From: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/10-scientific-truths-unpopular-2025/

(December 9, 2025)

Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief. These 10, despite contrary claims, remain vitally important as 2025 draws to a close.

1.) 2024, the latest full year on record, saw the highest CO2 levels and the highest average temperatures since we first began tracking them.

2.) Interstellar interlopers are real, and while we found a new one (only the third ever) in 2025, they are still not aliens.

3.) We broke the record for most distant galaxy ever found but still haven’t spotted the first generation of stars.

4.) Earth’s orbit has a finite “carrying capacity,” and if we exceed that, such as with megaconstellations of satellites, it will inevitably lead to Kessler syndrome.

5.) The germ theory of disease is real, and vaccination is the safest, most effective strategy to combat these deadly pathogens.

6.) SARS-CoV-2 led to COVID-19 in humans as the result of a natural, zoonotic spillover event, not as the result of a leaked pathogen from a Wuhan Lab in China.

7.) The Universe’s expansion is still accelerating, the Hubble tension remains an important puzzle, and the much-publicized evidence we have is insufficient to conclude that dark energy is evolving.

8.) “Passing peer review” doesn’t make a scientific study true; it just means the study is robust enough that it’s passed the “start line” for consideration by the community.

9.) We’ve found evidence for organics on Mars (again), but still have no good evidence for life on any planet other than Earth.

10.) You still need to know science in order to do it; “vibe science” is nothing more than AI slop.

See https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/10-scientific-truths-unpopular-2025/ for details on each of the 10 scientific truths that somehow became unpopular in 2025.

8 hours ago, KJW said:

From: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/10-scientific-truths-unpopular-2025/

(December 9, 2025)

Scientific truths remain true regardless of belief. These 10, despite contrary claims, remain vitally important as 2025 draws to a close.

1.) 2024, the latest full year on record, saw the highest CO2 levels and the highest average temperatures since we first began tracking them.

2.) Interstellar interlopers are real, and while we found a new one (only the third ever) in 2025, they are still not aliens.

3.) We broke the record for most distant galaxy ever found but still haven’t spotted the first generation of stars.

4.) Earth’s orbit has a finite “carrying capacity,” and if we exceed that, such as with megaconstellations of satellites, it will inevitably lead to Kessler syndrome.

5.) The germ theory of disease is real, and vaccination is the safest, most effective strategy to combat these deadly pathogens.

6.) SARS-CoV-2 led to COVID-19 in humans as the result of a natural, zoonotic spillover event, not as the result of a leaked pathogen from a Wuhan Lab in China.

7.) The Universe’s expansion is still accelerating, the Hubble tension remains an important puzzle, and the much-publicized evidence we have is insufficient to conclude that dark energy is evolving.

8.) “Passing peer review” doesn’t make a scientific study true; it just means the study is robust enough that it’s passed the “start line” for consideration by the community.

9.) We’ve found evidence for organics on Mars (again), but still have no good evidence for life on any planet other than Earth.

10.) You still need to know science in order to do it; “vibe science” is nothing more than AI slop.

See https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/10-scientific-truths-unpopular-2025/ for details on each of the 10 scientific truths that somehow became unpopular in 2025.

I must admit I wince rather when people write of "scientific truths". Strictly speaking the only "truths" in science are very well-corroborated observations. The theories and hypotheses that depend on these observations are models.

It also seems to me some of the statements are rather tendentious. Perhaps the most obvious is the assertion that SARS-Cov-2 arose from natural zoonotic spillover. According to my understanding, we simply don't know for sure whether that is how it arose or whether there was some bad lab hygiene at the Wuhan lab, chiefly because the Chinese government has refused to cooperate in a thorough investigation. So I do not see how one of the two routes can be described as a "scientific truth". It is merely considered the more probable of the two, surely?

