It's true that sound wavescan't travel in space. However electromagnetic and gravitational waves can. Now, a new album, Celestial Incantations, hasturned these signals such as the oscillations of a comet, radiation from a galactic pulsar and the merger of two black holes intomusical tracks. The album is a collaboration between Kim Cunio, an associate professor and convenor of musicology at the Australian National University, UK artist Diana Scarborough and Dr Nigel Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey. For those looking for a sonic journeythrough the cosmos, the albumis free to stream and download
Remains with combination of Neanderthal and early human features date back 100,000 yearsFossilised bones recovered from an ancient sinkhole in Israel may belong to a previously unknown group of extinct humans that lived in the Levant more than 100,000 years ago.Researchers unearthed the bones alongside stone tools and the remains of horses, fallow deer and wild ox during excavations at the Nesher Ramla prehistoric site near the city of Ramla in central Israel. Continue reading...
Scientists have turned electromagnetic and gravitational waves – which, unlike sound waves, can travel in a vacuum – into musical tracksIf two black holes collide in the vacuum of space, do they make a sound?Sound waves can’t travel in the almost perfect vacuum of space – no one can hear you scream, as the tagline from Alien goes. But electromagnetic and gravitational waves can, and a new album has turned these signals from space into musical tracks. Continue reading...
Discovery of tiny fossils indicates dinosaurs raised young in freezing region – and may have been warm-bloodedIt had long stretches of winter darkness, freezing temperatures and often scarce resources, but an array of tiny fossils suggests dinosaurs not only roamed the Arctic, but hatched and raised their young there too.While dinosaur fossils have previously been found in the Arctic, it was unclear whether they lived there year-round or were seasonal visitors. Continue reading...
Telescope may be able to observe event now calculated to have taken place 250-350m years after big bangIt is often said that looking through a telescope is like peering back in time, because of the millions of years it takes light from distant cosmic objects to reach Earth. Now scientists have calculated that they may be able to see far enough back to observe the birth of the very first stars – with the first images possibly available as early as next year. They have also pinpointed when this momentous event occurred.Observing the moment when the universe was first bathed in light, the cosmic dawn, is a major quest in astronomy. Continue reading...
Questions raised over failure of Covax scheme to provide promised doses to the continentAfrican Union special envoy Strive Masiyiwa has accused the world’s richest nations of deliberately failing to provide enough Covid-19 vaccines to the continent.Masiyiwa, the union’s special envoy to the African vaccine acquisition task team, said the Covax scheme had failed to keep its promise to secure production of 700 million doses of vaccines in time for delivery by December 2021. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample and produced by Shivani Da on (#5KFCK)
Throughout the pandemic, but increasingly in recent weeks, some senior scientists and politicians have been saying that, at some point, we’re going to have to learn to live with coronavirus. On the other hand, just last week, there was a vote in the Commons to delay the easing of restrictions - a date dubbed by some as ‘freedom day’. Speaking to Prof Siân Griffiths and Prof David Salisbury, Ian Sample asks if now is the time to go back to normality or whether a more cautious approach is needed
There is huge potential in an approach that tackles crises not by dominating or manipulating people, but by working with themFor many years, psychology has largely been relegated to the “and finally …” section of the news, down there with dogs on surfboards and siblings reuniting after a lifetime apart. I recall, for instance, during the Scottish independence referendum, being asked to comment on how political differences within families might lead to marital discord. Significant to those involved, no doubt, but hardly central to the story. Although issues that were central to the story – national identity, trust in government, decision-making under conditions of uncertainty – did involve a core psychological dimension, psychologists and behavioural scientists more generally were never invited to comment on these.The problem is that, although our society and popular culture are endlessly obsessed with the psychological, this is generally limited to how we act alone or in personal relationships. It rarely extends to how we act together, how we combine collectively and hence how we constitute a force that can alter the whole of society. So, when it comes to public policy, the discipline is irrelevant. Fine for the Big Brother House, less so for No. 10. Continue reading...
How did specific become pacific and neckties become assessories? If you’re regularly annoyed by the misuse of language, a new survey shows you are certainly not aloneName: Annoying mispronunciations.Age: No pacific age. Continue reading...
