Science news this week: The CDC in turmoil, NASA releases anticipated 3I/ATLAS images, and how to thwart an insect apocalypse
This week’s science news was full of controversy, as the three former heads of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) participated in a webinar to describe the chaos that reigns at the agency since the start of the second Trump administration.
Allegations of CDC dysfunction have been accompanied by a worrying surge in the disease across the United States, which experts warned this week may be on the way to curbing. lose your measles-free status as early as January. The news led to calls from scientists to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resign.
3I/ATLAS is a comet, NASA announces
What science news week in 2025 would be complete without a controversial statement about Comet 3I/ATLAS? This week may have been the most controversial announcement of all, and it came from NASA: 3I/ATLAS is a comet.
The announcement, accompanied by a lots of new images captured by the space agency’s spacecraft orbiting the sun and Mars, was made as the space agency was emerging from the U.S. government shutdown.
And while NASA may have summarily deflated the hopes of those who expected the comet to be full of little green men, it did reveal some fascinating details about the comet’s peculiar speed and trajectory, both of which indicate that the comet is more than 7 billion years old.
Discover more space news
—Three more Chinese astronauts now stranded in space after successful rescue of their colleagues
—Secret SpaceX satellites operated by US government send disruptive radio signals into space, astronomer accidentally discovers
—Scientists put moss outside the International Space Station for 9 months, then let it grow back on Earth.
The little mysteries of life
Father of a murdered son. Husband of a Murdered Wife – we get it, Ridley Scott, gladiator combat was for the guys. But is it really true? Were there any women among the fighters at the famous Colosseum in Rome? We traced the sources of evidence and found a surprising answer.
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Ants tricked into dismembering their mother
As Thanksgiving and the holiday season approach, many of us are already preparing for raucous family gatherings.
But if you think you have family drama, none of that compares to the activities of worker ants highlighted by this recent study. After being tricked by a parasitic queen’s spray of pheromones, some species of ants band together to dismember their mother and allow the impostor to usurp the throne for herself.
Discover more animal news
—‘A forest populated by bonobos has never been so calm’: The most extreme case of violence against a ‘hippie’ species recorded, with females ganging up on males in unprecedented attack
—Human waste ‘revives’ domestication of urban raccoons, study finds
—How did the metamorphosis take place?
Also in science news this week
—Viking Age Woman Found Buried With Scallop Shells On Her Mouth & Archaeologists Are Stumped
—Diagnostic dilemma: Woman had her twin brother’s XY chromosomes, but only in her blood
—Sunken city discovered in lake in Kyrgyzstan was a medieval Silk Road hotspot – until earthquake wiped it out
—New humanoid robot ‘Transformer’ can launch a shapeshifting drone on its back – watch it in action
Spotlight on science
Gone are the days when summer highway driving leaves your windshield dotted with bug splatter. In their place comes the insect apocalypse.
A combination of climate change, habitat loss and pesticides is causing insect populations to plummet on Earth, which could have serious downstream consequences for our food supplies.
But can we do anything to bring back the bugs? And is there still reason to hope?
Live Science investigated this fascinating question History of Spotlight on Science.
Something for the weekend
If you’re looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best news analyses, crosswords, and polls released this week.
—Live Science Crossword #19: The highest mountain in Africa – 12 in diameter [Crossword]
—How to see a rare conjunction of Mercury and Venus this month [Skywatching]
Science in pictures
Working in science news presents us with a glut of stunning images every day, but this one takes the cake – or maybe an entire galaxy of them.
Published among the first images taken by Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, this photo captures the entirety of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 61 (M61) with a 163,000 light-year-long stream of stars emerging from it.
The stellar breadcrumb is the result of a dwarf galaxy eviscerated by M61, its innards left to erupt in a flood of new stars. That’s probably bad news for anyone who owns real estate nearby, but for us cosmic rubbers, it makes for a damn pretty picture.
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