Having kids is a decision with a lot of gravity, literally. Scientists have found that sperm in space can’t find their direction during their pursuit to fertilize an egg. Such digressions could pose a problem in the future as the possibilities of human colonies in space become more likely.

Spacing out

A lack of gravity “impaired directional navigation and fertilization capacity” of human sperm cells, said a study published in the journal Communications Biology. “This is the first time we have been able to show that gravity is an important factor in sperm’s ability to navigate through a channel like the reproductive tract,” Nicole McPherson, a senior lecturer at Adelaide University’s Robinson Research Institute and the senior author of the study, said in a release.

Researchers tested human, pig and mouse sperm by putting them into a “microgravity simulation chamber designed to mimic the female reproductive tract and tested the swimmers’ ability to navigate,” said Scientific American. The results showed a “significant reduction in the number of sperm that were able to successfully find their way through the chamber maze in microgravity conditions compared to normal gravity,” said McPherson. The results repeated “across all models, despite no changes to the way sperm physically move.” The sperm’s directional loss “was not due to a change in motility but other elements.” In the case of human sperm, “less than 20% of them reached the finish line in near weightlessness,” compared to 50% in Earth’s conditions,” said Smithsonian Magazine.

There may be a way to lead sperm in the right direction: the hormone progesterone. “Progesterone works as a chemical signal, a kind of biological homing beacon that the egg releases around the time of ovulation,” McPherson said to Scientific American. “Sperm have receptors on their surface that detect this signal and use it to orient themselves and swim toward the source.” However, the progesterone only helped at concentrations “considerably higher” than those found in nature, so it is not yet a “simple fix for fertility in space.”

A new home

Having babies in space may be a necessity in the future as humans aim to establish human settlements on the moon and Mars. The human body “evolved over ​millions of years to function optimally in Earth’s environment, including its gravity,” said Reuters. “Trekking beyond Earth’s confines causes many physiological changes that affect human health.” Until now, research had not been done about “whether the cells can successfully navigate the female reproductive tract and fertilize eggs,” said Smithsonian Magazine.

Despite the potential to get lost in space, “many healthy embryos were still able to form even when fertilized under these conditions,” McPherson said. “This gives us hope that reproducing in space may one day be possible.” The next research step is to investigate “how varying gravitational environments, such as those on the moon, Mars and proposed artificial gravity systems, impact sperm navigation and early embryo development,” said the release. As of now, “NASA and other governmental space agencies maintain that no one has ever had sex in space,” said Scientific American. “But future human spacefarers may want to have families and reproduce while in a microgravity environment.”

Space programmes cost billions. By 2028, when the fourth mission in its current Artemis programme lands astronauts back on the Moon, Nasa will have spent $105 billion (£78 billion) – which is “a chunk of change”, said USA Today.

Spending so much seems puzzling “when we already did” the Moon thing: are “science, exploration and the possible value of moon materials” really worth it? Or would that all public money be better spent on ”healthcare or tax cuts”?

‘Futile pursuits of prestige’

“It’s absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless,” said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. And the more crises there are “besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes”. The US, “of all nations”, has got bigger issues right now, so “seriously, Nasa, can you not just knock it off”?

Ordinary Americans are tired of “these absurd expressions of vanity, these futile pursuits of prestige”, said space historian Gerard DeGroot on UnHerd. Even the Apollo missions in the late 1960s “were not as popular as Nasa pretended”: opinion polls showed “support was consistently below 50%”, with women, people of colour and the poor, in particular, questioning the “obscene cost”.

The current Artemis enterprise “reeks” of Elon Musk: his SpaceX Starship will have increasing involvement as the missions progress and, although the details of the deal are “shrouded in mystery”, it’s “safe to suspect that some quid pro quo is involved”. We know that SpaceX has received $17 billion (£12.6 billion) in government funding already.

Images to ‘catch the breath’

I've always thought the so-called “choice” between “advancing to the stars and solving problems back on earth” to be “a false one”, said Séamas O'Reilly in The New Statesman. Yes, the Artemis budget “may seem hard to justify” for what appears to be “a few rocket launches” and some “charming zero gravity footage of bulky astronauts surrounded by floating pens” but “this elides the truth” of the “titanic boost to science, technology and economies back home”.

Nasa’s Apollo programme “returned around $7 to the US economy for every $1 spent”. In all our homes, we can see “developments made at the bleeding edge of space”: if you have a laptop, a camera phone or a memory foam mattress, “you have Nasa to thank”. The same goes for advancements in water purification, landmine removal and artificial limbs – “not to mention the invention of ear thermometers and CAT scans”.

If those images beamed back from the Artemis II this week didn’t “catch the breath” in your throat, you can’t “be fully alive”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. “The experience of seeing the Earth photographed from space” has “an effect on our collective imaginations”. The Apollo 8 “Earthrise” image, for example, is widely thought to have “kickstarted the modern environmental movement”.

Artemis II is “one small step towards living in deep space”, said evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon in The Washington Post. I see parallels between “establishing an enduring human presence” on the Moon (and, ultimately, Mars) and “the processes by which animals and plants” arrive on Earth’s islands and “evolve into new species”. Future generations living on other planets will “gradually become different from people on Earth”. And that will be “a giant leap for all humanity”.

What happened

The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II on Monday traveled farther into space than any humans before, photographing never-before-viewed stretches of the far side of the moon. The group also watched a solar eclipse and an Earthrise before beginning their voyage home. The lunar flyby marked humanity’s first trip back to the moon since the Apollo era ended in 1972.

Who said what

The Artemis II crew — NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Victor Glover and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — broke Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles from Earth, then set a new record of 252,756 miles Monday night. “We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived,” Hansen said to Mission Control in Houston.

The seven-hour “lunar fly-around” was “by far the highlight” of the Artemis II mission, “yielding rich science” along with awe-inspiring “celestial sightseeing,” The Associated Press said. When the moon eclipsed their view of the sun, planets including “Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn nodded at them from the black void,” and “the landing sites of Apollo 12 and 14 also were visible, poignant reminders of NASA’s first age of exploration.”

During the solar eclipse, the astronauts “found it difficult to describe the sight when the moon was illuminated just from Earthshine — light reflected from our planet,” The New York Times said. “It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now,” Hansen said. “We just went sci-fi,” Glover said. “It is the strangest-looking thing that you can see so much on the surface.”

What next?

The Orion spacecraft is scheduled to reenter the Earth’s gravitational pull later this week before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego’s coast on Friday.

What happened

The four astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center shortly before sunset Wednesday, aiming to become the first humans to reach the moon in 54 years. The near-perfect launch sent NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen into Earth orbit, where Glover manually maneuvered their Orion crew capsule around the detached second stage of the SLS rocket, the first task on their historic 10-day journey into deep space.

Who said what

“We are going for all humanity,” Hansen, poised to be the first non-American in deep space, said before liftoff. “We have a beautiful moonrise,” Wiseman said five minutes into the flight, “and we’re headed right at it.”

Human spaceflight “may almost seem familiar and humdrum these days,” The Washington Post said. But Artemis II is a “crucial first chapter” in a “risky, expensive, technically challenging” and ambitious effort to “eventually return people to the lunar surface, build a base there and use it as a stepping stone to push deeper into the solar system.” All these plans “hinge on Artemis II going well,” The Associated Press said. The “biggest goal for the astronauts on this mission is to not die,” New York Times science reporter Kenneth Chang said on “The Daily” podcast.

What next?

Today, Orion “will fire its engines to push it on a path toward the moon,” which it will reach Monday, the Times said. After traveling 4,144 miles further from Earth than any humans before them and observing “portions of the far side that have never been seen by human eyes before,” the astronauts are scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.

What happened

NASA on Wednesday morning appeared on track to launch its Artemis II mission in the evening, sending four astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972’s Apollo 17. There’s “an 80% chance of favorable weather conditions,” NASA said, and no apparent problems with the SLS rocket and Orion capsule set to take astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen around the moon and back.

Who said what

A “successful mission” would be a “crucial step” for NASA as it “seeks to return to the moon’s surface” and “validate technology” needed to travel “even further,” The Washington Post said. The “dwindling survivors of NASA’s greatest generation” are “thrilled that NASA is finally going back,” The Associated Press said. And the “power brokers in Washington” insist it’s a “vital national imperative” to beat China to the moon, The New York Times said. But “people on the street” tell pollsters they want NASA to “monitor” Earth-bound asteroids and “key parts of the Earth’s climate system,” while sending humans back to the moon ranks only above sending them to Mars.

What next?

“If all goes as planned,” AP said, the 10-day mission will take the four astronauts farther from Earth than anyone has ever gone, followed by a “six-hour flyby” of “never-before-seen regions of the lunar far side.”

“When you come for the king, you best not miss,” said New Scientist – “particularly if the king in question” is Tyrannosaurus rex, a nine-tonne dinosaur with “the biggest teeth of any known land predator in history”.

Researchers have found that far from being a “one-species monopoly” under T. rex, the dinosaur “landscape” may have “hosted a tiered guild of hunters”, said Scientific American, including one of the most hotly contested dinosaur species: the Nanotyrannus.

‘Tyrant lizard king’

Tyrannosaurus rex has quite a fan base. It was the “tyrant lizard king” and it has “developed tremendous loyalty,” said Greg Paul, a dinosaur researcher. “There’s even a rock band named for the animal.”

For decades, palaeontologists have argued whether the single skull used to define the Nanotyrannus represented a true species in its own right or whether it was merely a young T. rex.

Now, a study in the journal Science argues that this thorny question has finally been resolved: Nanotyrannus was nearly fully grown and not a juvenile T. rex.

The researchers, who set out to “cut T. rex down to size”, investigated the microscopic details of a bone and compared it with those of modern birds, crocodilians and other dinosaurs. They concluded that Nanotyrannus was a mature and distinct predator.

Complete rethink 

But Team Tyrannosaurus “aren’t yet ready to rewrite the family tree of T. rex and its kin”, said Scientific American. They insist that “skeletal maturity alone doesn’t define a species”. There is a need for “more small T. rex fossils” to be studied and, without those, “distinguishing growth from evolution remains difficult”. And “if every small skeleton is Nanotyrannus, where are the juvenile T. rexes?” said Stephen Brusatte, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh.

Now that the researchers behind the new study have “corrected the record on Nanotyrannus”, said co-author James G. Napoli, a palaeontologist at Stony Brook University in New York, they think it’s “possible that other smaller tyrannosaur fossils are misidentified”, so there may be “many more species awaiting recognition”.

It is not often that “opinions on a high-profile dinosaur change so rapidly and so dramatically”, said New Scientist. This latest shift has “profound implications” because it means we “may need to completely rethink the way that dinosaur ecosystems were organised” and “how and why the dinosaur-dominated world came crashing down”.

And, “most exciting of all”, the reassessment of T. rex itself is “only just getting started”. This research “raises new questions”, such as how did the various tyrannosaurs “carve up the ancient landscape between themselves?”

What happened

NASA on Tuesday announced that in the next few years it will start building a permanent base on the moon and send three small helicopters to Mars aboard a pioneering nuclear-powered robotic spacecraft. “This is the moment where we should all start believing again,” NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, said at an international space conference in Houston. “NASA once changed everything, and we’re going to do it again.”

Who said what

NASA’s “years of talking about lunar outposts in vague terms for sometime in the indefinite future” appear to have ended with this new “road map” with “specific plans and timelines,” The New York Times said. Isaacman said that NASA has committed to return astronauts to the moon “before the end of President Trump’s term” and ahead of “real geopolitical rival” China’s planned 2030 crewed lunar landing.

As part of Isaacman’s revamp of NASA’s flagship Artemis lunar program, the Lunar Gateway orbiting station, which is “largely already built,” will be shelved, Reuters said. The new plan to repurpose its components to build the $20 billion moon base raises questions about the “future roles” of “key” Artemis partners Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. Experts also questioned the feasibility of launching a Mars-bound spacecraft powered by nuclear electric propulsion in 2028. The “dominant reaction” among spaceflight experts, cosmologist Katie Mack said, “is somewhere on the spectrum between mockery and dismay.”

What next?

Issacson said Artemis 3, now a mission to test the Orion space capsule’s integration with lunar landers, is scheduled for 2027, while Artemis 4 will send astronauts to the moon in 2028. Tuesday’s announcements came “one week before NASA’s targeted launch of Artemis 2,” the first crewed flight around the moon since 1972’s Apollo 17, space.com said.

Sarah Ferguson was involved in talks to clone the late Queen Elizabeth’s beloved corgis for a reality TV show, The Mail on Sunday has claimed.

The “cash-strapped” former Duchess of York “met executives from Halcyon Studios in Los Angeles for a series of lunches and dinners” in May 2023, eight months after the Queen’s death.

A show synopsis sets out how, after Ferguson “is bequeathed two of the Queen’s beloved corgis, she decides to embark on a bold and controversial business venture – cloning the royal pups”. However, “as she navigates the complex world of genetics and royal protocol, Sarah must also grapple with her own personal demons and strained relationship with the royal family”.

Pet cloning is “highly contentious”, said the paper, “with experts warning it can produce horrible abnormalities”. But it is also highly “lucrative”, with pet lovers in the US, including celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Barbara Streisand and NFL star Tom Brady, paying “up to £75,000” to replicate their favourite animal.

‘Not an exact match’

Science has “come a long way” since Dolly the sheep was cloned three decades ago, said National Geographic. Pet cloning is “becoming more commonplace” with “thousands of grieving pet owners“ turning to the procedure in an attempt to “bring back their lost loves”.

But while a clone “will likely resemble the original pet more than a random member of the same species, both in appearance and behaviour”, their personalities “probably won’t be an exact match”.

Cloning “involves extracting viable eggs from the fallopian tubes” of the female animal, fertilising the egg with sperm from the male animal, then injecting a surrogate with hormones and implanting the embryo, said James Serpell, from the University of Pennsylvania. But it is not cheap – the average procedure costs around $50,000 (£37,000) – or easy. A 2022 study showed a maximum success rate of just 16% as many of the embryos failed to implant successfully, leading to miscarriages and animals born malformed.

Some companies are “trying to market what they do as recreating the original pet, and they’re not succeeding there”, said Serpell. So much happens after conception that, like twins, the two animals will not be “truly identical”.

‘Essence of the hereditary principle’

A spokesperson for Ferguson said she “never progressed any discussions with Halcyon Studios, which were engineered by others, and withdrew from them of her own accord”. But to even “consider cloning the late Queen’s beloved dogs for financial gain is unbelievably grotesque and utterly bizarre”, royal author Richard Fitzwilliams told The Mail on Sunday.

The opportunity to “own an exact replica of a corgi once owned by the Queen of England” would certainly “give immense joy to a certain type of person”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator.

