the heat of reentry, meaning emergency protocols were initiated.

The Shenzhou 20 astronauts instead returned to Earth in the recently-arrived Shenzhou 21 spacecraft, while the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft — on standby for just a scenario at Jiuquan spaceport — was readied in 16 days and launched to Tiangong uncrewed to provide a lifeboat for the Shenzhou 21 astronauts. The incident was the first major human spaceflight emergency for China, with its orderly response quickly solving the crisis.

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Astronaut Chen Dong, who was the commander of China’s Shenzhou-20 mission, salutes a crowd. (Image credit: VCG/Getty Images)

The year ahead for Chinese space missions

China’s already accelerating launch rate is only likely to increase in 2026, with further reusable rocket test flights and landing attempts, megaconstellation launches, and the continued expansion of its spaceports, particularly in Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert, the Hainan commercial launch pads, and the maritime spaceport in the Eastern province of Shandong.

There will also be flagship missions. The second half of the year will see the launch of the Chang’e 7 robotic lunar mission, which will target a landing at the lunar south pole and aim to seek out water-ice. There will also be a joint space weather mission, named SMILE, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the European Space Agency (ESA), launching in the spring.

China’s Yutu 2 lunar rover, as seen by the Chang’e 4 lander, on the far side of the moon. The 2026 Chang’e 7 mission will also feature a large rover, as well as a lander and a small hopper that will explore lunar craters. (Image credit: CNSA)

China will also take new steps in human spaceflight in 2026. The country will send a pair of missions to Tiangong, namely Shenzhou 23 and Shenzhou 24. One of these is expected to carry the first International astronaut from Pakistan to the space station. The stay is expected to be short, launching on a Shenzhou as part of a three-person crew, and returning days later with two Chinese astronauts returning to Earth after their six-month-long stay in orbit. That will leave one Chinese astronaut from the completed mission to stay in orbit for a further six months, becoming the first Chinese astronaut to spend an entire year in orbit continuously.

Maybe the most closely watched and consequential missions will be related to China’s crewed moon plans. China plans debut flights for its Long March 10 rocket and the Mengzhou spacecraft in 2026, with success being crucial to achieving its goal of landing its astronauts on the moon before 2030.

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A distant exoplanet appears to sport a sooty atmosphere that is confusing the scientists who recently spotted it.

The Jupiter-size world, detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), doesn’t have the familiar helium-hydrogen combination we are used to in atmospheres from our solar system, nor other common molecules, like water, methane or carbon dioxide.

“This was an absolute surprise,” study co-author Peter Gao, a staff scientist at the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory, said in a statement. “I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was, ‘What the heck is this?’ It’s extremely different from what we expected.”

Researchers probed the bizarre environment of the planet, known as PSR J2322-2650b, in a paper published Tuesday (Dec. 16) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Although the planet was detected by a radio telescope survey in 2017, it took the sharper vision of JWST (which launched in 2021) to examine PSR J2322-2650b’s environment from 750 light-years away.

PSR J2322-2650b orbits a pulsar. Pulsars are fast-spinning neutron stars — the ultradense cores of stars that have exploded as supernovas — that emit radiation in brief, regular pulses that are visible only when their lighthouse-like beams of electromagnetic radiation aim squarely at Earth. (That’s bizarre on its own, as no other pulsar is known to have a gas-giant planet, and few pulsars have planets at all, the science team stated.)

The infrared instruments on JWST can’t actually see this particular pulsar because it is sending out high-energy gamma-rays. However, JWST’s “blindness” to the pulsar is actually a boon to scientists because they can easily probe the companion planet, PSR J2322-2650b, to see what the planet’s environment is like.

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“This system is unique because we are able to view the planet illuminated by its host star, but not see the host star at all,” co-author Maya Beleznay, a doctoral candidate in physics at Stanford University, said in the statement. “We can study this system in more detail than normal exoplanets.”

An artist’s concept of the exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI))

Formation mystery

PSR J2322-2650b’s origin story is an enigma. It is only a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from its star — nearly 100 times closer than Earth is to the sun. That’s even stranger when you consider that the gas giant planets of our solar system are much farther out — Jupiter is 484 million miles (778 million km) from the sun, for example.

The planet whips around its star in only 7.8 hours, and it’s shaped like a lemon because the gravitational forces of the pulsar are pulling extremely strongly on the planet. At first glance, it appears PSR J2322-2650b could have a similar formation scenario as “black widow” systems, where a sunlike star is next to a small pulsar.

