The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsHow do we know we’re not living in a simulation like The Matrix? Jack Freedom, BristolPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published on Sunday. Continue reading...
Loss of linguistic diversity may lead to disappearance of age-old remedies unknown to science, study warnsKnowledge of medicinal plants is at risk of disappearing as human languages become extinct, a new study has warned.Indigenous languages contain vast amounts of knowledge about ecosystem services provided by the natural world around them. However, more than 30% of the 7,400 languages on the planet are expected to disappear by the end of the century, according to the UN. Continue reading...
by Produced and presented by Shivani Dave on (#5JSDN)
Material science allows us to understand the objects around us mathematically, but there is no formula to describe the sophistication of a handcrafted teacup. Dr Anna Ploszajski is a materials scientist who has travelled all over the UK, meeting makers to better understand her craft and theirs. She spoke to Shivani Dave about what she discovered and documented in her new book, Handmade. Continue reading...
Event may have gone unnoticed had it not slowed data traffic between Nigeria and South AfricaA vast underwater avalanche sent mud and sand more than 1,000km out into the ocean over the course of two days, rupturing submarine cables and disrupting internet traffic on Africa’s western coast, scientists have revealed.The avalanche, the longest sediment flow ever recorded, travelled more than 1,100km from its source at the mouth of the Congo river along a deep ocean canyon, according to a new study. Continue reading...
Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of photographing the 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...
Research grant applicants ‘entitled to know’ if there is a secret blacklist operating: former research minister Kim CarrAn Australian government agency has been accused of running a secret “blacklist” on researchers by scanning for information about individuals who apply to it for grants.The Australian Research Council has confirmed it collates information about potential “sensitivities” when it prepares funding decisions, including media reports and links to Chinese institutions listed on a database compiled by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi). Continue reading...
Cumbria is latest county to raise SOS as plant causes erosion and smothers other flowersHimalayan balsam’s attractive exterior masks a deadly intent. Don’t be fooled by its soothing name, pink flowers and pleasant perfume – according to ecologists, this invasive species chokes our waterways, causes riverbank erosion and is smothering our wild flowers at a terrifying rate.Determined to stop this nefarious weed from colonising even more of Britain’s lowlands, crack squads of “balsam bashers” have been out regularly since spring, hoping to pull up the evil herb before it has chance to flower. Continue reading...
I am not one of nature’s sunbeams, but we all need optimism in our lives right now. Can looking for little moments of joy help?Apparently the fear of happiness has a name: cherophobia. You can check if you have it by answering a questionnaire that is halfway between teen mag summer quiz and the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale. “Having lots of joy and fun causes bad things to happen” – strongly agree, somewhat disagree, neither agree nor disagree?I am a “strongly agree”. Not one of nature’s sunbeams, I am superstitiously inclined to regard happiness with suspicion; absurdly, I seem to believe that expecting the worst can ward it off. Continue reading...
by Marion Boulicault and Meredith Reiches on (#5JR7D)
Apocalyptic predictions about male infertility seem to be everywhere, but the science doesn’t support themWhat’s too small to see with the naked eye, made by half the population in batches of millions, and in alarmingly short supply? The answer, according to some scientists, is sperm. Specifically, researchers are concerned that men in the west have been producing fewer and fewer sperm since the 1970s, a decline that they say shows no sign of stopping. At the current rate, they say, these men could be infertile by 2045. But these figures should give us pause. The idea that the sperm of men in western countries is about to flatline is, in a word, extraordinary. The data doesn’t support it.The fear of a decline in sperm counts is potent and far-reaching. It has been voiced by everyone from environmentalists such as Erin Brockovich to white supremacists and their mainstream media mouthpieces such as Tucker Carlson. The broad appeal of this notion is possible because the alleged causes of a decline run the material and ideological gamut. They include chemicals found in common household products as well as modern urban lifestyles in which white men are physically sedentary and compelled to share power with people of ever-diversifying genders and ethnicities. Continue reading...
