Comprehensive mission known as SPHEREx will collect data on more than 300m galaxiesNasa has approved a new sky survey mission that will explore the origins of the universe and its galaxies and of water in planetary systems.This comprehensive mission is known as SPHEREx (the spectro-photometer for the history of the universe, epoch of reionization and ices explorer). It will survey the sky in 96 different colour bands that span the optical and near-infrared wavelengths of light. Continue reading...

Saatchi Gallery to host exhibition of 150 artefacts before their permanent return to EgyptThe largest number of King Tutankhamun treasures ever to leave Egypt are heading to London for an exhibition which organisers say will never happen again. It was announced on Thursday that the Saatchi Gallery in London will be the only UK venue for a world tour of 150 original artefacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb, 60 of which have never left Egypt before.The tour marks the upcoming centenary of the sensational discovery of the boy pharaoh’s tomb by British explorer Howard Carter in 1922. Continue reading...

Biologists discover single female Wallace’s giant bee inside a termites’ nest in a treeAs long as an adult thumb, with jaws like a stag beetle and four times larger than a honeybee, Wallace’s giant bee is not exactly inconspicuous.But after going missing, feared extinct, for 38 years, the world’s largest bee has been rediscovered alive on the Indonesian islands of the North Moluccas. Continue reading...

Swede, 16, says EU cannot just ‘wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge’The EU should double its climate change reduction targets to do its fair share in keeping the planet below a dangerous level of global warming, the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has told political and business leaders in Brussels.Flanked by students from the Belgian and German school strike movements, the Swedish teenager said it was not enough to hope that young people were going to save the world. Continue reading...

The first of a series of films called 'Five minute masterminds' starts with Prof Martin Rees, the astronomer royal. He asks how the future of space exploration will transform how we think of humanity and if we can rely on mass emigration to Mars to save us from the Earth's problems Continue reading...

Spacecraft will shoot pellet at more than 650mph into Ryugu’s surface to kick up dustA Japanese spacecraft is to attempt an audacious smash-and-grab manoeuvre on a speeding asteroid in an attempt to collect samples and return them to Earth.The Hayabusa 2 probe is due to touch down on the asteroid Ryugu at 11pm GMT on Thursday. It will then fire a tantalum pellet into the surface to kick up dust and grains that it will try to capture. Continue reading...

William Happer, a physicist who has suggested higher levels of carbon dioxide are beneficial, would be on committee

Astronomers confirm orbit of tiny moon Hippocamp via multiple images from HubbleA miniature moon that whizzes around Neptune at breakneck speed has been tracked by astronomers working from the US.The speck of a moon, no more than 21 miles across, hurtles around the distant gas giant at about 20,000 miles an hour, 10 times faster than our own moon circles Earth, scientists said. Continue reading...

Pattern seems to confuse flies, researchers who dressed horses up as zebras findThe mystery of how the zebra got its stripes might have been solved: researchers say the pattern appears to confuse flies, discouraging them from touching down for a quick bite.The study, published in the journal Plos One, involved horses, zebras, and horses dressed as zebras. The team said the research not only supported previous work suggesting stripes might act as an insect deterrent, but helped unpick why, revealing the patterns only produced an effect when the flies got close. Continue reading...

Molecular geneticist who was a leading contributor to the Human Genome ProjectIn 2003 the Human Genome Project (HGP) published the complete sequence of human DNA. Sue Povey, who has died aged 76, contributed greatly to this international collaborative project with her team at University College London, her work as a molecular geneticist having started much earlier, in the late 1960s. She was motivated throughout by a strong interest in people and disease.At the outset she exploited newly developed enzyme detection systems that revealed differences between individuals and among species, allowing her to solve a number of longstanding puzzles. One was mapping the chromosomal location of human genes, initially by family studies, which use inheritance patterns across the generations, like Gregor Mendel’s pioneering work, to identify closely linked genes. Later mapping used human-mouse hybrid cell culture. In this approach, genes are assigned to specific human chromosomes by observing their coordinated presence or absence. Continue reading...

After endless guides to self-help, a new wave of books spearheaded by The Little Book of Bad Moods is switching the focus to more realistic hopesAlthough Finnish doesn’t have a direct equivalent of English’s “mustn’t grumble”, Lotta Sonninen admits, it has a few equivalents. “Vali vali” comes from “valittaminen”, meaning complaining: but there is also “marina”, “kitinä” and “jupina” (to complain under your breath or through gritted teeth); “urputtaminen” (to complain to someone about something they did); “nillittäminen” (to complain at length); and “avautuminen” (to complain at length with unnecessary frankness). Sonninen is familiar with them all; she has spent years working in the Finnish publishing industry, poring over positivity handbooks designed to get her countrymen through the long dark winters.“The type of books that crossed my path ask you to find the joy in the little things of life and turn up the silver lining or the bright side,” Sonninen says. “Although one at a time they’re really cute, when there were several of them it started looking a bit comical. So I ended up imagining an antidote.” Continue reading...