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In black-widow systems, the pulsar “consumes” or erodes the nearby star, much like the myth of the black widow spider’s feasting behavior after which the phenomena is named. That happens because the star is so close to the pulsar that its material falls onto the pulsar. The extra stellar material causes the pulsar to gradually spin faster and to generate a strong “wind” of radiation that erodes the nearby star.

But lead author Michael Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow in exoplanet atmospheres at the University of Chicago, said this pathway made it difficult to understand how PSR J2322-2650b came to be. In fact, the planet’s formation appears to be unexplainable at this point.

“Did this thing form like a normal planet? No, because the composition is entirely different,” Zhang said in the statement. “It’s very hard to imagine how you get this extremely carbon-enriched composition. It seems to rule out every known formation mechanism.”

One possibility for what happened comes from study co-author Roger Romani, a professor of physics at Stanford University and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. After the planet cooled down from its formation, he suggested, carbon and oxygen in its interior crystallized.

But even that doesn’t account for all of the odd properties. “Pure carbon crystals float to the top and get mixed into the helium … but then something has to happen to keep the oxygen and nitrogen away,” Romani explained in the same statement. “And that’s where the mystery [comes] in.”

Scientists hope to continue studying PSR J2322-2650b. “It’s nice to not know everything,” Romani said. “I’m looking forward to learning more about the weirdness of this atmosphere. It’s great to have a puzzle to go after.”

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Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have imaged the largest and most chaotic site of planetary birth humanity has ever seen.

Appearing like a stunning cosmic bat, this protoplanetary disk, located around 1,000 light-years away, stretches out for around 400 billion years, around 40 times the size of our solar system, out to the ring of cometary bodies known as the Kuiper belt.

This protoplanetary disk with an infant star at its heart has the official designation IRAS 23077+6707, but also has the incredible nickname “Dracula’s Chivito.” But it isn’t just its staggering size and unique nickname that make IRAS 23077+6707 so remarkable.

A Hubble image of Dracula’s Chivito, the largest protoplanetary disk ever seen (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Kristina Monsch (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

“The level of detail we’re seeing is rare in protoplanetary disk imaging, and these new Hubble images show that planet nurseries can be much more active and chaotic than we expected,” team leader Kristina Monsch of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) said in a statement. “We’re seeing this disk nearly edge-on, and its wispy upper layers and asymmetric features are especially striking.”

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Monsch added that both Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have glimpsed similar structures in other disks, but Dracula’s Chivito provides astronomers with an exceptional perspective that allows them to trace its substructures in visible light at an unprecedented level of detail.

“This makes the system a unique, new laboratory for studying planet formation and the environments where it happens,” Monsch continued.

The full Hubble image of IRAS 23077+6707, appearing like a cosmic steak sandwich (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Kristina Monsch (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

The unsymmetrical appearance of the gas and dust lanes in Dracula’s Chivito in this stunning Hubble image indicates that dynamic processes are occurring within the disk as its morphology is gradually shaped by interactions with its surroundings.

“We were stunned to see how asymmetric this disk is,” team member Joshua Bennett Lovell, also an astronomer at the CfA, said. “Hubble has given us a front row seat to the chaotic processes that are shaping disks as they build new planets — processes that we don’t yet fully understand but can now study in a whole new way.”

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Not only does this give scientists a better picture of planetary birth, but Dracula’s Chivito also offers a look at what the solar system may have looked like when it was forming planets 4.6 billion years ago, albeit on a much larger scale.

“In theory, IRAS 23077+6707 could host a vast planetary system,” said Monsch. “While planet formation may differ in such massive environments, the underlying processes are likely similar.

“Right now, we have more questions than answers, but these new images are a starting point for understanding how planets form over time and in different environments.”

By the way, in case you are wondering, the “Dracula” element of this protoplanetary disk’s nickname is a playful reference to the Transvaniian heritage of one of the team members behind this research. Meanwhile, a “Chivito” is a massive steak sandwich, an iconic national dish from Uruguay, the homeland of another of the crew of scientists.

Don’t panic, Drac, that’s “steak,” not “stake.”

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Whether you’re cooking up chemistry, getting physical with physics or bending your mind over mathematics, one thing that remains constant is, well, constants. Some numbers are so fundamental to the way we conduct science that we’d be lost without them, and their discovery has helped us better understand the world around us.

So how many of these key figures do you know? Try our new quiz and find out. We’ll be dropping another number in the mix every day for you to guess, and if you prove yourself to be a numberphile, maybe you’ll make it to the top of our leaderboard. All you need to do is register and your score will be saved, and be sure to leave a comment and share how you got on (but no spoilers please).

—Live Science crossword: Test your knowledge on all things science with our weekly, free puzzle!

