As Saturn’s moon Titan becomes Nasa’s latest destination, we look at other probes the agency is boldly sending forthAs announced last month, Nasa is sending a drone named the Dragonfly to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Part of their New Frontiers programme to explore the solar system’s biochemical relationships, the Dragonfly is scheduled to launch in 2026 and arrive at the icy moon in 2034. Development costs have peaked at $850m. Titan has “all the ingredients for life”, says Lori Glaze, director of Nasa’s planetary science division. Continue reading...

As the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo landing approaches, a host of countries are undertaking lunar missions. What’s behind the new space race?At 2.51am on Monday 15 July, engineers at India’s national spaceport at Sriharikota will blast their Chandrayaan-2 probe into orbit around the Earth. It will be the most ambitious space mission the nation has attempted. For several days, the four-tonne spacecraft will be manoeuvred above our planet before a final injection burn of its engines will send it hurtling towards its destination: the moon.Exactly 50 years after the astronauts of Apollo 11 made their historic voyage to the Sea of Tranquillity, Chandrayaan-2 will repeat that journey – though on a slightly different trajectory. After the robot craft enters lunar orbit, it will gently drop a lander, named Vikram, on to the moon’s surface near its south pole. A robot rover, Pragyan, will then be dispatched and, for the next two weeks, trundle across the local terrain, analysing the chemical composition of soil and rocks. Continue reading...

If the word is spread too thinly, it will cease to be such a powerful tool to educate and empower womenAll women need the term “gaslighting”. Well, all people really. Rebecca Humphries didn’t even realise that she needed it until she was cheated on by the comedian Seann Walsh in the 2018 Strictly Come Dancing scandal.She’d had suspicions but, as she wrote at the time, Walsh “aggressively and repeatedly called me psycho/nuts/mental, as he had done countless times… when I’ve questioned his inappropriate and hurtful behaviour”. When her friend mentioned gaslighting, it was a relief to know that there was a term to describe her experience. Humphries, who has just spoken at the House of Commons about coercive control, says that single word gave her the vindication and courage she needed. Continue reading...

I was nervous about inheriting a family condition – which helped me understand our brains and the direction lives takeOne stifling day at the beginning of the long, hot summer of 2018, I sat in the waiting room at my GP’s surgery. Outside it was dazzlingly bright, but inside the fluorescent lights were still humming. A buoyant doctor strode out and called my name. I took hold of my two-year-old son’s hand and we followed her down the corridor into a small room where she took a sample of my blood. The vial contained thousands of white blood cells. Hidden inside each one was my DNA, the 3.2bn-lettered code unique to every human being that is the blueprint for life.My son and I were at hospital because my father had been diagnosed with haemochromatosis, an inherited condition in which iron levels slowly build up in the body. Eventually the excess iron begins to damage internal organs and, if left untreated, it can lead to heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. Thankfully, in my father’s case, the organ damage was not too far advanced, but because the condition had gone undiagnosed for decades he now has to undergo weekly bloodlettings. This treatment, while intrusive, means he is otherwise in good health. A happy outcome for him and those of us who love him. Continue reading...

This month sees the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, landing the first man on the moon. As the Observer’s science editor Robin McKie looks ahead to the future of manned spaceflight, we look back at how, in 1969, mankind viewed that giant leap Continue reading...

Why do some of us pile on the pounds, while others seem to get away with it? Hannah Devlin speaks to Dr Giles Yeo about some of the latest findings from the field of obesity research – from the role of our genes and how heritable our weight is, to how, as a society, we’ve become overweight and what we can do about it. Continue reading...

New approaches to disposing of the dead needed as graveyards and crematoria are almost fullFrom burials in pyramids to scattering ashes and even plastination, there has been no shortage of ideas about how to deal with human corpses.But with graveyards and crematoria almost full in Britain, the conundrum of what to do with the dead has resurfaced with new urgency. Now a leading public health expert has suggested the sides of motorways, cycle paths and even brownfield or former industrial sites could be transformed to house the dead. Continue reading...

