Scientists hope the telescope will capture the imagination like ‘science fiction’The sun’s uncharted north and south poles are set to be revealed for the first time by an ambitious mission that will fly above our home star and beam back images.The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint Nasa and European Space Agency (ESA) mission, is set to be launched from Cape Canaveral just after 4am UK time on Monday morning, and will reach its vantage point above the planetary plane by the end of 2021. Continue reading...

Cut off during winter, a former Soviet weapons research facility high up on Mount Aragats, Armenia is now part of a network of sites around the world studying the mysterious particlesThe cosmic ray research station on Mount Aragats sits at an altitude of 3,200 metres. The site in Armenia was constructed in 1943 to conduct top-secret research into atomic reactions for the development of nuclear weapons. Now the facility provides insight into thunderstorms and cosmic rays. The only way visitors can reach the base in winter is via a nine-mile (15km) climb through snow. Continue reading...

Investigation links boom in flat-faced canines to rise in clinics, some of which advertise banned proceduresThe boom in popularity of flat-faced dogs such as pugs and French bulldogs may be fuelling a rise in canine fertility clinics, some of which advertise banned procedures, an investigation has found.Dogs with squashed faces, known as brachycephalic dogs, are often unable to breed or give birth naturally due to their extreme anatomy: the animals’ small hips can make mating difficult, meaning breeders turn to artificial insemination, while they also mean caesarean sections are often necessary since the puppies have disproportionately large heads. Continue reading...

World’s fourth most populous country says it has no confirmed cases despite close links to China

Group of Eight universities dismiss reports they will quarantine students from China on regional campusesAustralia’s eight most prominent universities have dismissed media reports that they are planing to quarantine international students on regional campuses as a result of the federal government’s travel ban.Since 1 February foreign nationals have been barred from entering Australia within 14 days of leaving China, as a result of the novel coronavirus outbreak. Continue reading...

Around 3.5bn years ago the first forms of life emerged: bacteria and archaea. These so-called prokaryotes had the Earth to themselves for a very, very long time. Then, for some mysterious reason, another new microbial kingdom formed. Eukaryotic cells came into being and complex life began. But how and why did this happen? Hannah Devlin dives into the 12-year scientific odyssey that gives us an important piece of the puzzle Continue reading...

Travellers returning to UK from countries including Japan, South Korea and Thailand are urged to ‘self-isolate’ if they feel ill. This blog is closed.

Spitzer became first telescope to directly capture light from planets in orbit around other starsNasa has ended science operations on its Spitzer infrared space telescope and placed the instrument into safe mode.The mission officially ended at 2230 GMT on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was one of Nasa’s four “great observatories”, alongside the Hubble space telescope, the Chandra X-ray observatory and the Compton gamma ray observatory. Continue reading...

Patient diagnosed in Brighton and taken to London is third confirmed case in the UK

Early reports of death of Li Wenliang were retracted, only for doctor to succumb to disease later in day

Koch lands in Kazakhstan after 328 days in space, the longest continuous spaceflight by a female astronautShe would miss the friendship of her crewmates, she said, and of course the spectacular views.But after 328 days on the International Space Station – the longest continuous spaceflight ever undertaken by a female astronaut – Christina Koch could not deny last week that she was looking forward to experiencing some very simple pleasures back on Earth, including “the feeling of wind on my face”. Continue reading...

More than 140 Russians evacuated from Wuhan over coronavirus outbreak are confined to sanatorium

Small glass ‘crown’ thought to be rare archaeological link to first Norse raidersIt is not large – the shape and size of a chocolate sweet – and might easily have been discarded as a pebble by a less careful hand.But a tiny piece of worked glass unearthed during an excavation on Lindisfarne has been revealed to be a rare archaeological treasure linking the Northumbrian island with the Vikings, from the very beginning of one of the most turbulent periods in English history. Continue reading...

Chancellor of Australian National University puts experts at government disposal to provide ‘evidence-based’ solutionsAustralia “needs action on several fronts” following a catastrophic bushfire season, including leading international efforts against climate change and cutting emissions beyond the electricity sector, Julie Bishop has said.Bishop, the incoming chancellor of the Australian National University, made the comments to Guardian Australia, offering to put the university’s disaster management experts and more than 300 climate scientists at the federal government’s disposal to provide “evidence-based” responses to the bushfires. Continue reading...

