The brig – whose crew was rescued – is linked to prominent Black mariner who hired nearly all Black and Native sailors for his shipsScientists have announced the discovery of a 207-year-old whaling ship that sank in the Gulf of Mexico, revealing evidence about descendants of African enslaved people and Native Americans who served as essential crew members.The 64-foot long, two-masted wooden ship was built in 1815 in Westport, Massachusetts, and was used to hunt whales from the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean sea and the Gulf of Mexico, but sank during a storm on 26 May 1836, the New York Times reported. Continue reading...

Peruvian historian and US archaeologist say the pre-Columbian town was called Huayna Picchu by the Inca peopleMachu Picchu is one of the world’s best-known archaeological sites, a wonder of pre-Columbian architecture that has been closely studied for decades and a tourist attraction that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.But a new academic paper argues that since its rediscovery more than a century ago, the site has been known by the wrong name. Continue reading...

With free universal testing winding down, health service advises tests mostly needed for people at high riskThe provision of free Covid-19 tests is being scaled back in England as people scramble to get them while they are still available.People trying to order lateral flow tests are discouraged from ordering packs when they try to access them online. Continue reading...

Prof Danny Altmann, immunologist at Imperial College London, says UK’s approach fails to take the impact of infections seriouslyLong Covid could create a generation affected by disability, with people forced out of their homes and work, and some even driven to suicide, a leading expert has warned.In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Prof Danny Altmann – an immunologist at Imperial College London – said that the UK’s current approach to Covid fails to take the impact of infections sufficiently seriously, adding that more needs to be done to aid diagnosis and treatment of long Covid. Continue reading...

Analysis: With experts concerned over rising case rates, where are we also with deaths, hospital admissions, long Covid and the economy?On 23 March 2020, the day on which the prime minister announced the first UK lockdown, just over 1,000 people had died of a new and frightening coronavirus. Two years later, that figure now stands at above 188,000.The UK endured several more lockdowns over the next two years as new variants emerged and cases soared, causing unprecedented disruption. Continue reading...

To stop another, more severe, pandemic, those misleading stories like thinking the virus would burn itself out can’t be forgottenAll big experiences in our lives have two realities. There is what really happened. And there is the narrative, the story we tell ourselves and each other about what happened. Of the two, psychologists say it’s the narrative that matters most. Creating coherent stories about events allows us to make sense of them. It is the narrative that determines our reactions, and what we do next.Two years after the World Health Organization (WHO) finally used the word “pandemic” in its own story about the deadly new virus from Wuhan, narratives have multiplied and changed around the big questions. How bad is it? What should we do about it? When will it be over? The stories we embraced have sometimes been correct, but others have sown division, even caused needless deaths. Those stories aren’t finished – and neither is the pandemic. Continue reading...

Two years after the first UK coronavirus lockdown, Laura Spinney reflects on what the years after the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic looked like, and what we might expect in a post-Covid eraOn 23 March 2020 – two years ago today – the first Covid lockdown was announced in the UK, upending life for everybody. It marked the start of a new era– one that has not entirely come to an end.Science writer Laura Spinney says pandemics don’t conclude neatly, and that the after-effects can be seen for years to come. While researching her book Pale Rider, a history of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, she read countless pandemic diaries. She tells Hannah Moore that those accounts, as well as public records, paint a rich picture of how that pandemic changed society – and we can already see how Covid-19 has reshaped our world. Continue reading...

PM Jacinda Ardern, who oversaw some of the toughest restrictions in the world, says rules will relax after Omicron peak in early April

Sean Kenny on how the virus can affect your sense of self for years. Plus Jennifer Jenkins on the foolishness of ending free lateral flow testsDr Xand van Tulleken (Falling ill made me realise the true wonder of the NHS, 19 March) says he will repeat to his patients the advice that an A&E doctor gave him: “You mustn’t let being ill make you think differently about yourself. You’re still the same person, just one bit of you isn’t working very well.”I am suffering from long Covid, and if any doctor said this to me I’d be hurt and offended. Part of the agony of long Covid is that you really are not the person you were before. You lose a lot: work, leisure, maybe the ability to walk for a length of time. You may lose friends and relatives who cannot cope with the diagnosis and its implications. You’re undergoing a profound change that will no doubt impact on your sense of self for years. Anyone who says “don’t think differently about yourself” in this situation is a Panglossian fantasist. Continue reading...