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing, on 20 July 1969, is being celebrated globally but giant leaps aren’t necessary for these ‘missions’ in the UKSeven metres in diameter, artist Luke Jerram’s spherical, internally lit lunar sculpture features detailed imagery of the moon’s surface from Nasa – each centimetre of the artwork representing about 5km of the moon. It was inspired by Bristolian Jerram noticing the huge tidal variation as he cycled over the Avon Cut each day. Accompanying the touring artwork is a surround-sound composition by Dan Jones (who has worked on musical scores for theatre, film and TV, including David Attenborough’s The Life of Mammals). Several moons are simultaneously touring the UK (including Dorchester, Armagh, Birmingham, Wakefield, Warrington and Derby), and beyond, installed at indoor and outdoor sites until the end of the year, with most venues organising an events programme alongside.

Melbourne-based Natasha van Zyl has treated 13 young adults with nerve transfer surgeryThirteen young adults who were paralysed in sporting or traffic accidents have had movement in their hands restored through pioneering nerve transfer surgery, enabling them to feed themselves, hold a drink, write and in some cases return to work.Natasha van Zyl, the Melbourne-based surgeon who leads a research programme that has given some people their lives back, said the patients were able to use their hands and extend their arms from the elbow. “Extending your elbow allows you to push a wheelchair better, helps you to transfer in and out of a car, reach out and do something in space in front of you, shake someone’s hand. Continue reading...

‘Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt’ now appears almost every year, forming largest record bloomIt weighs 20m tonnes, stretches from west Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, and washes up on beaches creating a malodorous stench. Now scientists say a vast swathe of brown seaweed could be becoming an annual occurrence.Researchers say the explosion in sargassum seaweed first materialised in 2011. But new research shows it has appeared almost every year since then, forming the largest bloom of macroalgae ever recorded. What’s more, the seaweed band – dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt – seems to be getting bigger. Continue reading...

That Brexit has put British pupils off studying languages is tragic – it’s not just great for your brain, it opens up whole new worldsMore than half the world’s people speak more than one language, and I am one of them: I speak English, Welsh, French and Italian, and wish that I could speak more.Being able to speak more than one language has opened up whole worlds of experience and understanding – so it is particularly saddening then to see reports that Brexit is putting British pupils off studying modern foreign languages at school. Some parents have even told teachers that it’s useless for their children to learn another language now that the UK is leaving the European Union. Continue reading...

This unsettling documentary focuses on an engineer from Nazi Germany who was a key player in America’s lunar programmeThis considered documentary blends archive, original interviews and reconstruction to track down an ugly, sticky thread from the great tapestry of self-congratulation that is forming around the 50-year anniversary of the first moon landing. Where a number of recent documentaries and dramatic features celebrate, however justly, the bravery, vision and scientific achievement of the Apollo 11 mission, writer-director Johnny Gogan’s collaboration with co-writer Nick Snow is a reminder that it was thanks to contributions from scientists smuggled out of Nazi Germany after the second world war that the Americans beat the Russians to the moon.In particular, this zeroes in on the story of Arthur Rudolph, who is played in flashbacks with enticing ambiguity by Jim Norton. Rudolph, an engineer, joined the Nazi party in 1931 and worked directly under the pioneering rocket scientist Wernher von Braun on the V-2, which was constructed using slave labour drawn from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Along with Von Braun and others, Rudolph ended up in the US, playing a major role at Nasa in its early days. Continue reading...

In 1985 the work research unit of the Department of Employment was disbanded and my father, Geoff White, stepped down after five years as director. A colleague wrote: “It is not often that one person can make a national and international contribution to such a worthy cause; the quality of working life in the UK will always be linked with the name of Geoff White.”Geoff, who has died aged 93, was an occupational psychologist, elected a fellow of the British Psychological Society in 1979. He contributed to various publications on organisational change, the quality of working life and work design, and advised organisations including the Greater London council, the Post Office and the Open University through significant change. Continue reading...