On “a slightly more philosophical plane”, isn’t genetics “the very essence of the hereditary principle?” If she had gone ahead with the proposal, perhaps Ferguson – “in her whimsical but clumsy way” – would “have been putting her manicured finger on the heart of something both important and a little absurd about our monarchy?”

It is generally accepted “as a matter of course that the descent of the crown through the generations is accompanied by a slight but perceptible deterioration of the genetic stock”.

Life on Earth may have origins from far, far away. Scientists have found a full set of life-building molecules in a nearly pristine asteroid sample, and the discovery suggests that the necessary ingredients to kick-start the evolution of life on Earth may have come from a celestial-body delivery. It also raises questions as to whether more complex molecules are present all over the solar system.

Back to basics

Asteroid Ryugu has all five of the primary nucleobases, according to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The nucleobases — adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine and uracil — are “compounds that make up the nucleic acids DNA and RNA when combined with sugars and phosphoric acid,” said New Scientist. They are the building blocks of the genetic code, and life as we know it could not exist without them. The bases are split into two categories: purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (thymine, cytosine and uracil).

Samples of asteroid Ryugu were collected by the Japanese Aerospace Agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission. The samples were brought to Earth in December 2020. Asteroids like Ryugu “formed 4.6 billion years ago when the planets were being born around the infant sun,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week). Since then, they have “remained relatively unspoiled.” Finding these nucleobases on the asteroid “hints that they can be formed without the presence of life and may offer clues into how these compounds could be transported across the solar system.”

Ryugu is not the only asteroid with nucleobases. They were also found in samples from asteroid Bennu, which were brought to Earth in 2023, as well as in the Murchison meteorite collected from Australia in 1969 and the Orgueil meteorite collected from France in 1864.

However, the “precise mixture of molecules” varied “depending on the asteroid’s chemical environment and history,” Kliti Grice, a professor of organic and isotope geochemistry at Curtin University, said at The Conversation. Ryugu contained roughly equal amounts of purines and pyrimidines, while Murchison was richer in purine nucleobases. Orgeuil and Bennu were richer in pyrimidine nucleobases. Ammonia may be the reason for the different balances, as “samples from Ryugu, Bennu and the Orgueil meteorite that contained more ammonia all tended to have a lower ratio of purines to pyrimidines,” said Gizmodo.

Obscure origins

Discovering these components in these otherworldly sources gives more insight as to how life developed on Earth. The nucleobases in all four of the samples “suggest key components of genetic material may have formed in space and later delivered to the early Earth,” said Grice. The “story of life on our planet may be deeply connected to the chemistry of such ancient asteroids.”

Much is still unknown about these compounds’ origins. “​Ammonia may have played an important role in shaping the composition of nucleobases in these materials,” Toshiki Koga, a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and study co-author, said to Gizmodo. “Because no known formation mechanism predicts such a correlation, it may indicate that previously unrecognized chemical pathways contributed to the formation of nucleobases in the early solar system.”

The detection of the bases in Ryugu also “strongly supports their ubiquity in the solar system,” Yasuhiro Oba, an astrophysical chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan and study co-author, said to New Scientist. Other asteroids may contain actual strands of DNA and RNA and not just the components. “It is very likely that more complex organic molecules like nucleic acids are formed on asteroids.”

What if the sun never set? The California-based startup Reflect Orbital aims to set that possibility in motion by launching thousands of mirrors into space. The company has identified the mirrors as a way of harnessing renewable energy. Detractors are worried about the environmental consequences.

Daylight savings

The company is “trying to build something that could replace fossil fuels and really power everything,” Ben Nowack, Reflect Orbital’s chief executive, said in an interview with The New York Times. The plan is to deliver a “spot of sunlight on demand with a constellation of in-space mirrors,” said Reflect Orbital’s website. The space-mirror constellation would intercept the “solar energy that misses us” and enable humanity to employ it.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering whether to permit Reflect Orbital to launch the mirror satellite. If the FCC allows it, the company would send up a prototype satellite “equipped with a 60-foot mirror,” said Futurism. Ultimately, Reflect Orbital’s goal is to deploy 50,000 mirror satellites in orbit around the Earth by 2035, a sum more than “five times the size of the largest satellite constellation in the world.” These satellites would be used to power solar panels, even during non-peak sun hours, as well as to illuminate disaster zones and expand daytime hours.

Manipulating sunlight has raised concerns among experts about the effect of light pollution on the environment and biodiversity. “The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation,” John Barentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory and consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, told Space.com (a sister site of The Week). The brightness will “have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas.”

Light complications

The mirrors “could distract airplane pilots, mess up astronomical observations and interfere with circadian rhythms,” which would ultimately impact humans, animals and plants’ ability to “know when to wake and sleep, when to bloom, when to migrate and so forth,” said the Times. To address these concerns, the light from the mirrors is supposed to be “contained within the spot,” able to be “turned off quickly and at any time so that none of it reaches the Earth” and “intentionally avoid sensitive areas like research observatories or protected habitats,” said Reflect Orbital’s website.

Despite the company’s claims, many are skeptical. “Light is inevitably scattered by particles of air, and glow from the beam could brighten the night sky miles farther away, an effect that is evident with the street lighting of even small towns,” said the Times. In addition, “brightness estimates suggest that thousands of these satellites could be visible to the naked eye,” even “potentially outnumbering the stars visible in the night sky,” said The Times.

Such environmental implications may not play a role in the FCC’s decision. Activities in space, per the agency, are “not subject to environmental review,” said the Times. Instead, the FCC “checks to ensure that a spacecraft’s radio communications do not create interference problems for others and that the spacecraft will be safely disposed of at the end of its operational lifetime.” The night sky is a “valued part of human heritage,” Robert Massey, the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, said to The Times. Space mirrors “would utterly destroy this and permanently scar the natural landscape. We hope the FCC wholeheartedly rejects the plans.”

NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to change the asteroid’s trajectory in 2022. Now, scientific observations have shown that the mission had more far-reaching effects than previously thought, affecting both the struck asteroid and the larger one it orbits. This could be a promising answer to the question of how to protect the planet from future cosmic threats.

No crash dummy

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally crashed into a small asteroid called Dimorphos in September 2022. The goal of the mission was to “prove that if a killer space rock ever threatened Earth in the future, humans could deflect it,” said The New York Times. The hit was quite the success, altering not only the orbit of Dimorphos around a larger asteroid, Didymos, but also the orbit of the pair around the sun, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.

Dimorphos and Didymos are a binary pair, which means they circle each other while orbiting the sun. The crash changed Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos to be 33 minutes faster than it was before the strike. Scientists also found that DART made an even bigger impact than expected. Observations of the asteroid pair’s motion “revealed that the 770-day orbital period around the sun changed by a fraction of a second after the DART spacecraft’s impact on Dimorphos,” said a NASA release. That change “marks the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the sun.”

While shifting the orbit by just 150 milliseconds per circle around the sun may seem insignificant, “given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection,” Thomas Statler, the lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA, said in the release. The study “validates kinetic impact as a technique for defending Earth against asteroid hazards and shows how a binary asteroid might be deflected by impacting just one member of the pair.”

The space between

When DART hit Dimorphos, the “impact blasted a huge cloud of rocky debris into space, altering the shape of the asteroid,” said the NASA statement. The debris “carried its own momentum away from the asteroid,” giving the asteroid an “explosive thrust.” The study found that the “debris loss doubled the punch created by the spacecraft alone.” And because Dimorphos is part of a binary pair, a “measurable change for one will affect the other,” said CNN.

Didymos “was never on a path toward Earth, and the DART experiment could not have placed it on one,” said a press release about the study. However, the “small shift in orbital speed demonstrates how spacecraft could be used to redirect a threatening asteroid if scientists detect it early enough.” In that case, a “spacecraft would strike the object and slightly alter its velocity,” and that “tiny change could accumulate into a large enough deviation to prevent a collision with Earth.”

NASA, in a similar guardian vein, is also developing its Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission, which “could spot dark, risky asteroids that have remained nearly invisible from Earth-based observatories,” said CNN. Being able to identify potential threats in space along with knowing how to change their orbit goes “hand in hand with how space agencies envision protecting Earth.”

While 2026 is less than three months old, this year has already seen its fair share of avalanches. This includes one that slammed into a train in the Swiss Alps, injuring five people, and a recent occurrence near Lake Tahoe that killed nine skiers — the deadliest in California’s history. And a major factor is contributing to how hazardous these avalanches are, according to scientists: climate change.

Why are avalanches getting worse?

A decrease in snow caused by a warmer planet may be making avalanches worse. People “might assume that increasing global temperatures would lead to fewer avalanches,” said The Independent. But rising temperatures can “increase the risk of avalanches,” especially at altitudes of 6,500 feet or higher.

At these higher elevations that see more snowfall, climate change can “increase the risk of ‘wet’ avalanches, which contain more liquid from rain or melted snow,” said The Independent. These are avalanches that “travel less far and more slowly than dry snow avalanches,” but they are also “denser, so they can exert greater pressure and impact,” Nicolas Eckert, a mountain risk specialist at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, said to Le Monde.

Scientists investigating the Lake Tahoe disaster are “pointing to a combination of heavy snow on top of an unstable snow pack as conditions that led to the avalanche,” said The New York Times. Some have also pointed to atmospheric ‘rivers’ that “occur when a high-altitude current of moisture flows from the tropical ocean regions.” These rivers over the Pacific Ocean are “becoming wetter and warmer,” and when they pass over the Western U.S., they could “lead to heavy snowfall in higher mountain elevations even as the number of snowy days decreases.”

In some areas of Europe, this lack of snow could be problematic. When it “does not snow for some time, the surface snow is exposed to warming during the day and colder temperatures at night,” said The Sydney Morning Herald. The snow’s crystals then become unstable, like “standing up a deck of cards on their end all the way across the snow pack,” Craig Sheppard, the program manager for the Mountain Safety Collective, said to the Herald. When the next snowfall arrives, it creates a “recipe for avalanches because you have snow sitting on a really weak grain.”

What can be done?

Many experts say the best solution is proper avalanche safety. About “90% of slides that cause an injury or death are triggered by the victim or a companion,” said The Associated Press. Avalanches travel fast and can’t be outrun, so the best “plan is to make sure you’re not in a place where one is at risk of occurring.” The National Avalanche Center allows outdoor enthusiasts to track avalanche threats and warnings across the U.S.

Despite avalanches happening less often these days, when they do, they are increasingly likely to be deadly. Over the “last 10 winters, an average of 27 people died in avalanches each winter in the United States,” according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. Still, there is no way to determine the exact number of people in such avalanches, as “most nonfatal avalanche incidents are not reported.”

Minerals are a hot topic in 2026. Lithium, the crucial ingredient in batteries that power smartphones and electric vehicles, is in particular demand. While most of the discussion has been around the potential treasure troves of Greenland or Ukraine, Cornwall is believed to sit on the largest lithium deposits in Europe.

Mining company Cornish Lithium made a “major production breakthrough” last October, said The Telegraph: it produced lithium hydroxide, a raw material required to make lithium-ion batteries. “It is believed to be the first time lithium hydroxide has been produced in Britain outside of a laboratory.”

Cornwall’s ‘roaring future’

If the world is ever to get close to net zero, lithium will be at the centre of it, said The Times. It can store more energy than most elements and is ideal for rechargeable batteries. That means it is playing an “increasingly important role” in the energy system. When “hooked up to a grid”, batteries can “absorb renewable energy when it is abundant and release it when scarce”.

The world has developed a “sudden and ravenous appetite” for lithium. That demand is expected to triple over the next decade as the green transition accelerates, said the International Energy Agency.

“Lithium is now among the most important mined elements on the planet,” said The Guardian. Most is extracted in Australia, the so-called lithium triangle in South America (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia), and China. The latter also “processes and therefore controls a majority of it for use in batteries”.

Cornwall doesn’t compare in scale but it is “probably the largest lithium deposit in Europe”. Cornish Lithium and another company, British Lithium, are “leading the way to tap into it”. And as the race to secure critical minerals intensifies, “there’s renewed enthusiasm for domestic exploration projects for critical minerals”, said Jamie Hinch on The Conversation.

In September, the National Wealth Fund announced a £31 million commitment to Cornish Lithium. And last month, the government released its critical minerals strategy, which could be a “watershed moment” for Cornwall, said Cornwall Live. The promised funding could be a “huge boon for the Cornish economy not seen since the heyday of tin mining”.

‘Supply chain dominated by China’

The “reshoring of mining” back to Britain can mitigate the “decline of employment opportunities” through the loss of industry, said Hinch. Cornish Lithium said it will create more than 300 jobs over the Trelavour Lithium Project’s 20-year operation, and 800 during construction. There is a “tempered optimism” that lithium could “rejuvenate” the county, which has some of the most deprived areas in the UK.

Cornwall’s “mining renaissance” extends beyond lithium, said The Economist. Britain’s last tin mine, South Crofty, near Redruth, has been dormant for nearly 30 years. It is now “being resuscitated by Cornish Metals” and is scheduled to resume operations in 2028, as the only mine in Europe that primarily extracts tin. The Trump administration said this month it was willing to loan up to $225 million (£165 million) to support the reopening, for some of its output in return.

Cornwall’s mineral deposits also present political opportunities, said Politico. Labour MPs are “betting” that local development of lithium mines – not to mention copper, tin and tungsten – will “help them keep their seats” at Westminster.

But China still looms on the horizon, said Politics Home. The superpower “produces more than 50% of 17 of the top 27 critical mineral groups, and refines 90% of the world’s rare earths”. It controls “critical mineral extraction on five different continents”.

Though the UK could initially bypass China by refining lithium “on home soil”, it would still be “entirely dependent on a global supply chain dominated by China”, said The Times. Once lithium has been refined, it needs to be turned into a battery cathode, and “almost 90 per cent of cathodes are made in China”.

But if Britain found a way to circumvent this step, such as piggybacking on “plans for several” commercial cathode facilities in Europe, it could capitalise on the manufacturing of battery cells on its own shores. To that end, processing gigafactories are expected to open in Sunderland and Somerset next year.

There has been a growing demand in recent years to separate “profound autism” into its own diagnosis, outside current parameters.

Since 2013, autism diagnoses have been split into three levels, ranging from “some support required” to “requires very substantial support”, said The Autism Service.

Support for the addition of the “profound autism” category, first proposed in 2022 by a board of international experts in The Lancet, is gaining traction. Some experts think it will bring welcome care to those who require it most, while others say it could mean other members of the autistic community are neglected.

What is profound autism?

