Rumors that Earth had picked up a new companion in the form of a so-called “second moon” began spreading online in late December 2025 and continued to light up social media into the new year.

Amateur astronomers took to social media platforms such as X to share their excitement over the purported discovery, with some users claiming that NASA “has confirmed that Earth will temporarily have a ‘second moon.'”

(@forallcurious via X)

It is true that astronomers discovered “a relatively short-lived quasi-satellite of Earth” and dubbed it 2025 PN7, according to a paper published by the American Astronomical Society in September 2025, which also mentioned the existence of six other known quasi-satellites, also called “quasi-moons,” currently orbiting alongside Earth.

The Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii first clocked 2025 PN7 on Aug. 2, 2025. Major news outlets, including CNN, ABC News, Yahoo, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times and Northeastern University’s Northeastern Global News, also reported the discovery.

It would be misleading to call 2025 PN7 a “second moon,” however, and there is no evidence that NASA “confirmed” as much, despite social media posts’ claims. 2025 PN7 was searchable through NASA’s Small-Body Database Lookup, which displayed scientific data of the object.

According to NASA, that 2025 PN7 is an asteroid and a “quasi-moon,” and explained how these objects differ from true moons. “Unlike a moon a quasi-moon is not gravitationally bound to Earth but follows an orbit around the Sun that makes it linger near Earth for an extended period of time,” the NASA spokesperson said.

In other words, quasi-moons orbit the Sun, while moons orbit a planet — like Earth’s moon. Therefore, claims that 2025 PN7 is a “second moon” are misleading.

The paper published by AAS added, “Quasi-satellites are in a resonant orbit but are not gravitationally bound to Earth, allowing for more sustained, though unbound, proximity; while mini-moons are characterized by temporary gravitational captures by Earth, meaning they are gravitationally bound, albeit for a limited time.”

The length of time for which the asteroid has been in step with Earth’s orbit did not appear in the NASA database nor the AAS paper, but NASA said, “2025 PN7 has been in this configuration since at least the past 70 years and will remain so for another 60 years.”

NASA’s timeline matched the information in a New York Times report, which included an interview with Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, a researcher at Complutense University of Madrid and co-author of the AAS paper. The Times wrote that 2025 PN7 “seems to have shifted into its quasi-moon orbit in 1957 — just in time to witness the launch of Sputnik 1, Earth’s first artificial satellite.” The report also suggested that 2025 PN7 would be in step with Earth’s orbit for another 60 years before moving elsewhere.

“These asteroids are relatively easy to access for unmanned missions and can be used to test planetary exploration technologies with a relatively modest investment,” CNN quoted de la Fuente Marcos as saying, emphasizing the importance of such a discovery.

But readers can rest easy knowing astronomers also confirmed that 2025 PN7 — and quasi-satellites in general — pose no threat to Earth. According to de la Fuente Marcos, the closest distance to Earth 2025 PN7 reached during its orbit was 186,000 miles.

For comparison, the Moon is “an average of 238,855 miles” from Earth, according to NASA.

The claim “As of late 2025, NASA had confirmed the existence of a temporary second moon that would remain in orbit next to Earth until 2083”.

In sum, it is true that astronomers discovered a quasi-satellite, or “quasi-moon,” that will keep pace with Earth’s orbit for the next 60 years or so, but calling it a “second moon” is misleading at best.

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Claim: Footage authentically shows an ICE agent running toward protesters in Minneapolis before slipping and falling on ice.

In January 2026, as more than 2,000 officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) patrolled the Minneapolis area under directions from President Donald Trump’s administration, a video circulated online claiming to show one of the federal agents slipping and falling on ice in the city.

The footage spread following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. It appeared on social media sites such as Instagram and X; media outlets like Turkish broadcaster TRT World and Australia’s 10 News, and late-night comedy shows in the U.S. Social media users claimed the clip showed “ICE slippling on ice.” Slipping

An ICE agent was caught slipping on ice in Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/wXMxisaOAm

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 13, 2026

The video is genuine. It was not created using artificial intelligence (AI) software nor manipulated using digital editing tools. The footage authentically shows a federal agent slipping and falling on ice in Minneapolis. We found photographs of the moment by reputable sources.

However, the agent’s uniform and at least one witness account indicated that he is part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a federal agency that was deployed in the area for the same purpose as ICE. As such, we rated this claim mostly true.

The video emerged on Jan. 11, 2026, and shows a federal agent with a yellow badge running toward the camera while onlookers jeer at him. The agent then slips and falls on ice in front of a man in a black jacket who is taking photographs with a camera. Another person in a blue jacket who is recording the scene from their phone appears in front of the camera, while another person cheers in the background. The federal agent then gets up and runs back to a waiting vehicle.

As of this writing, we have not determined the source of that video, which appears to be the most popular recording of the moment, nor the identity of the federal agent.

In another video of the same scene from a different angle, a person behind the camera screams insults at the officer.

