French book and documentary coming to the UK in September seeks to ‘debunk the simplistic division’ of gender rolesFrom academic works giving women a supporting role to hunter-gather men, to Raquel Welch’s portrayal of a bikini-clad cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years BC, the gender division of the stone age is firmly entrenched in public consciousness.While men strode out to spear woolly mammoths, women, as mothers or exploited objects of male desire, sheltered in caves from the violent world, according to an understanding said to be increasingly removed from the latest research. Continue reading...
Exercise better than relying on painkillers to improve quality of life long term, says guidanceBritons with arthritis are being urged to lose weight and exercise more rather than rely on painkillers as the main therapies for their condition.NHS guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says people who are overweight should be told their pain can be reduced if they shed the pounds. Continue reading...
by Denis Campbell Health policy editor on (#5YP7N)
Adding oxygen to blood using ECMO process found to cause big increase in survival rate in severe UK casesScores of severely ill Covid-19 sufferers survived because they were given the NHS’s highest form of intensive care in which an artificial lung breathes for them, a study has found.Patients in the UK who underwent extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) were more likely to survive than those who did not have the treatment, according to the research. Continue reading...
Three customers accompanied by former Nasa astronaut paid $55m for place on Ax-1 missionThe first private crew of astronauts has returned from the International Space Station (ISS).Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Eytan Stibbe and Mark Pathy are not employed by a government, but are part of the Ax-1 mission from Axiom Space Inc. López-Alegría is a former Nasa astronaut with four previous spaceflights under his belt: three on the space shuttle and one to the ISS on a Soyuz launcher. He is Axiom’s chief astronaut. Continue reading...
Research shows high degree of variability between individual animals – with implications for ownersFrom sociable labradors to aggressive pitbulls, when it comes to canine behaviour there are no end of stereotypes. But research suggests such traits may have less to do with breed than previously thought.Modern dog breeds began to emerge in the Victorian era and are often physically distinct – for example, great danes are huge and chihuahuas tiny. But it has often been thought breed can predict behaviour, too. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5YNCW)
Too much and too little sleep linked with worse cognitive performance and mental healthSeven hours of sleep each night is the ideal amount in middle to old age, research suggests.The study of nearly 500,000 adults aged between 38 and 73 found that both too much and too little sleep were linked with worse cognitive performance and mental health, including anxiety and depression. A consistent amount of sleep also appeared to be beneficial. Continue reading...
‘Zoonotic spillovers’ expected to rise with at least 15,000 instances of viruses leaping between species over next 50 yearsThere will be at least 15,000 instances of viruses leaping between species over the next 50 years, with the climate crisis helping fuel a “potentially devastating” spread of disease that will imperil animals and people and risk further pandemics, researchers have warned.As the planet heats up, many animal species will be forced to move into new areas to find suitable conditions. They will bring their parasites and pathogens with them, causing them to spread between species that haven’t interacted before. This will heighten the risk of what is called “zoonotic spillover”, where viruses transfer from animals to people, potentially triggering another pandemic of the magnitude of Covid-19. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5YMT5)
Research shows more than half of girls think science and technology careers are preserve of boysBrownies are to learn coding and Guides will investigate chatbots in a bid to shift stubborn attitudes among girls that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) careers are just for boys.The drive to engage thousands more girls in technology comes after research by Girlguiding found more than half (52%) of girls and women between the ages of 11 and 21 believed that Stem was for boys. The strength of feeling is unchanged since 2016. Continue reading...
