Notable discoveries include longest lightning strike, largest black hole collision and more
Some scientific discoveries in 2025 have pushed the boundaries. Earth’s longest lightning bolt and the first AI-generated genomes are among this year’s outstanding achievements, along with large, ancient black holes. Here are the record-breaking discoveries that pushed scientific boundaries and caught our attention.
Light up the sky
In October 2017, a colossal lightning bolt erupted from Dallas to Kansas City, Missouri, a distance of about 530 miles, researchers reported in July. This flash, which lasted 7.39 seconds, this year officially took the title of longest-known megaflashtoppling a 709-kilometer-long lightning bolt that crossed Brazil and Argentina in 2019. Such megaflashes only occur in about 1 in 1,000 thunderstorms across the Americas.
Invading mosquitoes
Citizen scientist captured three Slide canceled mosquitoes for the first time in Icelandwhich was previously one of the last places on Earth without leeches. The species is no stranger to cold weather and can be found throughout Europe, including Sweden and Finland. But the question remains whether Iceland’s first mosquitoes will survive the Nordic island’s harsh winter.
Firsts in AI
Genetic blueprints for 16 bacteria-killing viruses are the first functional genomes to write with artificial intelligence. This work, limited to viruses that pose no threat to humans, represents a step toward using the technology to engineer living organisms.
But AI cannot yet do everything on its own. At a conference in October, researchers putting the scientific capabilities of technology to the test. AI agents generated hypotheses and analyzed data to produce submitted documents which were then judged by human reviewers. The results were mixed, with some researchers stepping in to correct errors and some articles being marked as “neither interesting nor important.”
Old mummies
The oldest known mummies were slowly dried by smoke on fires more than 10,000 years ago in Southeast Asia, researchers reported in September. The remains predate mummification in ancient Egypt and South America by about 7,000 years.
And old rocks
The oldest rocks on Earth could be found in a remote outcrop in northeastern Canada. At 4.16 billion years old, the rocks date from the Hadean eon, when asteroids hit the young planet and broke off chunks of rock that now form the moon. The results confirm a different estimate than in 2008, which said the rocks, the first from Earth’s earliest periods, were 4.3 billion years old.
A wolf wielding tools?
HAÍŁZAQV WOLF AND BIODIVERSITY PROJECT
Researchers observed a gray wolf in British Columbia dragging a crab pot ashore and feasting on the bait inside. probably the first known tool used by a canid. Some scientists say the feat can only count as the use of an object, not a tool, because the wolf did not set up or control all the parts of the trap. We still think it’s a clever trick.
Large or old black holes
Largest recorded collision between two black holes with masses more than 100 times those of the sun, this calls into question physical theories. Indeed, it is probably not possible that the collapsing stars formed the two black holes involved in the collision, which resulted in a black hole of about 225 solar masses. It’s unclear exactly how each formed, but it’s possible that black holes repeatedly merged until they reached their size, or that a smaller black hole fed on the gas surrounding a much larger counterpart.
Meanwhile, another cosmic chasm with a mass of 38 million suns won the title of oldest black hole. The new record holder, called CAPERS-LRD-z9, formed more than 13 billion years ago, less than 500 million years after the Big Bang.