Regional director says several countries including the UK lifted restrictions ‘brutally’Several European countries lifted their coronavirus restrictions too soon, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said, and as a result are now witnessing sharp rises in infections probably linked to the new, more transmissible BA2 subvariant.Hans Kluge, director of the WHO’s Europe region, said countries including Germany, France, Italy and Britain had lifted their Covid curbs “brutally – from too much to too few”. Infections are rising in 18 out of the region’s 53 countries, he said. Continue reading...

New technology allows patients to communicate but at slow paceA completely locked-in patient is able to type out words and short sentences to his family, including what he would like to eat, after being implanted with a device that enables him to control a keyboard with his mind.The findings, published in Nature Communications, overturn previous assumptions about the communicative abilities of people who have lost all voluntary muscle control, including movement of the eyes or mouth, as well as giving a unique insight into what it’s like to be in a “locked in” state. Continue reading...

Analysis of vocal expression of emotions is being increasingly used as a tool to assess pigs’ welfare, study findsA new study seeks to answer a key question: what does it mean when a pig oinks, squeals or grunts?In the study published earlier this month, researchers from the University of Copenhagen, ETH Zurich and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment recorded 7,414 sounds from 411 pigs in different scenarios. Continue reading...

Data shows 202,000 pupils off sick on 17 March, raising fears of classroom disruptions before summer examsThe number of children in state schools in England who were absent last week because of Covid has more than tripled in a fortnight, confirming headteachers’ warnings of growing disruption in classrooms as pupils prepare for summer exams.Figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) on Tuesday showed 202,000 pupils were off school on 17 March because of the virus – a dramatic jump from 58,000 two weeks earlier when attendance was described as returning to “something approaching normal”. Continue reading...

Collaborative investigation shows ships regularly discharge ‘bilge’ water illegally instead of treating it, with toxic effect on marine lifeUp to 3,000 cases of oil dumped by commercial ships may be happening every year in European waters, according to a new investigation, which found the scale of illegal “bilge dumping” is likely to be far higher than publicly acknowledged.Bilge water is a mix of liquids from the engine room of a ship along with other potentially toxic substances including lubricants, cleaning solvents and metals such as lead and arsenic, which collects at the bottom of the vessel. Continue reading...

Findings are based on analysis of care given to almost 2.6 million adults across UK from 2003 to 2018The number of people in the UK using drugs to combat anxiety is soaring, driven by major increases among women and young adults, new research shows.Women are more than twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with anxiety and prescribed medication including antidepressants to relieve its symptoms, the study found. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s spatial puzzlesEarlier today I set you six puzzles that use a square piece of paper, in the light of new research saying that the best way to improve maths performance is to train ‘spatial reasoning’ using physical objects.1. The triangle fold Continue reading...

Defence minister argues boundary between competition and conflict ‘increasingly blurred’ after Russia destroyed satellite leaving ‘lethal debris’

Primates come up with new ‘kiss-squeak’ alarm calls that spread quickly through communities, research saysWhether it is the rapidly shifting patois of teenagers or curious words found long-buried in the local argot of a rural community, our vocabularies are shaped by our social environs. Now, it seems, such influences might also be at play among orangutans.Researchers studying the “kiss-squeak” alarm calls of wild communities of the apes in Borneo and Sumatra have found that rather than such sounds being innate and hardwired, as was long thought, orangutans are able to come up with new versions of the calls, varying in pitch and duration. Continue reading...

Satellite firm to partner with Elon Musk’s company after being forced to abandon launch plans in RussiaOneWeb, the satellite company part-owned by the British state, is turning to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for help after it was barred from using Russian rockets to launch its latest orbiters.Under the arrangement, the communications firm will partner with SpaceX for its first launches later this year, adding to the 428 micro-satellites it already has in low-earth orbit. Continue reading...

Ditch the screen, grab some paperUPDATE: The solutions to the puzzles can be read here.Today’s puzzles require you to roll up your sleeves and wrestle with a square piece of paper.Because this is the best way to become brilliant at a maths. Or so concludes a recent study by developmental psychologists at Surrey, Toronto and Maryland universities. Continue reading...