The proposed term would describe individuals with autism who “have little or no language (spoken, written, signed or via a communication device), who have an IQ of less than 50, and who require 24-hour supervision and support”, said Kelsie Boulton, Marie Antoinette Hodge and Rebecca Sutherland on The Conversation. This category would only be diagnosable for ages eight and over, when individuals’ “cognitive and communication abilities are considered more stable”.

In their study of 513 autistic children assessed between 2019 and 2024, the researchers found that around 24% of participants met, or were at risk of meeting, the criteria for profound autism.

How has understanding evolved?

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr claimed last autumn that there was an “epidemic” of autism across his country, falsely linking it with vaccines or Tylenol, which is known as paracetamol in the UK. The “unproven and debunked” claims about the causes of autism “threatens public health, even as officials funnel more money into research”, said The Associated Press.

Autism rates have been on the rise “for decades”, but there are solid reasons for this, said The Independent. The diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, adopted in 2013, is now “very broad”, including many people with low support needs, and there is “better awareness of the condition”, leading to more diagnoses.

The concept of an autistic “spectrum” has been widely accepted since it was coined in the 1980s by psychiatrist Dr Lorna Wing. “Groundbreaking” at the time, her work “transformed how autism was understood in the UK”, said Aimee Grant on The Conversation. Previously, autism had been seen as a “rare, narrowly defined condition”, whereas since a “wide range of traits and experiences” have been recognised.

The introduction of new terms to categorise the spectrum is not without precedent. Wing also introduced the term “Asperger’s syndrome” to the UK. It was intended to divide or categorise patients depending on their care needs. Individuals with Asperger’s tended to have lower support needs.

However, the term was “retired” in the 2013 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders following revelations about Hans Asperger’s links to the Nazi regime, said the National Autistic Society. He was responsible for “abhorrent descriptions of some autistic children as being less ‘worthwhile’ than others”, and “more recent research” has shown that Asperger “was aware that he was sending children to their death”.

Why is the new definition needed?

Having a more specific category in future clinical guidelines could allow governments, disability services and clinicians to plan and deliver support more effectively, said Boulton, Hodge and Sutherland on The Conversation. Due to the broadening of the current spectrum, it is possible that people with the highest needs are “overlooked”, so the new category would “re-balance their under-representation in mainstream autism research”.

Current understanding of an autistic spectrum ranging from “mild” to “severe” can be “misleading”, said Grant. “The term has outlived its usefulness.” The condition has “lots of unique combinations”, including reliance on routine, “stimming” or “monotropism”. “Because autism is made up of all these different elements, there can be no single line on which every autistic person is placed.”

What are the arguments against it?

However, some experts would say the new category is “unhelpful”, said Grant. “It tells us nothing about a person’s particular challenges or the type of support they require.”

Some autistic self-advocates see “unity as the best protection for everyone on the spectrum” and being “part of one shared story”, said Forbes. Similarly, some people in the autistic community fear that creating a separate diagnosis would “reduce attention on the broader spectrum and the individual needs of everyone on it”, said The Independent.

Most Americans may not expect a robot to perform their surgery, but AI-powered surgical tools are becoming more ubiquitous in operating rooms. While these tools are only used to assist human surgeons during operations and don’t perform surgery themselves, recent investigations, along with several lawsuits, are causing some medical experts to reconsider the use of AI in hospitals.

What kind of surgical tools are powered by AI?

At least 1,357 AI-integrated medical devices are “now authorized by the FDA — double the number it had allowed through 2022,” said Reuters as part of an investigation into AI-assisted surgery. One of the most notable is the TruDi Navigation System, a device manufactured by Johnson & Johnson that uses a “machine-learning algorithm to assist ear, nose and throat specialists in surgeries.” Other AI-assisted devices are designed for surgeries on other parts of the body.

Many of these tools address the “area of vision enhancement,” said Forbes. Traditional laparoscopic surgery “presents surgeons with significant challenges: smoke obscures the surgical field, two-dimensional images make depth perception difficult and critical anatomical structures can be hard to distinguish.” AI surgical tools can eliminate these obstacles and provide surgeons with “crystal-clear views of the operative field.”

What has the result been?

There has been an influx of allegations and lawsuits against various AI tools, many of which claim these tools actively harmed patients. Several of these involve the TruDi tool, as the FDA has “received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events” related to the device’s AI, said Reuters. Many of the alleged errors occurred when the AI “misinformed surgeons about the location of their instruments while they were using them inside patients’ heads.”

In one case, this reportedly led to cerebrospinal fluid leaking from a patient’s nose, while in another case, a surgeon “mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull,” said Reuters. Two other cases allegedly led to patients suffering strokes after major arteries were accidentally injured; in at least one of these cases, the plaintiff said the TruDi’s AI “misled” the surgeon, causing him to “injure a carotid artery, leading to a blood clot and eventually a stroke,” said Futurism.

FDA reports on malfunctioning devices “aren’t intended to determine causes of medical mishaps, so it’s not clear what role AI may have played in these events,” said Reuters. But TruDi is not the only AI-assisted medical device that allegedly has performance issues. One machine that analyzes prenatal images using AI, the Sonio Detect, has been “accused of using a faulty algorithm” that “misidentifies fetal structures and body parts,” said Tom’s Hardware. And Medtronic, a company that manufactures AI-assisted heart monitors, has faced allegations that its monitors “failed to recognize abnormal rhythms or pauses in patients.”

Overall, at least 60 AI-assisted medical devices have been linked to 182 product recalls by the FDA, according to research published in JAMA Health Forum. At least 43% of these recalls “occurred within the first 12 months” of the device’s FDA approval, said JAMA. This suggests that the FDA’s approval process “may overlook early performance failures of AI technologies.” But there is hope that the issue can be fixed, as shoring up “premarket clinical testing requirements and postmarket surveillance measures may improve identification and reduction of device errors.”

For thousands of years, humans have trained pigeons to race, deliver messages and “spy behind enemy lines”, said Bloomberg. “What would happen if people could bypass the training and steer their bird brains instead?”

A Russian neurotechnology company linked to Vladimir Putin’s daughter is claiming to do just that, said The Times. Scientists at Neiry have reportedly been implanting computer chips into the birds’ brains and strapping video cameras to their chests, trying to transform them into “living drones”.

There has been “no independent scientific verification” of the company’s claims – but in theory, the birds could be “adapted for military surveillance”.

Bio-drones

Under the project, codenamed PJN-1, neural chips are reportedly implanted into the birds’ brains, with flight paths controlled by remote operators. The Moscow-based company claims the birds can be steered by “stimulating their brains with electrodes to make them turn left or right”, said the paper.

Pigeons outperform traditional drones because animals “do not require battery swaps or frequent landings”, according to Neiry. They can fly up to 400km a day without a break, and can reach areas where drones would be restricted, the company says.

“Our current focus is pigeons, but different species may be used depending on the environment or payload,” said Alexander Panov, founder and chief executive. “For transporting heavier payloads we plan to use ravens.”

And there are other advantages to these bird-brained “bio-drones”, said Bloomberg. Drones may be “easier to control, can carry bigger loads and don’t need to eat or poop”. But birds are better suited to covert surveillance. A person is far more likely to notice a drone overhead than “one more pigeon flapping around”.

Remote-controlled assassins?

There’s plenty of precedent in attempts to control the minds of animals for military purposes. During the Cold War, the CIA tried to turn dogs into “remote-controlled canine assassins”, said The Times. It also inserted a microphone into a cat’s ear and a radio transmitter into its skull, “hoping to use it as a device to spy” on the Soviets.

Several countries, including China and the US, have also explored controlling birds through neural implants. Last year Chinese scientists “created cyborg bees” with brain controllers to direct their flight, said The Telegraph. And in January, Neiry unveiled “what it claimed was the world’s first rat connected to AI, allowing it to access online information and answer questions via a keyboard”.

Neiry says the birds are intended for peaceful purposes, to help with search and rescue operations and to monitor infrastructure. “We make every effort to ensure that our bio-drones are used exclusively for civilian purposes, with no concealed or secondary use,” the company said in a statement.

But experts warn the technology could “easily be adapted for military use”, said the paper. Russia already sends trained dolphins to guard its Black Sea naval base, and has reportedly “mounted Starlink terminals on horses to extend internet coverage along the front line”.

An investigation by T-Invariant, an independent anti-war outlet, found that Neiry had received about one billion roubles (almost £10 million) in funding, “much of it from Kremlin-linked sources”. The company has received funding “on a scale Russian neuroscience has never seen”, one neurologist told the outlet.

Brain implant technology has also advanced rapidly in recent years. Several companies are developing neural chips for humans to treat diseases and improve cognitive capabilities. Plus Russia has been expanding its drone capabilities in the war against Ukraine – a war keenly supported by Panov. He has “lamented what he called the ‘gentle style’ of Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine”, said The Telegraph. He has also described his “ultimate ambition” of creating the next human species after Homo sapiens: so-called Homo superior.

It may be time to hit the road in pursuit of scientific research. Millions of animals are struck by vehicles every year and killed as a result. These accidents have even pushed some species to extinction. While roadkill is never pleasant, these animals could bring an opportunity to conduct scientific research more ethically.

Road to discovery

Roadkill could be a “valuable source of animals for study that does not require and could even replace the use of live wildlife,” said a study published in the journal Biology Letters. Researchers identified approximately 117 different uses for roadkill across various scientific projects. “We found examples of successfully using roadkill to map species distributions, monitor disease and environmental pollution, study diets, track invasive species, supply museum collections and even discover species previously unknown to science,” said Christa Beckmann, the lead author of the study, in a statement.

One of the most common uses for roadkill is to identify and determine the populations of species in an area. Many species are “hard to see,” Beckmann said to Science. “You don’t just trip across them as you’re walking. So finding dead animals on the road might actually be an easier way to quantify the presence of these animals in the habitat.” Several lizard and rodent species were “first discovered as roadkill, while deer carcasses have been used as bait to attract eagles at the center of research,” said AAP. In another case, a “paleontologist took photographs of animals’ remains as they were repeatedly run over to teach students about the process of fossilization.”

The road less traveled

A big advantage of using roadkill for research is that it is “highly ethical,” said the study. It could be used as an alternative to invasive sampling methods. “If you want to take a genetic sample, you don’t need to trap live animals or handle them, both of which can cause stress,” said Beckmann. “You can just drive along the road and use samples of roadkill.” It aligns with the global guidelines for animal research known as the 3Rs: refinement, replacement and reduction. These tenets aim to reduce the number of animals needed for research, along with reducing suffering and protecting population numbers.

Researchers still need permits to collect and handle dead animals from the road because of potential biohazard and traffic risks. The animals can “harbor disease that is transmissible to humans,” which requires protective gear, said the study. In addition, it could be dangerous to collect the animals and “necessary precautions should be taken when collecting roadkill on and around roads and highways, such as wearing reflective clothing and being mindful of traffic.”

In a car-centric society, roadkill is an unfortunate side effect. Some species are even being “driven toward extinction because of traffic,” said Scientific American. “Vehicles continue to be overlooked environmental forces that are likely to decimate more and more animal populations.” Despite this, said Beckmann, “using these losses wisely could help drive scientific discovery and conservation forward, rather than letting valuable information decompose by the roadside.”

NASA is nearing the final preparations for its first crewed moon mission since the Apollo era, but the mode of transportation has some experts worried. The agency’s Artemis II undertaking, which will launch astronauts on a flyby of the moon, is set to take off in the coming months aboard the Orion spacecraft. Yet concerns over a key element of the vehicle have led to calls to delay the mission.

What are the primary concerns?

The main issue is related to Orion’s heat shield. This coating along the bottom of the spacecraft protects the vehicle from extreme temperatures upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Orion’s coating for Artemis II is “nearly identical” to the one used for the uncrewed Artemis I mission, and that prior mission’s Orion vehicle “returned from space with a heat shield pockmarked by unexpected damage,” said CNN.

NASA hired an independent agency to investigate why the shield was damaged. The report was largely redacted but concluded that the shield became charred in large pieces, a phenomenon it was “not designed nor was it expected” to protect the spacecraft from. Using this investigation, NASA “identified the technical cause of unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft,” the agency said in a press release.

Despite these findings, NASA plans to forge ahead with Artemis II using the same coating. Instead of “making major material changes to the heat shield itself after the fact,” NASA “opted to adjust the Artemis II mission’s flight path instead, to ensure a gentler reentry,” said Futurism. This has some experts concerned. NASA has a “deviant heat shield,” Dr. Danny Olivas, a former NASA astronaut who served on the independent review board, said to CNN. There’s “no doubt about it: This is not the shield that NASA would want to give its astronauts.”

What next?

The Artemis II flight will mark a major moment for NASA, as it will be the “first time humans have traveled beyond low Earth orbit in more than 50 years,” said ABC News. But unlike the later Apollo missions, Artemis II will not land on the moon. It will be a test flight around the lunar body ahead of Artemis III, which “aims to someday land astronauts near the moon’s South Pole, a region never explored by humans.”

Ahead of the planned mission, NASA has “full confidence” in Orion’s heat shield, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said to reporters. The agency trusts the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield, “grounded in rigorous analysis and the work of exceptional engineers who followed the data throughout the process.” But this has not stopped others from voicing their concerns.

NASA made a “huge mistake with the approach to manufacturing the heat shield, as I pointed out since the return of the first Artemis I Orion capsule nearly a year and a half ago,” Dr. Ed Pope, an expert on shield technology, said on LinkedIn after the investigation. It will “now take too long, cost too much and cause too great of a delay if they fix it. Enter the bureaucrats and politicians to make the final call. Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA.”

A new high-resolution map of distant galaxies may finally help scientists understand a mysterious substance that binds the universe together.

Taken by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, the latest images, published as part of a study in the journal Nature Astronomy, include information on new galaxy clusters dating back 10 billion years and, crucially, the strands of so-called “dark matter” that connect them.

‘Getting closer to unmasking dark matter’

Dark matter is “one of the most persistent and important puzzles in all of physics”, said Elizabeth Landau in National Geographic.

While ordinary matter – stars, planets, people, basically anything the eye can see – makes up just 5% of the universe, dark matter comprises over a quarter, with “dark energy”, a mysterious but constant force which pushes stars and galaxies away from each other, making up the rest.

Dark matter “doesn’t have much of an impact on your midday lunch order or your nightly bedtime ritual”, said Adithi Ramakrishnan, science reporter at The Associated Press, “but it silently passes through your body all the time and has shaped the universe.”

The problem is that it “doesn’t absorb or give off light so scientists can’t study it directly”. Instead, they have to observe “how its gravity warps and bends the star stuff around it – for example, the light from distant galaxies”. Only by studying these distortions across large swathes of the universe, can scientists “get closer to unmasking dark matter and its various hiding places”.

‘Gravitational scaffolding into which everything else falls’

The new images made with the Webb telescope are “twice as sharp as any dark matter map made by other observatories,” said Diana Scognamiglio of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the study.