I would also like to see some explanation of the "finite carrying capacity of Earth's orbit". What does this mean? "Earth's orbit" normally refers to the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Is that what is meant? Surely not. Is it then the orbit(s) that satellites can occupy to orbit the Earth? If the latter, surely there are innumerable orbits, at different altitudes and orientations.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I must admit I wince rather when people write of "scientific truths".

I thought that but accept that it is a bit of hyperbole.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

It also seems to me some of the statements are rather tendentious. Perhaps the most obvious is the assertion that SARS-Cov-2 arose from natural zoonotic spillover. According to my understanding, we simply don't know for sure whether that is how it arose or whether there was some bad lab hygiene at the Wuhan lab, chiefly because the Chinese government has refused to cooperate in a thorough investigation. So I do not see how one of the two routes can be described as a "scientific truth". It is merely considered the more probable of the two, surely?

I'll admit that I was open to the lab origin conspiracy theory. Although the article of this thread has further details, the following is a link to an article titled "Ask Ethan: Couldn’t COVID-19 have originated in a Chinese lab?" (April 11, 2025):

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/covid-19-origin-chinese-lab/

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I would also like to see some explanation of the "finite carrying capacity of Earth's orbit". What does this mean? "Earth's orbit" normally refers to the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Is that what is meant? Surely not. Is it then the orbit(s) that satellites can occupy to orbit the Earth? If the latter, surely there are innumerable orbits, at different altitudes and orientations

According to the article, the limitation on the number of satellites in orbit around earth is based on the idea that if there is a solar event that disables a number of satellites' ability to be controlled, then those satellites will eventually collide with other satellites, producing debris that collides with yet other satellites, leading to a cascade that produces so much debris that we are no longer able to send anything into space. This is referred to as the "Kessler syndrome".

Edited December 10Dec 10 by KJW

12 minutes ago, KJW said:

I thought that but accept that it is a bit of hyperbole.

I'll admit that I was open to the lab origin conspiracy theory. Although the article of this thread has further details, the following is a link to an article titled "Ask Ethan: Couldn’t COVID-19 have originated in a Chinese lab?" (April 11, 2025):

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/covid-19-origin-chinese-lab/

According to the article, the limitation on the number of satellites in orbit around earth is based on the idea that if there is a solar event that disables a number of satellites' ability to be controlled, then those satellites will eventually collide with other satellites, producing debris that collides with yet other satellites, leading to a cascade that produces so much debris that we are no longer able to send anything into space. This is referred to as the "Kessler syndrome".

Re satellites, yes I understand that satellites in the same or very similar orbit can collide. But there is a vast range of altitudes available. I'd have thought that satellites can't change altitude without energy expenditure - unless, I suppose, some process occurs that alters the degree of ellipticity of their orbit. Is that possible?

On the SARS-Cov-2 business, I'm not sure "Ethan" is any kind of final authority🤔. As I understand it no complete investigation was ever undertaken and no conclusive evidence has been brought to light either way. What worries me a bit is that claiming it was the fault of the Chinese was what the Trumpies jumped on, causing a reaction against that hypothesis by the anti-Trumpies. So the whole thing became a political football, involving the monstering of poor Fauci etc., and reason flew out of the window. Ethan seems to me to be attacking an Aunt Sally, dismissing the wilder notion that the virus was synthetically derived, by a Fauci-as-Frankenstein 'gain of function" process. Agreed, there are good reasons to dismiss that. But still leaves open the more reasonable possibility that poor virus security at the lab let escape a natural virus that they were studying. His argument doesn't seem to address that, so far as I can see. Dismissing a "gain of function" hypothesis does not dismiss the broader "lab leak" hypothesis.

!0 scientific facts, that remain today is a question of time and we all know how unreliable time is...

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

there is a vast range of altitudes available

True, but I don't think the different altitudes are necessarily equivalent in terms of the satellite function. But it's the number of satellites being planned for the future that is the scary part. From the article:

Back at the start of 2019, there were right around 2000 active satellites in orbit around planet Earth. Here in 2025, there were 3000 now-active Starlink satellites — satellites that are part of just one company’s megaconstellation — that were launched just this year, alone. Many other companies are launching their own satellites as well, some of which are very high-impact, large, reflective, and heavily light-polluting. As of December 7, 2025, there are more than 17,000 satellites in orbit around Earth, with announced plans to increase that number into the many hundreds of thousands over the next few years.