Astronomers estimate 29 habitable planets are positioned to see Earth transit and intercept human broadcastsFor centuries, Earthlings have gazed at the heavens and wondered about life among the stars. But as humans hunted for little green men, the extraterrestrials might have been watching us back.In new research, astronomers have drawn up a shortlist of nearby star systems where any inquisitive inhabitants on orbiting planets would be well placed to spot life on Earth. Continue reading...
He claims he wanted to be a scientist. One shudders to think what his fraudulent character might have unleashed in a labThis time last year there was no Covid vaccine and none was imminent. Today, about 43 million Britons – 80% of the UK adult population – have had a dose. The ordeal is far from over, but this will be the crux of the story when future generations narrate Britain’s pandemic: the virus brought fear and death; science replied with vaccines and hope.The associated political debates will go on in the margins. The jabs may have transformed Boris Johnson’s poll ratings, but that reflects a feelgood factor, which is not bankable. It cannot be deployed later in the year if voters feel bad about something else. The significance of the smooth vaccine rollout to the prime minister’s longer-term reputation depends on whether it is a late bloom of sustained administrative competence or, as seems likelier, a fluke, to be followed by a resumption of 2020-style disarray and prevarication. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of shooting June’s super moonWhen a full moon rises, many people will pull out their mobile phones to try and get an Instagram-worthy photograph, but unfortunately the moon is really challenging to get a great photo of.Two reasons: it is very far away and unless you have a telephoto lens (which makes the moon appear closer than it is) it will always appear as a very small glowing dot in the frame. Continue reading...
by Natalie Grover Science correspondent on (#5KD9Z)
Scientists were surprised by results of painting eyeliner on shells of jumping spiders to change their appearanceResearchers have come up with an ingenious way to test the theory that male jumping spiders have evolved colourful stripes to ward off predators – they have put makeup on them.Unlike the females of the species, the male Habronattus pyrrithrix come in vivid hues to attract mates. But scientists writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science wanted to establish whether their bright, striped backs help protect them from predators. Continue reading...
Space race pioneer as the commander of Soviet-era rocketsIn 1941, the 13-year-old Vladimir Shatalov was working on the defences around Leningrad as the Soviet city faced annihilation at the hands of the Nazis. By 1969, from the Soviet base at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, he was soaring into orbit aboard the Soyuz 4 spacecraft. The world had turned.The aim that day – 14 January 1969 – was to dock with Soyuz 5, and to transfer the flight engineer Aleksei Yeliseyev and research engineer Yevgeny Khrunovkrunov from Soyuz 5 into pilot cosmonaut Shatalov’s ship. A connecting tunnel for the Soviet craft had not yet been developed, so the transfer of the two cosmonauts had to take place via a space walk. Even in the era of space pioneers this was a major first, which helped pave the way for the permanent space stations that were to follow. Continue reading...
Active ageing | Hiccups | Food exports | Going cashless | KublasAt 90, I walk my lurcher twice a day (1.5 miles minimum), do the cryptic crossword (93% success this year), take more than two services a month at Methodist churches, preach once a month in my parish church, and am looking forward to the annual Wainwright challenge (climbing 2,176ft Tarn Crag) and the reopening of our village youth club (Letters, 21 June). My God is being good to me!
It’s not only the UK’s public sector that is mulling compulsory jabs. Often the carrot can be more powerful than the stickLast week we learned of a government consultation expected to announce mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations for care home staff, and possibly NHS staff too. This sparked debate as to the ethics and legality of such a move, not to mention the strain it could put on an already beleaguered workforce. A number of stakeholders opposed the move, from NHS providers to the British Medical Association. But it is not just the healthcare sector that is weighing up such considerations: a recent survey in the US and UK found that 9 in 10 employers will encourage or require vaccination and 60% plan to make them mandatory.Related: Is there an ‘acceptable’ risk of death? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters Continue reading...
Mark Grenon says in interview from prison he gave Trump the product and was the source of Trump’s fixation with disinfectantThe leader of a spurious church which peddled industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for Covid-19 is claiming that he provided Donald Trump with the product in the White House shortly before the former president made his notorious remarks about using “disinfectant” to treat the disease.Related: Republicans set to sink Democrats’ effort to advance key voting rights bill – live Continue reading...
