From a spacesuited everyman to a golden-legged invader, the lunar images were astonishingly poetic works of art that captured humanity evolving before our very eyes. Can they ever be surpassed?Fifty years ago this week, a former navy pilot created one of the most revolutionary artistic masterpieces of the 20th century, one we have yet to fully assimilate. His name was Neil Armstrong and his astonishing act of creativity is a photograph of his Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin standing on the Sea of Tranquillity on the moon. Not that you can see Aldrin’s face. His features and flesh are hidden inside a thickly padded white spacesuit, its visor reflecting the tiny figure of Armstrong himself, beside the gold-coloured legs of the lunar lander.This effacement of Aldrin came about because Apollo astronauts wore visors lined with gold to protect their eyes from sunlight. Yet these reflective qualities are part of what makes this such a powerful, complex image, one in which we can see two lunar horizons. Behind Aldrin, the moon’s bright surface recedes to a blue horizon against the black void of space. Meanwhile, reflected and warped by the helmet, the other horizon stretches away behind Armstrong. The photographer has incorporated the making of the image into the image, to tell the story of something new in the universe: two human beings looking at each other across the dusty surface of an alien world. Continue reading...

Diets heavy on snack foods linked to undernutrition and stunting, say researchersChildren under the age of two in Nepal are getting a quarter of their calories from junk food, according to groundbreaking research that warns their diet is linked to stunting and undernutrition.Biscuits, crisps, instant noodles and sugary drinks appear to be displacing foods with the vitamins, minerals and other vital nutrients babies need to grow well, say the researchers. The work, published in the Journal of Nutrition, illustrates that the 21st-century junk food diet spreading around the globe is linked not just to obesity but also to poor growth in children. Continue reading...

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that first put humans on the moon, Richard Godwin explores why conspiracy theories about the landings still endure. Plus Geoff Andrews on his part in the Guardian’s lunar front page from 1969 – and how he missed the famous quoteIt took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.It began as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Richard Godwin tells Anushka Asthana how Kaysing’s self-published 1976 pamphlet We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle sought to provide evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and ludicrous theories. Yet somehow he established a few perennials that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels. Continue reading...

Evolutionary roots of bonding through shared activity may be deeper than was thoughtChimpanzees enjoy watching movies together, scientists have discovered, in research that suggests social bonding through shared experience has deep evolutionary roots.It is widely known that humans can bond over group activities such as watching a movie or playing board games. But it has been unclear whether the underlying psychology behind this effect is present in other species. Continue reading...

Brigid Purcell recommends a book, Straight and Crooked Thinking, that should be put into the hands of every teenagerDavid Thouless’s obituary (13 July) mentions his father, Robert, but fails to mention the latter’s most notable publication, which contains one of the most important contributions of the 20th century to the public good: Straight and Crooked Thinking. Its contents are best summed up by the jacket blurb: “This practical book by an eminent psychologist tells you how to think clearly and avoid muddled reasoning. It exposes many dishonest tricks that are often used in argument, drawing the examples from controversial subjects which are frequently discussed today.”It was first published in 1930 (revised and enlarged edition in 1953), and my father gave me my copy in the early 1960s. Happily, it’s still available and is as relevant today as it ever was; if only a copy could be put into the hands of every teenager in the land.

Protein tau may spread more rapidly in female brains than males’, adding to range of factorsThe reason women appear to be at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than men might be due to a number of genetic, anatomical and even social influences, researchers have suggested.Recent figures show about 65% of those with living with dementia in the UK are women, with a similar statistic seen in the US for Alzheimer’s disease, while dementia is the leading cause of death for women in England. Alzheimer’s disease is only one of the types of dementia, but the most common form. Continue reading...

I sat on the committee that helped select the scientist. Honouring him sends a message that the UK respects all peopleOver Christmas, I had the unusual delight of reading short biographies of 989 dead scientists. As a member of the Bank of England’s banknote character advisory committee, I was sifting through potential nominees to be included on the new £50 note: the sheer volume of UK scientists, put forward by more than 225,000 members of the public, reflected the enormous contribution our small island has made to international scientific progress over the past few centuries.Related: Alan Turing to feature on new £50 banknote Continue reading...