Open letter from 500 academics likens fossil-energy funding of climate solutions to tobacco industry disinformationUniversities must stop accepting funding from fossil fuel companies to conduct climate research, even if the research is aimed at developing green and low-carbon technology, an influential group of distinguished academics has said.Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, the Nasa data scientist Peter Kalmus, and prominent US climate scientist Michael Mann are among close to 500 academics from the US and the UK who have written an open letter addressed to all university leaders in the two countries, calling on them to reject all funding from fossil fuel companies. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Experts say the $150m project, due to be de-orbited next year, provides vital data on forests and the carbon stored in themForest experts and scientists are asking Nasa to extend the life of a “key” climate and biodiversity sensor due to be destroyed in the Earth’s atmosphere early next year.The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (Gedi) mission – pronounced like Jedi in Star Wars – was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS) in December 2018, and has provided the first 3D map of the world’s forests. Continue reading...

Antarctic areas reach 40C above normal at same time as north pole regions hit 30C above usual levelsStartling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the “unprecedented” events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown.Temperatures in Antarctica reached record levels at the weekend, an astonishing 40C above normal in places. Continue reading...

After mishaps and misinformation, jab will build ‘global wall of immunity’, says director of Oxford Vaccine GroupExactly two years ago Prof Sir Andrew Pollard was starting to panic. “We were just waking up to the reality of Covid-19 and that we would need vaccines for our very survival,” the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group told the Guardian last week. He joined forces with a colleague, Prof Dame Sarah Gilbert, and together they launched one of the greatest medical missions in modern history. Their seemingly impossible task – to design, develop and deliver a vaccine from scratch to slow the advance of a lethal pandemic – was completed in less than 12 months, to the relief of millions.Today though, the coronavirus landscape – and the status of their jab, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – looks very different. In the UK, half the population have had their vaccine, restrictions have ended, and while cases and hospitalisations are rising in the UK, a dramatic uptick in deaths is not expected. The jab has saved more than a million lives, according to estimates, but its reputation has been battered by a toxic mix of misinformation, miscommunication and mishaps. Two years after Pollard, Gilbert and their teams first began making the miracle jab now known as Vaxzevria or Covishield, it has been sidelined in the UK and Europe, and snubbed in the US. Continue reading...

Cosmonaut says colours represent his university, after earlier saying they were chosen because they had a lot of yellow material

Can hopes become reality just through the power of positive thinking? Yes, say the latest new age gurus and their – suggestible – audiencesThe problem, it turns out, when writing a story about manifesting – the noughties new-age trend now making a pandemic-inspired Gen Z comeback – is that everyone you meet will proclaim they’ve manifested you. It’s a feature, I suppose, rather than a bug: when you believe that desires can be made real by concentration alone, as those in the manifesting game do, and when that desire is for a journalist to cover the manifesting company you recently set up, then, well, who I am to say that they didn’t?The practice of manifesting is hardly new – it dates back to both the New Thought movement of the 19th century and, more recently, a resurgence in the noughties thanks to the 2006 self-help book The Secret, which sold 30m copies, and Oprah Winfrey, who is a fan. Continue reading...

EBV is a puzzling pathogen that lies dormant in most of us. But its link to MS – detailed in a landmark new study – and some cancers has led to the development of new vaccinesIn the 1970s, Hank Balfour, a virologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, was studying the long-term survival prospects of kidney transplant patients when he noticed that a small proportion of them went on to develop a rare form of cancer known as post-transplant proliferative disorder.He was particularly intrigued when he discovered that almost all of these patients had been infected with a virus called Epstein-Barr or EBV, a curious pathogen that has captivated and puzzled virus-hunters for decades. Continue reading...

Singing in harmony with others is a joyful thing, even in difficult timesThere is something about singing in public that solicits everyone’s attention instantly and demands a reaction. It makes its own weather system wherever it happens. Even singing that is wildly off-tempo and off-key, like drunken karaoke, can’t be ignored. And when the singing is beautiful, it declares the singer’s emotional state and replicates it in the listener, gluing them together briefly in a moment of shared attention.We have seen and heard this in videos that have emerged from Ukraine in the past few weeks and gone viral. MPs lustily singing the Ukrainian national anthem as they returned to parliament. Parents singing folk songs to their children in underground stations to keep their spirits up. A young girl silencing the other occupants of a Kyiv bunker with a rendition of Let it Go from Frozen. Singing stops us in our tracks in a way that speech rarely can. Continue reading...

