James Webb and Hubble space telescopes captured impact on Dimorphos, moon of the asteroid Didymos, 6.8m miles from EarthNasa has released the first detailed images of its pioneering deep-space “planetary defense test” in which a spacecraft was crashed into a distant asteroid in an attempt to alter its trajectory.The pictures were taken by what the agency calls its “two great observatories”, the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes, which captured Monday’s impact on Dimorphos, moon of the asteroid Didymos, 6.8m miles from Earth. Continue reading...

Review of 400 published studies stresses vaping is not risk-free and urges action to reduce teenage useVaping is substantially less harmful than smoking, according to a major review of nicotine products, but action is needed to tackle the sharp rise in e-cigarette use among children.Researchers at King’s College London said smokers who switched to vaping would experience a “substantial reduction” in their exposure to toxic substances that cause cancer, lung and cardiovascular disease, but they strongly urged non-smokers not to take up either habit. Continue reading...

This week, Nasa scientists smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, more than 11m km from Earth. Most rocket scientists would wince at the thought, but the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, was purposefully designed to slam head-on into the asteroid Dimorphos. The aim is to nudge it off its current orbit, in an experiment that will assess the possibility of deflecting a killer space rock – if one was ever headed our way. Ian Sample speaks to Prof Colin Snodgrass about why they chose Dimorphos, what happens to the asteroid now, and whether there are other ways to prevent space-based planetary destructionArchive: BBC News, NASA Livestream, BBC World Service Continue reading...

Study finds stress response changes people’s ‘odour profile’ – which dogs can sniff outWhether it’s a tricky maths problem or an unexpected bill, daily life is full of stressful experiences. Now researchers have found that humans produce a different odour when under pressure – and dogs can sniff it out.While previous studies have suggested canines might pick up on human emotions, possibly through smell, questions remained over whether they could detect stress and if this could be done through scent. Continue reading...

Younger adults became more prone to stress and less trusting, say US researchersThe impact of the Covid pandemic may have been so deep that it altered people’s personalities, according to research.Previously psychologists have failed to find a link between collective stressful events, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, and personality change. However, something about the losses experienced or simply the long grind of social isolation appears to have made an impact. Continue reading...

Study shows cognition in early-stage patients on lecanemab declines by 27% less than those on placeboAn experimental drug has slowed the rate of decline in memory and thinking in people with early Alzheimer’s disease in what is being described as a “historic moment” for dementia treatment.The cognition of Alzheimer’s patients given the drug, developed by Eisai and Biogen, declined by 27% less than those on a placebo treatment after 18 months. This is a modest change in clinical outcome but it is the first time any drug has been clearly shown to alter the disease’s trajectory. Continue reading...

At 6am I have a jar of fresh steam from roasting native figs. That keeps me going until my brunch of organic twigs at 11

Study says possible causes could include faster warming in Chinese seas and lower air pressureSea level along the Chinese coast is rising faster than the global average, with some regions experiencing an increase of nearly 5mm a year, according to tide gauge and satellite data. A new study investigates what is causing the localised rise, and identifies which communities are most vulnerable.Global heating is causing sea level rise around the world, with the average rate now 3.6mm a year (compared with 1.4mm a year for most of the 20th century). Oceans are interconnected and water sloshes between them, but the rate of sea level rise is not evenly distributed. Chinese seas are experiencing a significantly higher rate of sea level rise, with the average increase along the Chinese coast now at 3.9mm a year. Continue reading...

Astrophiles and professionals celebrated humanity’s accomplishment at hitting a speeding space rock with a probe the size of a vending machine

For decades, patients with complex illnesses – especially those that affect women more – have been told that it’s in their heads, says Beth PollackMultiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), discussed in your article, is a common symptom of several illnesses that I research (Allergic to the world: can medicine help people with severe intolerance to chemicals?, 20 September).The article suggests that MCS should be treated, at least in part, as a mental illness. For decades, patients with complex illnesses have been told that it’s in their heads, and this is especially true for illnesses that predominantly affect females. Multiple sclerosis patients weren’t widely believed until MRI machines were invented. Until long Covid, ME/CFS patients often weren’t taken seriously, despite 25% of them being housebound from severe illness. Fibromyalgia patients were commonly dismissed until researchers discovered half of them have small fibre neuropathy. Continue reading...