Building on previous observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope, the new map “reveals dark matter’s influence on the largest objects in the universe, like galaxy clusters stretching millions of light years across”, said BBC Sky at Night. It shows “the overlap between dark matter and regular matter, confirming dark matter’s role in pulling regular matter together throughout the history of the universe”.

The findings “reinforce scientists’ current theory” that the gravity of dark matter “pulled ordinary matter into clumps that grew into the first structures in the universe”, said National Geographic.

“It's the gravitational scaffolding into which everything else falls and is built into galaxies. And we can actually see that process happening in this map,” said Richard Massey, study co-author and physicist at Durham University.

This matters because without it “there wouldn’t be enough matter to gravitationally bind galaxies together, and our Milky Way galaxy, housing billions of planets including Earth, would not exist in its current form”, said National Geographic.

Scientists are now using the high-res images to develop a three-dimensional version of the map, which they hope will unlock the properties of dark matter itself.

The moon is chock-full of Earth’s history. Elements from our planet’s atmosphere have made their way into moon dust, also called regolith, on a pathway created by the Earth’s magnetic field. These substances could help supply a lunar base, but using the dust might also be cumbersome and potentially dangerous.

Sharing is caring

Earth’s atmosphere “contributes significantly to light volatile elements” found in moon dust, said a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. That is because our planet is surrounded by a magnetic field that “may actually help guide atmospheric particles” into space and toward the moon, said a release about the study. As a result, “lunar soil may not only hold a long-term record of Earth’s atmosphere,” but “could be even more valuable than scientists once thought for future space explorers living and working on the moon.”

Soil brought back from the Apollo missions in the 1970s contained volatile substances, including “water, carbon dioxide, helium, argon and nitrogen,” said the release. While some of these volatiles came from the “sun’s constant stream of charged particles, known as the solar wind,” the amounts of the substances, especially nitrogen, were “too high to be explained by solar wind alone.” In the study, scientists created computer simulations that showed that rather than “blocking atmospheric ions from being blown from our planet, the magnetic field lines within Earth’s tail act as invisible highways for charged particles,” said Live Science. This moves the particles toward the moon, allowing them to settle into the regolith.

That also means that this transfer of particles has likely been happening for over 3.7 billion years, since the formation of Earth’s magnetosphere. “By examining planetary evolution alongside atmospheric escape across different epochs, we can gain insight into how these processes shape planetary habitability,” said Shubhonkar Paramanick, the study’s lead author, in the release. The study could have “broader implications for understanding early atmospheric escape on planets like Mars, which lacks a global magnetic field today but had one similar to Earth in the past, along with a likely thicker atmosphere.”

All the dust is not gold

The elements in moon dust could be harvested and used in lunar bases. Substances like water and nitrogen could be “used for life support or fuel production, thereby reducing the need to bring everything from Earth and making a sustainable human presence more feasible,” said Techno-Science.net. Researchers have also conceptualized a device that could possibly turn moon dust into usable water and oxygen, according to a study published in the journal Joule. The method “takes advantage of the abundant solar energy and the extreme thermal conditions of the lunar surface” and “offers a potential route for sustaining human life on the moon and enabling long-term extraterrestrial exploration,” said Earth.com.

Despite this, moon dust can be a double-edged sword. While resources within could help supply lunar bases, the concentrations are trace. “Miners would still need to heat several tons of regolith for every household bucket they hope to fill,” said Earth.com. Working with the dust is also difficult. When it is “lightly agitated or showered by radiation, it becomes electrically charged,” which means it can “levitate above the lunar surface” and “glue itself onto astronauts,” said National Geographic. Inhaling it can also be dangerous to an astronaut’s health. “It’s very, very sharp. It’s very aggravating and agitating. It gets everywhere,” said Amy Fritz, a dust-mitigation researcher at Johnson Space Center, to the outlet.

What happened

A massive winter storm rolled across much of the U.S. over the weekend, hitting states from New Mexico to Maine with sleet, snow and freezing rain. “It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” National Weather Service meteorologist Allison Santorelli told The Associated Press. “We’re talking like a 2,000-mile spread.” She said about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning on Sunday.

Who said what

The “colossal” storm’s “map of misery was vast and varied,” The Washington Post said, knocking out power to “more than a million customers,” prompting “widespread school cancellations” and causing “deaths in multiple states.” More than 11,000 flights were canceled Sunday, and thousands more had been scrapped Monday.

Communities in upstate New York “saw record-breaking subzero temperatures” as low as minus 49 F, the AP said, while “freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South.” The power outages “hit hardest in Tennessee, where about 300,000 customers lost power,” mostly in Nashville, The Wall Street Journal said. The Nashville Electric Service said the outages could “span over days or longer.”

What next?

Much of the snowfall ended last night, “but frigid temperatures should keep things icy for the rest of the week,” the Journal said. “The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” Santorelli told CBS News.

While many people are scared of sharks thanks to their rows of razor-sharp teeth, the changing waters might be rendering the creatures from “Jaws” a little less fearsome. Growing acidity in the world’s oceans is changing the structure of sharks’ teeth, scientists investigating the “corrosive effects from acidification” on the “morphology” of those teeth reported in a marine science journal. This weakening of the teeth of the apex predators could affect the broader marine ecosystem, too.

What did the study find?

The study was helmed by a group of German scientists examining the effects of ocean acidity. The scientists “investigated the corrosive effects from acidification on the morphology of isolated shark teeth,” said the study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science. The average ocean pH is currently 8.1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but it is expected to become more acidic in the coming centuries.

To simulate this, the study kept blacktip reef shark teeth in a pair of water tanks for eight weeks; one tank had a pH of 8.1 while the other had a pH of 7.3, the expected acidity of the ocean by 2300. It was found that the “teeth exposed to the more acidic water became much more damaged, with cracks and holes, root corrosion and degradation to the structure of the tooth itself,” said The Associated Press. Ocean acidification “can’t be disregarded as a threat facing sharks,” Maximilian Baum, a marine biologist at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf and the study’s lead author, told the AP.

This dental stress “would add to sharks’ other problems, which include prey shortages caused by overfishing,” said The Guardian. Many shark species can replace lost teeth naturally, but increasing ocean acidity could “speed losses past replacement rates.” And more than just sharks could be affected, as there could be “effects on the teeth of ocean predators in general when they are highly mineralized structures like we have in sharks,” Baum said to The Guardian.

What can be done about this?

Not all is lost, as the study “does have a few limitations,” said Smithsonian magazine. Most notably, the “repair process for teeth may be different in living species compared to in teeth that have fallen out.” And some experts have suggested that the rate of tooth replacement “could potentially keep up with any damage the animal’s teeth might face.” It will be “interesting to see in future studies if the damage to teeth seen in studies like this one results in a functional effect on a tooth’s ability to do its job,” Lisa Whitenack, a shark tooth expert at Allegheny College who was not part of the study, said to The Guardian.

Still, others are more pessimistic about the outlook for sharks and overall marine life. The study’s “main takeaway is that not only small organisms like corals or mollusks are at risk: even the teeth of apex predators show visible damage under acidified conditions, suggesting that ocean acidification could impact sharks more directly than previously assumed,” Baum said to CNN. By “isolating the chemical effects of acidified seawater on the mineralized structure itself, we want to provide a baseline for understanding vulnerability of shark teeth,” which could “highlight the potential damage to exposed hard tissues like teeth.”

Small but mighty, the red planet — our celestial neighbor — has made Earth’s climate what it is today. Mars’ gravitational pull serves as a stabilizing force for our home’s orbit, tilt and position from the sun. Without it, life could potentially have been a lot different from what we know today.

How does Mars’ gravity impact Earth?

Despite being approximately half the size of Earth and one-tenth its mass, Mars’ gravity has had a sizable effect on Earth’s climate, according to a study published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Specifically, the red planet is “quietly tugging on Earth’s orbit and shaping the cycles that drive long-term climate patterns here,” said a release about the study.

Earth’s climate is largely driven by Milankovitch cycles, which are “long-term variations in our planet’s orbit and tilt governed by the gravitational pull of other planets in the solar system,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week). One cycle takes approximately 430,000 years and is largely affected by Venus and Jupiter. Mars has little to no effect on this cycle, originally leading scientists to believe that the planet did not have much pull on Earth’s climate. However, it turns out that Mars “punches above its weight,” said Stephen Kane, the study leader and a professor of planetary astrophysics at the University of California, Riverside, in the release. Subtracting Mars from the equation significantly affected two other climate cycles, one of them 10,000 years long and the other 2.3 million years long. “When you remove Mars, those cycles vanish,” Kane said. “And if you increase the mass of Mars, they get shorter and shorter because Mars is having a bigger effect.”

These cycles “affect how circular or stretched Earth’s orbit is (its eccentricity), the timing of Earth’s closest approach to the Sun, and the tilt of its rotational axis (its obliquity),” said the release. This determines “how much sunlight different parts of the Earth receive, which in turn affects glacial cycles and long-term climate patterns,” including ice ages.

Mars’ positioning is what gives the lighter planet such a strong pull. “The closer it is to the sun, the more a planet becomes dominated by the sun’s gravity. Because Mars is further from the sun, it has a larger gravitational effect on Earth than it would if it was closer,” Kane said.

What are the implications?

Earth’s obliquity can “vary between 21.5 and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years,” said Space.com. This is considered to be quite stable compared to other planets. It was thought that the moon was responsible for the stability in Earth’s tilt, but “simulations show that Mars’ gravity also stabilizes Earth’s tilt,” which “potentially removes the necessity for a large moon to keep an Earth-like planet from wobbling.” This pattern could exist elsewhere, too, on other habitable exoplanets with similar properties to Earth. “When I look at other planetary systems and find an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone, the planets further out in the system could have an effect on that Earth-like planet’s climate,” Kane said.

Ice ages notably “changed Earth’s landscapes,” said Tech Explorist. They “shrank forests, spread grasslands and triggered major evolutionary changes, such as walking on two legs, making tools and working together.” It begs the question, said Kane: “What would humans and other animals even look like if Mars weren’t there?”

What happened

An Austrian cow named Veronika can use different parts of a wooden push broom to scratch herself, in the first verified instance of cattle using tools, cognitive biologists reported Monday in the journal Current Biology. The study adds cows to the “growing list of animals capable of using tools, an ability once thought to be a hallmark of humanity,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

“Making and using tools” was “thought to be uniquely human” until the 1960s, when primatologist Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee she named David Graybeard “dip a blade of grass into a termite mound to fish for insects to eat,” the Post said. “Since then, orcas, elephants, octopuses, crows, wolves, fish and ants have taken human beings down a peg or two by apparently wielding tools.”

Cattle “have not traditionally been celebrated for their smarts,” but perhaps they have been “underestimated,” The New York Times said. Unlike Veronika, a 13-year-old family pet, “very few of them get the opportunity to develop or demonstrate their cognitive abilities.” It’s probably not that Veronika is “like, the bovine Einstein,” study co-author Alice Auersperg of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna told the Times. But “she has the opportunity to interact with her environment and to learn about her environment.”

What next?

Other species of cattle have been caught on camera using branches to scratch themselves, so “our conclusion is that Veronika is not special,” said study co-author Antonio Osuna-Mascaró. Humans have been mainly interested in cattle for meat and milk, Auersperg told the Times. “Perhaps the absurd thing was not the absurdity of a cow using tools, but the absurdity of us never thinking that a cow might be intelligent.”

Will Uganda’s pop-star politician prevail? Is dodgy data undermining medical research? And what does a new app reveal about Chinese society?

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Spain and Portugal are taking a turn. The Iberian Peninsula sits on a boundary between two large tectonic plates that are being stressed by a variety of forces, and because of this, the peninsula is turning clockwise very slowly. A noticeable shift of the land is still far off, but understanding the dynamics can help us even today.

Turning point

Using earthquake records and satellite observations, scientists were able to match patterns of earthquake stress with estimates of strain on the Earth’s surface to determine that the Iberian Peninsula is rotating, according to a study published in Gondwana Research. The Earth’s crust is “fractured into portions that float and move on a nearly liquid and ductile lower mantle,” called tectonic plates, said El País. Their movement is “what causes continents to move closer together or farther apart, and seas to close or open,” as well as “tensions that are eventually released in the form of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.”

The Earth’s continents and landforms are always changing thanks to the tectonic plates. “Every year the Eurasian and African plates are moving 4–6 mm closer to each other,” said Asier Madarieta, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country and the leader of the study, in a statement. The boundary between the plates “behaves more like a zone of distributed stress, with different forces competing to shape the Earth’s crust,” rather than a “single clean fault line,” said Discover.

Specifically, in the western Mediterranean, “plate motion is dominated by a tectonic region known as the Alboran domain, which is drifting westward,” said Discover. This drives the formation of the Gibraltar Arc, a “curved mountain belt that links southern Spain’s Betic Cordillera with Morocco’s Rif Cordillera.” Because of this, different parts of the boundary behave differently. “Some areas are already dominated by direct collision between Eurasia and Africa, while others are still shaped by the westward motion of the Gibraltar Arc.” In turn, this “could affect the stresses being transmitted to the southwest of Iberia, by pushing Iberia from the southwest and making it rotate clockwise,” Madarieta said.

Full circle

We will not see the effects of the spinning peninsula for a long time. “From the viewpoint of our nanosecond-long human lives, the Iberian Peninsula remains unchanging, but this slow geologic work will take place over many millions of years,” said Popular Mechanics. Despite this, there is still great value in understanding how these tectonic plates move and change. Researchers “hope to develop a detailed overview of the geometry of these faults and folds and understand what potential earthquake threats may lurk there,” especially with the study’s “new view of the stress and deformation fields.”

Even though it is far in the future, the “very long-term consequences will be enormous,” said El País. The “Mediterranean will once again become a closed sea, Africa and Europe will be joined to the west and what is now southern Iberia will either face the Americas or will have merged with the area of Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa.” Going forward, the “data will increase exponentially,” said Madarieta. “We will be able to calculate the deformations in more detail, even in the places where we have little information available.”

A total solar eclipse, the likes of which will never be seen again this century, is coming to the skies on August 2, 2027. This eclipse will be longer than any other in the past three decades. While it won’t be visible in North America, it may be the right time to plan a trip in hopes of witnessing the natural phenomenon.