by Mark Brown North of England correspondent on (#5YMS0)
Leeds University shares library of 1950s vernacular and launches project to preserve today’s phrasesWas you or were you having your tea, dinner or supper last night? Before it, were you feeling clammish, clemmed, starving, hungry, leary or just plain clempt?Are you still whanging in Yorkshire? Haining in Somerset? Hocksing in Cambridgeshire? Hoying in Durham? Pegging in Cheshire? Pelting in Northamptonshire? Yarking in Leicestershire? Or do you throw now? Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample, produced by Madeleine Fin on (#5YMR3)
Over the past few weeks, countries around the world have reported an unexpected increase in the number of children with hepatitis. So far about 200 cases have been reported. More than half have come from the UK, but there have also been reports from Spain, Japan and the US, among others. Although this is still a very rare disease, it is severe, with 10% of affected children needing a liver transplant. So what might explain this unusual rise? Guardian science editor Ian Sample speaks to Prof Deirdre Kelly about the current theories as to what could be happening, and how concerned we should be
Rare fossils from three of the late-Triassic marine reptiles found in Swiss Alps include 10cm tooth – big enough to snag giant squidThe remains of a huge sea creature with enormous teeth that could have helped it capture giant squid have been found in the Swiss Alps.Ichthyosaurs were large marine reptiles with an elongated, snakey shape. They first emerged after the end of the Permian extinction, an event also known as the “great dying”, which occurred about 250m years ago and which wiped out more than two-thirds of species on land and 96% of marine species. Continue reading...
Face-to-face gatherings produce more ideas – and more inventive ones – than videoconferencing, say researchersAs if the endless muting and freezing, the need for shelves lined with high literature, and the constant fear of a colleague wandering on screen unclothed were not enough to worry about, researchers have found that Zoom stifles creativity.Meeting face to face produced more ideas, and ideas that were more creative, compared with videoconference discussions, according to lab experiments and a field study at a firm with offices around the world. Continue reading...
Paolo Macchiarini, who made headlines for pioneering surgery, charged with aggravated assault over procedureAn Italian doctor who made headlines for pioneering windpipe surgery has gone on trial in Sweden, charged with aggravated assault for performing the experimental procedure.Paolo Macchiarini won praise in 2011 after claiming to have performed the world’s first synthetic trachea transplants using stem cells while he was a surgeon at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent and Aubrey All on (#5YKTG)
Female physicists question ‘terrifying’ claims made by government commissioner Katharine Birbalsingh to MPsGirls do not choose physics A-level because they dislike “hard maths”, the government’s social mobility commissioner has claimed, prompting anger from leading scientists.Addressing a science and technology committee inquiry on diversity and inclusion in Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths), Katharine Birbalsingh said fewer girls chose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it, they don’t like it,” she said. Continue reading...
Research shows largest ‘turbidity currents’ can carry more sediment than the annual output of all the world’s rivers combined over timeOn 18 November 1929, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook the ocean floor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Within minutes transatlantic telephone cables started sequentially snapping, with the furthest cable – 600km from the quake – breaking 13 hours and 17 minutes later.At the time geologists hypothesised that the cables had been broken by a series of earthquakes, but we now know that the culprit was a massive underwater avalanche, known as a “turbidity current”. Continue reading...
A CDC report showed a striking increase in those with coronavirus antibodies between December and FebruaryMore than half of Americans show signs of a previous Covid-19 infection, including three out of every four children, according to a new report released on Tuesday.The findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) come after researchers examined blood samples from more than 200,000 Americans and looked for virus-fighting antibodies made from infections, not vaccines. They found that signs of past infection rose dramatically between December and February, when the more contagious Omicron variant surged through the US. Continue reading...
Potentially dangerous mutations of the virus could go unnoticed due to testing cuts, UN health agency saysA dramatic drop in testing for Covid-19 has left the world blind to the virus’s continuing rampage and its potentially dangerous mutations, the head of the World Health Organization has warned.The UN health agency said that reported Covid cases and deaths had been dropping dramatically. “Last week, just over 15,000 deaths were reported to WHO – the lowest weekly total since March 2020,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample with Devi Sridhar, produce on (#5YJ1F)
As the news came out of China that there was a new virus infecting humans, scientists around the world promptly got to work sequencing genomes, gathering data and communicating what they found with the public. One of the scientists catapulted into the public eye was Devi Sridhar, a professor in global public health. Soon, she was advising the Scottish government on their Covid strategy, regularly appearing on TV and had gained a big social media following. Ian Sample speaks to Sridhar about her experience of the pandemic so far, what it was like working alongside politicians, and what she’s learned from it all Continue reading...
This was the first time Nasa opened its space hatches to tourists, who paid $55m for a week, which was extended to nearly 17 daysThree rich businessmen returned from the International Space Station with their astronaut escort Monday, wrapping up a pricey trip that marked Nasa’s debut as a B&B host.Flying back in a SpaceX capsule, they splashed down in the Atlantic off the Florida coast to close out a 17-day tour that cost them $55m apiece. Continue reading...