Experts say healthy lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking and eating more vegetables can lower riskMore than 400 people are being diagnosed with preventable cases of cancer every day in the UK, analysis suggests, prompting health experts to urge people to adopt a healthier lifestyle.A total of 387,000 people were diagnosed with cancer in 2019-20, and 40% of those cases – about 155,000 – could have been avoided, according to analysis of the latest official data by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). Continue reading...

Digital model of ageing reveals importance of psychological health as well as biologicalFeeling unhappy, depressed or lonely could speed up the ageing processes more than smoking or even certain diseases, researchers have suggested.While everyone has an age based on their date of birth – their “chronological age” – they also have what is known as a “biological age”, based on the ageing of the body’s functions, influenced by genetics, lifestyle and other factors. Studies have previously suggested the higher the biological age, the higher the risk of various diseases, and the risk of death. Continue reading...

The Breakthrough prizes are described by their Silicon Valley founders as ‘the Oscars of science’, and while they are not as glamorous, they do come with a $3m award. This year, one of the prizes was dished out to Prof Emmanuel Mignot at Stanford University and Masashi Yanagisawa at the University of Tsukuba for their work uncovering the cause of narcolepsy. Their discovery has opened the door to the development of treatments for this chronic and often debilitating condition. Madeleine Finlay speaks to Mignot about how he pinpointed the cause of narcolepsy, why it is similar to diabetes and what sleep mysteries he wants to solve next Continue reading...

Space agency conducts Dart mission to learn whether asteroid’s trajectory can be diverted away from EarthSix minutes to impact on what is one of Nasa’s coolest missions of recent history.It has taken Dart 10 months and 470m miles to get here, since launch last year.Usually Nasa spacecraft are intended to operate for many years, or even decades, but not Dart.Dart was built to be destroyed. Dart is a mission of firsts, proving that a spacecraft can autonomously seek, find and approach a target in space that’s so far away we don’t even know what it looks like. Continue reading...

Bid to change asteroid’s course marks ‘new era of humankind’ as agency seeks to protect Earth from future disasterA multimillion-dollar spacecraft collided head-on with an asteroid the size of a football stadium on Monday in an unprecedented test of Nasa’s capacity to defend Earth from a doomsday scenario.Nasa’s craft successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos 6.8m miles from Earth. The mission, known as Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), marked humanity’s first attempt at moving another celestial body, with the goal of seeing if a large asteroid hurtling toward our planet could be successfully diverted. Continue reading...

Nasa’s Dart spacecraft has crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos 6.8m miles from Earth in the space agency’s first “planetary defense test”. Dart (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) collided head-on with an asteroid the size of a football stadium on Monday in an unprecedented full-scale test of Nasa’s capacity to defend Earth from a doomsday scenario. The test was humanity’s first attempt at moving another celestial body, to see if a large asteroid hurtling towards Earth could be diverted

Footage released by Nasa shows a view of Hurricane Ian that can be seen from the International Space Station as it flies over the storm. Hurricane Ian moved near the Cayman Islands and closer to western Cuba early on Monday on course to hit Florida as a major hurricane this week. A surge of up to 2.4 metres (8ft) of ocean water and 25cm (10in) of rain, with as much as 38cm (15in) in isolated areas, is predicted for the Tampa Bay area. That is enough water to inundate low-lying coastal communities

Pianist Susan Tomes passes on advice that she received from a psychotherapist to chase away dreaded earwormsTim Harrison asks for tips on how to get rid of certain music playing on an endless loop in his brain (Letters, 25 September). I once developed a bad case of music-looping after recording an album of jolly 1920s syncopated piano music. The resulting sleeplessness got so bad that I consulted a psychotherapist. He advised deep breathing techniques and taught me how to devote my attention to slow, even breathing while allowing my mind to become quiet. I still use this method to chase away the dreaded earworms.

The Dart mission’s ‘planetary defense’ experiment hopes to test whether an Armageddon-style impact could be avertedAn unprecedented and long-awaited deep-space venture will take place almost 7m miles from Earth on Monday night when a Nasa spacecraft will be deliberately crashed into an asteroid in an attempt to show humanity can avert an Armageddon-style impact to Earth.Here’s what’s happening, and why: Continue reading...