They may be vine-smothered ruins today, but the lost cities of the ancient tropics still have a lot to teach us about how to live alongside natureVisions of “lost cities” in the jungle have consumed western imaginations since Europeans first visited the tropics of Asia, Africa and the Americas. From the Lost City of Z to El Dorado, a thirst for finding ancient civilisations and their treasures in perilous tropical forest settings has driven innumerable ill-fated expeditions. This obsession has seeped into western societies’ popular ideas of tropical forest cities, with overgrown ruins acting as the backdrop for fear, discovery and life-threatening challenges in countless films, novels and video games.Throughout these depictions runs the idea that all ancient cities and states in tropical forests were doomed to fail. That the most resilient occupants of tropical forests are small villages of poison dart-blowing hunter-gatherers. And that vicious vines and towering trees – or, in the case of The Jungle Book, a boisterous army of monkeys – will inevitably claw any significant human achievement back into the suffocating green whence it came. This idea has been boosted by books and films that focus on the collapse of particularly enigmatic societies such as the Classic Maya. The decaying stone walls, the empty grand structures and the deserted streets of these tropical urban leftovers act as a tragic warning that our own way of life is not as secure as we would like to assume. Continue reading...
Dilemma of finding it hard to part with ‘problematic stuff’ we no longer need could date back more than 2,000 yearsFrom outgrown baby clothes to hideous mugs once used by a parent, there are certain items it is curiously hard to part with. Now research suggests difficulty of what to do with such objects could date back at least 2,000 years.Writing in the journal Antiquity, Dr Lindsey Büster, an archaeologist at the University of York, argues that bone spoons and gaming pieces found between the walls of an iron age roundhouse at the Scottish hillfort settlement of Broxmouth, as well as worn-out grinding stones in its floors, could be a centuries-old example of the same conundrum. Continue reading...
by Presented and produced by Anand Jagatia on (#5KBWM)
Since the dawn of time, clocks have shaped our behaviour and values. They are embedded in almost every aspect of modern life, from the time on your smartphone to the atomic clocks that underpin GPS. Anand Jagatia talks to horologist David Rooney about his new book, which tells the history of civilisation in twelve clocks Continue reading...
UK analysis shows people who drank coffee had 49% reduced risk of dying from the conditionFrom espresso to instant, coffee is part of the daily routine for millions. Now research suggests the brew could be linked to a lower chance of developing or dying from chronic liver disease.Chronic liver disease is a major health problem around the world. According to the British Liver Trust, liver disease is the third leading cause of premature death in the UK, with deaths having risen 400% since 1970. Continue reading...
Mayor of Greater Manchester writes open letter to Scotland’s first minister about decision ban on non-essential travel to and from city. This live blog has closed – please follow the global coronavirus live blog for updates
Rest and pacing, rather than graded exercise, seem the most effective treatments to prescribe widely to long Covid patientsWithin a few days of being discharged from the hospital in March last year, it was clear I was not improving in any sort of recognizable way. My Covid symptoms morphed, and any attempt to push through the fatigue, migraines and flu-like symptoms failed, often exacerbating their intensity. By late March, one thing became clear: Covid-19 was not going away – for me, or for many of the people I knew – and the road to recovery that lay ahead would be a marathon, not a sprint. I would have to pace myself accordingly.I devised a daily schedule. I’d sleep as much as possible, and allow myself hours to complete my morning routine. Activities like making breakfast or brushing my teeth often had to be done while seated, with time allotted for rest afterward. This slow morning routine allowed me a few hours of work at my computer each afternoon, which I usually had to cease by 3 or 4pm when I began to feel the beginnings of a “crash”. I’d then spend the rest of the evening napping or watching television, or – during periods of intense light and sound sensitivity, which typically followed afternoons when I did on-air interviews or more exhausting tasks – lying still in darkness. Continue reading...