Lack of exposure to adenoviruses due to Covid restrictions is most likely explanation for surge, experts sayTen children in the UK have required a liver transplant following a recent surge in severe hepatitis cases among young children, with the current total standing at 114 cases across all four UK nations.A lack of exposure to common adenoviruses due to Covid restrictions during the past two years combined with a recent spike in adenovirus infection as society opens back up is the most likely explanation, experts say. Continue reading...
Clean-up operation | Trouble up north | Alveolar plosives | Ramblers’ descent | Boris Johnson’s lucrative futureIn his fascinating article on space junk, Ian Sample informs us that the radar tracking the debris in the UK is operated by the RAF (Mind that satellite! The mission to clean up dangerous space junk, 21 April). That is reassuring. He adds that it is “analysts from Serco” who interpret the data. Reading that made me feel like ducking for cover.
Exclusive: Guardian learns sentience law could mean strict welfare rules extended to crustaceans and decapodsScientific experiments on crabs and lobsters could be curbed when the animal sentience bill becomes law, the Guardian has learned.There are few restrictions on how crustaceans and decapods can be treated in scientific studies, in contrast with mice and other mammals, for which there are strict welfare laws. Continue reading...
by Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent on (#5YH5Z)
Dispute over Northern Ireland protocol puts associate membership of Horizon Europe scheme in doubtBritish universities are facing a brain drain as the row over Brexit in Northern Ireland threatens £250m in research funding from the EU, it has emerged.The European Research Council (ERC) has written to 98 scientists and academics who were recently approved for €172m (£145m) in grants telling them that if the UK’s associate membership of the €80bn Horizon Europe programme is not ratified they will not be eligible to draw down the money. Continue reading...
Up to 12,000 substances could fall within the scope of the new ‘restrictions roadmap’Thousands of potentially harmful chemicals could soon be prohibited in Europe under new restrictions, which campaigners have hailed as the strongest yet.Earlier this year, scientists said chemical pollution had crossed a “planetary boundary” beyond which lies the breakdown of global ecosystems. Continue reading...
Film-maker Klaartje Quirijns turns the camera on her mother and father as they open up about the trauma of her elder sister’s deathThere is some insightful material in this personal essay-film from Dutch documentary maker and journalist Klaartje Quirijns, avowedly inspired by Philip Larkin’s poem This Be the Verse about your mum and dad fucking you up. It’s a painful probing of a psychological wound in her parents’ lives: the death of Quirijns’s elder sister in a drowning accident. That undoubtedly contributed to the disintegration of their marriage and is something which her elderly parents have never talked about until now: she makes them open up to her about it, on camera.Quirijns was apparently moved to consider this, and to take stock of her own life and upbringing, because of having surgeries on her breast, though she doesn’t actually say the word “cancer” out loud, an avoidance that an analyst might have questioned her about. But at 75 minutes, this film strangely feels too brief to do full justice to the story, and it is in any case intercut with footage of another case of family trauma which Quirijns had evidently been working on for years before deciding to shift focus to her own tale. This second element is about the unhappiness of Michael Moskowitz, whose Holocaust-survivor mother was cruel to him when he was growing up; Moskowitz is shown talking about it all in sessions with his analyst, a wise and gentle man called Dr Kirkland Vaughans. Continue reading...
The two brightest planets will be a beauty to spot if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizonWe will end the month as we started it: with a tricky planetary conjunction. Although challenging, it will be a beauty if you can find somewhere with a low enough eastern horizon. The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will draw exquisitely close.The chart shows the view looking east from Southampton on 30 April at 0530 BST. All week you will be able to see the planets drawing closer together, and then next week you will see them drifting back away from one another. Continue reading...
There’s been a worrying decline in diphtheria, polio and measles jabs. We should heed the lessons of Covid-19We forgot about measles. And tetanus and diphtheria. And polio. In the race to vaccinate the world against Covid-19, the global drive to suppress some of the biggest killers in history has fallen back.Almost 12bn doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in less than 18 months – a stunning achievement, even if the global distribution has been uneven. Yet more than 30 million children have missed out on other basic vaccinations during the pandemic, with south-east Asia and the eastern Mediterranean region being the worst hit. This means large numbers of young people will be vulnerable to diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus, as well as measles – a disease that continues to kill tens of thousands of people every year.Gary Finnegan is a health journalist based in Ireland Continue reading...