Put any biases aside and you might just become a ‘superforecaster’From Nostradamus to Paul the “psychic” octopus, who supposedly foresaw the results of World Cup matches, there has been no shortage of people who argue they – or their animals – are able to predict the future. In most cases it’s easy to dismiss such claims, be they incredibly vague, biblical-sounding prophecies (as with Nostradamus) or slippery coincidences (as with Paul).But are there any people who actually can tell us what’s going to happen? We do, after all, look to academics or well-known political pundits to help us make sense of the world. If we want to know what’s coming down the line in Ukraine, for example, we might ask someone who has studied the Russian military forces, or perhaps a foreign policy guru. For the outlook on inflation in 2023, we might go to an economist. What’s surprising is that the evidence tells us academics and commentators don’t, in fact, do particularly well. Continue reading...

In private, many physicists admit they do not believe the particles they are paid to search for exist – they do it because their colleagues are doing itImagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that lives in the Arctic. There’s no evidence it exists, she admits, but it’s a testable hypothesis, and she argues that a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for spiders.The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but it flies only in caves. There’s no evidence for that either, but he petitions to search the world’s caves. The third one has a model for octopuses on Mars. It’s testable, he stresses.Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. She is author of Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions and creator of the YouTube Channel Science Without the Gobbledygook.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

I’ve started talking to household objects – and none of us are enjoying what we’re hearingThere has been a flurry of debate about whether people do or do not have an inner monologue. What none of us has, really, is an adequate vocabulary to explain what goes on in our heads, or convey it to others. We can’t grasp how others experience their inner lives, just as we can’t know what they see or hear.Currently, though, my inner monologue is striving to bridge that gap by becoming an outer monologue. I have spent longer than usual – on balance, probably too long – alone recently, as various members of my family went away, and I have started vocalising the stuff that used to stay in my head. Talking to yourself isn’t necessarily bad (one study found it might help you find your keys, sort of, but talking to objects is revealing troubling things about me.Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Hidden hieroglyphics could suggest the king is buried within a much larger structure housing the Egyptian queenThe discovery of hidden hieroglyphics within Tutankhamun’s tomb lends weight to a theory that the fabled Egyptian queen Nefertiti lies in a hidden chamber adjacent to her stepson’s burial chamber, a world-renowned British Egyptologist has said.Nicholas Reeves, a former curator in the British Museum’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities, said that while the theory remained unproven after inconclusive radar scans, it has been given fresh impetus following the new clue. Continue reading...

Constellation’s brightest star, Altair, gives out 11 times more light than our sunThe celestial eagle is in full flight at this time of the year for the northern hemisphere.The constellation of Aquila is one of the 48 constellations defined by Ptolemy in the 2nd century, though it had been mentioned in Greek tradition as long ago as the 4th century BC by Eudoxus. In mythology, Aquila represents the eagle that holds Zeus’s thunderbolts. Continue reading...

Despite its ‘hellish’ environment, scientists argue there are good reasons to focus on ‘Earth’s sister’With a surface hot enough to melt lead, crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of sulphuric acid, Venus might not sound like the most enticing destination for human exploration.But a group of experts are advocating that our other nearest neighbour, rather than Mars, should be the initial target for a crewed mission to another planet. Continue reading...

Aim is to see whether space rocks can be deflected should one threaten humans with same fate as dinosaursMost mission scientists would wince at the thought of their spacecraft being smashed to smithereens. But for those behind Nasa’s Dart probe, anything short of total destruction will be chalked up as a failure.The $330m (£300m) spacecraft is due to slam head-on into an asteroid about 11m kilometres above the Indian Ocean soon after midnight on Monday. The impact, at nearly seven kilometres a second, will obliterate the half-tonne probe, all in the name of planetary defence. Continue reading...

Third delay in the past month for test flight as technical issues and weather hamper US effort to return to the moon after five decadesNasa is skipping Tuesday’s launch attempt of its new moon rocket over concerns about a tropical storm headed to Florida that could become a major hurricane.It’s the third delay in the past month for the lunar-orbiting test flight featuring mannequins but no astronauts, a follow-up to Nasa’s Apollo moon-landing program of a half-century ago. Continue reading...

Seven expert and unexpected tips for people who have already tried everything

As demand for menopause drugs soars, we trace the oestrogen production line from Chinese soya bean fields to European pharmacy shelvesIn the centre of the factory stand 31 reactors: giant metal globes that can hold up to 10,000 litres of liquid each. Every week, gleaming stainless steel drums arrive by truck at this plant on the outskirts of Oss, in the Netherlands. Their contents are poured into the reactors through a funnel, dissolved, and then heated to boiling point. Standing by one of the vast containers, the factory manager, Robert Dam, compares it to a “cooking pot”. Peering inside, we can see the light liquid bubbling away.At Dam’s factory, a white powder distilled from soya beans and shipped from China is turned into a precious commodity: strong synthetic oestrogen. The plant at Oss, owned by the Dutch subsidiary of South Africa’s largest drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare, produces the most potent variant of oestrogen, known as oestradiol, destined for the UK market. It will be added to gels, sprays and patches used by more than 1 million women in Britain to manage the symptoms of menopause. Continue reading...