While everything is in working order, even such a high number of satellites would probably be able keep themselves far enough apart. But it's when things go wrong that there may just be too many things in orbit for everything to remain stable.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

I'd have thought that satellites can't change altitude without energy expenditure

Bear in mind that it's not a perfect vacuum up there, so satellites require thrusters to maintain orbit. Thrusters can also prevent collisions, so the ability to control a satellite is quite important with regards to avoiding the Kessler syndrome.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

On the SARS-Cov-2 business, I'm not sure "Ethan" is any kind of final authority🤔.

I think I'll defer to someone with greater expertise on this. However, two points that I did note was that the lab origin cause has no actual evidence, whereas the evidence for the natural zoonotic spillover scenario is found in the genome of the COVID-19 virus itself.

50 minutes ago, KJW said:

True, but I don't think the different altitudes are necessarily equivalent in terms of the satellite function. But it's the number of satellites being planned for the future that is the scary part. From the article:

Back at the start of 2019, there were right around 2000 active satellites in orbit around planet Earth. Here in 2025, there were 3000 now-active Starlink satellites — satellites that are part of just one company’s megaconstellation — that were launched just this year, alone. Many other companies are launching their own satellites as well, some of which are very high-impact, large, reflective, and heavily light-polluting. As of December 7, 2025, there are more than 17,000 satellites in orbit around Earth, with announced plans to increase that number into the many hundreds of thousands over the next few years.

While everything is in working order, even such a high number of satellites would probably be able keep themselves far enough apart. But it's when things go wrong that there may just be too many things in orbit for everything to remain stable.

Bear in mind that it's not a perfect vacuum up there, so satellites require thrusters to maintain orbit. Thrusters can also prevent collisions, so the ability to control a satellite is quite important with regards to avoiding the Kessler syndrome.

I think I'll defer to someone with greater expertise on this. However, two points that I did note was that the lab origin cause has no actual evidence, whereas the evidence for the natural zoonotic spillover scenario is found in the genome of the COVID-19 virus itself.

OK agreed re satellites.

RE Covid, surely the genome would be the same whether the origin was directly from the wild or via a lab leak, wouldn't it?

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I'd have thought that satellites can't change altitude without energy expenditure - unless, I suppose, some process occurs that alters the degree of ellipticity of their orbit. Is that possible?

LEO especially has atmospheric drag, and there are effects from radiation pressure and gravitational anomalies. All can cause orbits to decay.

13 hours ago, KJW said:

10 scientific truths that somehow became unpopular in 2025.

I don’t have much issue with the items on the list, it’s the notion of unpopularity and that it happened just this year.

What fraction of the population has to disagree for something to be deemed unpopular? For most (perhaps all) of these the opposition is comprised of a fairly small minority, and have been opposed far longer than this past year. Vaccination rates in the US, for example, have been dropping before this year, but 90% still probably qualifies as popular. The problem is that it needs to be even higher.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DExj2EZRaOw/

Is the Kessler syndrome theory unpopular, or just that most people who haven't seen that Sandra Bullock movie are unaware of it? I would imagine that any theory that posits things can go to hell real fast would be quite believable to most humans. That said, I don't suppose many politicians are going to run on a Stop Kessler Syndrome platform if they hope to win. Hopefully there would be natural economic pressures that would eventually lead to safer sat deployments and maintenance - no one in the space biz wants a cascade nightmare.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

OK agreed re satellites.

RE Covid, surely the genome would be the same whether the origin was directly from the wild or via a lab leak, wouldn't it?

Maybe a comment here, the genome itself would provided only limited information on the source. It is more important to see where they were found. Near-perfect evidence would be the detection of the precise genotype in a sample recovered from an animal during or prior the outbreak, for example.

