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The moon is Earth’s closest neighbor in space and the only extraterrestrial body humans have visited. Yet scientists are still unsure exactly when a Mars-size meteorite slammed into early Earth, causing our natural satellite to form from the debris. Lunar rock samples suggest the event happened 4.35 billion years ago, but planet formation models and fragments of zircon from the moon’s surface put it at 4.51 billion years ago.

A new study published on December 18 in Nature offers a way to explain that 150-million-year gap. Computer modeling and analysis of previous research suggests the 4.35-billion-year-old rock samples may not date back to the moon’s formation but instead a later event in the moon’s history in which it temporarily heated up, causing its surface to melt and crystallize.

The moon is slowly moving away from Earth, so its orbit isn’t circular. As it moves, it is squeezed and stretched by Earth’s gravity, resulting in what is known as tidal heating—and one of these heating events likely happened 4.35 billion years ago. This early moon would have looked like Jupiter’s moon Io, says the new study’s lead author Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz. “It would have had volcanoes all over its surface,” he says. This event would have also erased lunar impact basins caused by meteorite strikes, which researchers use to estimate age as well.

This difference of 150 million years matters a lot to scientists, Nimmo says, especially for learning more about the early Earth. “The moon is moving away from the Earth, and the rate at which that happens depends on what the Earth

was like,” he says. “Was it solid? Was it liquid? Did it have an ocean? Did it have an atmosphere?” For instance, really early Earth likely didn’t have an ocean—or it would have pushed the moon away too fast. The moon’s formation time is crucial to these calculations, and more complex models of tidal heating and the mineralogy involved could help refine our view in the future.

“No previous study has synthesized all the available evidence comprehensively,” says Yoshinori Miyazaki, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, who wasn’t involved with the study. “This paper provides a better view in resolving the discrepancies between different age estimates.”

Current hypotheses for when the Earth and moon formed, which put the date at anywhere from 30 million to 150 million years after the sun’s birth, suggest vastly different scenarios for planet formation. “Resolving these uncertainties is essential for constructing a consistent picture of solar system history,” Miyazaki says.

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Javier Zayas Photography/Getty Images

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Don’t be duped by a scam made with artificial intelligence tools this holiday season. The FBI issued a public service announcement earlier this month, warning criminals are exploiting AI to run bigger frauds in more believable ways.

While AI tools can be helpful in our personal and professional lives, they can also be used against us, said Shaila Rana, a professor at Purdue Global who teaches cybersecurity. “[AI tools are] becoming cheaper [and] easier to use. It’s lowering the barrier of entry for attackers so scammers can create really highly convincing scams.”

There are some best practices for protecting yourself against scams in general, but with the rise of generative AI, here are five specific tips to consider.

Beware of sophisticated phishing attacks

The most common AI-enabled scams are phishing attacks, according to Eman El-Sheikh, associate vice president of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of West Florida. Phishing is when bad actors attempt to obtain sensitive information to commit crimes or fraud. “[Scammers are using] generative AI to create content that looks or seems authentic but in fact is not,” said El-Sheikh.

“Before we would tell people, ‘look for grammatical errors, look for misspellings, look for something that just doesn’t sound right.’ But now with the use of AI … it can be extremely convincing,” Rana told NPR.

However, you should still check for subtle tells that an email or text message could be fraudulent. Check for misspellings in the domain name of email addresses and look for variations in the logo of the company. “It’s very important to pay attention to those details,” said El-Sheikh.

Create a code word with your loved ones

AI-cloned voice scams are on the rise, Rana told NPR. “Scammers just need a few seconds of your voice from social media to create a clone,” she said. Combined with personal details found online, scammers can convince targets that they are their loved ones.

Family emergency scams or “grandparent scams” involve calling a target, creating an extreme sense of urgency by pretending to be a loved one in distress, and asking for money to get them out of a bad situation. One common scheme is telling the target their loved one is in jail and needs bail money.

Rana recommends coming up with a secret code word to use with your family. “So if someone calls claiming to be in trouble or they’re unsafe, ask for the code word and then [hang up and] call their real number [back] to verify,” she said.

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“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.

Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 860 herds across 16 states have tested positive.

Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”

To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.

Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.

Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched.

“It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the COVID-19 crisis reemerge,” said Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Far more bird flu damage is inevitable, but the extent of it will be left to the Trump administration and Mother Nature. Already, the USDA has funneled more than $1.7 billion into tamping down the bird flu on poultry farms since 2022, which includes reimbursing farmers who’ve had to cull their flocks, and more than $430 million into combating the bird flu on dairy farms. In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2% to 5% of infected dairy cows and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20%.

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YouTube says the policy will combat “egregious” clickbait that misleads viewers, with a particular focus on videos related to “breaking news” or “current events.” The company’s examples of egregious clickbait include a video with the title “the president resigned!” that doesn’t actually address a resignation or a “top political news” thumbnail attached to a video with no news content.

As the policy rolls out in India, YouTube will remove content that violates the rules without giving a strike to creators, at least at first. “And as we continue to educate creators, our enforcement efforts will prioritize new video uploads moving forward,” YouTube says.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

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