Total darkness

The upcoming astronomical spectacle has been deemed the “eclipse of the century” because it is supposed to be the longest total solar eclipse until after 2100. At its peak, its totality will “last 6 minutes and 23 seconds, close to the maximum possible on Earth,” said Forbes. This is “long enough to see the sun’s corona,” which is “visible to the naked eye only during totality in exquisite detail.” Comparatively, the total solar eclipse in April 2024 lasted 4 minutes and 28 seconds at its peak.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon completely covers the sun, plunging the world into brief darkness. This happens because the sun is “about 400 times as big as the moon, but it’s also about 400 times farther away from Earth,” said the BBC. That makes them appear to be the same size in the sky. The long length of the 2027 eclipse is “due to a perfect cosmic alignment,” said Forbes. This means the moon will be “near its closest point to Earth (perigee) and the sun near its farthest (aphelion), making the moon appear large enough to block the entire disk of the sun for a longer-than-usual time.”

The total solar eclipse is slated to begin in Morocco and southern Spain and “advance through Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, culminating in Yemen and the coast of Somalia,” said Wired. It will persist the longest in Egypt, specifically in Luxor and Aswan. Other parts of Europe, Asia and Africa will see a partial solar eclipse. Unfortunately, North America will largely not be able to see the eclipse, but a partial one may be visible from the northernmost parts.

Eyes on the skies

While 2027’s eclipse is prompting excitement, it is not the only upcoming eclipse of interest. An annular solar eclipse, which happens when the “moon can’t completely block the sun as it does during a total solar eclipse, and instead the sun’s fiery light surrounds the moon’s shadow, creating a ring of fire effect,” will occur over Antarctica on Feb. 17, 2026, said CNN. A “crescent-shaped partial solar eclipse will be visible in Antarctica, Africa and South America.”

Two lunar eclipses are also expected in 2026. A total lunar eclipse, which is when the moon passes through Earth’s shadow and makes it appear red, will “appear in the night sky for those in Asia, Australia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas on March 3,” while a “partial lunar eclipse will be visible for those in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Western Asia between August 27 to 28,” said CNN.

However, the next total solar eclipse is on Aug. 12, 2026, when a “path of totality will sweep across eastern Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain, with 1-2 minutes of totality occurring late in the day,” said Forbes. For Spain, this “will be the first of two total solar eclipses in under a year.” Solar eclipses should not be viewed with the naked eye; they should be viewed either indirectly or with protective glasses.

Spacecraft are assembled in specialized “cleanrooms” that are designed to avoid contamination from dust and microorganisms. But bacteria called extremophiles have genetic components that allow them to survive in extreme environments, and 26 of them have been found at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The room where it happens

NASA’s cleanrooms have “stringent controls such as regulated airflow, temperature management and rigorous cleaning,” said a study published in the journal Microbiome. Despite this, “resilient microorganisms can persist in these environments, posing potential risks for space missions.” Twenty-six of such persistent microbes were found at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, where NASA assembled its Phoenix Mars Lander.

These 26 were previously unknown bacteria that “resist cleaning chemicals and cling to sterile surfaces by producing sticky films,” said an article in Nature. Many also have “genes that protect their DNA from radiation damage, while some have genes that help control cell repair under oxidative stress.” One of the bacteria, Tersicoccus phoenicis, is capable of playing dead to survive starvation and other stressors. While dormant, it “can’t be detected by the usual method of swabbing surfaces and checking which bacteria grow in culture from the swabs,” said Scientific American. That means it “could theoretically sneak aboard spacecraft that are supposed to be free of Earth contaminants.”

Contrary to popular belief, “cleanrooms don't contain ‘no life,’” said study co-author Alexandre Rosado to Live Science. “Our results show these new species are usually rare but can be found, which fits with long-term, low-level persistence in cleanrooms.” Many of these organisms are extremophiles, given their ability to survive and thrive in normally inhospitable environments. Now, scientists will be studying these organisms and what their effect on space travel might be.

Young, scrappy and hungry

These bacteria are a double-edged sword. The findings “not only raise important considerations for planetary protection but also open the door for biotechnological innovation,” said Junia Schultz, the first author of the study, in a statement. “Identifying these unusually hardy organisms and studying their survival strategies matters,” said Live Science. “Any microbe capable of slipping through standard cleanroom controls could also evade the planetary-protection safeguards meant to prevent Earth life from contaminating other worlds.”

In the case of T. phoenicis, a fresh domain like Mars “could offer a new, nutrient-rich environment to the hibernating microbes,” said Scientific American. “Astronauts trying to survive on the red planet would need to grow food, and the sugars and nutrients involved could revive the bacteria.”

The genes in these bacteria could also “lead to new biotechnologies that benefit food preservation and medicine,” said the statement. For example, if scientists can prevent bacteria like T. phoenicis from becoming dormant, they may become “easier to eliminate with antibiotics or sterilization techniques,” said the University of Houston. In addition, the bacteria could “serve as benchmark organisms for evaluating spacecraft decontamination strategies before launch, offering a unique way to validate how thoroughly a craft is sterilized,” said Daily Galaxy.

It’s been a long time coming. No human has ventured into deep space since the final Apollo mission in 1972, but that is about to change. Four astronauts – three Americans and a Canadian – will soon be heading back to the Moon as part of Nasa’s Artemis II programme, possibly as early as 6 February and “no later than April”, according to the space agency. While they won’t land on our rocky satellite during the 10-day mission, they will pass just a few thousand miles from it, in a mission that promises to unlock valuable lessons for future missions – to the Moon and beyond.

What is the Artemis programme?

Artemis began in 2017. Nasa’s aim was to return astronauts to the Moon and ultimately establish a permanent lunar base.

In November 2022, Artemis’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket – the most powerful rocket Nasa has built – and its Orion capsule were launched on a 25-day crewless test flight, Artemis I, that circled the Moon only 80 miles from its surface.

Artemis II was originally scheduled to launch between 2019 and 2021 but delays kept pushing it back. In September last year, Nasa was finally able to say that the SLS rocket was “ready to fly crew”, and in November the Orion capsule was “stacked atop the rocket for a final series of tests”, said New Scientist.

What is Artemis II’s mission?

The four astronauts will lift off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and spend the first two days orbiting the Earth, testing their life-support systems. Then the Orion capsule will fire up its main thruster and shoot off towards the Moon on its 240,000-mile, four-day journey. It will follow a figure-of-eight path, looping around the far side of the Moon, before beginning the four-day return trip and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

Orion’s heat shield will be put to the “ultimate test”, said CNN, having suffered “abnormal wear and tear” on the Artemis I mission. Nasa then spent a year trying to iron out the problems amid much “controversy and criticism”. “We feel very confident that we are going to be able to bring our crew back safely for Artemis II,” said Nasa’s Lakiesha Hawkins.

Three of the four astronauts are Nasa’s own – Reid Wiseman, the commander of the mission, Victor Glover and Christina Koch – the latter of whom would be the first woman to fly to the Moon. They have all been to space once before. The fourth member of the crew, Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will be on his maiden flight.

As well as testing the various systems on board, the crew will be test subjects themselves, helping Nasa understand the effects that space travel has on their cognition, sleep, stress, immune responses and cardiovascular health. Koch spoke of their excitement about the historic experience. “Doing something we haven’t done in over 50 years, is just absolutely phenomenal.”

What’s the next goal?

If all goes well, then Artemis III will be next. Slated for 2027, it would be the first Moon landing since 1972 and the first chance for a human to set foot on the Moon since Eugene Cernan from Apollo 17. Nasa originally planned for the crew of Artemis III to include a woman and a person of colour to set moonwalk firsts, but the plans have been dropped amid the Trump administration’s clampdown on diversity initiatives.

Artemis III will use SpaceX’s Starship lander to ferry the crew to the lunar surface, but Elon Musk’s company has been having problems with its launch vehicle and spacecraft, putting the 2027 date in doubt.

Further afield, in time and space, is the prospect of a Mars mission. The Artemis programme “will lay the groundwork for future missions to the lunar surface and to Mars”, said Nasa’s Sean Duffy.

In a zesty new discovery, scientists have unearthed a strange lemon-shaped exoplanet. It is unlike one we have seen before, challenging many of the previously held assumptions about planetary formations and atmospheres.

When space gives you lemons

The exoplanet, which has been called PSR J2322-2650b, was found using NASA’s James Webb telescope. It has properties that are in “stark contrast to every known exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star,” said a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. PSR J2322-2650b “blurs the line between planets and stars,” and “how the planet came to be is a mystery,” said a release by the University of Chicago.

The exoplanet is about the mass of Jupiter and is “known to orbit a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star,” said NASA. A pulsar “emits beams of electromagnetic radiation at regular intervals typically ranging from milliseconds to seconds” that can “only be seen when they are pointing directly toward Earth, much like beams from a lighthouse.” They are essentially highly dense remnants of dead stars left behind after they explode in a supernova.

“The planet orbits a star that's completely bizarre — the mass of the sun, but the size of a city,” said Michael Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and a coauthor of the study, in the release. PSR J2322-2650b is extraordinarily close to its star at just 1 million miles away, compared to the Earth’s distance from the sun, which is about 100 million miles.

The tight orbit means that the exoplanet takes only 7.8 hours to go around its star. Also, because PSR J2322-2650b is “big enough and close enough to its pulsar host, the star’s gravity is pulling the planet into a lemon shape,” said Scientific American.

What has interested scientists most is the planet’s atmosphere, which “nobody has ever seen before,” said Zhang. “Instead of finding the normal molecules we expect to see on an exoplanet, like water, methane and carbon dioxide, we saw molecular carbon, specifically C3 and C2,” said Zhang.

PSR J2322-2650b’s atmosphere is “dominated by helium and carbon and likely has clouds of carbon soot that condense to create diamonds that rain down onto the planet,” said Space.com (a sister site of The Week). “Everywhere in the universe, where there’s carbon, there tends to be nitrogen and oxygen,” Zhang said to Scientific American.

Find how they are made

All these cosmic anomalies raise questions as to how PSR J2322-2650b formed in the first place. While designated as an exoplanet, some theorize that the planet is “itself the stripped remains of a former star” because of its strange composition, said Scientific American. But “that doesn’t solve the missing oxygen and nitrogen mystery.”

In this case, the star and exoplanet together can be called a “black widow system,” which is a “rare type of double system where a rapidly spinning pulsar is paired with a small, low-mass stellar companion,” said NASA. In it, the pulsar “erodes and devours” the companion with its “jets of radiation,” said Space.com.

If the planet is truly a black widow system, we may have witnessed the “very last moments” with PSR J2322-2650b “on the cusp of being entirely consumed,” said The New York Times. There is also a chance that it is something different altogether. “Did this thing form like a normal planet? No, because the composition is entirely different,” said Zhang. “Did it form by stripping the outside of a star, like ‘normal’ black widow systems are formed? Probably not, because nuclear physics does not make pure carbon.”

The cosmos has taken up its fair share of space in the news this year. Here are some of the major stories from beyond Earth that happened during 2025.

All-women space trip

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin completed its first mission with an all-women crew, including entrepreneur and Bezos’s wife, Lauren Sánchez, former NASA scientist Amanda Nguyen, singer Katy Perry, TV presenter Gayle King, former NASA scientist Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn. The trip lasted a whopping 11 minutes, sending the women to Earth’s lower orbit and back.

The trip was the subject of widespread controversy, with many viewing the mission as unnecessary and excessive. “As stupid as I thought it would be, it was even stupider,” said Heather Schwedel for Slate. Others viewed it as inspirational. “I’m not going to let you steal our joy,” said King. “Most people are really excited and cheering us on and realize what this mission means to young women, young girls and boys, too.”

Deep space comet

The 3I/ATLAS comet was first discovered in July and was “only the third interstellar object ever recorded to pass through Earth’s solar system from another star,” said Al Jazeera. The comet is thought to have been ejected from a giant exoplanet and traversed the Milky Way for billions of years. Because of this, scientists have been jumping at the opportunity to study it.

The comet was the closest it has ever been to Earth during July, providing prime viewing opportunities. Astronomers can “glean information about celestial bodies by observing the light reflected off them with telescopes,” said Darryl Z. Seligman, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University, at Space.com. “When 3I/ATLAS is closest to the Earth, all the features that we are looking for will be easier to detect with our telescopes.” Specifically, scientists can “look up close and learn about how planet formation in exoplanetary systems is similar or different to how it unfolded in our solar system.”

Alien debate

Scientists claimed to have found signs of life on a planet called K2-18b, which orbits a star 120 light-years from Earth, according to a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in April. Analysis of the exoplanet showed an abundance of dimethyl sulfide, which is a “molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae,” said The New York Times.

However, following the study’s release, the results were questioned and three separate analyses were unable to find any evidence of life on K2-18b. The “claim just absolutely vanishes,” said Luis Welbanks, an astronomer at Arizona State University and an author of one of the studies, to the Times.

Back to Earth

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were trapped in space for 286 days before finally returning to the ground in March. The two spent nine months in the International Space Station for a mission that was only supposed to last eight days.

When they first blasted off in June of 2024, the “Boeing Starliner capsule they rode on for its first crewed test flight experienced thruster failures and helium leaks following takeoff,” which made the “game plan surrounding their return to Earth” suddenly shift, said E! News. After finally making it back to Earth, the astronauts had to readjust to life. “By following astronauts like Butch and Suni before, during and after their missions, we can track how the human body responds to the extreme conditions of space,” said Rachael Seidler, a leading expert in spaceflight-associated health changes, in a statement.

New moons

Scientists discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, bringing the planet’s total to 274. Many of these moons are “only a few miles across,” said The New York Times. This is “small compared with our moon, which is 2,159 miles across.”

But size does not matter when it comes to moon classifications. If they have “trackable orbits around their parent body, the scientists who catalog objects in the solar system consider them to be moons,” said the Times. Saturn having so many moons is a point of interest because it indicates “multiple dramatic collisions in space.” To learn more about them, scientists will need to use an extremely powerful telescope or even a spacecraft to get a closer look.

Some people may be dreaming of a white Christmas when they wake up on Dec. 25, but for many parts of the world, climate change could soon make this a rare event. And snowfall is not the only part of the holiday that could be affected by extreme weather patterns, as everything from Christmas tree affordability to the prevalence of reindeer could be impacted.

How is holiday weather changing?

Climate change is “causing temperatures to rise across the country, and it’s impacting precipitation patterns,” said Time. In the last 75 years, temperatures in December have “warmed three to five degrees” nationwide, David Robinson, a New Jersey climatologist and Rutgers University professor, said to Time.

This small change in the global temperature “could mean the difference between snow and rain” on Christmas Day, said Time. And such a pattern has already been seen for years. From 2003 to 2024, the “average Christmas morning snow cover blanketed just 36% of the contiguous U.S. states,” according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data cited by Time, though this also factors in areas of the country like southern California, where it rarely snows.

A person’s memory of Christmastime may also play into the phenomenon, whether this frosty recollection is accurate or not. People “tend to remember that one snowy Christmas, and they forget that it was surrounded by five Christmases that weren’t,” Robinson said to Time. This could be contributing to some of the skewed memories of past Christmases.