Esa is launching a solar mission that could help forecast potentially catastrophic eventsOn the morning of 1 September 1859, the English astronomer Richard Carrington noticed something strange on the surface of the sun: two patches of intensely white light erupting from a cluster of dark sunspots. Five minutes later, they vanished.Later that night, bright aurora lit the Earth’s sky as far south as Havana and Honolulu. Around the world, telegraph communications failed, some of them bursting into flames. Continue reading...

Failure to report mild symptoms combined with highly contagious nature of disease raises fears existing figures are ‘tip of the iceberg’

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

A 30-hour-old baby is the youngest person to be diagnosed with the virus but experts warn against jumping to conclusionsNews that a 30-hour-old newborn baby had become the youngest person to have been diagnosed with coronavirus has prompted speculation that the potentially lethal illness could potentially be passed from a mother to a fetus.But medical experts have warned against drawing conclusions so early in investigation of the virus, which has infected 24,500 people mostly in China. Continue reading...

Seeds found in Judean desert are male and female, leading to hopes of producing datesA handful of date seeds from fruit that ripened around the time of Jesus have been successfully planted and grown in southern Israel, researchers have revealed.The seeds, dubbed Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith and Hannah, were among many others discovered at archaeological sites in the Judean desert. Continue reading...

It’s wrong to say all regions of the Asian country are equally at risk, says body’s director general

Calls for social interventions to be used along with opioids, which often have little effectPeople with chronic pain should be prescribed social interventions, such as mental health support instead of just opioid painkillers, experts have said.About 28 million adults in the UK live with pain that has lasted three months or more, according to recent research. But tackling such pain is challenging, with few effective treatments on offer. Continue reading...

British residents in quarantine anxious over news that Belgian woman on same flight has tested positive

The FCO has updated advice on travel to China in light of the Coronavirus outbreak. Here’s what you need to know – about flights, insurance, cancelling or booking alternativesThe Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has advised against all-but-essential travel to China and is urging UK citizens to leave the country, while several airlines have suspended flights and tour operators are cancelling trips. Here’s what UK travellers on current trips, or booked on future trips, need to know. Continue reading...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and when should you call the NHS?

The inauguration ceremony of the proton synchrotron at Cern showed how European cooperation could set the bar for scientific discoveryby our own correspondent

To transform the civil service, look to Canada or Portugal for ways to unlock the treasure trove of talentThe floodgates are open: Dominic Cummings is well on his way, apparently, to recruiting “true cognitive diversity” into government. Forget those fusty old civil service interviews, wooden as a GCSE French oral exam. His call – made via a personal blog – for “weirdos” and those with data and quantitative skills has reportedly garnered thousands of applications.This is just the start of his plan to “make rapid progress on long-term problems”. But a few new people in No 10, however maverick, will make little difference. The whole machine needs to change if Cummings is to achieve the vision of a responsive, citizen-centred, 21st-century government. Continue reading...

Australian Daniel Ou Yang, 21, was on the Air New Zealand flight out of virus-struck Wuhan to Auckland. Here he writes about the stress of his evacuationAt 2.52pm, we arrived at Wuhan Tianjin airport.The drive here was smooth, all the big wide roads with no cars on them. We made it through the checkpoints and arrived within an hour. Continue reading...

The global body is accused of failing to act fast to halt epidemic but the true cost of doing politics with Beijing is still unknownOn social media this week the insults were flying thick and fast, some tinged with racism, but all with a common theme: how the World Health Organization, and its head, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was effectively doing the bidding of the Chinese government in the midst of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.It is a charge that has also been expressed in less offensive terms elsewhere in columns and articles, some of which have focused on whether, in praising China’s response to the deadly Wuhan coronavirus outbreak during a visit to Beijing, Tedros allowed himself to become complicit in China’s flawed handling of the outbreak in its early days? Continue reading...

5 February 1910: A debate held last night allowed both sides to put forward their views on this contentious subject

Researchers analysed 590 recordings taken in Italian zoos of birds’ distinctive soundThe call of the jackass penguin, a wheezing bray that sounds like a donkey in distress, follows some of the same linguistic laws found in human languages, scientists have found.Researchers say that, just like in our own speech, more frequently used sounds within the call tend to be shorter, while the longer the call, the shorter the sounds within it. It is the first time this pattern has been shown outside primates. Continue reading...