‘Centres of decision making’ will be targeted if west deploys new missiles in EuropeVladimir Putin has said that Russia will develop new weapons and aim them at western “centres of decision-making” if the west deploys new short and medium-range missiles in Europe.The threat, which appears to describe Washington and other western capitals, came after the United States and then Russia suspended compliance with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Continue reading...

Attempt to become fourth country to send spacecraft to the surface blasts off this weekA team of Israeli scientists is to launch what will be the first privately funded mission to land on the moon this week, sending a spacecraft to collect data from the lunar surface.Named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander will blast off from Florida at 01.45 GMT on Friday, propelled by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Once it touches down, in several weeks, it will measure the magnetic field of the moon to help understand how it formed. Continue reading...

If we want to make progress with FGM, we need to first tackle our outdated, misogynistic views on sexThe first UK conviction for female genital mutilation (FGM) this month was a milestone in the fight for the basic human rights of women and girls. But one of the things that stands out from the news reports of that case is how oddly furtive they were about communicating the key facts – in particular their avoidance of the C-word: clitoris.In reporting such a prominent case, are readers unable to be shown the correct medical terminology? Why do the media carefully avoid mentioning what occurred, using highly generalised anatomical terms before quickly moving on? If this lack of detail was to spare the victim the indignity of having such a personal matter discussed so publicly, I would have sympathy, however I do not think that this is the case here. What I think is at play, is a deep-rooted fear of the clitoris. Continue reading...

Millions of cases could be prevented with high HPV vaccine and screening coverageCervical cancer could be effectively eliminated in most countries around the world by the end of the 21st century, according to research.The HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine, which protects against the virus that causes most cases, has dramatically reduced incidences of cervical cancer wherever uptake has been high. There are hopes that the jab given to young girls, together with occasional HPV screening, could end the scourge of a disease that kills more than 300,000 women globally every year. Continue reading...

Hailing ‘next step’, president accepts plans to create organization on a lesser scale than he had hopedDonald Trump on Tuesday directed the Pentagon to develop plans to create a new space force within the air force, accepting less than the full-fledged department he’d wanted.Before signing a document instructing the defense secretary to draft proposed legislation, Trump said space was the “future” and the “next step”. Continue reading...

The February Snow Moon is the biggest and brightest super-moon of the year, lighting up the night skies across the planet giving stargazers a celestial treat. It appears brighter and bigger than other full moons because it is close to its perigee, the closest point in its orbit to Earth Continue reading...

FDA warning is blow to anti-age treatment fad that claims it could improve strength and memory and even combat Alzheimer’sThe US government has warned that older people should not be paying to have their veins filled with the blood of young people, in a blow for what was becoming a fad anti-aging treatment.In a statement on Tuesday the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said infusions of plasma from young donors into older clients “should not be assumed to be safe or effective”, and said it was “concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors” charging thousands of dollars for transfusions. Continue reading...

Frontal bone initially believed to be pottery shard to be shown at Museum of LondonThe oldest skull ever found on the banks of the River Thames – dating from about 5,600 years ago – will go on display at the Museum of London.Related: Mega lift? Stonehenge pillars were carried 230km over land – research Continue reading...

Criminals now make more money from these counterfeits than they do from illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaineSome crimes are just worse than others. When I tell people I research the market for fake and substandard medicines, their most common reaction is: “Fake cancer medicines? That’s horrible. Why would anyone do that?”Related: Revealed: UK patients stockpile drugs in fear of no-deal Brexit Continue reading...

US professor raised early alarms about climate change and popularised term ‘global warming’A pioneering scientist who raised early alarms about climate change and popularised the term “global warming” has died aged 87.Wallace Smith Broecker, a Columbia University professor and researcher died on Monday at a hospital in New York City, according to a spokesman for the university’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. He had reportedly been ill in recent months. Continue reading...

Archaeologists say up to 80 two-ton blocks may have been dragged from Preseli hillsThey are among the most famous and most enigmatic mysteries in all of archaeology: how did neolithic builders, using only stone, wooden and bone tools, carve Stonehenge’s bluestone pillars from the hilltops of western Wales – and how on earth did they transport them more than 230km (143 miles) to Salisbury plain?Now, an excavation has found intriguing new evidence of the method by which the huge stones were chiselled out of the rock face at two craggy outcrops of the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire. Continue reading...