Exclusive: The professor chosen to deliver Royal Institution Christmas lectures talks about a fascination with anatomy that goes back to plucking pheasants as a childFrom a solitary set of finger bones to a fragment of skull in a washing machine, the cases Dame Sue Black has helped solve may seem too gruesome for the joyful spectacle that is the Royal Institution Christmas lectures.But it is not the stuff of nightmares that Black, one of the world’s leading forensic anthropologists, will be exploring as she gives Britain’s most prestigious public science lectures this winter. Continue reading...

Experts question long-term benefits of therapy for mental and psychological disordersPopping into a room on your lunch break to have a good scream may seem like a helpful way to let off steam, but experts say there is little evidence the approach offers long-term benefits for mental health.Primal scream therapy (PST) was created by psychologist Arthur Janov in the late 1960s. It is based on the idea that repressed childhood traumas are at the root of neurosis, and that screaming can help to release and resolve the pain. With a bestselling book and high-profile patients, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the approach became popular in the 1970s. Continue reading...

Dr Matthew Bothwell, public astronomer at the University of Cambridge, on whether humans will one day be able to observe the origin of the universeThe pictures from the James Webb telescope – described by Nasa as a “time machine” because the light has taken billions of years to reach us – raise the question: will it be possible to someday see the big bang itself? I asked Dr Matthew Bothwell, public astronomer at the University of Cambridge.Why is the James Webb telescope so good?

Discovery offers new support for the theory that life may have been seeded from outer spaceSpecks of dust that a Japanese space probe retrieved from an asteroid about 186 million miles (300m kilometres) from Earth have revealed a surprising component: a drop of water.The discovery offers new support for the theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Expert who has downplayed link between concussion and traumatic brain injury is accused of 10 more cases of plagiarism

David Deutsch, who proposed an as yet unbuildable machine to test existence of parallel universes, shares prize with three othersA theoretical physicist who has never had a regular job has won the most lucrative prize in science for his pioneering contributions to the mind-bending field of quantum computing.David Deutsch, who is affiliated with the University of Oxford, shares the $3m (about £2.65m) Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics with three other researchers who laid the foundations for the broader discipline of quantum information. Continue reading...

Biden’s recent announcement that the pandemic is ending could slow process further, as parents question the necessity of shotsIt’s been three months since the US authorized Covid vaccines for kids under five, yet uptake in this group has been extremely low. Meanwhile, Joe Biden said on Monday that the pandemic is ending – a message that could result in a continued lag.More than 1,400 children have died from Covid in the US, and at least 533 of those deaths have been in children under five, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That makes Covid one of the top 10 causes of child mortality in the country. Continue reading...

First study to look at facial responses of foetuses to tastes shows crying expression twice as likely for kale than carrotIf the taste of kale makes you screw up your face, you are not alone: researchers have observed foetuses pull a crying expression when exposed to the greens in the womb.While previous studies have suggested our food preferences may begin before birth and can be influenced by the mother’s diet, the team says the new research is the first to look directly at the response of unborn babies to different flavours. Continue reading...

The UK’s new health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has not taken on an easy job. Almost two-thirds of trainee GPs plan to work part-time just a year after they qualify, reporting that the job has become too intense to safely work more. A record 6.8 million people are waiting for hospital treatment in England, and 132,139 posts lie vacant across the NHS in England. Ian Sample hears from acute medicine consultant Dr Tim Cooksley about what’s happening within the NHS, and speaks to the Guardian’s health policy editor, Denis Campbell, about how the UK’s health and social care systems ended up in crisis and whether they can be fixedArchive: ITV News, BBC Sounds, BBC News, Sky News, BBC Newsnight Continue reading...

Farthest planet from sun and its satellites revealed in unprecedented detail by space telescope’s infrared imagerThe James Webb space telescope has turned its gaze away from the deep universe towards our home solar system, capturing an image of a luminous Neptune and its delicate, dusty rings in detail not seen in decades.The last time astronomers had such a clear view of the farthest planet from the sun was when Nasa’s Voyager 2 became the first and only space probe to fly past the ice giant for just a few hours in 1989. Continue reading...