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Social media often feels overwhelmingly toxic, but the reality is more restrained. Research finds that most harmful content comes from a tiny fraction of users who post frequently and loudly. Many Americans believe that hostile behavior dominates online spaces, but research suggests this belief is far off the mark. People often assume that nearly half […]



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Removing old furniture made with flame retardants from people’s homes can significantly reduce the amount of the toxic chemicals in blood, a new 10-year, peer-reviewed study by California regulators and public health groups has found.

The drop that researchers found was a “super big deal”, said Arlene Blum, the director of the Green Science Policy Institute who has for decades worked to reduce the level of flame retardants in consumer goods.

“To my mind, that’s a pretty dramatic change, and it shows how you can effect change and improve public health with a regulation,” Blum said.

Most furniture made with foam between about 1975 and 2015 contained any of a range of toxic flame retardants that are linked to serious health problems, and especially present a risk for kids.

In 2015, California scrapped requirements for several of the most toxic and common flame retardants used in furniture. The California department of public health and environmental non-profits at the time checked for flame retardants in the blood of dozens of people that had furniture with the chemicals, and monitored levels over the next 10 years.

Flame retardant levels dropped about four times faster in the blood of those that removed furniture with flame retardants compared with those who didn’t. The levels in blood on average were reduced by about half within just 1.4 years.

Flame retardants commonly used in furniture are linked to serious health issues, including cancer, neurotoxicity, thyroid disease, pre-term birth, decreased fertility, deficits in motor skills, and a drop in IQ in children.

During the mid-1970s, state and federal legislators passed laws requiring a range of products to meet flammability standards, including furniture, electronics, car seats and kids’ pyjamas. But the first generation of flame retardants were found to be highly toxic, and Blum led advocacy in 1977 that helped stop the use of the most dangerous in kids’ pyjamas.

Later generations of flame retardants have proven to be nearly as toxic as the first. In 2015, after years of pressure, California updated its flammability standards to eliminate a requirement for chemical flame retardants in furniture.

The retardants often break off from furniture and attach to dust that is inhaled or ingested. Researchers found much lower levels of flame retardants in the dust of homes from which the furniture was removed.

A few years later, the state banned some of the most dangerous flame retardant compounds in furniture and other goods, and Congress adopted a similar measure in 2020. The furniture industry has largely moved away from using any flame retardants, Blum said, meaning the level of the chemicals in Americans’ blood more broadly is probably dropping as the furniture is disposed of.

Blum recommends replacing furniture made between 1975 and 2015 with products made before or after that period. Replacing foam in couch cushions can be a more economical safeguard, she said. If those options are not in the budget, regularly dusting and using a vacuum with a Hepa filter can help reduce the amount of flame retardants in a home.

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The Predator | Holiday Special | 20th Century FOX – YouTube

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The holiday season evokes majestic memories of family, friends, gifts, and… the Predator?! Wait, that last one doesn’t sound right, but it’s true. Everyone’s favorite intergalactic trophy hunting species has a Christmas connection, as he battled Santa Claus’ reindeer in a forgotten animated short titled “The Predator Holiday Special.”

Directed by David Brooks and Alex Kamer from a script by Matthew Senreich (of “Robot Chicken” fame) and Matt Motschenbacher, the stop-motion actioner kicks off in an unassuming manner in the North Pole, as Santa’s elf Sprinkles (Xander Mobus) brushes the reindeer Blitzen (Dave B. Mitchell) and discusses their exciting plans for Christmas Eve.

Blitzen spots three red laser dots pointed in their direction, so he shoves the elf out of harm’s way, whips out a heavy-duty gun, and opens fire in the direction of the presumed threat. It doesn’t end well for Blitzen, though, as the Predator shows up and blasts a hole through the beloved reindeer. What? Did you expect the Yautja to offer it grass, or a bowl of water?

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(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)

What follows is a pulsating hunting mission, as Sprinkles runs for the hills but appears to fall victim to the rabid Yautja’s sharp blades. Santa’s trusty reindeer – all kitted out like they have posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch Schaefer above their beds – assemble in a coordinated military fashion, but their efforts prove to be futile, since the Predator savages and makes mincemeat out of them.

It’s glory kills galore, as the hunter recreates some of the franchise’s most brutal moments with the reindeer. All those weapons and training seemed to be lost on them, with the chances of “Reindeer vs. Predator” replacing “Alien vs. Predator” as the mega-money crossover evaporating with each dead reindeer.