Sir Ranulph Fiennes keeps his fingertips in a jar and Aron Ralston cut off his arm to escape death. Is this the ultimate in heroism?

Doctors could use Crispr tool to inject benign virus into foetus’s brain to ‘switch on’ key genesScientists are developing a radical form of gene therapy that could cure a devastating medical disorder by mending mutations in the brains of foetuses in the womb.The treatment, which has never been attempted before, would involve doctors injecting the feotus’s brain with a harmless virus that infects the neurons and delivers a suite of molecules that correct the genetic faults. Continue reading...

As Airbus’s cancelled superjumbo shows, technological progress is not compulsory – we can choose to call a halt

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsIf the galaxies have been accelerating outwards since the big bang, does this mean any aliens out there are getting further and further away from us, so that it becomes ever less likely that we will meet them?James Simpson, Manchester Continue reading...

Analysis of community where 73% of residents contracted Zika in 2015 offers new clues about epidemicScientists studying the 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil have discovered that people previously exposed to dengue may have been protected from the virus.Three-quarters of the inhabitants of a favela in the country’s north-east caught the mosquito-borne Zika virus during the epidemic. The outbreak left more than 3,000 babies across Brazil with microcephaly, a birth defect caused by mothers catching the virus during pregnancy. Continue reading...

Once we were pressured to acquire things and do more with our lives. Now, we’re being told to declutter our homes and diaries. What happened to just being ourselves?What brings you joy? It is a question that is hard to avoid these days, as joy seems to be the new buzzword. It is on the cover of two new books, The Joy of No (#Jono) by Debbie Chapman, published at the end of last year, and The Joy of Missing Out, by the philosopher and psychologist Svend Brinkmann, published earlier this month. It is also on Netflix, in the show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, in which the decluttering guru and author tells us to discard any possessions that do not “spark joy”. Truly, a surfeit of joy!But joy is not the only idea linking these three approaches: Chapman, Brinkmann and Kondo all tap into the same zeitgeisty wish to clean up our cluttered lives. For Kondo, it is about household clutter; for Chapman and Brinkmann, it is life clutter. Continue reading...

Australian Academy of Science panel says urgent steps needed to restore flowsA scientific panel investigating the causes of three mass fish deaths at the Menindee lakes has pointed the finger squarely at those managing the Murray-Darling river system, saying the lack of flows was caused by a combination of drought and over-extraction, leading to the environmental disaster.Up to one million native fish, including hundreds of thousands of small bony bream, Murray cod, up to 20 years old, and silver perch were killed in the three events. While there had been other fish kills during droughts, these were on an unprecedented scale, the report found. Continue reading...

Birds’ eggs in High Arctic contain chemical additives used in plasticsScientists have warned about the impact of plastic pollution in the most pristine corners of the world after discovering chemical additives in birds’ eggs in the High Arctic.Eggs laid by northern fulmars on Prince Leopold Island in the Canadian Arctic tested positive for hormone-disrupting phthalates, a family of chemicals that are added to plastics to keep them flexible. It is the first time the additives have been found in Arctic birds’ eggs. Continue reading...

Conspiracy theories shown on video-sharing site persuade people to doubt Earth is roundResearchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year. Continue reading...

Fears of no-deal Brexit prompt 50 firms with UK operations to seek to use EU regulatorsThe threat of a no-deal Brexit has prompted a slew of chemicals companies to move regulatory approvals from the UK to the EU to protect their ability to do business legally.More than 50 British chemicals companies with operations in the UK have applied to use EU regulators for critical authorisations that will become worthless if there is no transition arrangement following 29 March, the planned date of Brexit, according to data provided to the Guardian by the European commission. Continue reading...

Scientists say roast meal can make household air dirtier than in sixth most polluted city

The philosopher Giordano Bruno, burned for heresy in 1600, has become a symbol of free expression and toleranceEvery year on 17 February, a crowd gathers in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori to place wreaths, poems and candles at the foot of the statue that glowers towards the Vatican from beneath its friar’s cowl. The man it memorialises, the Neapolitan philosopher Giordano Bruno, was burned alive by the Inquisition on that spot in 1600, for heresies including several books in which he advocated the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and argued that the universe was infinite and contained multiple other worlds.Related: Cosmos and Giordano Bruno: the problem with scientific heroes | Rebekah Higgitt Continue reading...