Biogen drug Tofersen showed promising results when taken for six months beyond previous trialAn experimental drug for motor neurone disease (MND) has shown signs of slowing the progress of the devastating illness in a landmark trial.The results provide fresh hope after a phase-three trial of the same drug had previously failed to make a meaningful difference to patient outcomes after six months of treatment. Continue reading...

Three arrived in a Soyuz spacecraft in rare instance of cooperation between Moscow and WashingtonA US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts have arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) after blasting off on a Russian-operated flight in a rare instance of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and Nasa both distributed live footage on Wednesday of the launch from Kazakhstan, and commentators speaking over the feed said the crew were “feeling well”. Continue reading...

More than a third of children’s clothing tested in a study detected PFAS, which are used to make textiles stain resistantToxic PFAS chemicals are frequently used to make children’s clothing and textiles resist water and stains, but exposure to the compounds in clothes represents a serious health risk, a new peer-reviewed study finds.The study, published in the Environmental and Science Technology journal, detected the chemicals in 65% of school uniforms, rain gear, snowsuits, snowshoes, mittens, bibs, hats and stroller covers tested, and at levels authors characterized as “high”. Continue reading...

Research finds people who had them at least once a week were four times more likely to experience cognitive declinePeople who experience frequent bad dreams in middle age may experience a faster rate of cognitive decline and be at higher risk of dementia as they get older, data suggests.If confirmed, the research could eventually lead to new ways of screening for dementia and intervention to slow the rate of decline. Continue reading...

Researchers think they may have solved enduring mystery of where Typhloesus wellsi sits on tree of lifeThe mystery of a bizarre creature dubbed the “alien goldfish”, which has baffled fossil experts for decades, may have been solved, according to scientists who say the animal appears to have been some sort of mollusc.Typhloesus wellsi lived about 330m years ago and was discovered in the Bear Gulch Limestone fossil site in Montana in the late 1960s, with the remains of other species subsequently identified. Continue reading...

The new song, Semper Supra, is set to a jaunty tune, but critics say its lyrics are ‘verbal word salad’Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the US military, unveiled its official song on Tuesday amid a less than stellar critical response.As one website dedicated to covering America’s armed forces put it: “It’s not a banger.” Continue reading...

The analysis is based on 489 studies of ant populations spanning every continent where the insects liveThe world’s human population is forecast to surpass 8bn in the coming months. Compared with ants, that is a mediocre milestone.Researchers have made the most thorough assessment to date of the global population of ants and the estimated total is a mind-blowing 20 quadrillion of them, or approximately 2.5 million for every human. Continue reading...

It doesn’t just happen to emergency or frontline workers, and can stem from accidents, bullying, and even severe stress

Archaeologists say find supports theory that drug was used in burial rituals, possibly to ‘enter ecstatic state’Israeli archaeologists have discovered opium residue in 3,500-year-old pottery pieces, providing evidence to support the theory that the hallucinogenic drug was used in ancient burial rituals.The joint investigation by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Weizmann Institute of Science began in 2012 when excavations in the central Israeli town of Yehud revealed a series of late bronze-age graves. Continue reading...

A week certainly is a long time in monarchy. It was fascinating to see individuals actively changed by this experienceA strange thing has happened since last week, when I wrote about how myself and other social psychologists were studying the crowds of people queueing to watch the ceremonials following the death of Queen Elizabeth – finding out the many reasons and motivations for taking part in this mass event. It seems the Queue itself – and what it supposedly tells us about the state of our nation – has become as big a story as the ceremonies. We stopped watching the pageantry and started watching ourselves watching the pageants.This was just the start of a series of remarkable transformations. The size and behaviour of the crowds did not simply reflect the pre-existing state of the nation. Rather, through these crowds we saw a transformation in our desire to participate in the events, a transformation of relations between those in the crowd, and transformations in their relationship to the monarch, the monarchy and the state. A week is a long time, it seems, and not only in politics. Continue reading...

There are many story angles surrounding childhood cancer, but rarely mentioned is the burden of illness on everyday lifeAs a parent of two young children with a high-risk brain cancer diagnosis, it’s wonderful to see donation drives soar and yellow ribbons promote empathy for my family’s situation during childhood cancer awareness month.However, I’m also acutely attuned to important story angles that seem conspicuously absent. Continue reading...