The shocking mistreatment of women by the medical establishment is laid bare in a compelling social historyDuring the recent anxieties about the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and its possible link to blood clots, many women felt obliged to point out, on social media and in the press, that the risk of fatal thrombosis was significantly higher from using hormonal contraception, and yet this continues to be prescribed to millions of women without anything like the level of concern or scrutiny that the vaccine has received. The potential danger of a medication that only affects women is less of a headline-grabber, it seems. In fact, when the pill was first licensed in the US in 1960 it contained more than three times the levels of synthetic hormones than the modern version, and the side-effects – including fatal pulmonary embolisms and thrombosis – were deliberately downplayed. It took a sustained grassroots campaign by women’s groups to bring the issue to the attention of a congressional hearing in 1970. “From the beginning, the pill was couched as a way for women to take control of their bodies and fertility,” writes cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn in her debut book, Unwell Women. “But this also means that the costs – physical and mental – remain women’s burdens.”The history of the pill is just one fascinating episode in this richly detailed, wide-ranging and enraging history of how conventional medicine has pathologised, dismissed and abused women from antiquity to the present. A male-dominated medical establishment, influenced by religious, cultural and political ideas about women’s bodies – particularly with regard to sexuality and reproduction – has inflicted immeasurable suffering on women and girls, often with a sense of righteous zeal. Some of the cases Cleghorn unearths could come straight from The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s the 19th-century London surgeon Isaac Baker Brown, an avid proponent of clitoridectomy to cure the hysteric and nervous disorders thought to be brought about by excessive masturbation in young middle-class women. Or the American neurologists Walter Freeman and James Watts, who pioneered the craze for lobotomies in the 1930s and 40s – by 1942, 75% of their patients were women. “In an era when a mentally healthy woman was a serene wife and mother, almost any behaviour or emotion that disrupted domestic harmony could be interpreted as justification for a lobotomy.” Continue reading...
A Pentagon report on UFOs is almost here, but I’d rather not consider another looming disasterAs a child, I loved unsolved mysteries, and I’m not talking about detective novels. I’m talking about those big, fat, cheaply printed volumes you could buy from Woolworths which anthologised everything from the Mary Celeste and the Loch Ness monster, to Kaspar Hauser to the Enfield poltergeist, throwing in the Yeti and the Moberly–Jourdain incident for good measure. I gobbled them up, as well as being an avid reader of Fortean Times and an avid watcher of the paranormal series Strange but True? – 90s television introduced me to things that a small child really has no business knowing about, such as spontaneous human combustion. The black and white image of a burned-out armchair where a person used to be, with only their charred legs remaining, will probably never leave me.
The moon will partially cover the sun in the UK later this week, but some parts of the northern hemisphere will experience a total eclipseThis Thursday, Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic, most of Europe, much of North America and Asia will experience a solar eclipse.Most will see a partial eclipse, where the moon takes a bite out of the sun. From a few specific places in Russia, Greenland and Canada, the event will be visible as an annular eclipse, which occurs when the moon is located near the furthest part of its orbit around the Earth. Continue reading...
‘Internationally significant’ discovery of male with burial chains in Rutland is first of its kindHis ankles secured with heavy, locked iron fetters, the enslaved man appears to have been thrown in a ditch – a final act of indignity in death.Now the discovery of the shackled male skeleton by workers in Rutland – thought to have been aged in his late 20s or early 30s – has been identified as rare and important evidence of slavery in Roman Britain and “an internationally significant find”. Continue reading...
by Edna Mohamed (now); Harry Taylor and Jessica Murra on (#5JQ82)
Delta variant is threat to timetable for England, says Matt Hancock; children aged from 12 in Israel eligible for jab after 55% of adults have had two doses
A key maths tool during the pandemic came about because of an 18th-century debate about Christianity. The lesson we can draw today is that moral philosophy mattersDo the laws of science and mathematics explain everything, without any need to bring God into it? The pious once believed that wrathful deities could unleash plagues. As reason emerged in the temple of thinking, there was a move to claim God was behind the advance of reason. In this struggle between beliefs, new pathways of thought emerged, to the benefit of humanity.The fruits of this theological and scientific collision have been revealed during Covid. The work of Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century clergyman and mathematician, has become central to understanding the pandemic. Bayes’ theorem shows how to calculate the accuracy of lateral flow tests used to map the spread of coronavirus. The maths is used to work out the conditional probability that a person is not infected, given a positive test. This is just the tip of the Bayesian spear. David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters wrote in April that many complex pandemic analyses “have been ‘Bayesian’, including modelling lockdown effects, the ONS infection survey, and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine trial”. Continue reading...