Environmental crisis clouding scientific objectivity about plants’ feelings, says botanistThe gardening gloves are off. Frustrated by more than a decade of research which claims to reveal intentions, feelings and even consciousness in plants, more traditionally minded botanists have finally snapped. Plants, they protest, are emphatically not conscious.The latest salvo in the plant consciousness wars has been fired by US, British and German biologists who argue that practitioners of “plant neurobiology” have become carried away with the admittedly impressive abilities of plants to sense and react to their environments. Continue reading...

Most common household cockroach able to develop ‘cross resistance’ to multiple types of chemicals, US study findsCockroaches have become harder to kill and could soon be “almost impossible” to control using pesticides alone, according to a study funded by the United States housing department.Researchers from Purdue University in Indiana spent six months trying to eradicate German cockroaches (Blattella germanica L.), one of the most common species of household cockroach in the US, Australia and Europe, from three low-rise apartment buildings in Illinois and Indiana. Continue reading...

Crook, County Durham: By chewing their way directly into the nectaries of flowers, the thieving insects circumvent the laborious pollination mechanismThe first hint that there were thieves in the garden appeared in the columbines. This plant’s common name is derived from the Latin columba, a dove, because its quintet of florets is reminiscent of an inward-facing circle of doves, with petals forming their wings and long nectar spurs resembling the birds’ necks and bowed heads.Holes had been chewed in every head. The culprits were a few nectar-robbing bumblebees. They should pollinate the flowers by hanging awkwardly underneath, showered with pollen while probing upwards into the nectar spurs with their long tongues. These ones had devised an easier route to a reward, by chewing a feeding hole in the top of each nectary: now they could forage 10 times faster. Continue reading...

Thousands gathered across Chile and Argentina to witness the only total solar eclipse for 2019. Northern Chile is known for clear skies and is being turned into a global astronomy hub

Best views were in the Atacama desert, where a total eclipse has not occurred since 1592

Commons’ health committee warns patients’ expectations are being disappointedHigh expectations among the public of the benefits of medicinal cannabis are being disappointed because doctors are unwilling to prescribe it in the knowledge that there is little evidence to stand up some of the claims, according to MPs.A House of Commons health select committee inquiry says the hopes of patients and families were raised when the government agreed to reschedule medicinal cannabis to make it more available in the light of “the distressing cases of Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell” – two children with severe epilepsy whose parents said only the drug gave them respite from seizures. Continue reading...

Scientists are trying to uncover the mystery of the regular geyser’s clockwork-like eruptionsWhy is Old Faithful so faithful? Roughly every 90 minutes this spectacular geyser in the Yellowstone national park spouts a plume of boiling water 40 metres into the air. In Victorian times people used to put their washing into it, discovering that cotton shirts survived the high-pressure wash, but woollens were torn to shreds. It is one of the most predictable geysers in the world, and yet relatively little is known about its underground plumbing.In 2016 scientists placed a dense network of seismometers around Old Faithful, and recorded her innermost gurglings over a two-day period (25 eruptions). Previously instruments placed in and around the geyser had provided a picture of the pipework down to around 20 metres’ depth, but the new data has probed right into the belly, to 80 metres’ depth. The results, which are published in Geophysical Research Letters, show how a tremor (most likely caused by hot steam condensing to liquid) drops rapidly to around 80 metres after each eruption, and then gradually travels up again to around 20 metres, before re-erupting. A bubble trap at around 20 metres’ depth appears to trigger the eruption. And because Old Faithful is far from other geysers there is little interference to this pattern, which explains why it stays so regular. Continue reading...

Searing heat shows crisis is ‘here and now’, say scientists, and worse than predictedThe record-breaking heatwave that struck France and other European nations in June was made at least five – and possibly 100 – times more likely by climate change, scientists have calculated.Such heatwaves are also about 4C hotter than a century ago, the researchers say. Furthermore, the heatwaves hitting Europe are more frequent and more severe than climate models have predicted. Continue reading...

To mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, an interactive collection of the sounds of space and the history of space travel has been launched by global sound project Cities and Memory. The project, called Space is the Place, combines 80 recordings from Nasa and the European Space Agency for the first time with reimagined, remixed interpretations of those space sounds, all designed to answer the question ‘what does space travel sound like?’ Continue reading...

It’s half a century since the first known HIV-related death and two patients appear to have been cured of the virus. What does this mean for the 37 million still living with it?Nobody knew what killed Robert Rayford. The African American boy was just 15 years old when he presented at St Louis city hospital in late 1968, but the medical team drew a blank.Unexplained swelling in Rayford’s genitalia soon spread throughout his body. Chlamydia bacteria, usually localised at the point of entry, coursed through his bloodstream. A small purple lesion on the inside of his thigh signalled cancer, but of a form usually found in elderly Ashkenazi Jews and Italians, not teenage black boys who had never left Missouri. Continue reading...

Projects headed by UK universities have fallen sharply since Brexit voteBritish researchers say they are being shut out of bids for major European research partnerships, or asked to keep a low profile, because of fears that the threat of a no-deal Brexit could contaminate chances of success.An analysis by University College London of the latest EU research funding data shows that UCL and eight other Russell Group universities were running around 50 big European research collaborations a year in 2016, but only 20 in 2018. Continue reading...

Research says brain ‘de-individuates’ other groups, while scientists say findings could help tackle racial biasThe common perception that people from other racial groups look alike is rooted in the way human brains process what they see, researchers say.It has long been known that people find it easier to tell apart members of their own race than those of a different race. But the mechanism behind this has been the topic of much research. Continue reading...

Reports released after FoI request criticise Prof David Latchman’s ‘recklessness’A lab run by one of Britain’s foremost academics published fraudulent scientific papers for more than a decade, according to investigators.Work at Prof David Latchman’s laboratory at UCL Institute of Child Health came under scrutiny from senior academics after an anonymous whistleblower alleged that dozens of papers from the lab were doctored. Continue reading...

The answers to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following puzzles.1) Ashleigh Barty and Naomi Osaka are playing a set of tennis. In the last eight points, Barty has served seven aces and Osaka has served one. What’s the score? Continue reading...

Record temperatures are being recorded as warnings pile up. It’s vital action is taken against climate breakdown nowSeveral French temperature records were broken on 28 June during this historic heatwave, including the highest temperature ever recorded in the country since records began – 45.9C. The previous high was set during the 2003 heatwave, which was the most significant episode in France’s meteorological history until now.Saharan air has engulfed the country. On 20 June, while meteorologists were discussing the projections of the American global forecast system model, a map with a disturbing resemblance to Munch’s painting The Scream came to my attention. Within a few days, the media spotted this comparison and the image went viral. In 15 years of model observation I had never seen such high temperatures predicted for France, especially in June. The forecast, made more than a week in advance, proved correct: records were not just broken, they were smashed. Continue reading...

The UK market for cannabidiol, a compound found in cannabis, will soon be worth £1bn. But consumers are being connedRoll up, roll up, ladies and gentleman, and gather around. Do you, your loved one – or family pet – suffer from any of the following conditions? Cancer, epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, anxiety, menstrual cramps, insomnia, dry skin, psychosis, Alzheimer’s, dementia, anger, depression, ADHD, Crohn’s and IBS, PTSD, opiate addiction, Parkinson’s, pain of any kind, migraine, or canine uptightness? Then it’s your lucky day.Related: CBD: a marijuana miracle or just another health fad? Continue reading...

Standard therapies were not working. But once I discovered the role of the brain in physical pain, I began to mendChronic pain is an ongoing epidemic. It debilitates around 28 million adults in the UK alone. Yet society seems to have grown comfortable with there being no cure. Perhaps this is because we have been searching for the wrong type of answer, in the wrong place.I should begin by briefly explaining my own experience of chronic pain and what, seemingly against the odds, has helped me find relief. Continue reading...

