A review by researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford in the UK has found that controlled doses of laughing gas (or nitrous oxide) really can provide quick-acting relief from depression.

The treatment seems to be viable over longer periods of time, with repeated doses, and can be effective in individuals with both major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD) – some of the people who are hardest to treat.

"This population has often lost hope of recovery, making the results of this study particularly exciting," says consultant psychiatrist Steven Marwaha, from the University of Birmingham.

"These findings highlight the urgent need for new treatments that can complement existing care pathways, and further evidence is needed to understand how this approach can best support people living with severe depression."

The oldest evidence of fire-making has been unearthed in the UK! 🔥

Dating back 400,000 years, it shows early Neanderthals were controlling fire in northern Europe as our own species was only just emerging.

Find out how this shaped human evolution 🏻
nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/…

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) researchers now think they have found the answer to a puzzle that has lingered for nearly four decades involving Uranus and its unusual radiation environment.

When Voyager 2 completed its first and only visit to the planet in 1986, the spacecraft detected an unexpectedly intense electron radiation belt, far stronger than scientists had predicted. Comparisons with other worlds suggested that Uranus should not have produced such extreme values. The discovery left scientists questioning how a planet so different from the rest of the solar system could maintain such a powerful band of trapped electrons.

New investigations are offering a potential explanation. SwRI scientists propose that the conditions recorded by Voyager 2 may resemble events seen near Earth during major solar wind disturbances. Researchers now suspect that a solar wind feature known as a co-rotating interaction region was moving through the Uranian system at the time of the flyby. If so, this passing structure could account for the unusually high energy levels Voyager 2 measured.

A joint effort between two of the world’s largest neutrino experiments has brought scientists closer to understanding how the universe survived its violent beginnings.

The findings could reveal why matter exists at all — and why everything didn’t vanish long ago.

Scientists Unite to Explore Why the Universe Exists
A Michigan State University researcher has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration that could bring scientists closer to understanding how the universe came to be.

For the first time, two of the world’s largest neutrino experiments — T2K in Japan and NOvA in the United States — combined their data to gain new insight into neutrinos, the ghostlike particles that constantly stream through space but almost never interact with other matter.

Their joint analysis, published in Nature, offers some of the most precise measurements ever made of how neutrinos shift between types as they travel. This achievement lays important groundwork for future experiments that could reshape our understanding of how the universe evolved — or reveal that current theories are incomplete.

NOAA and NASA report that the 2025 ozone hole over Antarctica was far smaller and shorter-lived than usual. Falling chlorine levels and a weaker polar vortex helped limit ozone loss this season.

These findings add to decades of evidence showing that the Montreal Protocol is working. Scientists expect the ozone layer to keep strengthening in the coming decades.

2025 Antarctic Ozone Hole Ranks Among Smallest in Decades
Scientists at NOAA and NASA report that this year’s Antarctic ozone hole is the fifth smallest measured since 1992 — the same year the Montreal Protocol began reducing the use of ozone-depleting chemicals.

During the peak of the 2025 ozone depletion season, which lasted from September 7 through October 13, the ozone hole covered an average of about 7.23 million square miles (18.71 million square kilometers). It has also begun to break apart almost three weeks earlier than the typical timing seen over the past ten years.

“As predicted, we’re seeing ozone holes trending smaller in area than they were in the early 2000s,” said Paul Newman, a senior scientist at the University of Maryland system and longtime leader of NASA’s ozone research team. “They’re forming later in the season and breaking up earlier.”

On November 27th, Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome experienced a severe accident that has suspended Russia's ability to launch payloads and crews to space.

Shortly after the Soyuz-MS28 mission launched at 09:27:57 UTC (4:27:57 am EST; 1:27:57 am PST) from Site 31/6 at the launch center, drone footage showed that the 8U216 mobile maintenance cabin was lying upside down in the flame trench.

Fortunately, the launch was successful and the crew it carried - cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams - arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) a few hours later.

Nevertheless, the collapse of this maintenance cabin means Russia's only launch site capable of launching missions to the ISS is out of service.