Now, the heart-in-throat anxiety pounds faster and harder, as the Yautja approaches Santa’s house. This is it – Christmas is about to be cancelled, folks! The Grinch cheers from his home on Mount Crumpit. Or maybe not. Jolly ol’ Saint Nick (Keith Silverstein) steps out to face the enemy, and he has an ace up his sleeve: Larry the reindeer! Like a force of nature out of every single ’80s action movie and powered by the testosterone of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Van Damme, Larry unloads on the Predator, sending him to the great big trophy hunting museum in the sky.

(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)

Of course, Santa and Larry celebrate accordingly by reenacting the iconic handshake between Dutch and Al Dillion (Carl Weathers) from 1987’s “Predator.”

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Then more Predators show up. Uh-oh! Actually, scratch that. They’re here to take away their deceased clan member, and one of them even leaves a basket of decorated eggs with Santa. Aw! The kind gesture does nothing to endear the gift givers to the North Pole residents, as Sprinkles returns and unleashes the fury of John Wick on the remaining Predators.

Related: Predator movies ranked, from worst to best

(Image credit: 20th Century Studios)

Despite Santa and his crew having the Yautja’s number here, the creatures have the last laugh, thanks to a carefully placed Trojan horse: The basket of eggs. In the final scene of the film, one of the eggs opens up to reveal it’s an Ovomorph, indicating that a Facehugging Xenomorph is imminent here. Drats! And sadly, in the North Pole, no one can hear you scream…

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Where did this idea even come from? According to Senreich’s comments to Entertainment Weekly, it was born out of “a random hangout moment.” Then, the concept evolved into chucking the Predator into the world of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”-styled animation, because nothing screams Christmas quite like a Yautja hunt in the North Pole.

Ultimately, “The Predator Holiday Special” was created as a neat promo to drum up anticipation for the home release of Shane Black’s “The Predator,” which arrived in December 2018. Who could have guessed that this barely two-minute short was better than all 108 minutes of Black’s baffling blockbuster that almost sent the Yautja into extinction?

The special is still available to watch on YouTube, so make it a holiday tradition like watching the best Christmas movie of all time (Die Hard, obviously) every year. If you’d rather check out some more serious Predator movies, they’re all available to watch on Hulu (US) and Disney+ (UK).

If you’re going to be out of the country this holiday season, you can still watch your streaming service of choice using a VPN. You’ll be able to connect to the service you’ve paid for, no matter where you are (on Earth, it won’t work in space, sorry).

There are loads of great VPN services out there, but if you’re looking for a recommendation, NordVPN is our top pick.

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The last two decades have seen a revolution in scientists’ ability to reconstruct the past. This has been made possible through technological advances in the way DNA is extracted from ancient bones and analyzed.

These advances have revealed that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred — something that wasn’t previously thought to have happened. It has allowed researchers to disentangle the various migrations that shaped modern people. It has also allowed teams to sequence the genomes of extinct animals, such as the mammoth, and extinct agents of disease, such as defunct strains of plague.

While much of this work has been carried out by analyzing the physical remains of humans or animals, there is another way to obtain ancient DNA from the environment. Researchers can now extract and sequence DNA (determine the order of “letters” in the molecule) directly from cave sediments rather than relying on bones. This is transforming the field, known as paleogenetics.

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Caves can preserve tens of thousands of years of genetic history, providing ideal archives for studying long-term human–ecosystem interactions. The deposits beneath our feet become biological time capsules.

It is something we are exploring here at the Geogenomic Archaeology Campus Tübingen (GACT) in Germany. Analyzing DNA from cave sediments allows us to reconstruct who lived in ice age Europe, how ecosystems changed and what role humans played. For example, did modern humans and Neanderthals overlap in the same caves? It’s also possible to obtain genetic material from faeces left in caves. At the moment we are analyzing DNA from the droppings of a cave hyena that lived in Europe around 40,000 years ago.

The oldest sediment DNA discovered so far comes from Greenland and is 2 million years old.

In 2022, the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Svante Pääbo, a leading light in this field. It highlighted the global significance of this research. Ancient DNA now regularly makes headlines, from attempts to recreate mammoth-like elephants, to tracing hundreds of thousands of years of human presence in parts of the world. Crucially, advances in robotics and computing have allowed us to recover DNA from sediments as well as bones.

One of the most exciting aspects of sediment DNA research is its ability to detect species long gone, even when no bones or artifacts remain. A particular focus lies on humans: who lived in the cave, and when? How modern humans and Neanderthals use the caves and, as mentioned, were they there at the same times? Did cave bears and humans compete for shelter and resources? And what might the microbes that lived alongside them reveal about the impact humans had on past ecosystems?