Three smashing puzzlesUPDATE: To read the solutions click hereThe peculiarities of tennis throw up some nice problems. When better to ponder them than on the opening day of Wimbledon?1) Ashleigh Barty and Naomi Osaka are playing a set of tennis. In the last eight points, Barty has served seven aces and Osaka has served one. What’s the score? Continue reading...

Scientists searching the universe for aliens to conduct survey of the public for views on first contactScientists wrestling with the delicate issue of how to respond should humanity ever be contacted by an alien civilisation have hit on a radical idea: a survey that asks what the public would do.Members of the UK Seti Research Network (UKSRN) are to launch what they believe will be the largest ever survey of public attitudes towards alien contact on Monday at the Royal Society’s summer science exhibition. Continue reading...

To mark the 50th anniversary of the moon landings, an interactive collection of the sounds of space and the history of space travel has been launched by global sound project Cities and Memory. The project, called Space is the Place, combines 80 recordings from Nasa and the European Space Agency for the first time with reimagined, remixed interpretations of those space sounds, all designed to answer the question 'what does space travel sound like?' Continue reading...

After a total solar eclipse visible in South America, the end of the week will deliver a treatTowards the end of the week and moving into the weekend, look out for a young crescent moon in the western sky just after sunset. Having passed directly in front of the sun on 2 July to create a total solar eclipse visible from parts of South America, the moon will then become visible in the evening sky. Continue reading...

Hidebound views on subjects such as the climate crisis and Brexit are the norm – but the appliance of science may sway stubborn opinions“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters of religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” wrote Mark Twain.Having written a book about our most common reasoning errors, I would argue that Twain was being rather uncharitable – to monkeys. Whether we are discussing Trump, Brexit, or the Tory leadership, we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction. And the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why. Continue reading...

Composed entirely of archive footage, this documentary invests the historic mission with a tense immediacyGiven that we all know how the mission turned out, this documentary about the Apollo 11 lunar landing shouldn’t be as nervily tense as it is. But the archive-only approach – unlike the 2007 picture In the Shadow of the Moon, there are no contemporary interviews, just material recorded at the time – lends the film an immersive sense of urgency. Like the rows of crew-cut, clench-jawed scientists staring fixedly at banks of grainy screens 50 years before, we almost forget to breathe as Armstrong manoeuvres a rickety little capsule that looks like it’s held together with duct tape and faith.There is no shortage of factual films that explore this moment. But a combination of superb research – behind-the-scenes footage is augmented by newsreel shots of crowds camped out in the car park of a JC Penney department store, craning to catch a glimpse of history – and first-rate editing makes this lift off. A celebration of human endeavour, and of a rare moment of global unity. Continue reading...

Following last week’s discovery of the remains of a giant bird, we look at some of the most formidable beasts on recordLast week, researchers published a paper about the remains of a giant flightless bird found in a Crimean cave. Pachystruthio dmanisensis is believed to be from a family of prehistoric birds with powerful legs and large beaks, present across North America, Asia and Europe. The gigantic creature could grow to 3.5 metres in height and weigh about 450kg. By contrast, the ostrich is the largest living flightless bird and can reach 2.7 metres and weigh 150kg. The exact reason for Pachystruthio’s extinction is unknown, though it may have been due to some of the deadliest predators of the last ice age. Continue reading...

A drop of breast milk – enough to feed a kitten – fed one mother’s twins, but formal support for donations is under-fundedI wanted to donate breast milk even before I had my now four-month-old daughter, Gallia, whose birth has made it possible. It is she, I suppose, who is performing the act of generosity, sharing her dinner with those not born so lucky. Gallia has recently acquired what I believe to be her fourth chin, and so she is in a position to be charitable. If that sounds smug, it isn’t. I am grateful beyond measure that I have been able to feed her. It wasn’t always thus.Gallia’s older sisters, my identical twin girls, Raffaella and Celeste, now aged three, were born 10 weeks early. They needed oxygen to breathe, an incubator to regulate their temperature, intravenous nutritional support and a nasal-gastric tube that dripped breast milk directly into their unready stomachs to sustain them in place of their lost umbilical cord. They weighed just a shade over 2lb each and they would spend 56 days in hospital before they were well enough to come home. Continue reading...