What else is impacted?

While the drive to the store for Christmas gifts may not be covered in snow, once shoppers arrive, they may be even more disappointed. Many of the “most lucrative Christmas commodities are grown” in areas that are being transformed by climate change, said Mother Jones. In African countries over the past few years, plummeting cacao yields altered the production of cocoa, which goes into “all sorts of holiday classics — from yule log cakes to marshmallow-topped cocoa.” This “points to a new normal in a climate-driven shift,” said Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.

People’s Christmas trees may look different in future years too, as “modern-day circumstances are slowly transforming the tree-farming industry,” said CBC News. Beyond the weather shifting growing conditions for trees, the “high cost of land is also having an impact on the industry,” Kelsey Leonard, the founder and director of the Christmas Tree Lab at Canada’s University of Waterloo, said to CBC News. People may think plastic trees are the solution, but their environmental repercussions are troublesome. Many “artificial trees are some type of plastic by-product, which is a product of fossil fuel consumption,” said Leonard.

Not even classic Christmas characters like Rudolph will be able to avoid the changing climate; global warming could cause a 50% decline in the global reindeer population by the end of the 21st century, according to a study in the journal Science. Population decline could be particularly bad in North America, where “projected losses are expected to exceed 80%.” This may be catastrophic for the only species of deer “adapted to year-round occupancy of the Arctic.”

The world’s supply of glacial ice is quickly approaching an alarming milestone, as the planet continues heating to disruptive new heights. In a striking study published this week in Nature Climate Change, researchers modeling multiple warming scenarios predict the number of glaciers that disappear annually is set to dramatically increase in the coming decades.

The paper introduces the concept of “peak glacier extinction,” defined by researchers as the “year in which the largest number of glaciers is projected to disappear between now and the end of the century.” Peak glacier extinction is the point when anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 glaciers will disappear annually. With the Alps leading our planet’s glacial disappearing act, the next few years may be a turning point for much of Earth’s ice.

‘We will lose a lot of glaciers’

Although typical glacier studies focus on “mass and area loss,” the newly published research focuses on disappearances of “individual glaciers” — a trend that “directly threatens culturally, spiritually and touristically significant landscapes,” the study’s authors said. The number of individual glaciers is a “less clearly defined metric” that can be “influenced by observational limitations,” but tracking individual disappearances is “important from touristic, cultural and spiritual perspectives.”

The study’s authors used data on 200,000 glaciers obtained from a “database of outlines derived from satellite images” and applied “three global glacier models” to test the ranges under “different heating scenarios,” The Guardian said. Areas featuring the “smallest and fastest-melting glaciers” are “most vulnerable,” unsurprisingly, with about 3,200 glaciers in central Europe set to shrink by 87% by the coming century “even if global temperature rise is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Regions with “larger glaciers,” such as Greenland and around the South Pole, would likely experience peak glacier disappearance “later in the century,” ABC News said. “The biggest findings,” the lead researcher and ETH Zurich glaciologist Lander Van Tricht said to the network, “are that we will lose a lot of glaciers.”

‘Point of no return’ for global glaciers

Whether or not we will be “witnessing the deaths of 2,000 or 4,000 glaciers” annually depends on “how much is done to rein in global heating,” CNN said. A mere 20% of global glaciers are expected to exist in 2100 “under 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, compared to around 50% at 1.5 degrees.” At 4 degrees the world can expect a “nearly complete loss.”

The study shows we are at a “point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California at Irvine, to CNN. “Reforming a glacier would take decades if not centuries.” The researchers behind the study hope their paper, along with an accompanying database showing the “projected survival rate of each of the world’s 211,000 glaciers,” will help “assess climate impacts on local economies and ecosystems,” Politico said. Even for smaller, remote glaciers that may not affect water-levels or resources, a disappearance could “have a huge importance for tourism, for example,” Van Tricht said to Politico. “Every individual glacier can matter.”

A man has been declared HIV-free, in a case that “upends our understanding of what’s required” for a cure, according to The New Scientist. He was the seventh patient found to be clear of the virus after receiving a stem cell transplant – and, significantly, the second of the seven to receive stem cells that were not actually HIV-resistant. If HIV-resistant cells aren’t necessary to destroy the virus, then scientists have greater options in their search for an effective but less risky cure.

And yet, just as medics make such leaps forward in HIV/Aids treatment, access to both preventive care and medicine for infected patients “remains far from universal”, said The Guardian. Foreign aid cuts have shaken “to its core” the “complex eco-system that sustains HIV services in dozens of low to middle-income countries”.

How close are we to a cure?

The signs are increasingly positive. In addition to the stem-cell study, research released this week highlights another of “the paths scientists are pursuing towards finding an HIV cure”, said The Washington Post. The study, published in Nature, “shows a glimmer of hope” for controlling HIV without the current daily regimen of pills. A small group of patients were given a “experimental immunotherapies” and then taken off their pills; the majority were able to keep the virus “at a low level for months” afterwards.

The standard daily antiretroviral therapy has had a “transformative” effect on managing HIV since its nadir of the 1980s. It works by preventing the virus from multiplying in the body. For many people with HIV, their “viral load” becomes so low as to be undetectable, hugely lowering the risk of them transmitting the virus to somebody else. But, although antiretrovirals can keep the disease in check, it is not a cure.

How have aid cuts impacted HIV/Aids treatment?

Multiple nations are cutting foreign aid funding, on which many lower-income countries depend to deliver health services. For 2025, “external health aid” is expected to have dropped by 30% to 40%, compared with 2023, said the World Health Organisation. “The impact of a sudden acceleration of cuts” to international HIV funding has had a “devastating” impact in the fight against the disease, said a UNAids report published, to mark World Aids Day, on 1 December.

The drop in access to PrEP, a medication that reduces the risk of getting HIV when taken by people at high risk of exposure to the virus, has been “substantial”, said the report: 2.5 million people who used PrEP in 2024 lost access to it in 2025. The number of people treated with PrEP has fallen by 64% in Burundi, 31% in Uganda and 21% in Vietnam. Such failure to meet 2030 global HIV targets could see an additional 3.3 million new HIV infections between 2025 and 2030.

The massive cuts to global health spending made by the US, in particular, has “disrupted HIV/Aids care in many parts of the world”, said NPR. Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term and took an “America First approach”, his administration has slashed international aid programmes. This year was the first year that the US did not formally commemorate World Aids Day.

Hannah Fry is “surely the UK’s leading populariser of science”, said The i Paper. Recently named co-host of “The Rest is Science”, the latest podcast in Gary Lineker’s hit The Rest Is… franchise, Fry is a “natural communicator” with a “winning fusion of darting intelligence, sly humour, electric enthusiasm and a touch of cheerful glamour”.

The maths professor is “like the teacher you wish you’d had” – someone who makes “challenging subjects feel like shared adventures”.

‘Goody two shoes’

Growing up in a working-class family in Hertfordshire, with a factory worker father and her housewife mother, “I wasn’t really going out”, dating, drinking, or “hanging out in the park at ill-advised hours”, Fry told The i Paper. Instead, I was “learning how to do Rubik’s Cubes”, juggle and “genuinely just reading”.

“My whole life I’ve been a goody two shoes,” she told The Guardian. No detentions, no breaking the law. My worst habit is being “consistently and reliably late for everything. I strongly suspect it’s because I’m very optimistic – I think I can get ready quicker than I ever can.”

When she arrived at UCL to study mathematics, Fry was “one of the people who grew up in the countryside and whose parents were really strict and they Lose. Their. Minds”, said The i Paper. She tried stand-up comedy at university, then studied for a PhD in fluid dynamics so that she could work in Formula 1. But she found the motor racing industry “awful” and broke into broadcasting through a TED talk on the mathematics of love.

‘Electric enthusiasm’

When she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2021 at the age of 36, she opted for a radical hysterectomy. The strain “precipitated the amicable end of her marriage”, but she “dealt with it all by intimately tracking” the experience in a BBC Two documentary, “Making Sense of Cancer with Hannah Fry”. She’s also written a book: “Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine”.

She is a regular guest host on “Have I Got News for You” and co-hosts BBC Radio 4’s “Curious Cases” podcast with comedian Dara Ó Briain. In her National Geographic TV series “The Infinite Explorer”, Fry visits countries all over the world – it was “the chance of a lifetime”, she told Metro. She was recently appointed the University of Cambridge’s first professor of the public understanding of mathematics.

There have been mixed reviews for her performance on “The Rest Is Science”. Fry’s “fact-filled banter needs structure”, said The Times, whereas The Telegraph thought the opening episode was “a delight”.

The biological world is always expanding as research is constantly being done. Because of this, many findings often fall under the radar despite having the potential to change the world. Here are some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in biology from the past year.

Slowing Huntington’s disease

Scientists have found a way to slow the progress of Huntington’s disease, a deadly neurodegenerative disorder, by 75%. The disease is largely hereditary and causes a gradual decline in mental and physical functions. Until now, there have been very minimal treatment options.

The new gene therapy treatment, called AMT-130, is “delivered deep into the brain during an eight- to 10-hour surgery,” said Scientific American. A “safe virus” that has been genetically altered to contain a specific DNA sequence is “infused,” where it “acts like a microscopic postman” by “delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells,” said the BBC. The treatment “turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death.” AMT-130 is still in clinical trials and not yet widely available. “We’ve had so many failures, and there’s been a lot of heartbreak over many years in this community,” neurologist Victor Sung said to Scientific American. “So to have something that at least really appears to be having [an] impact is really significant.”

Understanding cell mechanisms

Researchers may be able to see what proteins are doing inside cells more accurately, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The new method uses “natural proteins produced by a cell as tiny sensors to report on their environment and interactions,” said an article by Cornell University. It does so “without traditional invasive techniques that could interfere with a cell’s normal biology and skew research results.” The scientists were able to track flavoproteins, which are in many organisms and contain magnetic properties that can be detected using a technique called electron spin resonance spectroscopy.

Being able to understand the cell’s internal functions is “mainly useful for understanding new biological mechanisms, such as those that could be involved in disease states like cancer or during infection,” Brian Crane, a professor in Cornell’s Department of Chemistry and the author of the study, said in the article. “One could conceivably track the assembly of a virus using this method to understand how and where its components are built within cells.”

Kangaroo IVF

Scientists, in a hopping success, were able to produce the world’s first kangaroo embryo using IVF. This could be a significant step toward protecting endangered species in Australia. The researchers “assessed how kangaroo eggs and sperm developed in a laboratory, before injecting a single sperm directly into a mature egg, using a technique known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” said CNN.

While the eastern grey kangaroo is not endangered, other marsupial species are. “Our ultimate goal is to support the preservation of endangered marsupial species like koalas, Tasmanian devils, northern hairy-nosed wombats and Leadbeater’s possums,” Andres Gambini, who led the research, said to CNN. Australia has a higher extinction rate than any other continent on Earth in recent history, largely because many species are endemic to the region.

Oldest microbial DNA

Researchers “sequenced the DNA of various mammoths — including 440 that had never been sequenced or published before,” as well as “identified DNA from 310 different microbes living on or in the animals’ tissues,” said Smithsonian Magazine. The findings were published in the journal Cell.

While much of the bacteria appeared after the mammoths’ deaths, the scientists also “identified six ‘host-associated’ microbial groups that likely colonized the mammoths when they were still alive” over one million years ago. Host microbes may have “shaped how these Ice Age herbivores digested food, resisted infections and coped with shifting climates,” said Earth.com. “The same methods could be applied to other frozen or well-preserved remains, from ancient horses to extinct cave bears.”

Virtual scientists

Future research could be done in a virtual lab, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Researchers trained AI large language models (LLM) to “mimic top-tier scientists in the same way that they think critically about a problem, research certain questions, pose different solutions based on a given area of expertise and bounce ideas off one another to develop a hypothesis worth testing,” said Stanford Medicine. This essentially led to the creation of a virtual lab, which “consists of an LLM principal investigator agent guiding a team of LLM scientist agents through a series of research meetings, with a human researcher providing high-level feedback,” said the study.

The researchers then had the “lab” devise a new vaccine basis for Covid-19. It created a method using nanobodies that was potentially viable. These types of labs could allow for research to be done quickly, especially when done in collaboration with humans. “Good science happens when we have deep, interdisciplinary collaborations where people from different backgrounds work together, and often that’s one of the main bottlenecks and challenging parts of research,” said James Zou, an associate professor of biomedical data science and lead author of the study.

What happened

Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn. Unlike the orbital rocket’s inaugural launch in January, its booster successfully touched down on Blue Origin’s landing barge, a feat previously accomplished only by Elon Musk’s rival aerospace company SpaceX.

Who said what

New Glenn’s flight “was a complete success,” The Associated Press said, and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos appeared “ecstatic” as the booster landed upright. That was a “major step forward” in the company’s “bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets,” said Scientific American. Reusing boosters cuts costs and allows for more frequent launches.

Blue Origin, founded in 2000, “has long been seen as sluggish and disappointing when compared with SpaceX,” The New York Times said. But with a few more successes, that perception “could totally flip pretty quickly,” University of Central Florida space commercialization expert Greg Autry told the newspaper. SpaceX has never sent anything to Mars, and if Blue Origin can “land something on the moon successfully in the first half of next year, then they can even claim to be ahead of SpaceX in some ways.”

What next?

The Escapade mission’s satellites, named Blue and Gold, are scheduled to start orbiting Mars in 2027 to “study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and take other readings” that “could help researchers understand why the planet lost its atmosphere and inform future crewed missions,” The Wall Street Journal said. Blue Origin’s ambitious launch schedule for next year includes sending a prototype lunar lander to the moon.

The government has set out a plan to phase out scientific experimentation on live animals in all but the most exceptional situations.

New funding will be given to researchers to support a pivot towards the use of artificial intelligence and other innovative methods to gradually replace the controversial use of animals in laboratories.

How many animals are used in experiments?

There were 2.64 million animal tests in Britain in 2024, according to the Home Office. Some 488,255 animals were used in experiments that caused them “either moderate or severe pain and suffering”. The majority of tests took place on mice, fish, birds or rats, but there were 2,646 experiments on dogs and a further 1,936 on monkeys.

What is the government’s plan?

Under the new plan unveiled by Science Minister Lord Vallance, animal testing will be phased out for “some major safety tests” by the end of this year, and the use of dogs and non-human primates in tests for human medicines will be “cut by at least 35% by 2030”, said the BBC.

The “comprehensive roadmap” will support researchers to “seize on new and developing opportunities” to replace animal tests, said the government.

Ministers will encourage researchers to use alternative methods such as “organ-on-a-chip systems”, which are small devices that “mimic how human organs work using real human cells”. There will be increased use of AI and also os “3D bio-printed tissues” to replicate human tissue samples for testing.