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the best season for stargazing with binoculars. The nights are long, the air is cold and the stars seem brighter than in summer.

Naked-eye stargazing in winter is a joy, but lift a pair of binoculars to your eyes and the whole experience changes. The sky stops being a flat backdrop and suddenly has depth. It’s layered with stars, open clusters and nebulas that you never knew were there. Galactic immersion is yours.

That’s the magic of binocular astronomy. Sweeping the sky with both eyes open, holding a pair of binoculars up to the night sky, feels natural and relaxed, yet you’re seeing so much more than with the unaided eye. It’s also easy and affordable to do — all you need is a warm coat, a dark corner and a steady pair of hands.

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Choose a good pair of the best stargazing binoculars — something like 7×50, 8×42 or 10×50 — and you’ll unlock a second layer of the winter night sky with almost no effort. Here’s what to look at in a pair of binoculars from the Northern Hemisphere this season.

4. The Owl Cluster

NGC 457. (Image credit: Stocktrek Images via Getty Images)

A particularly bright open star cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia, the Owl Cluster (or NGC 457 , if you prefer) is over 9,000 light-years from the solar system and contains almost 100 stars.

7. Winter Milky Way

Winter’s Milky Way from Elan Valley Dark Sky Park, Wales. (Image credit: Jamie Carter)

Stargazers and astrophotographers rave about capturing the Milky Way during the Northern Hemisphere summer months, but the dense star fields of our galaxy’s spiral arms can easily be seen in winter. All you need to do is scan your binoculars between the constellations of Orion in the south and Cassiopeia high in the north, and you will see many thousands of bright stars.

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Christmas may seem like a time for switching off and suspending disbelief but there are plenty of ways to introduce a little science into the celebrations.

We asked experts for their top home experiments to challenge friends and family.

Sweet science

Matthew Cobb, a professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, suggests picking a sweet such as a jellybean and, with your eyes shut and holding your nose, putting it in your mouth and chewing, keeping your mouth shut.

“See if you can tell what the sweet tastes of – you will probably just say ‘sweet’ and maybe have a vague idea of something else,” says Cobb. “After five seconds, take your fingers off your nose and you should get a sudden rush of sensation that enables you to correctly identify the flavour.”

A more extreme version of this experiment, he says, involves grating an onion and an apple, separately, then tasting each on a spoon with your eyes shut and your nose firmly held. “They should taste the same – until you take your fingers off your nose.”

Cobb says such experiments show how flavour largely consists of smell, not taste. “When we chew, the volatile smells emitted by the food go up into our nose via the back of our mouth, where they stimulate our olfactory neurons,” he says, adding that it is the combination of taste and smell that produces flavour.

“Without smell, things don’t taste of much. We all discovered this during the first outbreak of Covid, when people temporarily lost their sense of smell.”

Have a laugh

With crackers a staple of Christmas, Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London suggests experimenting to see what can influence whether or not people laugh at a (terrible) joke.

“First, try reading those jokes to yourself and see if you laugh at any of them,” she says. “Second, read the jokes to someone else – maybe a room full of people.”

Scott says to look and see if anyone laughs – including you – when you get to the punchline, or if they respond in some other way such as groaning. She notes that although we associate laughter with jokes and humour, we laugh mainly for social reasons.

“You are 30 times more likely to laugh if there is someone else with you than if you are on your own,” she says. “What this means for cracker jokes is that a joke read by someone alone is much less likely to make them laugh than the same joke read – or heard – in company. And laughter is amplified by social connection, so the more you know and like the people that you are with, the more laughter there will be.”

Get stuck into the festive fowl

Look at the bones and understand how they fit together and move. Photograph: Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images

If you are having a turkey or another bird for your Christmas meal then take time to explore the carcass.

“We did a Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago and I got an enormous turkey, cooked the thing for a few hours, basted it lovingly every 30 minutes or so,” says Steve Brusatte, a professor of palaeontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh. “Mostly so it would be delicious, but also so the meat would fall off the bone well enough that I could remove the bones and show my wife and my six-year-old boy the shoulder area.”

That allowed Brusatte to demonstrate how the various bones fit together to move the wing up and down, and how the huge springy wishbone stores energy as the wings beat.

“This is a simple thing that you can do with a roast turkey or chicken – actually look at the bones and understand how they fit together and move, and that gives a better understanding of biomechanics and flight motions than I’ve ever seen in any textbook during my many years of study,” he says. “And then you get a delicious meal afterwards.”

Prof Sue Black, a forensic anthropologist, anatomist and academic at the University of Oxford, also recommends dissecting the festive bird to understand the anatomy of motion.