Bear Wood near Bristol aims to spark debate about rewilding of ancient woodlands

Mathematician who cracked Enigma code was persecuted for his homosexuality in 1950s

Mining company said it wanted ‘peace of mind’ that groundwater review would not be ‘hijacked’ by anti-coal activistsThe deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, has defended Adani after revelations it tried to get the names of scientists reviewing a crucial plan for its Queensland mine, fearing they might be anti-coal activists.The ABC has cited emails – obtained under freedom of information by the Lock The Gate environment group – showing Adani demanded the federal government reveal the names of the scientists. Continue reading...

Neural analysis finds the brains of both sexes respond the same way to pornographyThe belief that men are more likely to get turned on by sexual images than women may be something of a fantasy, according to a study suggesting brains respond to such images the same way regardless of biological sex.The idea that, when it comes to sex, men are more “visual creatures” than women has often been used to explain why men appear to be so much keener on pornography. Continue reading...

Eliminating hunger by 2030 is an immense challenge, say heads of UN agenciesMore than 820 million people worldwide are still going hungry, according to a UN report that says reaching the target of zero hunger by 2030 is “an immense challenge”.The number of people with not enough to eat has risen for the third year in a row as the population increases, after a decade when real progress was made. The underlying trend is stabilisation, when global agencies had hoped it would fall. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s problems - with cheesy pics!Earlier today I set you the following four puzzles:1. You have a cube of cheese that measures 3 x 3 x 3 inches, and you want to slice it into 27 smaller 1 x 1 x 1 inch cubes, as shown below. If you have a straight knife, what’s the minimum number of slices you need to do it? You are allowed to rearrange the pieces after each slice. Continue reading...

Aerogel sheet mimics Earth’s greenhouse effect and could help to create fertile oasesFor future astronauts bound for Mars it will surely rank as a positive: when they sit down to dinner on the barren red planet, they should at least have plenty of greens.The harsh environment on Mars has always made growing food a daunting prospect, but scientists believe they have cracked the problem with sheets of material that can transform the cold, arid surface into land fit for farming. Continue reading...

Discovery of metabolic causes opens door to new treatments for dangerous eating disorder

Agency blames war, inequality and complacency for 20 million children missing immunisationA dangerous stagnation in vaccination rates is putting children at risk of preventable diseases around the world, the UN children’s agency has warned, blaming conflict, inequality and complacency.One in 10 children, totalling 20 million globally, missed out on basic immunisation against the life-threatening infections of measles, diphtheria and tetanus last year, says Unicef. Continue reading...

American psychologist who devised the therapy EMDR – eye movement desensitisation reprocessing – for use in the treatment of traumaThe American psychologist Francine Shapiro, who has died aged 71, devised the form of therapy known as eye movement desensitisation reprocessing (EMDR). Having started out as an English teacher, she summed up her life’s work with William Blake’s line: “For the eye altering alters all.”EMDR, which involves making rapid eye movements to stimulate the brain, assists people in processing traumatic memories. It has helped millions worldwide, including many with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Shapiro overcame opposition to make it a mainstream therapy, after its efficacy had been demonstrated in more than 40 randomised controlled trials. It is now practised in around 30 countries and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the NHS and many other bodies. Continue reading...

High sugar content may be threat to first teeth and affect food preferences in adulthoodCommercial baby foods contain too much sugar – even when they are labelled as savoury meals, says the World Health Organization, which is seeking a ban on added sugars in foods for children under 36 months old.WHO Europe is calling for a crackdown on the high levels of sugar in the diet of babies fed on commercially available foods, warning that their first teeth may suffer and they are at risk of developing a preference for sweet foods, which may lead to overweight and obesity-related disease in adulthood. Continue reading...

National Archive documents reveal Buckingham Palace thought messages ‘a gimmick’While the world awaited the historic launch of Apollo 11 half a century ago this week, Nasa invited many heads of state and government, including the Queen, to send messages to the moon.Buckingham Palace may not have been immediately enthusiastic, however, apparently thinking that any such message could be “a gimmick”, records at the National Archives suggest. Continue reading...