But the new strategy “recognises that phasing out the use of animals in science” can only happen where “reliable and effective alternative methods, with the same level of safety for human exposure”, can replace them.

What do experts say?

Welcoming the strategy, the RSPCA said it will “help UK scientists to embrace the high quality, ethical science needed in a rapidly changing world”. By “accelerating the replacement of animals”, it “will be positive news for animals, science and society”.

Some scientists, including Professor Frances Balkwill, of the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University, London, believe that “reaching ‘near zero’ tests on animals will be extremely difficult”, said the BBC. “These non-animal methods will never replace the complexity that we can see when we have a tumour growing in a whole organism, such as a mouse.”

Asked about the prospect of a complete ban, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Francis Crick Institute in London, told The Telegraph it would be “disastrous”.

Joseph Wright of Derby is a painter “all too often underserved in accounts of British art”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Born in Derby in 1734, he trained in London but returned to the Midlands to capitalise on the money flowing into the region in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

A “prodigiously gifted” artist, he developed a style inspired by Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro technique, painting scenes that blended “heightened realism” with “powerful contrasts of light and shadow”, as well as portraits and landscapes that flattered the local industrial elite and their domains. Yet while several of his paintings have become renowned as “seminal” images of the British Enlightenment, he is – possibly on account of the “parochial suffix” attached to his name – often remembered as “a jobbing provincial painter”. This show at the National Gallery seeks to correct that assumption. It brings together many of his best-known works to reclaim him as one of the great British artists of the 18th century, confounding expectations at every turn while creating several bona fide masterpieces. It is “revelatory”.

At the show’s heart are two “spectacular” paintings, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. The first, the National Gallery’s “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” (1768), is “an electrifying, life-and-death composition”, depicting a white cockatoo placed within a glass vessel. A red-robed scientist is seen drawing the oxygen from the contraption as the creature thrashes around, fighting for survival. The second is “A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery” (1766), normally on display in Derby. It’s “just as spectacular”, presenting “an impresario-cum-philosopher with flowing grey locks” performing a scientific demonstration with a clockwork model of the solar system. Both works have long been seen as archetypal images of the Age of Reason. Yet, as the wall texts remind us, they may not be “entirely in sync with it”. While apparently championing rationality, they are “animated by childish wonder as much as intellectual enquiry”, and they show off Wright’s virtuosic skill at replicating artificial illumination.

Wright was certainly interested in science and technology, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. But the paintings he made on these subjects make humanity’s new knowledge look terrifying. One girl hides her face from the air-pump experiment, too appalled to look. “This is meant to be a rational exposition of the vacuum, but has become a nightmarish theatre of science, power, cruelty and death.” Wright is perhaps better understood as “the first gothic artist”, using his mastery of light and shade to create truly uncanny pictures. “A Philosopher by Lamplight” (1769), for instance, sees two travellers crossing a moonlit stream to find an old hermit looking at a skeleton, trying to discover what happens when we die. “The bloodcurdling secret at the heart of these paintings is scientific not supernatural.”

National Gallery, London WC2. Until 10 May

The expansion of the universe may be slowing down rather than accelerating, according to a new study that challenges the Nobel Prize-winning theory of dark energy.

“If confirmed, this would have profound implications for the fate of the universe,” said The Guardian. The study raises the possibility that “rather than expanding for ever, the universe could ultimately enter a reverse Big Bang scenario known as the Big Crunch”.

What is happening?

Dark energy is already “mysterious and baffling” and the new findings from a team at Yonsei University in South Korea suggest that this force “may not be driving galaxies apart at an accelerating rate any more”, said Space.com. Instead, researchers propose, it is weakening over time.

In the 1990s, astronomers made the first estimates of the expansion of the universe by studying exploding stars, known as type 1a supernovas. The distant supernovas were dimmer than expected, leading past studies to conclude that the expansion of the universe had sped up and was continuing to accelerate.

But by estimating the ages of 300 host galaxies, the latest study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, concluded that there are variations in the properties of stars in the early universe that mean they produce, on average, fainter supernovas. So there is still an expanding universe, but, the findings suggest, the expansion has slowed down.

Who said what?

There was a “key assumption” that “turned out to be incorrect”, said Professor Young-Wook Lee, one of the study’s authors. “It’s like doing up a shirt with the first button fastened incorrectly.”

But some experts question the new findings. The study is “definitely interesting” and “very provocative”, but it “may well be wrong”, said Professor Carlos Frenk, a cosmologist at the University of Durham.

Although the findings are “likely to be greeted with heavy scepticism”, said The Guardian, the “influential” Desi consortium reached a similar conclusion earlier this year, so “a fierce debate is opening up in cosmology” over the nature of dark energy and the “probable fate” of the universe.

What does this mean for the universe?

If the findings are confirmed the implications are profound: it could “open an entirely new chapter” in the “quest” to “understand the past and future of the universe”, said Phys.org.

The study could “revolutionise” our understanding of the universe, said Space.com, and “offer clues about how our cosmos will end”, because if dark energy has “lost the battle against gravity”, the next step could be “the contraction of space”. That would suggest the universe will end in a ”Big Crunch” – effectively the Big Bang in reverse.

About 60 years ago, Russian physicist Lev Artsimovich said nuclear fusion “will be ready when society needs it”.

For decades, scientists have tried to recreate the fusion reaction that powers the sun, hoping to produce potentially unlimited clean energy. But recent advances in science and technology, and funding from tech companies desperate to power the artificial intelligence boom, now make fusion a “realistic option”, said Fortune.

The UK has achieved a “major breakthrough for fusion energy research”, the UK Atomic Energy Authority announced last week. Researchers there stabilised the fusion process in a spherical tokamak – a more compact fusion machine than those used by most researchers – for the first time. This is a “significant step forward”.

What is fusion?

When most people think of nuclear power, they are thinking of nuclear fission. Fission creates energy by splitting heavy atoms – but fusion creates energy by fusing light atoms together.

In fusion, hydrogen isotopes are heated to extremely high temperatures until they form plasma – superheated, electrically charged gas. The atoms’ nuclei then have enough energy to overcome their repulsion and fuse together, forming helium.

In the process, they lose a small amount of mass, which is converted into a massive amount of energy. It’s the same reaction that powers the stars.

Why is it so attractive?

Fusion promises a “virtually limitless, carbon-free source of energy”, said The Times. It is the “holy grail of energy”, nuclear physicist Annie Kritcher told Fortune.

Scientists estimate that one glass of fusion fuel could produce enough energy to power a home for more than 800 years, according to the Financial Times. Unlike fission, it produces no long-lived radioactive waste, and couldn’t cause a runaway nuclear accident like Chernobyl.

“If you know how to build a fusion power plant, you can have unlimited energy anywhere and forever,” said Bill Gates on his Gates Notes website this month. Nuclear fusion could not only meet the soaring global energy demand, but some scientists suggest it could also power a carbon-capture system that could remove CO2 from the atmosphere, helping to reverse climate change.

Why is fusion so difficult to recreate?

Stars can fuse hydrogen because their massive gravity creates extreme pressure and heat in their core. On Earth, recreating those conditions remains one of science’s toughest – and most expensive – challenges.

British scientists first achieved nuclear fusion in 1934, using a particle accelerator, but commercial fusion “remained a distant dream”, said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Bulletin magazine. Achieving controlled fusion, the kind that could one day power a reactor, remained elusive. To sustain fusion, hydrogen isotopes must be heated to tens of millions of degrees until they form plasma. This is so hot, hotter than the surface of the Sun, that it can’t touch any solid surface; it must be contained by powerful magnetic fields or using laser pulses.

Soviet physicists developed the first fusion machine in the 1950s, known as a tokamak – short for a Russian acronym that translates as “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”. These doughnut-shaped vacuum chambers use powerful magnets to spin and heat the hydrogen, then trap the plasma while it can fuse and release energy.

But for 70 years, no experiment produced more energy from fusion than was put into the fuel. Then, in 2022, scientists at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a landmark breakthrough: their reaction released more energy than the process consumed. It was the “Wright brothers’ moment”, said Kritcher, the project’s designer.

So when might we see fusion deliver power to the grid?

The world’s biggest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is under way in France. It’s a publicly funded project backed by 33 countries, including China, Russia and the US – but it has “suffered multiple delays and setbacks” and isn’t expected online before 2035, said the B1M. It’s also “basically a big experiment” to show how feasible fusion is at scale: it won’t generate electricity.

But the private sector fusion race is “heating up”, said the FT. Tech companies are pouring money into fusion start-ups, hoping for energy to power their data centres. Fusion companies have also received huge private investment – “largely from billionaires” like OpenAI’s Sam Altman – and public funding.

And they are making fast progress. One start-up in the US, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is building a nuclear fusion power plant it aims to turn on in 2027. It is hoped that it will supply electricity to the grid in the early 2030s, which has never been done before. Many private and state-backed Chinese enterprises are also “racing to build a commercial fusion reactor by 2035 or sooner”, said the South China Morning Post.

But even if the most ambitious timelines are achieved, fusion power plants are not likely to be widespread until at least the 2040s.

What happened

Dinosaurs appear to have been thriving before a giant asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, paleontologists working in New Mexico said Thursday in the journal Science. Experts have long debated whether the asteroid was the final blow to a dinosaur population already in decline or if it cut short a flourishing reptilian dynasty.

Who said what

Using “two high-tech dating techniques” on fossil beds in northwest New Mexico’s Ojo Alamo Formation, the paleontologists determined that a wide range of dinosaur species lived in the area within 380,000 years of the mass extinction event, a “blink of the eye in the geological record,” The Washington Post said. That implies “dinosaurs were still going strong up to the moment the asteroid hit,” not “gradually wasting away to extinction as many paleontologists once believed,” said study coauthor Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

Researchers not involved in the study had mixed responses. The “new evidence” is “very exciting,” but “this is just one location, not a representation of the complexity of dinosaur faunas at the time,” said University of Bristol paleontologist Mike Benton. Philip Mannion at University College London told The New York Times that the “robust” analysis showed that if not for the asteroid, “the Age of Dinosaurs would almost certainly have continued for much longer and might even still be the case today.”

What next?

Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, but “accurately dating them can be a challenge,” The Associated Press said. “More work needs to be done to date those sections,” said study coauthor Dan Peppe at Baylor University. But so far, “it seems like the same pattern that we’re seeing in North America is holding up globally.”

“We’re about to have an internet of animals, and that’s super exciting.”

So said Martin Wikelski, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, on BBC Science Focus. Wikelski was referring to a programme he founded, the International Co-operation for Animal Research Using Space (Icarus).

The “internet of animals” he envisages is a system that monitors animals and collates the data on a freely accessible platform. This month Icarus launches the first of a series of satellites into space that hope to track 100,000 animals worldwide, so data from their movements can inform conservationists about habitat loss and climate change – and, hopefully, help us anticipate natural disasters and zoonotic disease. “The ancient art of augury is now being resurrected for the space age,” said The Sunday Times.

What is the background?

Humans have long observed animals acting differently before natural phenomena like earthquakes. In 2012, Wikelski’s team began tracking goats that graze on Mount Etna, the volcano in Sicily. They found that before an eruption, the goats stayed lower. “They know much earlier than the volcanologists can see on their equipment,” Wikelski told The Sunday Times. “And they know better how big it will be.”

The team also found that farm animals in the Italian Apennine mountains could detect an earthquake up to 12 hours before it hit. About 45 minutes beforehand, it was like a trading floor “in a stock market crash – all the animals were going crazy”.

Wikelski believes the answer lies in the animals’ sensitive feathers and fur. “During the build-up to an earthquake, tectonic plates slide across each other under enormous pressures, and that throws out ions from the rocks into the air,” Wikelski told The Guardian. “The animals may be reacting to that.”

How does Icarus work?

Various terrestrial tracking systems have monitored wildlife worldwide for decades. But Icarus became possible after “a revolution in tagging technology”, said The Guardian, which led to “cheap and plentiful minuscule GPS devices”.

Miniature sensors and communications devices led to the development of “large-scale wireless digital networks that track the location and status of objects”, said BBC Science Focus: the “internet of things”.

The IoT made “two-way digital communications with small devices viable”, while lithium batteries “shrunk to sizes that more animals can carry”, and smartphones made low-cost GPS “increasingly available”, said MIT Technology Review. Wikelski’s team launched “affordable and lightweight GPS sensors that could be worn by animals as small as songbirds”. These “Fitbits for wild creatures” could offer “live location data accurate to a few metres”, while allowing scientists to monitor heart rates and body heat, as well as ambient temperature and air pressure.

The Icarus tags will send their information to receivers on tiny satellites made from 10cm cubes, called CubeSats. From there, the data will be beamed back to Earth and published in a freely accessible database called Movebank. Wikelski describes this as a “permanent digital museum” of animal data, established 25 years ago.

What is the point?

It is “the most ambitious wildlife-tracking project that’s ever been attempted”, said BBC Science Focus. For researchers, “the possible applications are almost endless”.

One day, people worldwide will be able to “log on with a smartphone app” to the internet of animals, to “follow their favourite bird or tortoise or fish”, said The New York Times. Wikelski hopes that connecting people to “a single charismatic animal” could help “build support for conservation”. “If people hear Cecil the lion died, it’s very real to them,” he said. “But if you say 3,000 lions died, nobody cares.”

The project could help prevent that, as many animals are on the move due to climate change. Protecting them will “require an understanding of where they are”. Icarus could also “keep tabs” on species that have played a part in epidemics – like bats. “With skin temperature we can see in the ducks in China whether the next avian influenza is starting,” said Wikelski.

“In the wake of the pandemic, the prospects of using animals’ GPS locations to monitor the spread of zoonotic disease is truly beguiling,” said Paul McGreevy on The Conversation.

Critics “question the costs” compared with existing animal monitoring programmes, said MIT Technology Review: about $10 million to $15 million a year. But that is “significantly cheaper than sending humans or drones” to remote locations. Ultimately, Icarus offers “another way to monitor the Earth itself during a period of increasing instability”, transforming animals into “sentinels of a changing world”.

Like pipes, statues and nails, the moon can rust. Such rusting has occurred despite a seeming lack of necessary components — but all signs of blame point to the Earth. A new study posits that the relevant rust-forming particles are coming from the Earth’s atmosphere during a short period in the lunar cycle.

Building rust

Hematite, also known as rust, was first found on the moon in 2020 during India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. The discovery puzzled scientists because rust is formed through the process of oxidation, which, like the name suggests, requires oxygen as well as water. But there is no oxygen on the moon and water is extremely limited. “It’s very puzzling,” Shuai Li, a researcher at the University of Hawaii, said to NASA in 2020. “The moon is a terrible environment for hematite to form in.” Now, new research shows the culprit may be the Earth. “Hematite can form when oxygen ions in Earth’s magnetosphere (Earth wind) are implanted into iron-bearing materials” on the moon, said a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Earth and the moon are usually “bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun,” said Nature. But for approximately five days out of the month-long lunar cycle, “Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles.” When this happens, the “moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth’s atmosphere before blowing into space.” This is called Earth wind.