On the second anniversary of the first lockdown, experts including Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar, outline what needs to be done to cope with pandemicsStopping the spread of Covid-19 through public health measures remains vital to curbing the pandemic, one of Britain’s most senior scientific figures has warned.On the eve of the second anniversary of the lockdown that began the UK’s Covid response, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, called for investment in next-generation vaccines and better access to vaccinations for poorer countries. Continue reading...

The language we use to talk about death has become increasingly sanitised. It’s time for a more healthy approachAs a forensic pathologist, the dead of all ages, shapes and sizes have been the focus of my career. Numerous times a day, for the past 40 years, I have looked closely and directly at death, knowing that, for many – probably most – of the people I examine, the start of their final day had been completely normal. Death had come swiftly and unexpectedly. So, as I dress each morning, I often wonder where I will be at the end of my day. At home? Or in a mortuary, being slid into a fridge on a shiny tray?In medical circles, we had been expecting a global pandemic for several decades. The HIV/Aids pandemic of the 80s was a sombre milestone, resulting in about 36 million deaths worldwide, but I never anticipated that the first pandemic of the 21st century would develop from a virus in China. I had expected it to come from a lethal reorganisation of the DNA of the influenza virus – as happened in 1918, when “Spanish” flu killed at least 50 million people worldwide, and in the subsequent, less lethal, influenza pandemics: 2 million died in the 1957 flu pandemic and 1 million each in 1968 and 1977. The last notable flu pandemic was swine flu, in 2009, which resulted in about 500,000 deaths. A serious influenza pandemic is about 50 years overdue. Continue reading...

Birdwatchers, church-goers and TV addicts are considered dull, according to new research. But this is stereotyping - let’s embrace the mundaneA new study has supposedly pinpointed the most boring people alive: birdwatchers, accountants, data analysts and everyone who works in insurance. (What, no trainspotters? A major oversight.) The University of Essex research lists the most boring hobbies as going to church, watching TV and “animal observation”. All these things were judged to be worse even than stamp-collecting.Of course, when you undertake this kind of research, you also have to find the opposite types. So the study lists actors, scientists, journalists (and in particular “science journalists”) as the “least boring” professions. The research, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was conducted by Wijnand van Tilburg, Eric Igou and Mehr Panjwani, all possessing refreshingly unboring names and presumably blessed with many science journalist friends. Continue reading...

Three Russian cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station wearing yellow flight suits with blue accents, colours that match the Ukrainian flag. Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos blasted off from Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan in their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft on Friday at 8.55pm local time. The men were the first new arrivals at the space station since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last month

Archeologists worry rapid expansion of North Sea projects could remove access to rare Mesolithic remainsWhile the Conservative party’s proposed dash for wind power is good news for the climate it could be bad news for archaeology, with rapid offshore windfarm development sealing off access to some of the best preserved and most complete evidence of early human communities in the world.Much remains to be learned about the humans who roamed the planet before the advent of farming. “There’s a common perception that they were short, brutish and nasty, and that they had to keep moving and scrabbling around to feed themselves,” says Vince Gaffney, a landscape archaeologist at the University of Bradford. Continue reading...

Remember flu? Despite lockdowns holding it at bay, a small group of scientists is searching the globe for deadly new strains – and to work out what to put in next winter’s vaccinesLast month, a small group of international scientists met to decide an issue critical to the health of millions of people all over the planet. For once, it wasn’t about coronavirus, although these experts know a lot about that, too. The task in hand was to save us from a bug we’ve been fighting since before the days of Hippocrates, the first doctor to describe it in 400BC. It’s an adversary potentially as much of a threat as Covid. These scientists are the flu hunters – heads of a handful of international institutions who track this old foe as it evolves and disperses in its own fight for survival.This crucial annual meeting was held, for the first time since Covid struck, in the plateglass anonymity of the World Health Organization building in Geneva, with a few participants on Zoom. The scientists came armed with mountains of data and decades of experience to decide which four strains of the flu virus circling the globe should be in the next flu vaccine, to protect us from illness and our healthcare systems from buckling. Each has their own opinion and there can be wrangling and even some political positioning. Experts from China, the US, Australia, Japan and Russia are involved. It’s not always easy. But on 25 February, with what surely ought to have been a white puff of pontifical smoke, they made their recommendation public. Many thousands of lives will be saved – if they have got it right. Continue reading...