Casual vaccine chat is today’s only form of small talk, so it’s not surprising it would take a lightheartedly tribal turn. Ultimately, of course, gratitude is at the heart of the conversationLast week, I had cause to go searching for images of men getting vaccinated (it’s not a fetish – it was for work) and I turned up a photo from a flu vaccination drive in 2012. I tried to think back nine years: did we have anti-flu-vaxxers? Were there different types of vaccine and did we care which one we got? These are rhetorical, by which I mean stupid, questions. Even when I think I don’t remember, I remember perfectly well. We never thought about the flu vaccine, because we didn’t really feel anything about flu.There’s something endearing about the intensity of opinions about Covid vaccinations, as though we’re all trying to wrestle every untamed feeling about the giant, untoward event of the pandemic into more manageable shapes and sizes: tribes and allegiances, preferences and views. It’s like being a teenager again – the emotions are just too vast to comprehend, too volatile to make sense of. But maybe if I scratch “AstraZeneca” on to my desk, someone else might like AstraZeneca, too, and then at least there would be two of us. Continue reading...
UK ufologists are worlds apart on the importance of a hotly anticipated US intelligence releaseNearly 75 years after Roswell, the possibility that we are not alone in the universe is once again the talk of mainstream politics.The impending release of a Pentagon report on the activities of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) has sparked a wave of interest and recent pronouncements from the programme’s former director, Luis Elizondo , have raised the eyebrows of ufologists worldwide. Continue reading...
Night owls with clear skies will be able to chart procession during moon’s waning gibbous phaseConsider this a heads up for next weekend, when the moon is going to glide past Jupiter and Saturn in the early hours of the morning. Continue reading...
French and American astronauts have completed a six-hour spacewalk as they installed new solar panels to boost power supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). In time lapse footage taken at 10x speed, Earth pulls into frame as astronauts float outside the station on Sunday 20 June as they begin the 19-metre panels, which will power daily operations and the research and science projects carried out on the ISS. The panels are expected to have a 15-year lifespan. Continue reading...
Successful International Space Station installation followed an attempt on Wednesday that ran into several problemsFrench and American astronauts have completed a six-hour spacewalk as they installed new solar panels to boost power supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), Nasa said.“It is a huge team effort each time and couldn’t be happier to return with @astro_kimbrough,” Frenchman Thomas Pesquet tweeted on Sunday, referring to his American colleague Shane Kimbrough. Pesquet is with the European Space Agency, Kimbrough with Nasa. Continue reading...
by Natalie Grover Science correspondent on (#5KA7D)
Condition also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy is brought on by an acute emotional shockTwo molecules associated with high stress levels have been implicated in the development of broken heart syndrome, a condition that mainly affects post-menopausal women and is usually brought on by severe stress, such as the loss of a loved one.The syndrome, formally known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is characterised by weakening of the heart’s main pumping chamber and was first identified in 1990 in Japan. It looks and sounds like a heart attack and is consequently often confused for one. Continue reading...
Biden’s 70% vaccination target by Fourth of July likely to fall short as efforts to entice people to get shots have lost their initial impactWith Covid vaccination penetration in the US likely to fall short of Joe Biden’s 70% by Fourth of July target, pandemic analysts are warning that vaccine incentives are losing traction and that “two Americas” may emerge as the aggressive Delta variant becomes the dominant US strain.Efforts to boost vaccination rates have come through a variety of incentives, from free hamburgers to free beer, college scholarships and even million-dollar lottery prizes. But of the efforts to entice people to get their shots have lost their initial impact, or failed to land effectively at all. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsHappier people live longer, more pleasant lives. Informed people are weighed down with the woes of the world. So, is ignorant bliss better than knowledgeable gloom? Mary Shider, MacclesfieldSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...
Researchers say influences in the womb may play a role in increasing the risk of developing the conditionChildren of obese mothers have a greater risk of developing fatty liver disease in their 20s, according to researchers who say policymakers need to do more to tackle the promotion of poor-quality food and drink.Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) can be caused by obesity. If it progresses it can lead to serious health problems such as cirrhosis and liver cancer, while high levels of fat in the liver are also associated with a greater risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Continue reading...
Unvaccinated children have potential to drive third wave of highly transmissible Delta variant, says virologistThe drive to vaccinate all adults over the age of 18 in the UK could lead to the concentration of Covid-19 cases in schoolchildren, a leading British virologist has warned.Under-18s would then become reservoirs in which new variants of the virus could arise, said Julian Tang, of Leicester University. Continue reading...