UK citizens should leave ‘if they can’ to reduce risk of exposure to virus, says foreign secretary

Pauline Armory and Maxine Arnott write about a recently completed trial that has the potential to detect lung cancer with a blood test and Prof Martin Marshall says it wrong to blame GPs for failing to spot symptomsYou rightly report that one of the key reasons lung cancer is the biggest cause of cancer deaths in the UK is that up to 56% of lung cancers are only discovered in A&E where patients present with late-stage symptoms, by which point they often have only months to live (Report, 31 January).Every year in the UK around 40,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer and 35,000 people die – it kills more women, for instance, than breast, cervical and ovarian cancers combined, and is the world’s biggest cancer killer. Continue reading...

Preparedness is everything – so it’s chilling to realise that investment in it is actually being cutMerely a month after a mysterious respiratory illness arose in Wuhan, China, the world is already in the grip of a global outbreak. Now designated a “public health emergency of international concern” by the World Health Organization, and probably not far off earning the more sinister name “pandemic”, the 2019-nCov coronavirus outbreak has already surpassed its cousin Sars in terms of the number of cases confirmed. Although it has a lower fatality rate than Sars, it’s too early to tell whether 2019-nCov will be remembered as something much more frightening.Related: WHO declares coronavirus a global health emergency Continue reading...

Health officials raise concerns that many African countries are ill-equipped to combat the virus

Planes have been chartered and quarantines set up – but some countries have been slow to react

Biodiversity hotspots with millions of years of climate stability could be among the world’s hardest hit regionsBiodiversity hotspots that have given species a safe haven from changing climates for millions of years will come under threat from human-driven global heating, a new study has found.Species that have evolved in tropical regions such Australia’s wet tropics, the Guinean forests of Western Africa and the Andes Mountains will come under increasing stress as the planet warms, the study finds. Continue reading...

Facility was built in less than two weeks in city at the centre of the viral outbreakThe first coronavirus patients have arrived at a Chinese field hospital built from scratch in under two weeks at the frontline of the outbreak, state media said.The 1,000-bed facility was built to relieve hospitals swamped with patients in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people in Hubei province. The national health emergency that has killed more people in China than the 2003 Sars outbreak. Continue reading...

Emergency doctors call for calm amid reports of abuse of Asian-AustraliansDoctors have warned of a rise in racist incidents as Asian-Australians have been targeted amid coronavirus fears. Guardian Australia has been told of one involving a young mother who was racially abused on a Sydney train.The body representing Australian doctors working in emergency departments called for a calm and fact-based response to the new coronavirus, and to avoid “panic and division” amid the spread of misinformation. Continue reading...

Decision described as a ‘significant setback’ by International Aids SocietyThe latest trial of a vaccine against HIV has been halted because interim results show it is not working, the National Institutes of Health in the United States has announced.The end of the trial taking place in South Africa is a blow to the vaccine field and to Aids experts and advocates. As early as the mid-1980s, the US government was forecasting that Aids would be stopped by a vaccine. In 1997, the then-president Bill Clinton pledged money to an effort to find a vaccine within 10 years. But as the decades have passed, no effective vaccine has been discovered. Continue reading...

Wuhan hospitals need more staff and supplies as residents describe increasingly desperate conditionsDozens more people have died in the city at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak, where hospitals are severely undersupplied and understaffed and residents have described increasingly desperate conditions.Chinese state media reported 57 new deaths on Monday, all but one in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei which has been under lockdown for almost two weeks as authorities try to contain the outbreak. Continue reading...

Exhibition marks bicentenary of nursing pioneer’s birth with focus on life after Crimean warAn exhibition on Florence Nightingale which marks 200 years since her birth will shine a spotlight on her as an older woman.Nightingale is often pictured in her 30s, when she nursed wounded soldiers in the Crimean war. Continue reading...

The solar system’s innermost planet can never be seen in the night sky. But there is a chance to see it at twilight during the next two weeksThis coming week offers the chance of seeing Mercury in the evening sky. The innermost planet, Mercury’s orbit is just 0.38 times the size of Earth. Being that close to the sun means that we can never see the planet in the night sky but at certain times of the year we can catch a glimpse of it in the twilight. For the next two weeks, Mercury will be visible in the evening as dusk is falling. To see it, a clear south-western horizon will be needed but at least the bright planet Venus is on hand to act as guide. The chart shows the view looking south-west towards Venus at 1730GMT on 3 February. There will be no other stars visible at this time, only Venus and Mercury will shine through the twilight sky. Mercury is much more of a challenge from the southern hemisphere. From Sydney, Australia, Venus will be to the north of Mercury, which just peeps above the western horizon around 2030 AEDT. Continue reading...