How a close and enduring relationship forged in the school playground turned my life aroundMy school bully came in an unlikely package. She was a bushy-haired, bespectacled, briefcase-carrying pocket rocket who made my life miserable for a significant portion of Year 8 when I was 12 years old. I met her on the first day at our large and rowdy comprehensive school. With all my existing friends assigned to different forms, I was on high alert for someone to attach myself to as soon as possible. With her outwardly gawky appearance, she seemed like the ideal candidate and I approached her with the rather arrogant assumption that she would jump at the chance of my friendship.It didn’t take me long to realise I’d severely misjudged the situation. Her meek physical persona belied a serious rebellious streak and I struggled to keep up from the start. When she dared me to join her in “the jungle” – a wooded area of the school grounds off limits to students, I shakily agreed. We eluded capture from the lunchtime supervisors who patrolled its perimeters, but my time in the jungle brought me little exhilaration or pleasure. More tests and challenges soon followed, all proposed with a glint in her eye that I came to dread. Continue reading...
European Space Agency extends deadline for ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ to be an astronautBritish women are being encouraged to seize a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to go to space, after the European Space Agency (Esa) extended its deadline to apply to be one of its new astronauts.The agency is seeking to recruit 26 astronauts – a process only undertaken once in about a decade – and is hoping to attract a more diverse cohort. People with some disabilities are being urged to put themselves forward for the first time. Continue reading...
US scientists develop system using a cake tin and marbles to forecast areas posing biggest health threatThe Roman writer Vitruvius wrote of an unhealthy wind blowing off the city’s marshlands, bringing sickness. While this ancient miasmal theory of infection was superseded by germ theory, researchers have found that dust storms really can spread pathogens.Scientists from George Mason University, Virginia, are studying dust storms in the south-western US and their connection with Valley fever, a fungal disease that kills hundreds of people every year. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5JN03)
Less ice means more global heating, a vicious cycle that also leaves the region open to new oil extractionSea ice across much of the Arctic is thinning twice as fast as previously thought, researchers have found.Arctic ice is melting as the climate crisis drives up temperatures, resulting in a vicious circle in which more dark water is exposed to the sun’s heat, leading to even more heating of the planet. Continue reading...
by Libby Brooks Scotland correspondent on (#5JMZN)
Research maps the extent of the catastrophic Storegga tsunami 8,200 years ago for the first timeTowns and cities across Scotland would be devastated if the country’s coastline was hit by a tsunami of the kind that happened 8,200 years ago, according to an academics’ study.While about 370 miles of Scotland’s northern and eastern coastline were affected when the Storegga tsunami struck, the study suggests a modern-day disaster of the same magnitude would have worse consequences. Continue reading...
Rocket due to reach the International Space Station this weekend is loaded with 7,300lb of fresh food and supplies for an orbiting labSpaceX has launched a supply mission bound for the International Space Station on Thursday, carrying with it thousands of tiny sea creatures along with a plaque-fighting toothpaste experiment and powerful solar panels.The 7,300lb (3,300kg) shipment – which also includes fresh lemons, onions, avocados and cherry tomatoes for the station’s seven astronauts – should arrive Saturday. Continue reading...
Learning you have ADHD on TikTok is now such a common phenomenon it has become its own meme, but it can be trickyIt’s kind of embarrassing to say, but the social media app TikTok figured out I had ADHD before I did.For 23 years my parents, my teachers, my doctor, my psychologist and my own brain all missed the warning signs, yet somehow it only took that app’s algorithm a few days to accidentally diagnose me. Continue reading...
by Damian Carrington Environment editor on (#5JM81)
Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effectsIce sheets and ocean currents at risk of climate tipping points can destabilise each other as the world heats up, leading to a domino effect with severe consequences for humanity, according to a risk analysis.Tipping points occur when global heating pushes temperatures beyond a critical threshold, leading to accelerated and irreversible impacts. Some large ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to already have passed their tipping points, meaning large sea-level rises in coming centuries. Continue reading...
The psychologist and author believes we are tapping into only a small corner of our potential. In his latest book, he explains how to harness all our senses and gut instinctsSteve Biddulph is telling me about a patient who came to him after a life-changing incident in a car park. The woman, Andie, was getting into her car when she noticed a figure in the distance moving towards her. The young man looked nice, well dressed. He called to her, but she couldn’t make out his words. Andie’s stomach twinged. She had been raised to be polite and helpful, but the knot in her stomach tightened. She shut the car door and drove away. Later, she learned that the next woman to enter that quiet car park was brutally attacked.Biddulph is a psychologist, known for his bestselling parenting books Raising Boys and Raising Girls. In his latest book, though, he has turned his attention to the human race in general and, in particular, to the tiny clench in Andie’s stomach that overrode her conditioning and gave her the right answer. Fully Human is a paean to what Biddulph calls “supersense”: the ability of our bodies to make our deepest feelings known to us – and of our brains to process these twinges and flutters into a simple “yes” or “no”. Continue reading...