The party snack is perfect brain foodToday’s puzzles all concern cubes of cheese. You’ll need to be as sharp as a cocktail stick to skewer them.1. You have a cube of cheese that measures 3 x 3 x 3 inches, and you want to slice it into 27 smaller 1 x 1 x 1 inch cubes, as shown below. If you have a straight knife, what’s the minimum number of slices you need to do it? You are allowed to rearrange the pieces after each slice. Continue reading...

Nation’s first attempt at a landing on the moon put on hold due to ‘technical snag’India’s moon mission, destined for the uncharted south pole, has been put on hold less than an hour before take off, following a technical glitch.The mission, which was scheduled to launch at 02:51 local time from Sriharikota space centre, north of Chennai, is India’s most ambitious to date. Continue reading...

Most of us will get a chance this week to see a partial lunar eclipse. Though not if you live in North America, Greenland or northern RussiaA partial lunar eclipse is visible from much of the world this week. Only North America, Greenland and northern Russia will miss out. From Asia and Australia, the eclipse will take place in the early hours of 17 July. From the rest of the world it will happen on the preceding evening. Lunar eclipses take place when Earth crosses between the sun and the moon, and casts its shadow across the lunar surface. The outer portion of Earth’s shadow, known as the penumbra, touches the moon at 19:45 BST on 16 July. At this time, the moon will still be below the horizon from the UK. When it rises at 21:06 BST, the darkest, most noticeable portion of Earth’s shadow will have just begun to pass across it. Mid-eclipse occurs at 22:32 BST, when a dark circular “bite” will have covered the moon’s northern hemisphere entirely. By midnight BST, the umbra will be about to leave the moon, and the penumbral phase finishes about an hour and a quarter later. Continue reading...

The internet is awash with ads for costly but bogus treatments – and claims that scientists are suppressing a cure for the diseaseFor Eileen O’Sullivan, being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 was the catalyst for a deluge of distinctly unscientific and frequently dangerous advice. An investment manager with a analytical mind, she began seeking information to better understand her potentially life-altering condition. But from the moment Eileen starting searching online, misinformation was unavoidable: “This is when all the suggestions start rolling in,” she says. “Before diagnosis, I had never heard of crank treatments for cancer: herbs, supplements, diets, juicing, clean eating, homeopathy, essential oils, nor adverts for overseas alternative cancer clinics. I certainly didn’t go looking for them, but I got endless prompts based on keywords such as breast cancer. I was also inundated with relatives and friends coming out with crackpot therapies – and even from other patients in chemo wards and waiting rooms.”As a cancer researcher deeply involved in science outreach, I can attest that few subjects provoke quite the emotional response that cancer does. There is not a family in the world untouched by the disease, and the word itself is enough to induce a sense of fear in even the hardiest among us. Cancer is oppressive and all-pervasive: half of us alive today will experience a direct brush with it. But despite its ubiquity, it remains poorly understood and falsehoods around it can thrive. Continue reading...

The civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy called Nasa’s moonshot ‘an inhuman priority’ while poor children went hungryThe date was 15 July 1969. As the Saturn V rocket towered over the launchpad, about to send the first men to the moon, two dozen black families from poor parts of the south, accompanied by mules and wagons emblematic of the civil rights movement, marched to the fence of Cape Kennedy in Florida. From a bird’s eye view, they would have resembled dwarves in the wake of a colossus.

Homo sapiens might well have been living in Europe 210,000 years ago, but it’s not relevant to contemporary debates about raceIn 1978, two skulls were discovered in a cave called Apidima in southern Greece. Both, it was thought, were Neanderthal. Now, a new study using 3D computer reconstructions has suggested that one skull is from a modern human, Homo sapiens, and, at 210,000 years old, more ancient than the other, Neanderthal one.The findings are not universally accepted, but if true would rewrite the ancient history of Europe. The Apidima skull is 150,000 years older than any other H sapiens remains found in Europe, and older than any found outside Africa. Continue reading...