The sound resembles ‘shotgun-like cracks’ and attracts potential matesA wild grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) has been caught “clapping” on camera for the first time, making sounds that resemble “shotgun-like cracks”.The large male was filmed striking its flippers together off the coast of the Farne Islands, near Northumberland, during the breeding season in 2017. Continue reading...

This year could be a crucial one for ocean protection – but threats abound. A robust global treaty is neededThe 60th anniversary of the expedition that first took humans to the highest spot on earth – the peak of Everest – was widely celebrated seven years ago. The 60th anniversary of the first expedition to its deepest point has gone almost unnoticed. Yet that trip to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, was an equally remarkable feat and has rarely been repeated.While thousands of climbers have since climbed Everest in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, only two more people have followed the route of Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, who reached the bottom in 1960. It was not until 2012 that film-maker James Cameron conducted a solo dive to the almost 11km-deep valley, collecting samples and video. Last year, explorer Victor Vescovo followed suit. Continue reading...

Australia’s horrific bushfires could be the catalyst that pushes the world to a mass recognition that it’s time to actAs a climate scientist on sabbatical in Australia, I’ve had plenty of conversations about the climate crisis lately as bushfires have burned their way to the front of everyone’s mind. Although the Murdoch media make it seem as if there’s plenty of debate, the reality is that most Australians I talk to get it.And why shouldn’t they? More carbon pollution means warmer temperatures which dry out the landscape, making it easier for fires to spread. The fact that the bushfires tore through Australia as we ended the hottest decade ever recorded is no coincidence. Continue reading...

Looking for freedom from that familiar nagging feeling? Here’s how to get stuff done without overwhelming yourself

The WHO has praised country’s response, but heavy-handed approach could make things worseWhen the World Health Organization declared the 2019nCoV coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency, it effusively praised China’s response to the outbreak. The WHO issued a statement welcoming the government’s “commitment to transparency”, and the WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, tweeted: “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”The WHO is ignoring Chinese government suppression of human rights regarding the outbreak, including severe restrictions on freedom of expression. In turn, Chinese state media are citing the WHO to defend its policies and try to silence criticism of its response to the outbreak, which has included rights violations that could make the situation worse. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary confirms evacuation as Philippines reports first death outside ChinaDominic Raab has confirmed that 11 evacuees will be flown to the UK from the Chinese city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday, on a French-chartered plane, after they missed a previous evacuation flight on Friday.The foreign secretary said the government was doing everything in its power to help Britons who wished to leave but that the process posed serious challenges. Continue reading...

A sudden bereavement tore my life apart. But even though I’m a trained therapist, I couldn’t find comfort on the couchFive years ago I flew over the Connecticut hospital mortuary where thousands of feet below my husband’s dead body lay. The map on the screen flashed up New Haven as we headed east over the Atlantic… leaving him behind. During the six-hour flight back to London I sat bolt upright, tearless and unable to eat, drink or even visit the loo. I felt nothing, utterly empty, numb and as close to inanimate as I imagine a person can feel.Andrew, at just 52, had died at 8am that morning, killed by a vicious land grabber of a cancer that had taken 14 months to overwhelm every organ in his body. This was my trauma beginning, to be followed, inevitably, by grief. We knew from the start it was bad, but I didn’t somehow think he would actually die. We never discussed it. Now, this seems astounding to me. I am still perplexed by the strength of his denial. And by my complicity. Continue reading...

The benefits of tissue harvesting to delay a supposed middle age hell are doubtfulAgainst a background of tasteful pastel – which signals from the off that we are in the land of discretionary spending on faulty female anatomy – the ProFaM website makes its unique bid for women’s money. Ovarian tissue storage! And not only for fertility-related reasons. Who’d want a menopause? “Will you be ready?” the website challenges. “You never know what the future holds, so freeze the biological clock and prepare for the future.”For many women, alas, the offer will be empty. The ProFaM clockstopping technique requires young ovarian tissue and costs up to £7,000 for removal (storage and reinstatement extra). “Age 25-30 is optimal,” the doctors say. Once reinstalled, the tissue is supposed to function as “natural HRT”. Continue reading...