Archives for 2025

Scientists discovered that comb jellies can fuse and become one organism with two sets of body parts. There are intriguing ways this could one day result in advances in how humans have organ or limb transplants.

Articles

• An animal with a superpower — it can fuse with another and become one (NPR 2024)
• Alternate article: When Two Sea Aliens Become One (NYT 2024)
• Primary Resource: Rapid physiological integration of fused ctenophores (Cell 2024)

A NASA rover discovered geological evidence that suggests that life could have existed on Mars billions of years ago.

Articles

• NASA’s Perseverance rover may have just found what it was looking for on Mars (CNN Science 2024)
• Primary Resource: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock (NASA 2024)
• Other Articles: NASA Did Not Say It Found Life on Mars. But It’s Very Excited About This Rock. (NYT 2024)

There’s scientific evidence that Jupiter’s moon Europa could support life. The spacecraft will reach the moon in April 2030 and conduct studies to confirm or deny.

Articles

• Scientists supporting mission to assess Europa’s habitability (Cornell Chronicle 2024)
• Primary Resource: Can Life Exist on an Icy Moon? NASA’s Europa Clipper Aims to Find Out (NASA 2024)

In new research, we’re seeing that other species make choices that affect their evolution. It challenges Darwinian thinking that evolution is rooted in random genetic mutation (natural selection). For example, a woodrat has been observed to eat the feces of other woodrats to inherit detoxifying bacteria which allows it to survive in toxic environments.

A new AI system “OmniHuman-1 is producing the most realistic deepfakes to date. It only needs one reference image and audio (like speech or vocals) to produce its videos. It’s opening a larger concern about regulations surrounding the use of AI as it’s being used to scam people.