Health chiefs reinstate UK patients’ access to fertility treatment as minister says postcode lottery is unacceptableAfter years of savage rationing of IVF treatment, NHS bodies in England are again making it available to childless women, raising fertility campaigners’ hopes of an end to a “heartless” policy.The NHS clinical commissioning groups in Herts Valley and South Norfolk reinstated patients’ access to IVF in April and this week Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG may follow suit. Continue reading...

What changes have the experts made to their own lives to tackle the climate emergency?‘We need to reduce our capacity and urge to consume’ Continue reading...

Worldwide panel says it cannot recommend healthy people take ‘memory supplements’Dietary supplements such as vitamins do nothing to boost brain health and are simply a waste of money for healthy people, experts have said.According to figures from the US, sales of so-called “memory supplements” doubled between 2006 and 2015, reaching a value of $643m, while more than a quarter of adults over the age of 50 in the US regularly take supplements in an attempt to keep their brain in good health. Continue reading...

Solar Foods hopes wheat flour-like product will hit target in supermarkets within two yearsA Finnish company that makes food from electricity, water and air has said it plans to have 50m meals’ worth of its product sold in supermarkets within two years.Solar Foods is also working with the European Space Agency to supply astronauts on a mission to Mars after devising a method it says creates a protein-heavy product that looks and tastes like wheat flour at a cost of €5 (£4.50) per kilo. Continue reading...

Tapes identified in 2008 as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing in 1969 are to go up for auction in JulyWhen Gary George bought a truckload of videotapes for $218 from a US government surplus auction more than 40 years ago, he planned to sell them to television stations – to record over.Fortunately, he decided to hold on to the three tapes labelled “Apollo 11 EVA”, which have since been identified as the only surviving original recording of the first moon landing, in 1969. Continue reading...

Featuring previously unseen footage, this electrifying documentary marks 50 years since the first moon landingSometimes gush is the only appropriate response and the amazingness never gets any less amazing. The 50-year anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon launch has now been marked by this fascinating documentary, which presents newly discovered colour footage of the build-up with the buzzcut wholesomeness of the astronauts’ goodnaturedly trustful faces in closeup, the electrifying launch, the touchdown and the return to Earth.Somehow, it doesn’t look like something that happened 50 years ago – but rather an extraordinarily detailed futurist fantasy of what might happen in the years to come, if we could only evolve to some higher degree of verve and hope. And, to my amateur eye, the design of the Apollo rockets is incomparably superior to the Nasa spacecraft that came afterwards or to anything in any sci-fi movie or TV show ever. Continue reading...

String theory gained traction 35 years ago but scientists have not found any evidence to suggest it is correct. Does this matter? And should it be tested? Ian Sample debates this with Eleanor Knox, David Berman and Peter Woit Continue reading...

Fossilised jaw of baby diprotodon, a type of megafauna extinct for millennia, extracted in NSW by Australian MuseumA “giant wombat” fossil has been discovered by local council workers in the Monaro region of southern New South Wales.Two Snowy Monaro regional council employees found the fossilised jaw of a baby diprotodon last Friday at an undisclosed location that is known for such paleontological findings. Continue reading...

Visitors flock to see volcanic phenomenon that threatens to engulf property in RotoruaWhen Rotorua resident Susan Gedye was awoken at 2am by “a lot of shaking and jolting” she thought it was an earthquake.But then she headed downstairs at her suburban home and saw that her kitchen windows had steamed up and a large mud geyser had appeared in her garden. Continue reading...

Spacecraft will travel to an as-yet unidentified comet and map it in three dimensionsThe European Space Agency (ESA) has selected a comet interceptor for the first of its new class of “fast” missions.These must launch within eight years of selection and weigh less than 1,000kg so they can hitchhike into space on an already scheduled launch. Continue reading...

Hoxton Hall, London