#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!

Before our Artemis II astronauts lift off on their journey around the Moon next year, find out what it takes to build a mission like theirs from the ground up.

Episode 1 of Moonbound is live—and free to watch on NASA+: go.nasa.gov/4pxIoel

The first generation of stars that were born in the universe are a mystery. We can estimate when they existed and even how big they might have gotten, but direct evidence has been lacking. Now, JWST has found the most compelling proof of their existence, reporting a crucial signature of their presence in galaxy GS 3073.

The light of this galaxy comes from just over 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Using JWST, researchers were able to estimate the chemical composition of stars in this distant galaxy and found something extremely peculiar: an imbalance in the ratio of nitrogen to oxygen. This has been seen as evidence of the first stars, known as Population III.

Following the Big Bang, only three elements were created: hydrogen, helium, and a sprinkling of lithium. All the other elements we find in nature were formed in stars and stellar interactions. It took tens, if not hundreds, of millions of years for stars to form though, and many of those stars were truly massive. They are expected to weigh between 1,000 and 10,000 times the mass of the Sun.

A handful of incredibly rare solar neutrino events were detected turning carbon-13 into nitrogen-13 deep underground.

The finding confirms a long-anticipated reaction and provides a new tool for probing the universe’s smallest and strangest particles.

Ghost Particles and a New Kind of Interaction
Neutrinos rank among the most puzzling particles known to science. Often described as ‘ghost particles’, they almost never interact with ordinary matter. Trillions move through each of us every second without leaving any trace behind. These particles emerge from nuclear processes, including those happening at the heart of our Sun, yet they are extremely difficult to detect because they so rarely collide with anything.

Until now, solar neutrinos have only been observed interacting with a limited number of materials. Researchers have now achieved a first: they have documented neutrinos converting carbon atoms into nitrogen inside a massive underground detector.

The emission of X-rays is usually the domain of the energetic events of the universe: hot stars, supermassive black holes, and the like. However, since 1996, with Comet Hyakutake, we have learned that even comets can emit X-rays. But despite efforts, no such signal was ever seen for an interstellar object. Enter this year’s superstar Comet 3I/ATLAS, breaking yet another record.

Interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is different from its predecessors, 1I/’Oumuamua, discovered in 2017, and Comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. It’s faster, it’s older, more active, and estimated to be larger. Now, observations from the X-ray telescope XRISM suggest that it is also the first interstellar object with an X-ray signature.

Before the conspiracy theorists claim that this is some sort of engine signature or a weapon charging up, let’s stress that it is perfectly normal for comets to emit X-rays. This emission comes from specific interactions between the plasma released at high speed by the Sun and the coma, the atmosphere of the comet. This is gas and dust released as the comet gets near the Sun.

The plasma slams into the gas of the coma, and it can rip electrons from the gas’s atoms. The electrons are pushed away with such energy that they begin to emit X-rays. It doesn’t matter that comets are among the coldest objects in the universe. This plasma interaction produces electrons with a temperature of millions of degrees.

The data was collected from 23:20 on November 26 to 20:38 on November 28, 2025, with an effective exposure of 17 hours. The primary analysis is consistent with a faint X-ray glow spanning 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles). The team believes that it would be difficult to explain this signal just with noise from the detector.

While more work is necessary, the team has other preliminary evidence. The X-ray signatures of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen appeared in the data in a way that couldn't happen if there was a different source, such as the galaxy at large or even from our own atmosphere.

NASA has officially lost contact with a spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 2014.

The MAVEN spacecraft – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – abruptly lost contact with Earth on 6 December 2025 while passing behind the red planet in the normal course of its orbit. When MAVEN re-emerged from behind Mars, however, NASA ground control was unable to reestablish a connection.

On December 9, the space agency announced it is investigating the issue and attempting to locate a signal.

All systems had been working normally before MAVEN passed behind Mars.

MAVEN is one of a fleet of seven orbiters currently actively observing Mars. It launched from Earth in 2013 and reached Mars orbit in September 2014, tasked with studying the red planet's upper atmosphere and ionosphere, and how they interact with the solar wind.

By observing ongoing rates and mechanisms of atmospheric loss, MAVEN has given scientists the tools to understand how Mars may have changed from a once-wet planet to the cold, dry dustball it is today.

Scientists are hard at work trying to assess the scale of our microplastic pollution problem and the likely health impacts. A new study now identifies several downstream health risks these tiny plastic fragments may pose as they traverse the environment.

Research suggests microplastics by themselves can be harmful to our biology, and they're also known to absorb other toxic pollutants.

Now, on top of this, new findings from researchers at the University of Exeter and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK suggest microbes also develop biofilms on top of microplastics.

These biofilms (or 'plastispheres') can harbor dangerous bacteria and aid their growth and survival – meaning microplastics might potentially be spreading pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as well.

That poses several serious health risks, from disease-causing bacteria finding their way into the food chain, to an increased spread of drug-resistant bacteria that make infections harder to treat and medical procedures more risky.

"Our research shows that microplastics can act as carriers for harmful pathogens and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, enhancing their survival and spread," says marine scientist Pennie Lindeque, from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

"This interaction poses a growing risk to environmental and public health and demands urgent attention."