The most direct evidence was a re-analysis of Huanan market samples and swabs (published last year). These analyses strengthened the argument of a wet-market zoonotic spillover. I find the evidence compelling and would put that as the most likely scenario, however the level of evidence is insufficient to entirely rule out other scenarios. Elevating that to the level of "truth" as outlined in OP is highly problematic. In fact, elevating these conclusions to "truths" are IMO one of the reason why trust in public health and science is declining.

As researchers, we need to be clear about levels of uncertainty and understand the limits of our conclusion and communicate with nuance. I think the old adage of keeping things simple is not working in the modern, fragmented information (and disinformation) system.

Edit: also a further issue that I noticed, at least in the headline it is a bit unclear what type of lab leak the author is addressing. I.e. an engineered virus (for which there is no evidence) or a collected virus that somehow leaked out of the lab. The latter is not impossible, especially considering that biosafety breaches have happened around the world (including prominent cases in the UK and US). I.e., it is at least plausible that in theory similar issues have happened in China.

24 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Maybe a comment here, the genome itself would provided only limited information on the source. It is more important to see where they were found. Near-perfect evidence would be the detection of the precise genotype in a sample recovered from an animal during or prior the outbreak, for example.

The most direct evidence was a re-analysis of Huanan market samples and swabs (published last year). These analyses strengthened the argument of a wet-market zoonotic spillover. I find the evidence compelling and would put that as the most likely scenario, however the level of evidence is insufficient to entirely rule out other scenarios. Elevating that to the level of "truth" as outlined in OP is highly problematic. In fact, elevating these conclusions to "truths" are IMO one of the reason why trust in public health and science is declining.

As researchers, we need to be clear about levels of uncertainty and understand the limits of our conclusion and communicate with nuance. I think the old adage of keeping things simple is not working in the modern, fragmented information (and disinformation) system.

Edit: also a further issue that I noticed, at least in the headline it is a bit unclear what type of lab leak the author is addressing. I.e. an engineered virus (for which there is no evidence) or a collected virus that somehow leaked out of the lab. The latter is not impossible, especially considering that biosafety breaches have happened around the world (including prominent cases in the UK and US). I.e., it is at least plausible that in theory similar issues have happened in China.

Yes that is exactly what I had in mind.

But I didn’t know about the Hunan market samples. That is interesting. I wonder how widely disseminated those findings were. Certainly didn’t seem to hit the headlines in the UK.

50 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Yes that is exactly what I had in mind.

But I didn’t know about the Hunan market samples. That is interesting. I wonder how widely disseminated those findings were. Certainly didn’t seem to hit the headlines in the UK.

I think they should have been- I have seen that in the news and certainly it was in the pile of papers for me to read. There were at least two papers of relevance. One earlier published in Science with Worobey and Anderson as corresponding authors back in 2022 and a later one which had a different methodology and from what I remember had a stronger evidence base published in Cell (where they tried to reconstruct and associate genotypes from genetic fragments).

I suspect that by 2024 most SARS-CoV-2 related news were not elevated that much anymore, unless you are paying active/professional attention (apropos fragmented information systems..).

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

I think they should have been- I have seen that in the news and certainly it was in the pile of papers for me to read. There were at least two papers of relevance. One earlier published in Science with Worobey and Anderson as corresponding authors back in 2022 and a later one which had a different methodology and from what I remember had a stronger evidence base published in Cell (where they tried to reconstruct and associate genotypes from genetic fragments).

I suspect that by 2024 most SARS-CoV-2 related news were not elevated that much anymore, unless you are paying active/professional attention (apropos fragmented information systems..).

Yes I think that may be it. To the mass media, that horse had long since bolted, I suspect.

The media remind me as some addict chasing the next high- except that influences have flooded the landscape with synthetics that keep everyone oversaturated and sedated. Or I should say resistant to information but still somehow angry and disgruntled. I think I should think a bit more about this analogy, don't mind me.