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Today:
'Freak of Nature': Scientists Think Greenland's Ice Is Churning Like Molten Rock
NEWS | 25 February 2026
Deep inside the Greenland ice sheet, radar images have revealed strange, plume-like structures distorting the layering deposited over eons. "Finding that thermal convection can happen within an ice sheet goes slightly against our intuition and expectations. Understanding the physics inside it is vital for predicting how the ice sheet will change over time. In a 2014 paper, scientists described strange structures these radar images had revealed deep inside the ice in northern Greenland. The ice sheet there is over one thousand years old, and it's the only ice sheet on Earth to have a culture and permanent population at its margins," Law says.

Top Stories:
Is Your Child a Picky Eater? Here's One Thing to Try
NEWS | 25 February 2026
Before you can give her an answer, Billy, your 4-year-old picky eater, shouts, "Mac and cheese!" Understanding how food preferences develop can help parents teach kids to enjoy a diverse, varied, and healthy diet. However, there are plenty of people who develop a liking for bitter foods, even though their first experience with them might have been unpleasant. Hope for picky eatersThe good news is that for most children, picky eating is a phase that tends to decline as they reach school age. For parents who want to help their kids expand their palates, the most important thing you can do is give your child repeated opportunities to taste foods without pressuring or coercing them.

World:
The Horse's Whinny Is a Unique Mix of Two Sounds, Study Finds
NEWS | 25 February 2026
NEW YORK (AP) – Horses whinny to find new friends, greet old ones, and celebrate happy moments like feeding time. The whinny is an unusual combination of both high and low-pitched sounds, like a cross between a grunt and a squeal – that come out at the same time. The whinny's mysterious high-pitched tones, they discovered, are a kind of whistling that starts in the horse's voice box. It's really interesting, and I can hear that now," said Jenifer Nadeau, who studies horses at the University of Connecticut. Related: New Evidence Reveals Unexpected Origins of Horse DomesticationA big lingering question is how horses' two-toned calls came to be.

Current Events:
Alcohol Profoundly Changes The Way Your Brain Communicates, Study Finds
NEWS | 25 February 2026
While plenty of previous research has looked at the ways booze changes the brain, little of it has considered the network-wide effects. The brain is, of course, a delicately balanced and incredibly intricate organ, and any shifts in chatter between brain regions are going to have impacts on emotions and behavior. Using a variety of mathematical approaches, the researchers calculated communications between 106 different brain regions. The researchers found that this feeling of drunkenness was related to how disconnected their brain regions had become. What's more, the network changes seen here – the breakdown between different brain regions – go some way to explaining how too much booze can start to cause blurred vision, difficulty walking in a straight line, and other well-known effects.

News Flash:
These 40,000-Year-Old Marks May Be a Precursor to Writing
NEWS | 25 February 2026
But the way they were arranged on various objects shows measurable structure comparable to the earliest protocuneiform systems that emerged around 5,300 years ago. They may represent an early precursor to writing, according to the newly published research by linguist Christian Bentz of Saarland University in Germany and archaeologist Ewa Dutkiewicz of the Berlin State Museums. That makes it difficult to trace when – or how – humans first began using marks to store information outside the mind. These metrics are often used to study language and early writing systems. While we may never know what they signified, the findings indicate that humans were storing and structuring information tens of thousands of years before the first known writing systems emerged.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 25 February 2026
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Latest:
Changes to One of The Largest Known Stars May Signal Destruction
NEWS | 25 February 2026
One of the largest stars known in the Universe has done something strange – and scientists are debating what it means. Such stars are inherently unstable and can undergo dramatic changes, including shifts in brightness or hue, as they shed material into space. "WOH G64 has been claimed to have turned into a yellow hypergiant, which could signal a pre-supernova post-red supergiant evolution," van Loon says. This implies that WOH G64 is currently a red supergiant and may never have ceased to be." To better understand what's going on with WOH G64, continued monitoring is crucial.

Breaking:
Lithium Plume in Our Atmosphere Traced Back to Returning SpaceX Rocket
NEWS | 25 February 2026
This is the first observational evidence that re-entering space debris leaves a detectable, human-caused chemical fingerprint in the upper atmosphere. Yet this region is crucial for radio and GPS communications, upper atmospheric weather patterns, and stratospheric ozone. But the new space age is injecting growing quantities of metals and other pollutants from satellites, rocket bodies, and space debris. Soot from rocket launches is also likely to cause warming in the upper atmosphere. Current estimates suggest that by 2030, several tonnes of spacecraft material will burn up in the upper atmosphere every single day.