As a survey reveals that the over-50s are joining gyms and having sex, the reality is something rather more comfortableThe psychological challenges that arrive with your 50th birthday are rarely addressed in debates about Scotland’s health. To be honest, they’d all been pulsing and fermenting away for a few years before then anyway. Many of us choose to put them in one of those wee mental boxes that psychologists tell their patients to imagine when they want to dodge bad memories and negative vibes. We then mark it with big virtual red capital letters: “NOT TO BE OPENED UNTIL YOU’RE 50.” These little red flags range from twinges in your body’s fundamental areas to framing the appropriate reply when the barber asks you how you want your hair cut.The biggest mental and emotional challenge comes, though, when you realise that it can take up to three days for the effects of a hangover to subside. You find yourself having to think very carefully before you embark on one of the great and uncomplicated pleasures of being human: the afternoon bevvy session. Can I cancel the next day and perhaps the day after that? Can I get Bargain Hunt on catch-up? Is there enough mould-free cheese, breaded ham and white bread to see out a couple of days in the dark? Continue reading...

‘I hid from the truth about the domestic workers who ran my home, but finally I had to tell their story’The first time I paid another woman to clean my apartment, it felt like an experiment. I was 24, and I’d recently started a job as a national correspondent for a big newspaper. The assignment came with professional trappings and freedoms I’d never had before: a stylish office in a downtown skyscraper, a full-time research assistant, a travel budget that never seemed to run dry.It was a man who put me up to calling a house cleaner. I’d made the mistake of mentioning that I had to clean my house. He laughed. “Why are you doing your own cleaning? Hire somebody.” Continue reading...

University College London may rename buildings to cut links to promoters of eugenicsThey were some of Britain’s greatest scientific pioneers. Based at University College London, they developed the first fingerprinting methods, the use of statistics in health and genetics research, early birth-control science and many other key technologies of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.But now these trailblazers – who include Francis Galton and Marie Stopes – are under investigation. A committee of inquiry has been set up by UCL to probe their links with eugenic causes and to consider if buildings, lecture theatres and libraries named after them should be re-titled.“UCL has launched the inquiry to ensure that its historical links to eugenics are properly examined,” said a spokeswoman. Continue reading...

Medical experts hail ‘paradigm shift’ of implant that transmits video images directly to the visual cortex, bypassing the eye and optic nervePartial sight has been restored to six blind people via an implant that transmits video images directly to the brain.Some vision was made possible – with the participants’ eyes bypassed – by a video camera attached to glasses which sent footage to electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of the brain. Continue reading...

Esketamine could initially become available through private clinics but potential side effects raise concernsA ketamine-like drug that could be licensed in the UK as soon as November could transform treatment for severe depression, one of the country’s leading psychiatrists has said.The drug, called esketamine, which is administered through a nasal spray, would be one of the first “rapid acting” drugs for depression and the first drug in decades to target a new brain pathway. Continue reading...

Do you remember where you were when man first landed on the moon? We’d like to hear from youIt’s almost 50 years since US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. As his words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” beamed from radios and television sets, feelings of hope and wonderment spread globally.Teams from around the planet, from ground control to newsrooms and remote Australian satellite stations, brought the event to an estimated 600 million people worldwide. Grainy images from the Sea of Tranquility and headlines that echoed the inspiring messages adorned news stands the following day. Half a century on, the impact from the successful Apollo 11 mission still resonates, seeping into popular culture and inspiring new scientific and technological developments today. Continue reading...

Scientists reconstruct extinct species using fossils found in northern Mali from ancient seaway

From micro pigs to the doping dangers of a poppy seed bagel, life may be imitating the US sitcomWhen Jerry Seinfeld starts his UK tour, listen out for a science joke. From early on in his TV career, the comedian poked fun at science. In his 1981 HBO debut, he said of weather forecasts: “And then my favourite part, the satellite photo. This is really helpful. A photograph of the Earth from 10,000 miles away. Can you tell if you should take a sweater or not from that shot?”His eponymous 90s sitcom is also packed with nuanced references to science, with the storylines of some of the most famous episodes centred on it: George Costanza pretends to be a scientist in The Marine Biologist, while in The Abstinence he becomes a boffin after swearing off sex. In The Non-Fat Yogurt, Kramer has a romantic fling in a lab and inadvertently spoils an experiment testing whether the frozen snack is as healthy as it sounds. Continue reading...

Have you ever been caught out online and subscribed to something you didn’t mean to? Ian Sample has and so he tasked Jordan Erica Webber with finding out how companies play on our psyches to pinch our pennies and what we can do about it Continue reading...