Leaning into difficult feelings can help you find the way forward, according to a refreshing new wave of books, says Jamie WatersEight years ago, when Whitney Goodman was a newly qualified therapist counselling cancer patients, it struck her that positive thinking was being “very heavily pushed”, both in her profession and the broader culture, as the way to deal with things. She wasn’t convinced that platitudes like “Look on the bright side!” and “Everything happens for a reason!” held the answers for anyone trying to navigate life’s messiness. Between herself, her friends and her patients, “All of us were thinking, ‘Being positive is the only way to live,’ but really it was making us feel disconnected and, ultimately, worse.”This stayed with her and, in 2019, she started an Instagram account, @sitwithwhit, as a tonic to the saccharine inspirational quotes dominating social media feeds. Her posts included: “Sometimes things are hard because they’re just hard and not because you’re incompetent…” and “It’s OK to complain about something you’re grateful for.” It took off: the “radically honest” Miami-based psychotherapist now has more than 500,000 followers. Continue reading...
The newly published will of philosopher, self-help maverick and ‘one-man global industry’ Dr Edward de Bono reveals surprises about his children – and his wealthEdward de Bono, the late philosopher, author and bestselling mental strategist, was famous for solving problems in an unconventional manner. Indeed, he actually invented the term lateral thinking in 1967.But the publication of De Bono’s final work, his last will and testament, has posed several unexpected questions that might test even the most creative mind. Continue reading...
Operations can have cognitive side-effects, particularly in the over-65s but also in the very young. How can science minimise the danger?In 2004, Mario Cibelli was preparing a 75-year-old patient for a big cardiac operation when the patient’s daughter asked for a quick word. “She explained to me how worried she was about the surgery,” says Cibelli, a consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care at the University Hospitals Birmingham. “I said: ‘Look, everybody’s worried about heart surgery, it comes with risks, but normally people benefit from it.’ And then she told me that her father had undergone a cardiac procedure two years before and he had changed dramatically.”Cibelli listened as the woman described how her father, a former physics professor, had shown signs of significant cognitive decline after the initial operation. Once a keen chess player, he was now unable to play the game and struggled to even do basic crosswords. Continue reading...
Research into C difficile found antibiotic resistance is growing as a result of overuse on farm stockScientists have uncovered evidence that dangerous versions of superbugs can spread from pigs to humans. The discovery underlines fears that intensive use of antibiotics on farms is leading to the spread of microbes resistant to them.The discovery of the link has been made by Semeh Bejaoui and Dorte Frees of Copenhagen University and Soren Persson at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institute and focuses on the superbug Clostridioides difficile, which is considered one of the world’s major antibiotic resistance threats. Continue reading...
Strain reported in 12 countries causing at least 169 cases in young children, most of them in the UKAt least one child has died from a mystery strain of severe hepatitis which has now been reported in 12 countries, the World Health Organization has confirmed.The UN body said on Saturday that it is aware of 169 rare cases of acute hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, in young children. Of these, 17 became so sick they needed liver transplants. Continue reading...
The Department for Transport’s breezy predictions about driverless cars transforming Britain into a ‘global science superpower’ are both premature and optimistic“Britain moves closer to a self-driving revolution,” said a perky message from the Department for Transport that popped into my inbox on Wednesday morning. The purpose of the message was to let us know that the government is changing the Highway Code to “ensure the first self-driving vehicles are introduced safely on UK roads” and to “clarify drivers’ responsibilities in self-driving vehicles, including when a driver must be ready to take back control”.The changes will specify that while travelling in self-driving mode, motorists must be ready to resume control in a timely way if they are prompted to, such as when they approach motorway exits. They also signal a puzzling change to current regulations, allowing drivers “to view content that is not related to driving on built-in display screens while the self-driving vehicle is in control”. So you could watch Gardeners’ World on iPlayer, but not YouTube videos of F1 races? Reassuringly, though, it will still be illegal to use mobile phones in self-driving mode, “given the greater risk they pose in distracting drivers as shown in research”. Continue reading...