The TV medic suffered complications after Covid and needed a heart operation. Only then did he understand the real value of a free-at-the-point-of-access healthcare systemI love the NHS. I know this is a fashionable thing to say, but it also has a whiff of naivety. It is like saying I love autumn, or chocolate. Sure, those things are great, but they are also big things that are complex and loving them unconditionally seems to avoid important criticisms (the waiting lists for essential surgeries, the leaves on the train tracks and taking your dog to the vet every Easter, respectively).I mean, of course, that I love the idea of a nationalised health service, rather than the dysfunctional, underfunded service we have, where staff are even more overworked and underpaid now than they were when I left more than a decade ago. I love the idea of a system in which our freedoms in a pandemic aren’t contingent on avoiding it becoming overwhelmed – despite it coming close to being overwhelmed in a normal year (and, as I write, Covid cases and hospital admissions are once again rising). But I didn’t truly grasp the big idea – that health care has to be free at the point of access – until I got ill. Continue reading...

Head of Russian space agency has made provocative comments about ending cooperation with US but missions are proceedingThe Nasa administrator, Bill Nelson, has played down hostile comments by the head of the Russian space agency, after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.“That’s just Dmitry Rogozin,” Nelson told the Associated Press. “He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.The Associated Press contributed to this report Continue reading...

School leaders also fear staff and student absences are disrupting A-level and GCSE preparationsA resurgence of Covid cases is under way across the UK, with infections in the over-70s at a record high and school leaders fearing that preparations for A-levels and GCSEs are being disrupted by outbreaks among staff and students.Based on random swab tests taken in the community, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that almost 5% of the population in England, or 1,544,600 people, had Covid in the week ending 12 March, and 3.5% of people in the oldest age group. Infections also reached a record high in Scotland, where one in 14 tested positive. Continue reading...

The pandemic has taught us that viruses are not easy to identify – and can spread like wildfireAs we move into the late stages of the pandemic, it is important to reflect on the scientific discoveries of the past two years, so that we are better prepared for future virus outbreaks. I believe there are two areas in particular where we can learn from the experience.The first is understanding that outbreaks are not always easy to identify quickly. Viruses such as Nipah and Ebola cause severe, and therefore obvious, illness in everyone who is infected. The fatality rate is high but transmissibility is low, with an R number – the rate used in epidemiology to measure the reproduction of a virus – of about 2 for Ebola and less than 1 for Nipah. This means that outbreaks can be rapidly identified and contained. In contrast, coronaviruses cause mild, sometimes asymptomatic, infection in the majority of people, but transmissibility is higher. The R number in early 2020 was about 5 – meaning that, on average, each infected person infected five others. Transmission can also occur before symptom onset. The first reports of “pneumonia of unknown cause” in four people that heralded the start of the Sars-CoV-2 outbreak didn’t appear to provide much cause for concern – but those cases were investigated because the 2002 Sars outbreak in the same part of the world had not been forgotten. Continue reading...

Actor gave no details for deciding not to join six passengers on Blue Origin’s next flightPete Davidson has bowed out of a short ride to space on a Jeff Bezos rocket.The Saturday Night Live star is no longer able to make the flight, which has been delayed for nearly a week, Bezos’s space travel company said on Thursday night. No other details were provided. Continue reading...

As the WHO mulls when to call the Covid pandemic over, attention is turning to the futureLast November, having alerted the world to the new and highly transmissible Omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, South Africa-based scientist Tulio de Oliveira saw that country hit with travel bans.Already smarting at what he saw as wealthier nations’ hoarding of vaccines, antiviral drugs and test reagents, his frustration spilled over. “If the world keeps punishing Africa for the discovery of Omicron and ‘global health scientists’ keep taking the data, who will share early data again?” he tweeted. Continue reading...