The scientist and broadcaster discusses the drawbacks of calorie-counting and BMI in measuring obesity, and how our growing understanding of genetics is leading to new treatmentsSince the dawn of the 20th century, almost all weight loss guidelines have used calories as a simple measure of how much energy we’re consuming from our food. But according to Giles Yeo, a Cambridge University research scientist who studies the genetics of obesity, there’s one problem: not all calories are created equal. In his new book, Why Calories Don’t Count, Yeo explains that what really matters is not how many calories a particular food contains, but how that food is digested and absorbed by your body.Can you explain why you feel calorie-counting is a flawed approach to weight loss?
As psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry becomes our new agony aunt, she reveals why helping you with your worries will help us all. Plus, a special welcome from Jay RaynerJohn Dunton founded the Athenian Mercury in the 1690s. A paper that consisted of readers’ questions and the answers. His idea was that readers could send in dilemmas to be answered by a panel of experts, the Athenian Society. But his great innovation was that they could do so anonymously and this has remained a feature of problem pages ever since. Poor old Dunton could have done with some advice himself, because he ended his days in poverty as he was a better innovator than he was a business person. He blamed his woes on other people rather than taking responsibility for his own failings. I think an agony aunt today might have spotted that for him and possibly saved him from destitution.His panel of experts, depicted as 12 learned men with him in the centre in an engraving at the top of the pages, were largely fictitious. It was just Dunton and a couple of mates who went through all the letters in a coffee shop. Continue reading...
The astronaut reveals why he likes nothing more than a nice and relaxed down-to-earth day with the kidsWhat time do you get up? Whatever time my youngest comes bouncing into the room. He’s nine and has an uncanny ability to sleep in on school days and wake up early on weekends.What’s for breakfast? We’ll make pancakes with blueberries and raspberries. We’ve got a little pancake maker – it’s fun and our two boys like getting involved. Continue reading...
Sir David King hopes to emulate success of British Covid advisory body by issuing monthly reports on environmental crisisSeveral of the world’s leading scientists plan to launch an independent expert group this week to advise, warn and criticise global policymakers about the climate and nature crises.The new body has been inspired by Independent Sage – the cluster of British scientists who have held UK ministers and civil servants to account for their lack of transparency and mishandling of the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...
At the age of just 22, the very last thing you want to hear is that you have stage 4 cancer, but for some people the only response is to tackle it head on – which is just what Ellie Edna Rose-Davies didI barely noticed it at first. A bump on the right side of my neck, small but definite. I was 22 and had no health issues (I’d never even broken a bone), so I didn’t think much of the lump. But my boyfriend was concerned, so I made an appointment to go to the GP.For the next few months, I would see and feel more lumps spreading up my neck, and even larger ones under my armpits. I went to the doctor three times, where I was told: “It’s not cancer” and that I had “nothing to worry about”. Continue reading...
The moss scientist and bestselling author reveals the secrets of these primitive plants – and what they might teach us about surviving the climate crisisRobin Wall Kimmerer can recall almost to the day when she first fell under the unlikely spell of moss. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” she says. “I’ve always been engaged with plants, because I grew up in the countryside. That was my world. But mosses I’d set aside in my mind as not worthy of attention. I was studying to be a forest ecologist. That little green scum on the rocks: how interesting could it really be? Only then there came a point when I’d taken every botany class our university had to offer, except one: the ecology of mosses. I thought I’d do it, just so I could say that I’d taken them all. It was love at first sight. I remember looking with a lens at these big glacial erratic boulders that were covered in moss, and thinking: there’s a whole world here to be discovered.” Ever since, she has rarely left her house for a walk without such a lens on a string around her neck.Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and the director of the Centre for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse, is probably the most well-known bryologist at work in the world today. She may be, in fact, the only well-known bryologist at work today (bryology is the study of mosses and liverworts), at least among the general public. But her unlikely success – her fans include the writer Robert Macfarlane and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Richard Powers, who gives daily thanks for what he calls her “endless knowledge” – hardly arrived overnight. In 2013, Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma, quietly published a book called Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants – a (seemingly) niche read from a small US press. Continue reading...