In 1966, a British psychiatrist had an idea: to change the course of history by asking the public to share their eerie intuitionsOn the morning of 21 October 1966, a dark, glistening wave of coal waste burst out of the hillside above the Welsh village of Aberfan and poured down. People later compared the roar of the collapsing mine tip to a low-flying jet aircraft or thunder or a runaway train. At first, sheep, hedges, cattle, a farmhouse with three people inside were smothered. Then the wave reached Pantglas junior school and Pantglas county secondary school, burying the former, which was full of children answering the register. One hundred and forty-four people were killed by the tip slide in Aberfan, 116 of them children, mostly between the ages of seven and 10.In the aftermath, a roadblock was set up to control access to the disaster, but more or less anyone in a uniform or an official-looking car could find a way through. During the morning of 22 October, a green Ford Zephyr nosed its way into the village. At the wheel was John Barker, a 42-year-old psychiatrist at Shelton hospital near Shrewsbury with a keen interest in unusual mental conditions. Barker was tall and broad and dressed in a suit and tie. At the time, he was working on a book about whether it was possible to be frightened to death. In the early news reports from Aberfan, Barker had heard that a boy had escaped from the school unharmed but later died of shock. The psychiatrist had come to investigate, but realised he had arrived too soon. When Barker reached the village, victims were still being dug out. “I soon realised it would have been quite inopportune to make any inquiries about this child,” he wrote afterwards. The devastation reminded Barker of the blitz, when he had been a teenager, growing up in south London, but the loss of life in Aberfan was worse for being so concentrated and the dead so young. “Parents who had lost their children were standing in the street, looking stunned and hopeless and many were still weeping. There was hardly anybody I encountered who had not lost someone.” Continue reading...
Sufferers urged to join consultation after Aquiette pills deemed safe to buy without prescriptionMillions of women suffering from an overactive bladder have been urged to take part in a consultation that could make a treatment available over the counter for the first time.The call for evidence, launched on Saturday, could lead to the medicine Aquiette being reclassified so that it can be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription. Continue reading...
If we are going to send more humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars, will the goal be to benefit the people of the US and the world, or to make billionaires even richer?On 20 July 1969, 650 million people throughout the world watched with bated breath as Neil Armstrong successfully fulfilled President Kennedy’s vision. The United States achieved what had seemed impossible just a few decades before. We had sent a man to the moon.On that historic day, the entire world came together to celebrate the enormous accomplishment as Armstrong’s voice boomed from our television sets: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont Continue reading...
For first time it is possible to detect patterns in cancers’ DNA – opening up to possible personalised treatmentsAnalysis of thousands of tumours has unveiled a treasure trove of clues about the causes of cancer, representing a significant step towards the personalisation of treatment.Researchers say that for the first time it is possible to detect patterns – called mutational signatures – in the DNA of cancers. Continue reading...
The singer’s refusal to have replacement surgery reinforces horribly negative ideas about older bodiesPsst, want to feel old? Liam Gallagher, the eternally chippy younger brother of rock, apparently now needs a hip replacement. At 49, the ex-Oasis frontman is suffering from arthritis, which he seems to be approaching with customary but misplaced stubbornness. This week it emerged that he is refusing to have the surgery his doctor recommended, because hip replacements are for old people. And who wants that?“I think I’d rather just be in pain,” he explained to Mojo magazine. “It’s the stigma, saying you’ve had your hips replaced.” Either he hasn’t seen the reboot of Sex and the City in which a fiftysomething Carrie has surgery on hers, or else – surprise, surprise – one lone stab at reinventing the idea of growing older for primetime isn’t nearly enough.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Researchers at London hospitals call for urgent new treatments for persistent infectionsDoctors in the UK have called for urgent new treatments to clear persistent Covid infections after identifying the first person in the world known to have harboured the virus for more than a year.The patient, who had a weakened immune system, caught the virus in 2020 and tested positive for Covid for 505 days before they died. Previously, the longest known PCR-confirmed case of Covid was a US cancer survivor in her 40s who tested positive for 335 days. Continue reading...