“Boil the carcass so that only the bones are left and you have a 3D jigsaw to reconstruct,” she says.

Chemistry of Christmas

Salt is commonly spread on pavements in the winter and there is a simple experiment that can help to explain why.

“You will need 500ml of full-fat milk or cream, five egg yolks and 125g of sugar. A bit of vanilla never goes amiss,” says Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at UCL.

“Whisk them together and then warm almost to the boil until the mixture starts to thicken. Let it cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, get some ice from the freezer. Either bash it, like an alchemist, with a mortar and pestle, or grind it up in a blender like a modernist.”

Next, he says, take two plastic bags – ideally zippable ones. “Drop some of your crushed ice into one and add generous amount of salt. Into the second, spoon some of your custard mixture, adding sprinkles, nuts or bits of fruit. Seal the [second bag] and put it into the first.

“Now mash the ice and salt together, and the custard in the bag. The temperature will plunge, to -10C or even lower. In seconds you’ll have ice-cream, a soft (and delicious) solid.”

Sella says this happens because the dissolved salt prevents liquid water molecules, produced as the ice melts, from freezing back on to the remaining ice.

“So the ice keeps melting and steals heat from the custard (and your fingers),” he says. “It’s practical magic – also known as science.”

Festive pi(e)

ϖ seems to crop up in really unusual places. Photograph: Anastassiya Bezhekeneva/Getty Images

“One of the most surprising little science experiments you can do at home is called Buffon’s Needle, but for festive purposes let’s call it Buffon’s Pine Needles. It’s a way of approximating the value of ϖ,” says Kit Yates, a professor of mathematical biology and public engagement at the University of Bath.

First off, grab a bunch of pine needles and select as many as you can that are roughly the same length (L). “Let’s say you manage to find a total (T) of similar-sized pine needles. You’re going to also need a piece of paper that has lines ruled on it which are a distance W apart – further apart than the length of your needles,” Yates says.

Scatter the pine needles, without aiming, on top of your piece of ruled paper and then count the number of needles that cross one of the lines. This number is C.

Once you have counted, you can find your approximation of ϖ by plugging your numbers into this formula: ϖ ≈ 2LT/CW

“What I love about this is that it demonstrates how ϖ seems to crop up in really unusual places,” Yates says. “It feels almost like magic, but it’s just probability in action on your living room floor.”

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About 800 years ago, Richard Fishacre, a Dominican friar at the University of Oxford, challenged the scientific thinking of the day, using his understanding of the behaviour of light to show that stars and planets are made of the same elements as found on Earth. Though he faced heavy criticism at the time, Fishacre would probably have been delighted to learn that very similar principles are being used to make discoveries today.

During his lifetime it was believed that Earth was made up of four elements – fire, water, earth and air – while the stars and other planets were made from a special transparent and unchanging fifth element.

But Fishacre drew on his understanding of light and colour to argue that if stars and planets were made of a such a substance, they would appear transparent. Instead, the red of Mars, yellow of Venus and blue and white of the moon, he said, were clear evidence that they were made up of multiple elements also found on Earth.

Today, telescopes such as the James Webb detect variations in the brightness and colour of light from distant planets and stars, recently revealing that TOI-421b – an exoplanet about 244 light years away – has an atmosphere rich in water and sulphur dioxide.

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Crayfish, weevils and fungi are being released into the environment in order to tackle invasive species across Britain.

Scientists working for the government have been breeding species in labs to set them loose into the wild to take on Japanese knotweed, signal crayfish and Himalayan balsam, and other species that choke out native plants and wildlife.

They are doing this, in part, to meet tough targets set by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in its recently announced environmental improvement plan. Ministers have directed the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha) to reduce the establishment of invasive species by 50% by 2030.

Olaf Booy, deputy chief non-native species officer at Apha, said: “The science around biological control is always developing. It really works for those species that were introduced quite a long time ago, that we haven’t been able to prevent getting here or detect early and rapidly respond.”

Scientists have been working out which species would be able to tackle the invasive pests by killing them and reducing their ability to spread, without harming other organisms. Booy said the perk of biological control agents was they reduced the need for human labour.

Japanese knotweed in Taff’s Well, near Cardiff. Photograph: Dimitris Legakis/Athena Pictures

This includes targeting floating pennywort, which spreads and chokes the life from rivers, by releasing the South American weevil Listronotus elongatus. Where weevils have overwintered for several years, floating pennywort biomass appears reduced across a number of release sites.