While other launch facilities exist in Russia, such as the Plesetsk Cosmodrome near Archangel (northern Russia), the Vostochny Cosmodrome in far-eastern Russia, or Gagarin's Start at Baikonur, they are either incapable of reaching the ISS, unable to fulfill crew-launch capability, or unable to conduct launches at all.

As a result, Russia is temporarily unable to launch either crews or payloads using Soyuz and Progress spacecraft (respectively) to the ISS for the time being.

When the brain's typical wiring patterns shift from the norm, it leads to psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

In a new study, researchers have identified 'brainquakes' that disrupt the brain's connectivity in people who live with these conditions and experience debilitating psychosis.

By mapping out the role these brainquakes play, the research team hopes to get a better understanding of common brain disorders and perhaps a step closer to treatment interventions that can help manage them.

Essentially, these brainquakes are an imbalance between the redundancy and synergy of brain networks, whereby brain cell circuits process either shared or complementary information, respectively. Redundancy makes the brain more robust, while synergy allows it to extract more information from related inputs.

The brains of the people with psychotic disorders were noticeably more unbalanced, the researchers found, showing more irregular and random connectivity.

#PPOD: Titan's Surface 🌕

The atmosphere of Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, appears similar to that on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, before life appeared.

After a seven-year journey on board the Cassini spacecraft, ESA’s Huygens probe reached Titan’s surface, marking the most distant landing ever achieved by a spacecraft. During the descent, its cameras collected data on the dense atmosphere and took the first-ever images of the surface.

These revealed an extraordinary world with lakes, islands, and erosion features similar to those that shape our planet, confirming that liquid methane once flowed there. Methane on Titan is found in liquid form, not as a gas, due to the intense pressure and cold temperatures, about –180° C.

Credit: esa NASA

In a world where misinformation spreads faster than fact, a new study is offering insight into why so many people fall for fake news, even when they suspect it's false.

Researchers from Georgia State's Robinson College of Business, Kennesaw State University, and the University of Tennessee have developed a model that explains how emotional cues, rather than accuracy, shape the way we consume and share news on social media.

The study, "Tabloids, Fake News, and the Overton Window: The COP Model on News Consumption in Uncertain Times," co-authored by Aaron French, Amrita George, Joshua Madden and Veda C. Storey, was published in Information Systems Frontiers.

At the heart of the research is a simple question: Why do people believe and spread fake news, and do people consume fake news in the same way they consume tabloids?

Previous studies largely pointed to belief in fake news as confirmation bias, which is the tendency to believe information that supports your existing worldview. But this new study suggests something deeper is going on, especially during times of uncertainty like the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We found that people do consume fake news differently than tabloid news, which is largely consumed for entertainment and not taken seriously. With fake news, people are believing and sharing it because it feels useful either emotionally or informationally," said Amrita George, co-author and clinical assistant professor of computer information systems(CIS) at Robinson.

In other words: fake news scratches an emotional itch. And in anxious, unstable times, that emotional itch is more powerful than truth.

The planet is on track to log its second hottest year on record in 2025, tied with 2023 after a historic high in 2024, Europe's global warming monitor said Tuesday.

The data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service reaffirms that global temperatures are on course to exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels—the threshold considered safer in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Temperatures rose by 1.48C on average between January and November, or "currently tied with 2023 to be the second-warmest year on record," according to the service's monthly update.

"The three-year average for 2023–2025 is on track to exceed 1.5C for the first time," Samantha Burgess, strategic lead for climate at Copernicus, said in a statement.

"These milestones are not abstract—they reflect the accelerating pace of climate change and the only way to mitigate future rising temperatures is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Burgess said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in October that the world would not be able to contain global warming below 1.5C in the next few years.

The Geminid meteor shower peaks this weekend, Dec. 13-14!

The meteors will be visible all night – just look to the eastern sky.

Under the darkest skies (and after allowing your eyes to adjust), you could see up to 120 Geminid meteors per hour.

Happy meteor-gazing!