Trending:
The 'Breaking Bad' Effect From Cancer Is Real, Study Finds
NEWS | 25 February 2026
A lot can change after a cancer diagnosis. Yes, it's like Breaking Bad, the TV series about a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher whose cancer diagnosis prompts a descent into criminality. Most cancer patients who experience this effect don't become as ruthless as Walter White, however. At first, newly diagnosed cancer patients show no signs of criminality, the study found. Beyond demonstrating this correlation, the researchers sought to understand why a cancer diagnosis might compel people to break the law.

This Just In:
Oldest Fossilized Butthole Found in 290-Million-Year-Old Reptile
NEWS | 25 February 2026
"The traces from the Thuringian Forest open new perspectives on the early development of reptiles and their skin structures." Marchetti and his team named the trace fossil Cabarzichnus pulchrus, representing a newly described species of reptile resting trace. Its size and nearby footprints suggest that C. pulchrus was likely a bolosaurian, an early branch of the reptile lineage. Related: Wild New Study Suggests Buttholes Once Had a Very Different PurposeInterestingly, C. pulchrus' cloaca is shaped and oriented differently from that of Psittacosaurus, other dinosaurs, and crocodiles. The fossil also preserves rows of polygonal skin scales across the trunk, limbs, head, and tail.

Today:
NASA's Giant Moon Rocket Has a New Problem
NEWS | 25 February 2026
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – Grounded until at least April, NASA's giant Moon rocket is headed back to the hangar this week for more repairs before astronauts climb aboard. NASA had barely finished a repeat fueling test Thursday, to ensure dangerous hydrogen fuel leaks were plugged, when another problem cropped up. This time, the rocket's helium system malfunctioned, further delaying astronauts' first trip to the Moon in more than half a century. The space agency has only a handful of days in any given month to launch the crew of four around the Moon and back. They will become the first people to fly to the Moon since NASA's Apollo program, which sent 24 astronauts there from 1968 through 1972.

Top Stories:
Life May Have Started as Sticky Goo, Long Before Cells Even Existed
NEWS | 25 February 2026
Scientists have many theories about how Earth's raw materials turned into living cells, but a new proposal is particularly slimy. In a recent paper, an international team argues that life may have first emerged within a blob of sticky goo clinging to a rock, long before true cells existed. Prebiotic gels, the team suggests, could have offered much-needed protection to life's fragile chemistry, long before actual membrane-bound cells had a chance to develop. "Such prebiotic gels may have allowed primitive chemical systems to overcome key barriers in prebiotic chemistry by enabling molecular concentration, selective retention, reaction efficiency, and environmental buffering." Structures like gels, rather than specific chemicals, may be targets in future missions looking for life in space.

World:
Neanderthals Mysteriously Collected Horned Skulls in a Cave, But Why?
NEWS | 25 February 2026
A new investigation of ancient horned animal skulls found in Spain's Des-Cubierta Cave deepens the mystery of when and why Neanderthals put them there. But it wasn't just tools; there was also an unusual assemblage of animal remains, overwhelmingly composed of skulls. Researchers cataloged the top parts of the skulls of at least 35 individual animals, including 28 bovines, five deer, and two rhinoceroses. The deliberate accumulation of animal crania is pretty rare in the archaeological record. It was after this rockfall that Neanderthals began to bring in animal skulls, placing them in the cave during separate phases of activity.

Current Events:
Play Can Make Adults Feel Happier And Less Stressed, Research Shows
NEWS | 25 February 2026
Our research with New Zealand families highlights how supporting unstructured play can help adults feel less stressed and more connected, while also normalising playfulness in everyday family life. For adults, play is often woven into hobbies and moments of exploration that sit outside work and obligation. Making room for play in everyday lifeIf play matters across the lifespan, the spaces we inhabit need to support it. Just as urban design can invite or discourage playful movement, social norms shape whether play feels acceptable in adult life. Reframing play as a legitimate part of adult life opens up new ways of thinking about wellbeing across the lifespan.