If successful, India will become fourth country to soft-land on moon after Russia, US and ChinaIndia is making final preparations for the launch this Sunday of the Chandrayaan 2 moon mission. The spacecraft will take two months to cruise to the moon. Following its arrival, it will manoeuvre into a circular orbit just 62 miles (100km) above the lunar surface. It will then deploy the Vikram lander early in September.This will be India’s first attempt at a soft landing on the moon. If successful, it will make the country the fourth to achieve such a feat, after Russia, the US and China. Continue reading...

Pluribus wins 12-day session of Texas hold’em against some of the world’s best human playersRack up another win for the machines. An artificial intelligence called Pluribus has emerged victorious from a marathon 12-day poker session during which it played five human professionals at a time.Over 10,000 hands of no-limit Texas hold’em, the most popular form of the game, Pluribus won a virtual $48,000 (£38,000), beating five elite players who were selected each day from a pool who agreed to take on the program. All of the pros had previously won more than $1m playing the game. Continue reading...

Salford team explores sound qualities of ancient Wiltshire monument using 1:12 replica based on data from scansA diminutive model of Stonehenge could help crack the acoustic secrets of the ancient site, according to scientists who have built a version of the megaliths at a 12th of their size.The team say the 1:12 model, with a stone circle spanning 2.6 metres, has an edge over other replicas of Stonhenge, such as the full-scale one near Maryhill,Washington, for being based on laser scan data. The data collected by Historic England allowed the team to produce a highly accurate representation. Continue reading...

Ancient bird’s foot is so distinctive palaeontologists declare it a new speciesThe fossilised remains of a bizarre, ancient bird that had middle toes longer than its lower legs have been found in a lump of amber from Myanmar.The elongated toe resembles those seen on lemurs and tree-climbing lizards, and suggests an unusual lifestyle for some of the earliest birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs, researchers said. Continue reading...

Research showing goats can communicate emotion by bleating should help us build empathy with our fellow animalsWicksteed Park in Kettering is not known for its miracles, but on that day, it was if a holy statue was weeping blood. Within minutes of the incredible event beginning, a great crowd coalesced. The elderly and infirm got out of their chairs. Children were put on shoulders. There were gasps. There was awe. I can tell you what happened but you may prefer to sit down first. Because two weeks ago, almost to the day, a goat in this small-town theme park climbed a tree in its enclosure. “But … goats can’t climb trees,” came the murmurs from the crowd. “What is it doing?” they asked, with confused astonishment. I watched with great delight. These people clearly had an idea of what a goat is and what a goat does and were being met with a new reality where goats could also happily climb trees, a behaviour goats regularly employ in the wild to find the juiciest leaves. To the people of Kettering, who were not aware of tree-climbing goats, it was as if they were looking at a flying monkey.Related: Goats can distinguish emotions from each other's calls – study Continue reading...

Unmanned craft – about the size of a large refrigerator – plans to collect ground samples, some 300 million kilometres from EarthA Japanese spacecraft has successfully landed on a distant asteroid where it hopes to collect samples that could shed light on the evolution of the solar system.Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) observing the landing from a control room on the southern island of Tanegashima applauded and made “V” for victory signs after the Hayabusa2 probe landed on the asteroid on Thursday morning local time. Continue reading...

President makes remarks as he announces a government plan to tackle kidney diseaseDonald Trump surprised the medical community on Wednesday afternoon, when he claimed “the kidney has a very special place in the heart”.Speaking as he announced a government plan to tackle kidney disease, Trump went on an extended riff about the efforts of specialists. Continue reading...

Two-year-old has had brain surgery to treat spasms, raising hopes for other childrenA two year-old girl from Glasgow has become the youngest person in the world to undergo brain surgery that doctors say could help limit severe disability among children afflicted by uncontrollable body movements.Viktoria Kaftanikaite was just 32 months old when she had deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat a condition called dystonia, which caused her arms and legs to flail about and her mouth to twitch constantly while she was awake. Continue reading...

Nearly 80% of cities to undergo dramatic and potentially disastrous changes, study findsLondon will have a similar climate in three decades’ time to that of Barcelona today, according to research – but if that seems enticing, a warning: the change could be accompanied by severe drought.Madrid will feel like present-day Marrakech by 2050, and Stockholm like Budapest, according to a report on the likely impacts of the climate crisis. Around the world, cities that are currently in temperate or cold zones in the northern hemisphere will resemble cities more than 600 miles (1,000km) closer to the equator, with damaging effects on health and infrastructure. Continue reading...