Defra has also employed specialist scientists at the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (Cabi) to conduct biological control (biocontrol) research into the use of naturally occurring, living organisms to tackle Japanese knotweed. Cabi has targeted this species using the release of the psyllid Aphalara itadori, which feeds on the plant.

Similarly, Cabi has been trialling the release of the rust fungus Puccinia komarovii var. glanduliferae to tackle Himalayan balsam. Defra said the results of the release were encouraging and would continue at compatible sites.

“Once the biocontrol agent is working properly, then it should actually start to spread naturally across the range, where the non-native species is, and it will start to bring that population of the non-native species down,” Booy said. “Hopefully, once it starts to establish in the wild, then it sort of starts taking over itself, and the human effort bit starts to reduce significantly.”

As well as releasing biological control agents into the wild, government scientists have been breeding threatened species to protect their populations from invasion. Britain’s native white-clawed crayfish has disappeared from most of the country since the invasive American signal crayfish was introduced in the 1970s. These non-native creatures outcompete the native crayfish and carry a deadly plague, making eradication or containment virtually impossible.

Himalayan balsam invades the banks of the river Avon. Photograph: Mark Boulton/Alamy

Invasive species experts have created protected “ark sites”: safe habitats where white-clawed crayfish can survive free from threats. A new hatchery has been set up in Yorkshire to release them into the wild in secure locations, and in Devon the Wildwood Trust is expanding its hatchery, building a bespoke ark site pond, and rescuing crayfish from rivers under threat. More than 1,500 breeding-age crayfish so far have been translocated to eight safe sites in Gloucestershire.

The creatures Booy is most concerned about establishing in the wild include raccoons and raccoon dogs, which are kept as pets but are very good at escaping into the wild.

The medium-sized predators could be harmful to the amphibians and small birds they feed on, he said. At the moment, keepers of raccoons and raccoon dogs do not have to register with the government, though breeding and selling them is banned.

Social media trends depicting raccoons as cuddly and desirable pets could be a concern, he said: “You do see things like raccoons and raccoon dogs popping up on social media and stuff. Particularly raccoons, they’re kind of cute and cuddly, and you could imagine that a TikTok trend might encourage people to think about getting a species like that. Obviously years ago we had the interest in terrapins from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

He added: “If you have a raccoon, you really need to know how to keep it securely to avoid it escaping. You don’t really want any predators of that sort of size establishing and spreading in the country, because it will have knock-on impacts for biodiversity. But they are also potentially vectors of disease as well.”

The biosecurity minister and Labour peer Sue Hayman said: “With a changing climate we are constantly assessing for new risks and threats, including from invasive plants and animals, as well as managing the impacts of species already in this country. Invasive non-native species cost Britain’s economy nearly £2bn a year, and our environmental improvement plan sets out plans to reduce their establishment to protect native wildlife and farmers’ livelihoods.”

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Russian state-owned Energia rocket company has secured a patent for a novel spacecraft architecture designed to generate artificial gravity, a capability which could provide a huge boost for long-duration crewed missions.

A report from Russian state media outlet TASS, which obtained the patent, states that the rotating system is designed to generate a gravitational force of 0.5g, or 50% of Earth’s gravity. The patent documentation includes illustrations of a notional space station structure with a central axial module with both static and rotating components, with modules and habitats connected by a hermetically sealed, flexible junction.

The radially attached habitable modules would be rotated around this axis to simulate gravity for the crew by producing an outward-pushing centrifugal force. These would need to rotate about five revolutions per minute, and have a radius of 131 feet (40 meters) in order to produce 0.5g. A space station of that size would require multiple launches with each module that would then be assembled in orbit.

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The documentation notes the disadvantage of the need for spinning and coordinating the rotation of transport ships to dock with the station, which it notes reduces the safety of using such a station.

Generating artificial gravity could have profound impacts for crews on long-duration space missions, whether in low Earth orbit on interplanetary voyages into deep space. Exposure to microgravity has numerous impacts on astronauts, including muscle atrophy and bone density loss.

Illustrations accompanying a patent for an artificial gravity space station submitted by Russian state-owned Energia rocket company. (Image credit: RSC Energia)

NASA has produced concepts such as the rotating wheel space station concept Nautilus-X, while, more recently, commercial firm Vast has said it will pursue artificial gravity stations.

Russia did not indicate timelines for such a project nor resources to back its development. The patent does however indicate interest in the concept of artificial gravity at a time when the end of the International Space Station (ISS) is approaching and new national and commercial station plans are moving forward.

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Currently, NASA and Roscosmos plan to deorbit the ISS in 2030, using a modified SpaceX Dragon capsule to push the station down into a fiery death over the Pacific Ocean. Russia has committed to stay aboard the ISS until 2028.