The Earth wind contains ions of nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere. These charged particles can “then embed themselves in the lunar soil and cause the chemical reactions required to create rust,” said The Independent. This still raises the question of where the water required for oxidation comes from. Water on the moon only really exists as ice at the poles, but researchers have come to believe that “hematite may have formed in those polar regions and later spread across the surface by some unknown process,” said Firstpost.

Varying reactions

The presence of rust on the moon is also intriguing because, while oxygen ions are needed to form hematite, hydrogen ions can undo the rust. Earth wind contains both kinds of ions. To test the effect of the hydrogen ions, researchers “irradiated hematite with both high-energy hydrogen, mimicking hydrogen found in Earth wind, and low-energy hydrogen ions, like those from the sun,” said Phys.org. They found that the “high-energy hydrogen ions are capable of reducing hematite back to metallic iron, while low-energy hydrogen ions are largely ineffective.” So, the amount of rust retained on the moon “depends on both the energy and the relative flux ratio of oxygen and hydrogen ions from Earth wind.”

These findings “provide valuable insights into the widespread distribution of lunar hematite and indicate a long-term material exchange between Earth and the moon,” said the study. While the evidence shows strong support for Earth wind as the cause of lunar rusting, lab conditions may not always fully emulate the environment of the moon. As a result, more research, preferably done on the moon itself, is needed to test the processes.

We often wonder whether there are aliens on other planets but what if we ourselves are aliens on the planet we call home?

Panspermia, the “controversial” theory that life “began elsewhere in space” and was “delivered to Earth on comets and asteroids”, is gaining new traction, said BBC Science Focus.

Building blocks of life

New analysis of asteroid rocks brought back to Earth by Japanese and Nasa-led space missions suggests a presence of some of the building blocks of life – which could mean that those “same building blocks”, and “perhaps even primitive microbial life”, could have been delivered to Earth on other asteroids or comets billions of years ago, said BBC Science Focus.

Scientists examining the rock samples have found carbon, ammonia, salts, 14 of the 20 amino acids needed to make proteins, and the “basic constituents of DNA and RNA”.

Of course, “just having the right conditions and ingredients” for life “doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily create life”, but the findings will still gladden the hearts of believers in panspermia.

The origin of those first life-delivering rocks could have been a nearby planet, like Mars, or somewhere light years away. And, if that was the case, the potential consequences are huge – because, if it happened here, it has probably happened on other planets, too.

'Wild' theories 

The theory of panspermia dates back many years and was “popularised in the 1970s” by the British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, said BBC Science Focus.

Their suggestion that asteroids and comets could have been incubators for life wasn’t taken seriously at first, and the pair were regarded as “crazy”, said Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University.

But the theory gradually “became more alluring”, and “reached a fascinating peak” in 1996 when scientists believed they had discovered traces of microfossils of bacteria inside a meteorite from Mars that had landed in Antarctica. The discovery was later refuted.

Recently, in a “wild” new spin on the theory, known as directed panspermia, it’s been suggested that “aliens sent microbes or simple life forms” to Earth themselves, to “propel evolution”, said the Daily Mail.

Even if the panspermia (or directed panspermia) theory turns out to be true, it doesn’t answer the big question, said New Scientist, because it “simply relocates the problem of how life got going – we haven’t found evidence of life elsewhere”. Besides, we know that space is “hostile to life”, as shown in experiments where bacteria placed outside the International Space Station faced a “heavy toll”, so there are question marks over how life’s building blocks could survive the putative journey through space to Earth.

As the United States and China compete for dominance in outer space, Africa is also looking to get in on the race toward the stars. China aims to enhance its cooperation with Africa by constructing new alliances for its space development, while many in the United States are pushing the Trump administration to shore up its own space alliances in Africa. All the while, the continent is moving ahead with its own space program.

How are the US and China intertwined with African space development?

China has been seeking to broaden its African footprint and has recently been “building space alliances in Africa to enhance its global surveillance network and advance its bid to become the world’s dominant space power,” said Reuters. Not all of this development is done in secret, as China has “publicly announced much of this space assistance to African countries.”

China also has “access to data and images collected from this space technology, and Chinese personnel maintain a long-term presence in facilities it builds in Africa,” said Reuters. This includes a new satellite lab in Egypt where Chinese officials can “scan space-tracking monitors and deliver instructions to Egyptian engineers.”

As China expands its influence, there have been calls for the White House to get ahead of the game, given that Africa's space sector “presents significant opportunities for the United States,” said the international affairs think tank Atlantic Council. The U.S. “will need to take a collaborative approach: In order to harness the opportunities of the African space sector, the United States must also fill the gaps in its space coordination with Africa.”

This could be easier said than done. Trump is “unlikely to prioritize forging bilateral space relationships in the way Beijing has done in Africa,” said Reuters. This also comes as the U.S. “scales back aid to developing countries, creating an opportunity for China to position itself as Africa’s key ally in space development,” said Business Insider Africa.

How is Africa developing its own space program?

Africa is working to cement its own status in space. In May 2025, it “established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing,” said Bloomberg. This came at a time when a “more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information.”

The African Space Agency (AfSA) will help the existing space programs of African countries collaborate. It also “aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across Africa and beyond,” said Bloomberg.

Prior African space initiatives were “happening in a very fragmented fashion,” Meshack Kinyua, a space engineer and an Africa space policy veteran, told Bloomberg. AfSA “brings a coordination mechanism and economies of scale — it puts all members of the African Union at an equal level.”

AfSA “represents a giant leap into the global space arena” for Africa, said Space.com. It is a clear signal that Africa has a “commitment to space exploration and technological advancement.” Other multinational space organizations, including the European Space Agency (ESA), also lauded the group. The “establishment of the African Space Agency is a real milestone for the continent and signals an important advance for Africa’s space strategy,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a statement. “Space has the power to spur innovation and inspiration, and I look forward to working together for the benefit of citizens.”

What happened

NASA announced Wednesday that a rock sample collected on Mars by its Perseverance rover last year contains what appear to be biosignatures, or signs of previous life, on the Red Planet. “This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said at a press conference coinciding with the publication of a paper on the findings in the journal Nature.

Who said what

NASA scientists were “giddy” when Perseverance found the rock with telltale signs of microbial life in a former lakebed called the Jezero Crater, The New York Times said. After a year studying the sample from 140 million miles away, “we are at the point where we are actually saying in detail, ‘Here is what we have found,’” study lead author Joel Hurowitz told the Times. And the chances are “better than a coin flip” that the sample contained convincing evidence of life.

The rock, dubbed Cheyava Falls, is “composed of finely packed sediment and covered in specks resembling poppy seeds and leopard spots,” said The Washington Post. Those specks, the study found, are “minerals that — on Earth — have traditionally been created from microbial activity.” That’s the “closest we’ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars,” NASA science mission chief Nicky Fox told reporters, but it “certainly is not the final answer.”

What happened?

The “underlying elephant in the room” is that for the NASA scientists to confirm their theories, the rock samples “need to be returned to Earth,” said Space.com, and “NASA’s Mars Sample Return program remains in limbo due to budget constraints” and “priority shifts” in the Trump administration.

In Telford's Exotic Zoo, life found a way.

A casque-headed iguana has given birth to eight babies at the Shropshire wildlife park – without any contact with a male, via a phenomenon called parthenogenesis.

"When we confirmed the eggs were fertile without any contact with a male, our jaws hit the floor," zoo owner Scott Adams told the BBC. "For us, it's a powerful reminder that life finds a way in the most unexpected circumstances."

What is parthenogenesis?

A type of asexual reproduction, in which females create offspring without fertilisation from male sex cells. The unfertilised eggs develop into embryos that are genetic clones of the mother. Basically, the female clones herself.

It actually predates sexual reproduction, which evolved to introduce more genetic variation. It's more common in plants or invertebrates than vertebrates – but it has been observed among fish, snakes, sharks, lizards, and even birds. What is "mind-boggling is that parthenogenesis isn't even that rare", said the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. It was first documented in Komodo dragons in 2006, but has since been seen in all "vertebrate lineages" except mammals.

"Komodos are famous for it," Colin Stevenson, head of education at Crocodiles of the World, told The Guardian. "They can reproduce normally, but every now and again, they pop out a parthenogenetic one. The trick is to work out what kicks it off."

Are there other cases?

In January, a baby swell shark, Yoko, was born in a Louisiana aquarium – although the two females in the tank "had not been in contact with a male in over three years", said a Shreveport Aquarium spokesperson. Yoko's birth could be the result of either parthenogenesis or delayed fertilisation – females of many shark species can store sperm inside themselves for months or even years.

Kevin Feldheim of Chicago's Field Museum told NPR that both explanations were possible, and that genetic testing on Yoko would be necessary to compare her to the sharks in the tank. But there have been documented cases of parthenogenesis involving more than half a dozen shark species, he said.

Recently, a new parthenogenetic species of spider was discovered in the Czech Republic. Dysdera parthenogenetica uses "thelytoky" parthenogenetic reproduction, in which "generations are formed by females arising from unfertilised eggs", said the study published in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research.

This species is similar to another, Dysdera hungarica, but when researchers put the two together, the parthenogenetic females refused to mate with males. They "did not respond to their courtship behaviour", said the study, and "their copulatory organs were reduced".

So what kicks it off?

"In general, we think parthenogenesis is a last-ditch effort for a female to pass on its genes, so when a female is isolated from conspecific males, she is able to undergo parthenogenesis," Feldheim told NPR.

"How parthenogenesis kicks in or what cues the females use to begin the process remains to be discovered."

What are the downsides?

Organisms born via parthenogenesis, known as parthenotes, "don't have the best track record when it comes to survivorship or fitness", said the Smithsonian. Every zebra shark parthenote has died before reaching sexual maturity. However, one female white-spotted bamboo shark not only survived to sexual maturity, but also gave birth through parthenogenesis.

Yoko is "thriving", said the aquarium, but shark pups born from rare reproductive events usually suffer health issues. "Should Yoko's time with us be brief, it will still leave an unforgettable legacy, contributing invaluable insights to the study of shark reproduction and conservation efforts."

Beneath Antarctica's vast expanse of ice sit hundreds of canyons, some up to tens of thousands of feet deep. These complex formations under a seemingly barren landscape play a significant role in global climate change and ocean circulation — and studying them could lead to better climate models and predictions.

Rolling in the deep

Scientists have mapped 332 underwater canyons in Antarctica, according to a research article published in the journal Marine Geology. Some of these are deeper than 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet). Antarctic submarine canyons "resemble canyons in other parts of the world," David Amblàs, a part of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences at the University of Barcelona and one of the authors of the article, said in a statement. "But they tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf."

The canyons also vary significantly between east and west Antarctica. In the east, the canyons are "intricate and branching, with wide U-shaped profiles," while the western canyons "are shorter and steeper, cut into sharp V-shapes," said IFL Science. These findings indicate that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely much older than its western counterpart. "This had been suggested by sedimentary record studies," Amblàs said, "but it hadn't yet been described in large-scale seafloor geomorphology."

Scientists posit that the canyons "may have a more significant impact than previously thought on ocean circulation, ice-shelf thinning and global climate change, especially in vulnerable areas such as the Amundsen Sea and parts of East Antarctica," said the statement.

Zone of interest

Submarine canyons are "vitally important to ecological, oceanographic and geological processes worldwide," said Discover. The canyons "facilitate water exchange between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, allowing cold, dense water formed near ice shelves to flow into the deep ocean and form what is known as Antarctic Bottom Water," said the University of Barcelona statement. They also do the reverse, where they transport "warmer ocean waters from the sea toward the coastline," which helps "maintain and stabilize Antarctica's interior glaciers," said Discover.

The role of submarine canyons is thus far a "blind spot in climate change science," said Discover. There is not much known about the deep-sea gorges because less than one-third of the seafloor has been properly mapped. "Since so many submarine canyons are undiscovered and understudied, they do not factor into many of the current climate change models," the outlet added. This may be understating their effect on climate change. "Omitting these water-transporting canyons drastically limits the ability of climate change models to accurately predict ocean and overall climate changes."

Scientists have identified approximately 10,000 submarine canyons globally, but most remain unexplored, particularly those in polar regions. "Mapping the seafloor and its influence on the movement of water is necessary to build accurate ocean circulation models," said The Guardian.

You can earn £4,400 for lying in bed for two weeks in a swanky room, with access to free WiFi and food delivered to your door. So say enthusiastic "flu camp" volunteers, who've been recommending the experience on social media.

Obviously, you have to get the flu, too. Volunteers at these clinical trial camps are infected with the virus and then given the trial treatment or a placebo, and monitored over a fortnight to see how their body responds. But is being a human lab rat and spending all that time alone in a room as easy as it sounds?

A lot of introspection and a lack of fresh air

"Being deliberately infected with a virus may sound scary", said Vice, but firms like hVIVO, which runs FluCamp, say they only recruit people whose health records show that getting the illness is unlikely to have a serious effect. They also screen applicants to make sure their mental health can withstand a two-week period of isolation.

Once isolated in their room, participants fill in a checklist every morning about their symptoms. "Doctors would come in about four times a day to test your vitals," student volunteer Faith Larkam told Business Insider. "Other than that, you're just left to your own devices."

During her stay, she "binge-watched movies", read a book "in like three hours", did "a lot of introspection" and "banged" out three or four essays for university. She found "the lack of fresh air" and not being able to socialise or exercise increasingly challenging and, "towards the end", she was "desperate to get out".

But she said she has already signed up for a second stay and it's easy to see why. FluCamp's facility in Canary Wharf has "floor-to-ceiling windows" offering views of the Thames, and "ensuite rooms" come with a TV, a PlayStation and "a bell to summon staff" to bring food and drink, said The Telegraph. Other volunteers posting on TikTok have boasted of "feta salad lunches" and "10/10 views".

According to FluCamp, only 50% to 70% of participants develop any symptoms of illness and, for those that do, they are usually mild.

Fast and cost-efficient 

Exposing volunteers to a controlled dose of a virus in a quarantined setting, rather than running clinical-field trials over many years, means firms can quickly get a "clear picture" of treatment's efficacy before they move to larger, later-stage studies, said This Is Money.

And it's certainly proving successful for hVIVO. The firm finished 2024 in "rude financial health, with revenue up almost 12% at £62.7 million" and a "rock solid" balance sheet, "with £44.2 million in cash".