The closer the prospect of disaster becomes, the less the government manages to doThe difference between speed limits and speed cameras is that speed cameras work. They arouse fear and frustration, but they are in the end obeyed. Speed limits, on the other hand, are generally treated as moralistic exhortations which no one ought to take literally. The distinction between exhortation and enforcement is fundamental to understanding what governments intend when they announce a policy; and the latest report to parliament of the government’s Committee on Climate Change makes it clear that the government’s commitment to mitigating the effects of the climate emergency is still very much at the stage of announcing speed limits: targets and exhortations without any enforcement or real effects on behaviour. As a result, there is a smashup coming. A global rise of 4C in mean temperature is equivalent to the entire rise in temperature since the last ice age, and whereas the preceding rise was spread out over 10,000 years, this one will be a compressed into a century.The committee’s language is remarkably blunt: “Targets do not themselves reduce emissions”, the report says – any more than speed limit signs make drivers slow down – but even the targets are badly placed; “There are no areas where the government is planning properly”; and, from the former chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Deben, “the whole thing is run by the government like Dad’s Army … this ramshackle system … doesn’t begin to face the issues. It is a real threat to the population.” Continue reading...

Virgin Galactic | Headlines | Women’s tennis | Saw joke | Bull run | IzalI was surprised to find no mention in your report (Floating into space: Branson reveals plans to list Virgin Galactic on stock exchange, 10 July) of the environmental costs of using a huge aircraft and a rocket ship to give super-rich clients a few minutes in space. How many hard-working families do we need to persuade to give up their annual holiday in the sun to offset the carbon footprint of one of Branson’s flights of fancy?

Remains discovered on Mani peninsula could rewrite history of Homo sapiens in EurasiaA broken skull chiselled from a lump of rock in a cave in Greece is the oldest modern human fossil ever found outside Africa, researchers claim.The partial skull was discovered in the Apidima cave on the Mani peninsula of the southern Peloponnese and has been dated to be at least 210,000 years old. Continue reading...

This retelling of the Neil Armstrong story has been eclipsed by superior studies of his historic lunar missionThis Neil Armstrong documentary feels like unrequired viewing coming so soon after two cracking moon landing movies: Damien Chazelle’s First Man, a character study correcting the myth of Armstrong as a surly recluse, and Apollo 11, the thrilling documentary made with colour footage of the mission found at the back of a filing cabinet at Nasa. By contrast with the latter film, Armstrong looks made for TV, filled with good ol’ boys from Nasa – elderly white men every one of them, who you suspect are still pining for the days of American life when men were men and women waited by the phone in headscarves.Armstrong was an Ohio farm boy who grew up obsessed with airplanes and got his pilot’s licence before he could drive. He flew fighter planes in the Korean war; it gave him character and backbone, he said. It also acquainted him with death. As a civilian test pilot and later on Project Apollo, he risked his life and lost colleagues. Tragically, his daughter Karen died from a brain tumour, aged two. The film features upsetting home movie footage of Karen at home, her balance impaired, desperately unwell. Watching it, you realise how Chazelle prettified her illness in First Man. Continue reading...

From archaeologists to office workers, people feel the need to accompany hard work with a grunt. But why do they do it?When the umpire at Wimbledon calls out “quiet, please”, a religious hush falls over the court. The only things that break the silence are the gentle pop of a bouncing tennis ball, the faint murmur of the crowd, and the passionate grunting of the players.Related: What can science tell us about grunting in tennis? Continue reading...

The Guardian photographer Christopher Thomond went to the opening events at the 161st Great Yorkshire show in Harrogate, a three-day showcase of British farming and the countryside Continue reading...

It all started with a man called Bill Kaysing and his pamphlet about ‘America’s $30bn swindle’ ...It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.It began as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Kaysing had actually contributed to the US space programme, albeit tenuously: between 1956 and 1963, he was an employee of Rocketdyne, a company that helped to design the Saturn V rocket engines. In 1976, he self-published a pamphlet called We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, which sought evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and ludicrous theories. Yet somehow he established a few perennials that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels. Continue reading...