It has a sad and misunderstood history, but witchcraft still has a role to playOur fascination with witches has long surpassed witchcraft being a crime punishable by death. They are a cultural obsession, it seems, that is always with us in one guise or another. In recent weeks it’s been Netflix’s reboot of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Sky One’s A Discovery of Witches, as well as an episode of Doctor Who focusing on the Pendle witch trials. The only shift has been packaging witchcraft as a more grown-up take on women attempting to take control of their own destinies.As a teenager, my friends and I were self-subscribed members of Wicca, the “white witch” religion. Growing up in a rainy mill town in Lancashire, with little in the way of diversion, our cultural diet consisted of Heathers, The Craft and other moody 90s films. At sleepovers we did Ouija boards and whispered “light as a feather, stiff as a board” as one of us lay corpse-like on laced hands, her arms crossed over her chest. Later, I’d lie awake as the wind and rain battered down from the moor, thinking of the guns my friend’s father kept hanging in the hallway. Continue reading...

Researchers are working with Nasa to see if clowns help team cohesion on long space missionsWanted: smart, fit and unflappable applicants for humanity’s first mission to Mars. Must have: crazy wig, oversized boots and a big red nose.It is enough to make Neil Armstrong spin in his grave, but researchers have found that the success of a future mission to the red planet may depend on the ship having a class clown. Continue reading...

As a young doctor in rural South Africa (1975-76), my father, Julian Pratt, questioned the underlying cause of the diseases he was treating and identified how the grossly unequal distribution of land for agriculture was having a devastating effect. As a result, he became passionate about land reform and pursued this interest for the next 40 years.Julian, who has died aged 70, researched, proposed and campaigned for a radical approach to the market economy, replacing private ownership of land with a system he described as stewardship. He built on work by Thomas Paine and Henry George, and advocated that everyone should be entitled to an equal share of the wealth of the natural world. In a stewardship economy, “stewards” would pay a fee (a land tax) for the exclusive right to use land. The fee, gathered by government in place of conventional taxes, would be used to provide a universal basic income and fund public services. He outlined his ideas in a book, Stewardship Economy: Private Property Without Private Ownership (2011) and on his website, www.stewardship.ac. He described how the transition to a stewardship economy could be made, and last year contributed to a Liberal Democrat policy paper, Taxing Land, Not Investments (2018). Continue reading...

I’ve seen how OpenAI’s GPT2 system can produce a column in my style. We must heed Elon Musk’s warnings of AI doomElon Musk, recently busying himself with calling people “pedo” on Twitter and potentially violating US securities law with what was perhaps just a joke about weed – both perfectly normal activities – is now involved in a move to terrify us all. The non-profit he backs, OpenAI, has developed an AI system so good it had me quaking in my trainers when it was fed an article of mine and wrote an extension of it that was a perfect act of journalistic ventriloquism.Related: New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators Continue reading...

Across the country today, children left their classes to protest against climate change. This is my message to themThe Youth Strike 4 Climate gives me more hope than I have felt in 30 years of campaigning. Before this week, I believed it was all over. I thought, given the indifference and hostility of those who govern us, and the passivity of most of my generation, that climate breakdown and ecological collapse were inevitable. Now, for the first time in years, I think we can turn them around.Related: Schoolchildren take to streets in UK-wide climate strike - live Continue reading...

What do attempts to establish a human colony on Mars, a $9bn blood-test startup and the Fyre festival have in common? Sheer chutzpahIf you were hoping to escape Brexit Britain with a one-way ticket to Mars, I am afraid you’re out of luck. Mars One Ventures, the company that wanted to start a permanent human settlement on the red planet in the next few years, has gone bankrupt, although its not-for-profit sister company, the Mars One Foundation, continues to operate. No doubt you are as shocked by this as I am.A quick recap of the space saga: Mars One was launched in 2012, when the Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp decided that, instead of dealing with his midlife crisis by getting a motorcycle, he would colonise the fourth planet from the sun. How he planned to do this was questionable, as Mars One didn’t make any space technology. It was a bit like the Brexit ferry firm that didn’t own any ferries, but on an interplanetary scale. Also unclear was how he thought Mars One could start a space colony on a budget of just $6bn; Nasa has estimated that a manned mission to Mars would cost between $80bn and $100bn (£62bn and £78bn). Mind you, Nasa clearly wasn’t doing the sort of galaxy-brain thinking Lansdorp was: the entrepreneur had the brilliant idea of making a reality show out of the colonisation process to fund the endeavour. After all, who wouldn’t want to watch a space-based mashup of Love Island and Lord of the Flies? Continue reading...