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Earth’s seasonal cycles can vary dramatically across short distances, even at the same latitudes, a new study suggests.

Researchers have compiled a detailed map of seasonal rhythms around the world, which shows that some physically close regions have dramatically different timing for seasonal variations such as the start and end of the growing season. These differences could contribute to high biodiversity in certain ecosystems, the development of new species and even the different types of coffee harvested in Colombia, the team said.

“Seasonality may often [be] thought of as a simple rhythm — winter, spring, summer, fall — but our work shows that nature’s calendar is far more complex,” study co-author Drew Terasaki Hart, an ecologist and data analyst at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, said in a statement. “This is especially true in regions where the shape and timing of the typical local seasonal cycle differs dramatically across the landscape. This can have profound implications for ecology and evolution in these regions.”

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The idea of a simple, seasonal growing pattern works well for plants that grow at high latitudes, such as those in much of Europe and North America, researchers wrote in the study, published Aug. 27 in the journal Nature. But it doesn’t work quite as well in arid or tropical ecosystems.

In the study, Terasaki Hart and his colleagues used 20 years’ worth of satellite data that captured how plants reflected infrared light throughout the year to map vegetation’s growth cycles around the world.

Areas on the slopes of mountains in tropical regions or that have a balmy Mediterranean climate frequently exhibited seasonal asynchrony, or differences in their seasonal cycles across short distances, the team found. In these areas, the availability of light and water was more important for the local plants’ growth cycles than the temperature.

“Our map predicts stark geographic differences in flowering timing and genetic relatedness across a wide variety of plant and animal species,” Terasaki Hart said in the statement. “It even explains the complex geography of coffee harvest seasons in Colombia — a nation where coffee farms separated by a day’s drive over the mountains can have reproductive cycles as out of sync as if they were in opposite hemispheres.”

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These starkly different niches over short distances could explain why tropical regions have such high biodiversity, the team wrote in the study. Plant and animal species on different seasonal cycles would slowly diverge, reproducing at different times and possibly forming new species after many years.

The results could help explain how species evolve in other ecosystems, such as in river or ocean environments, as well as how environments are adapting to climate change, the researchers wrote in the study.

“We suggest exciting future directions for evolutionary biology, climate change ecology, and biodiversity research, but this way of looking at the world has interesting implications even further afield, such as in agricultural sciences or epidemiology,” Terasaki Hart added.

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Early risers across North America and Europe may notice something unusual in the skies this Christmas, a bright, silent light, gliding smoothly overhead in the hours before sunrise on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

It won’t blink like an airplane and it won’t leave a trail behind. Instead, it will appear suddenly, move steadily across the sky and fade away just minutes later. To young, eager eyes already awake and brimming with excitement, it might look like something (or someone) making a quiet journey through the dawn sky.

The timing matches a well-known object passing overhead.

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This Christmas, the International Space Station is also perfectly placed to reflect sunlight down to Earth during early-morning passes, making it one of the brightest objects in the sky.

Whether you choose to see it as a seasonal mystery or a space-age marvel, the sight may be brief, but it is beautiful and easy to spot with the naked eye  — so long as you are in the right place at the right time.

In the table below, we have listed some of the best times to look up over major cities, weather permitting — information gathered from AstroViewer.net.

Swipe to scroll horizontallyWhen to look for the Christmas sky surprise

City

Date

Local time

Duration

Max altitude

New York

Dec. 24

6:43–6:48 a.m. EST

~5 min

19°

New York

Dec. 25

5:56–5:59 a.m. EST

~3 min

16°

Chicago

Dec. 24

5:42–5:45 a.m. CST

~3 min

16°

Chicago

Dec. 25

6:29–6:35 a.m. CST

~6 min

26°

Toronto

Dec. 24

6:42–6:47 a.m. EST

~5 min

25°

Toronto

Dec. 25

7:30–7:35 a.m. EST

~5 min

56°

London

Dec. 24

7:04–7:10 a.m. GMT

~6 min

55°

London

Dec. 25

6:17–6:22 a.m. GMT

~5 min

70°

Rome

Dec. 25

7:19–7:22 a.m. CET

~3 min

35°

To see the flyby, head outside with a clear view of the sky. You don’t need binoculars or a telescope to spot it, just your eyes and a little patience.

The bright light comes from the International Space Station. It shines when sunlight reflects off the large structure while it orbits Earth every 90 minutes.

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For those who want to check future sightings, or quietly confirm what they’ve seen, NASA’s Spot the Station service shows when the space station will pass overhead from any location.

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