Exclusive: calls for regular boosters after a sharp drop in immunity three to seven months after jabsImmunity declines steeply among care home residents in the months after Covid vaccination, a study has found, leading to calls for regular boosters for the most vulnerable.The study of more than 15,000 care home residents found that protection against hospitalisation and death fell by one-third three to seven months after vaccination. The decline is far sharper than that seen in younger people, where immunity against infection wanes, but protection against severe illness appears to be robust. Continue reading...

With tens of thousands of satellites planned for launch, efficient space traffic management is vitalAstroscale has been awarded an €800,000 contract by the European Space Agency (Esa) to lead a study into new systems for avoiding collisions between satellites in space.Tens of thousands of satellites are being planned for launch in the next decade, dwarfing the number sent up since the beginning of the space age. As the skies become more crowded, efficient space traffic management becomes critical. Continue reading...

The ESA has commissioned a study of how to get ExoMars off the ground without Roscosmos involvementThe European Space Agency has suspended its €1bn (£844m) ExoMars mission, a joint project with Russia that was due to launch a robotic rover in September. Member states of the ESA voted on Thursday to cancel the launch because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.“The decision was made that this launch cannot happen, given the current circumstances and especially the sanctions that are imposed by our member states,” said agency director general Josef Aschbacher. “This makes it practically impossible, but also politically impossible to have a launch of [the rover] in September.” Continue reading...

Excessive daytime napping likely to be symptom rather than cause of mental decline, say scientistsTaking long naps could be a precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study that tracked the daytime sleeping habits of elderly people.The findings could help resolve the conflicting results of the effects of napping on cognition in older adults, with some previous studies highlighting the benefits of a siesta on mood, alertness and performance on mental tasks. Continue reading...

My friend and mentor Piers Nye, who has died aged 75 of pulmonary fibrosis, was a teacher of physiology at the University of Oxford for more than 40 years, and a medical researcher. His laboratory was full of his homemade equipment, which he joked was held together with “chewing gum and bits of string”. He was a talented mentor of students and junior colleagues and worked to widen access to the university among under-represented groups.Piers was born in Perth, Scotland. His father, Leslie Nye, was an insurance executive. After Piers’ mother, Grace (nee Evershed), died when he was 14, he was brought up in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, by Janet, one of his three older sisters, and her husband, Ian Tait, both general practitioners. Continue reading...

Treatment aimed at people who cannot be vaccinated is boost to firm’s coronavirus portfolioAstraZeneca has received UK regulatory approval for its long-acting Covid-19 antibody treatment Evusheld in a boost to its coronavirus portfolio, as the British-Swedish drugmaker targets greater drug development success at its new £1bn research lab in Cambridge.Aimed at preventing Covid infections in people with poor immune systems who cannot be vaccinated, Evusheld is already approved in the US, France and other countries, and the US government has ordered 1.7m doses. Continue reading...

SLS rocket, which stands taller than the Statue of Liberty, to move four miles in Florida journey expected to take about 11 hoursNasa’s next-generation moon rocket was due on Thursday to make a highly anticipated, slow-motion journey from an assembly plant to its launchpad in Florida for a final round of tests in the coming weeks that will determine how soon the spacecraft can fly.Rollout of the towering space launch system (SLS) rocket with its Orion crew capsule perched on top marks a key milestone in US plans for renewed lunar exploration after years of setbacks, and the public’s first glimpse of a space vehicle more than a decade in development. Continue reading...

New mathematical formulation means huge paradigm shift in physics would not be necessaryStephen Hawking’s black hole information paradox has bedevilled scientists for half a century and led some to question the fundamental laws of physics. Now scientists say they may have resolved the infamous problem by showing that black holes have a property known as “quantum hair”.If correct, this would mark a momentous advance in theoretical physics. Continue reading...

After falling for the past few weeks, the number of Covid cases in the UK is increasing once more. Since the easing of restrictions, scientists have been expecting an upwards trend in infections – but could other factors also be at work?Guardian science correspondent Nicola Davis speaks to Anand Jagatia about the latest coronavirus data and what it could mean.Archive: The World is One News, CNBC Continue reading...

From lead to E Coli to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, the filth that clings to your soles is best left outside, environmental chemists sayYou probably clean your shoes if you step in something muddy or disgusting (please pick up after your dog!). But when you get home, do you always de-shoe at the door?Plenty of Australians don’t. For many, what you drag in on the bottom of your shoes is the last thing on the mind as one gets home. Continue reading...