Simply telling people they are ignorant has failed. We need to find a better way to communicateAfter reading the news that cases of measles have soared by 50% in the last year, I recalled the first time I heard an anti-vaccination conspiracy theory. It wasn’t from a member of Donald Trump’s administration, or part of a frenetic, grammatically challenged Facebook post – it was from a classmate when I was at school. Her family wasn’t waging a crusade against medical science: they simply gave credence to disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield’s study that wrongly asserted a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Back then, the study had not yet been discredited.One only has to stray into anti-vaxxer internet forums for a few minutes to see that they’re stuffed with conspiracy theorists, opportunists, reactionaries, and – worst of all – hubristic idiots. This is the vanguard of the anti-vaxxer movement. But behind that vanguard are a lot of concerned parents who are being convinced of wild and dangerous ideas because we – and by we, I mean those of us who recognise the incontrovertible fact that vaccines are essential – aren’t talking to them properly. A number of the anti-vaxxer vanguard may have started life as concerned parents, but have gradually sunk into increasingly extreme positions because the only communication they’re getting from the other side is that they’re foolish and irresponsible. Almost every week the internet produces another diatribe against anti-vaxxers, or a listicle of their “horrifyingly stupid” social media posts. Continue reading...

Nicola Davis talks to the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, who has been trying to find the solution to one of humankind’s trickier questions – what is life?Paul joins Nicola in studio to talk about his new book The Demon in the Machine. In it, he looks at whether or not we have all of the tools necessary to come up with answer to what life actually is. He suggests we may need something fundamentally new – a field yet to be discovered – to answer this question.The pair discuss everything from Margaret Thatcher to dead mice. Continue reading...

Study says evidence ‘supports link’ between exposure to glyphosate and increased risk

Toronto researchers believe the drug can also help those with depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’sAn experimental drug that bolsters ailing brain cells has raised hopes of a treatment for memory loss, poor decision making and other mental impairments that often strike in old age.The drug could be taken as a daily pill by over-55s if clinical trials, which are expected to start within two years, show that the medicine is safe and effective at preventing memory lapses. Continue reading...

New research shows that gestures used by chimpanzees follow the same rules as human language. Are we really so different?It’s a bit garbled but you can definitely hear it in the mobile phone footage. As the chimpanzees arrange their branches into a makeshift ladder and one of them makes its daring escape from its Belfast zoo enclosure, some words ring out loud and clear: “Don’t escape, you bad little gorilla!” a child onlooker shouts from the crowd. And … POP … with that a tiny explosion goes off inside my head. Something knocks me back about this sentence. It’s a “kids-say-the-funniest things” kind of sentence, and in any other situation I’d offer a warm smile and a chuckle of approval. But not this time. This statement has brought out the pedant in me.Related: Chimps use branch as ladder to escape Belfast zoo enclosure Continue reading...

Winton mayor hopes discovery of rare sauropod tracks can help his struggling townGigantic dinosaur footprints preserved in an outback creek bed have been saved from the floods that have ravaged western Queensland.Hailed by paleontologists as the best-preserved sauropod track in Australia, the small town of Winton hopes the discovery will help secure its future. Continue reading...

I wish that as an oncologist I could see off quackery through good communication. Unfortunately that doesn’t work“Tell me why I should have your chemotherapy when I can be healed naturally!”His face is set, his arms defensively squared. His friend carries a pamphlet that features a suspiciously healthy woman with glamorous hair and a glowing complexion. This is the urgent appointment of the day, for whom other patients were hastily shuffled to make room. Continue reading...

Robot the size of a golf buggy has sent data to Earth for 15 years but fell silent eight months ago and Nasa says mission is completeNasa declared the 15-year mission of the veteran Mars rover Opportunity finally over on Wednesday, crediting the robot as having “transformed our understanding of our planet”.The golf buggy-sized vehicle last made contact with Earth eight months ago, after being caught in a global dust storm. Continue reading...

Reproductive tract’s shape lets only strong swimmers through to egg, research suggestsFor millions of sperm it is the end of the road. Scientists have found evidence that the female reproductive tract is shaped in such a way that stops poor swimmers from reaching their goal.Researchers used small-scale models and computer simulations to show that pinch points that behave like gates along the sperm’s arduous path from cervix to egg allow only the fastest ones through. Continue reading...

Study finds one in 14 cases in under-35s could be avoided if teenagers did not use the drugScientists believe they have identified about 60,000 cases of depression in adults under 35 in the UK, and more than 400,000 in the US, that could be avoided if adolescents did not smoke cannabis.An international team of scientists looked at 11 studies published from the mid-1990s onwards, involving a total of more than 23,000 people, they report in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. They explored the use of cannabis for non-medicinal purposes in under-18s. Participants were then followed into adulthood to see who developed clinical depression, anxiety or suicidal behaviour. No single study looked at all three mental health issues. Continue reading...