My friend Godfrey Fowler, who has died aged 90, was a leading and reforming family doctor for 30 years; he was warm, modest and convivial. For much of his career he also headed a department of medical general practice at Oxford University, training students and undertaking research into preventive medicine.Godfrey was founding clinical reader in the new department from 1978, having been persuaded to take this role by Sir Richard Doll, then regius professor of medicine. The department became what is now the large and successful Nuffield department of primary care sciences. Godfrey took the role part-time, so he could continue as a GP. His first challenges were to devise new general practice teaching, such as in consultation skills, and to convince Oxfordshire GPs to provide up to 70 placements a year – a target he met successfully. Continue reading...
My grandfather Abraham Yoffe, who has died aged 102, was an explosives expert, a research physicist at Cambridge University’s Cavendish laboratory, and a founding fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.Abe was born in Jerusalem to Haim Yoffe, a rabbi, and his wife, Leah (nee Kreindal). He lived in Australia as a child, attending Melbourne high school. He studied chemistry at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1941, and stayed for a master’s. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5YDDP)
Latest run is expected to scrutinise findings from last year that may turn into another blockbuster discoveryThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart on Friday after a three-year hiatus and is expected to resolve a scientific cliffhanger on whether a mysterious anomaly could point to the existence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.The tantalising findings reported last year have reignited hopes that the 20 mile-long collider could deliver a second blockbuster discovery, more than a decade after the Higgs boson. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#5YD0Z)
Scientists report shortest known gap between infections in fully vaccinated healthcare workerA 31-year-old woman in Spain caught Covid twice within 20 days, the shortest known gap between infections, scientists have reported.Researchers in Spain gave details of the healthcare worker, who tested positive a few days before Christmas in December 2021 and again in January 2022. The case is further evidence that the Omicron variant can evade immunity from even recent previous infections. Continue reading...
In western US waterways, invasive and voracious brook trout are outcompeting native species – but a modified variant could tip the scalesOn a golden morning in early October, two graduate students from New Mexico State University plunge into the icy current of Leandro Creek. The small waterway flows through the 550,000 acre Vermejo park ranch, a reserve in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the pair are in search of an unusual fish.Kelsie Field, 25, from the Department of Wildlife and Conservation Ecology, wears a pair of worn grey waders and carries two eight-gallon buckets, one full of water, the other, of scientific gear: test tubes, an electronic scanner and surgical implements. Michael Miller, 30, shoulders a large, waterproof backpack containing a battery attached to an electrode that resembles a metal detector.Researchers Kelsie Field and Michael Miller go ‘electrofishing’ in New Mexico. Photograph: Jeremy Miller Continue reading...
As soon as we left the planet, we began leaving rubbish in orbit. Now it is putting space stations and astronauts at risk. What can be done about the millions of pieces of debris?In November last year, the five astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were ordered to suit up and take refuge in their capsules for fear their spaceship might be struck by flying debris. Russia had deliberately destroyed one of its own satellites with a missile, producing a cloud of wreckage that threatened the orbiting outpost. “It’s a crazy way to start a mission,” Nasa told its sheltering crew, who had arrived only days beforehand.The incident revealed how hairy Earth’s orbit has become, and it wasn’t a one-off. Two weeks later, mission controllers received another alert that the ISS might be hit by more debris. This time, Nasa delayed a planned spacewalk amid concerns that the astronauts could be in danger if they went outside. Before the week was out, yet another warning came in, this one forcing the space station to dodge a US rocket body that has been barrelling around Earth since the 90s. It was all worryingly reminiscent of the 2013 movie Gravity, in which debris from a shot-down satellite damages not just the ISS but the Hubble space telescope and a visiting space shuttle. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample, produced by Madeleine Fin on (#5YCSP)
This week, the US became the first country to ban anti-satellite missile tests, in an effort to protect Earth’s orbit from dangerous space debris. There could be millions of pieces of old satellites and spent rockets zooming around above our atmosphere, at speeds where collisions can be catastrophic. Guardian science editor Ian Sample talks to Prof Don Pollacco and Prof Chris Newman about the threat posed by space junk, and how we can tackle the problem
Science | The Guardian