@bayareaman06The crowd laughs as an ICE agent slips and falls in Minneapolis? Cool Attitude (Vox) – Ah2

The man in a black jacket with a camera was Christopher Katsarov, a journalist with the Canadian Press. He captured the moment in the image below. The caption states: “A Federal agent slips and falls on ice during a patrol in Minneapolis, Minn., on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026.”

(Christopher Katsarov/Canadian Press)

Nasuna Stuart-Ulin, a freelance photojournalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, also captured the agent slipping from a different angle.

(Instagram user “nasunaphoto”)

Neither image’s caption identified whether the agent worked for ICE, but a close look at his uniform revealed the agent likely worked for Border Patrol. The yellow label on his back reads “Police” and “U.S. Border Patrol,” and the yellow logo on his arm is consistent with the ones worn by CBP officers in other photographs taken in Minneapolis around the same time.

Stuart-Ulin said via text message that the man slipping on ice was a Border Patrol agent.

CBP and ICE both fall under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security. While ICE carries out immigration enforcement across the interior of the country, CBP was established to secure borders and can carry out arrests and searches without a warrant within 100 miles of a border.

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino told Fox News that CBP agents were in Minneapolis to conduct immigration enforcement operations, adding that they go after “violent criminals” and “fraudsters.” News reports have documented instances of Border Patrol agents firing gas canisters at protesters in Minneapolis, and one agent shot a man in the leg after DHS said the agent was attacked.

In sum, we determined the video is authentic, as evidenced by photographs of the moment and witnesses’ observations. However, the man was a Border Patrol agent, not an ICE agent as some social media posts described him. Agents from both agencies were patrolling Minneapolis for the same reasons.

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According to a rumor that has circulated online for years, novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

For example, on Nov. 12, 2025, a TikTok user shared the quote as part of a photo post showing a piano, accompanied by German-born British composer Max Richter’s famous piece, “On the Nature of Daylight.”

Social media users shared the same quote, and in most cases Hemingway’s name, on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Threads, TikTok  and X. Others attributed the words to physicist Albert Einstein or author Kay Bratt.

Did Ernest Hemingway write, ‘Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know’?

In short, Hemingway, who died in 1961, truly authored the quote about happiness in intelligent people. Rather than being written in his own voice, however, it was attributed to a character in his posthumous 1986 novel, “The Garden of Eden.”

The quote in ‘The Garden of Eden’

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology website hosted a copy of the full novel, including the in-question quote, which appeared on Page 97 (emphasis ours):

When they were at lunch in the dining room out of the wind, David asked, “What about your friend Nina?”

“She’s gone away.”

“She was handsome,” David said.

“Yes. We had a very big fight and she went away.”

“She was a b****,” Catherine said. “But then I think almost everyone is a b****.”

“Usually they are,” the girl said. “I always hope not but they are.”

“I know plenty of women who aren’t b*****s,” David said.

“Yes. You would,” the girl said.

“Was Nina happy?” Catherine asked.

“I hope she will be happy,” the girl said. “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

“You haven’t had such a long time to find out about it.”

“If you make mistakes you find out faster,” the girl said.

“You’ve been happy all morning,” Catherine said. “We had a wonderful time.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” the girl said. “And I’m happier now than I can remember ever.”

The novel’s 1986 release

In 1986, The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee, reported freelance writer Fredric Koeppel’s thoughts about the posthumous release of Hemingway’s novel, saying the story takes place in the south of France and in Spain and concerns “a main character who is also a writer who has just married a beautiful and wealthy woman named Catherine.”

Koeppel’s piece in the paper, excerpted below, specifically mentioned the quote about happiness:

Catherine is a little crazy, the man finds out, and when they make love she wants him to call her David and she calls him Catherine and she tells him she wants to be a boy but she wants to be his good girl too.

Catherine keeps cutting her hair shorter and shorter between episodes of swimming and sitting in the bar drinking martinis and wine and eating south-of-France type food. But David is trying to write stories about (guess where) Africa and (guess who) his father, and he feels more real in his stories than in his life with Catherine, which is getting complicated.

The beautiful woman who wants to be a boy seems jealous of her husband’s success, and she burns all his good reviews and even the stories he is working on. She picks up a girl and brings her home for both David and her to love and make love to; things get even more complicated, and the characters are alternately miffed or ecstatic and Catherine gets weirder and weirder.

It’s like “The Black Book” or “Nightwood” or that movie, “The Hunger,” with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie and Susan Sarandon, where everyone is very beautiful and chic and sophisticated and yet their eyes are sad and they are filled with a great swelling sadness because life beyond its simply heavenly lovely days and wine and terrific food and its esthetic stuff is filled with sadness itself, and all our hopes and desires will turn to sad ashes.

People in this novel say things like “Don’t we have wonderful simple fun?” and “Remember everything is right until it’s wrong” and “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” And if David says more than three sentences to Catherine he apologizes for making a speech because he mistrusts rhetoric and he must keep tightening his discipline so he won’t lose control.

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