The revelation that I’ve got eight weeks of pain ahead of me has made me realise: we humans get out of practice when it comes to falling downThe older you get, the more dramatic it feels to fall over. I think this is less to do with creeping fragility than how out of practice adults are at it. When you are a kid, you fall over all the time and bounce straight back up like Wile E Coyote after he’s been flattened by a steamroller. When you take a tumble in middle age, your life flashes past you before you hit the ground, at which point you see stars and then, for an instant, keep perfectly still before you dare to explore what life-changing injuries you may have sustained.In my 20s, I played a lot of football as a goalkeeper; I enjoyed throwing myself about. The last time I played, quite recently, I was delighted to find I could still get substantially airborne. I was less delighted to find that upon coming back to Earth I nigh-on passed out and needed half the team to help me back to my feet. Never mind pilates, yoga and whatnot, we should be able to go to falling-over sessions during which we’re pulled, pushed and tripped over willy-nilly until we get reaccustomed to falling over. Continue reading...
For decades, anthropologists have been telling us that it’s often the informal, unplanned interactions and rituals that matter most in any work environment. So how much are we missing by giving them up?In the summer of 2020, Daniel Beunza, a voluble Spanish social scientist who taught at Cass business school in London, organised a stream of video calls with a dozen senior bankers in the US and Europe. Beunza wanted to know how they had run a trading desk while working from home. Did finance require flesh-and-blood humans?Beunza had studied bank trading floors for two decades, and had noticed a paradox. Digital technologies had entered finance in the late 20th century, pushing markets into cyberspace and enabling most financial work to be done outside the office – in theory. “For $1,400 a month you can have the [Bloomberg] machine at home. You can have the best information, all the data at your disposal,” Beunza was told in 2000 by the head of one Wall Street trading desk, whom he called “Bob”. But the digital revolution had not caused banks’ offices and trading rooms to disappear. “The tendency is the reverse,” Bob said. “Banks are building bigger and bigger trading rooms.” Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample and Produced by Shivani Da on (#5JKEQ)
As temperatures soar in the UK, the Guardian’s Science Weekly team have decided to pull this episode out of the archive. Prof Callum Roberts is a British oceanographer, author and one of the world’s leading marine biologists. Sitting down with Ian Sample in 2019, he talks about his journey into exploring this marine habitat
Nasa sets aside $1bn for two ventures, which will be first US exploration of the planet since 1989Nasa is returning to Venus for the first time in more than three decades to gain a better understanding of the history of what scientists believe could have been the first habitable planet in the solar system.Plans for two separate and ambitious deep space missions to Earth’s nearest neighbour were announced on Wednesday by the head of the US space agency, Bill Nelson. Launches were targeted for a 2028-2030 time frame, he said. Continue reading...
Blue Abyss applies for permission to build £150m centre with pool that would reach depths of 50mPlans have been submitted to build the world’s deepest artificial pool in Cornwall to train astronauts and help advance undersea robotics.The project would be 40 metres by 50 metres at the surface, with a 16-metre wide shaft plunging to 50 metres at its lowest point – nearly as deep as Nelson’s Column is high – and would also be the world’s largest pool by volume. Continue reading...
If a gynaecologist is embarrassed to use real terms, perhaps he or she should have chosen a different speciality, says Susan Wolfe. While Susan Boyd finds the obsession with the vagina tiresomeRe your article (Most Britons cannot name all parts of the vulva, survey reveals, 30 May), I put some of the blame for this on the medical community for using infantilising euphemisms for female genitalia when addressing adult female patients.For example, four separate private gynaecologists in central London each referred to my adult menopausal uterus as my “tummy”. English women to whom I related my surprise at this replied: “The doctor’s probably just embarrassed.” If a gynaecologist is embarrassed to use real terms for a woman’s body, perhaps he or she should have chosen a different speciality. Continue reading...
Science | The Guardian