Jupiter and Venus still dominate the early morning sky as Mercury becomes more challenging to findThroughout this week, the cold mornings will provide a beautiful sight to warm the heart about an hour before sunrise. In the days immediately surrounding Christmas, the three bright planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter all line up in the south-eastern sky. Looking south-east around 07:00am, Venus and Jupiter will be unmistakable bright beacons that will instantly capture the attention. Mercury is more of a challenge. It will have risen about 15 minutes earlier and so a very clear south-eastern horizon will be needed to see it. Those with such a view, will see the planet appear in the brightening twilight sky. On Christmas Day, sunrise is at 08:05 GMT from London; 08:24 GMT from Manchester; 08:59 from Inverness. The chart shows the view later in the week, looking south at 07:00 GMT on 30 December. On this day, Mercury will have disappeared from view but the waning moon will be near the bright star Spica, and heading towards the planetary alignment. Watch the moon over the succeeding days to see it become a crescent as it heads towards the sun, reaching new moon on 6 January. Continue reading...

Military officer’s stable preserved under ash from eruption of Mount VesuviusArchaeologists have unearthed the petrified remains of a harnessed horse and saddle in the stable of an ancient villa in a Pompeii suburb.The Pompeii archaeological park’s head, Massimo Osanna, told the Italian news agency Ansa that the villa belonged to a high-ranking military officer, perhaps a general, in ancient Roman times. Continue reading...

Rocket science | Crosswords | Gravy on the border | Egypt, Bucks | Hollywood, BirminghamTerence Hall is incorrect regarding the lack of success of Blue Streak (Letters, 20 December). It was the grandfather of Black Arrow which launched the British satellite, Prospero, in 1971. We are the only country in the world to put a satellite into orbit and cancel the programme when a politician stated there was no market for small satellites.

The rocket launch marked the space transportation company’s first national security space mission for the USA SpaceX rocket carrying a military navigation satellite blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Sunday, marking the space transportation company’s first national security space mission for the US.The Falcon 9 rocket carrying a roughly $500m GPS satellite built by Lockheed Martin lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 8.51am local time. Four scheduled launches in the last week, including one on Saturday, were canceled due to weather and technical issues. Continue reading...

Our guest scientists pick the breakthroughs and discoveries that defined their year, from insights into human evolution to our first trip aboard an asteroidTake a deep breath. Dive into the emerald water. It’s 13 minutes and 70 metres down to lunch. Are you dead yet? Not if you are one of the Bajau “sea nomads” of south-east Asia, who have been free-diving like this for more than 1,000 years, relying on their remarkable physiology, and, as we learned in April, their genes. Humans left Africa 50 millennia ago, encountering new environments that required adaptation to survive. Adaptation is mostly cultural – building shelters, using fire, deciding what to eat, and transmitting instructions from generation to generation. But alongside this are advantageous genetic mutations grasped by natural selection. Continue reading...

Yuletide ghost stories have shaped my life – as well as my understanding of what happens next…Scrooge was famously haunted by three spectral visitors at Christmas time, but the tradition of telling ghost stories at midwinter goes back much further than Dickens. People have been gathering around the fire to tell stories at Yule, the pagan festival to mark the winter solstice, for centuries. As the year comes to a close, it’s natural to think about loved ones no longer with us – and what better time for ghosts to draw near than deepest, darkest winter?Thinking about the dead and remembering the past go hand in hand, especially at Christmas. Perhaps it’s no surprise the most wonderful time of the year promises scary ghost stories. Reminiscing, it seems, is as compulsory as turkey and tinsel – whether that’s talking about old times with family, re-watching comedy classics, or remembering our childhood days. When I look back at my childhood, few memories are more vivid than the time I saw a ghost. I appreciate that what I’m about to say sounds like fiction, but whether or not it was real or imagined, the experience undeniably shaped my life and the person I am today. Continue reading...

When Bill Anders took this photograph from the Apollo spacecraft on Christmas Eve in 1968, our relationship with the world changed foreverThis photograph is now half a century old. It was taken by the astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas Eve 1968 as the Apollo 8 spacecraft rounded the dark side of the moon for a fourth time. When Earth came up over the horizon, Anders scrabbled for his Hasselblad camera and started clicking.In that pre-digital age, five days passed. The astronauts returned to Earth; the film was retrieved and developed. In its new year edition, Life magazine printed the photo on a double-page spread alongside a poem by US poet laureate James Dickey: “And behold / The blue planet steeped in its dream / Of reality, its calculated vision shaking with the only love.” Continue reading...

Picture taken by the Apollo 8 mission at the height of the space race gave a new perspective on Earth’s place in the universe

From the response to Windrush to scientific wonders – at times like this we need to remind ourselves what we are capable ofLord knows, there are reasons to be cheerless this Christmas. If you’re British, you have your pick of sources of misery. You could be anxious that we are less than 100 days away from a car-crash, no-deal Brexit that will see us short of medicine and food, the public advised to “vary their diet” to cope with diminished supplies, our ports jammed and the army on standby. Or you might despair at the poverty that sees children going to school hungry in one of the world’s richest countries, as a homeless man dies on the very doorstep of parliament.Related: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier Continue reading...

Forget haikus, epigrams, proverbs, maxims, adages and riddles. If you’re needing a sliver of wisdom, try an aphorism. There are certainly plenty around …“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Trapped layer of cold air keeps water frozen in 50-mile-wide impact craterThe stunning Korolev crater in the northern lowlands of Mars is filled with ice all year round owing to a trapped layer of cold Martian air that keeps the water frozen.The 50-mile-wide crater contains 530 cubic miles of water ice, as much as Great Bear Lake in northern Canada, and in the centre of the crater the ice is more than a mile thick. Continue reading...

Around the world, species hunters unearth 128 vascular plants and 44 species of fungi, many already facing extinctionA spectacular orchid sold from a barrow in a Laos market, a flower which may contain cancer-fighting chemicals, and a tall tree found beside an African highway, are among more than 100 plants that were newly discovered by science in 2018. But experts warn it is a “race against time” to discover many new species before they become extinct.Species hunters scouring the globe for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and its partners, this year found about 128 vascular plants and 44 species of fungi. Continue reading...

Prof Dame Jane Francis knows Antarctica better than most: she’s spent the majority of her career researching this icy landscape. Ian Sample talks to her about what it’s like to camp in Antarctica and what her findings can tell us about our future on this planetProf Jane Francis was made a dame in 2017 for services to diplomacy and polar science. As you might expect, Francis has spent much of her career in Antarctica. What you might not expect is that she did so in the hope of finding fossilised plants. Millions of years ago, Antarctica was covered in luscious forests and had very little snow. Francis’s work has shed light on some of the reasons for this Antarctic paradox.Ian Sample invited Francis, the director of British Antarctic Survey, on to the podcast to talk about what it’s like to camp in Antarctica and how her findings there should make us all think about our future on this planet. Continue reading...

Scientists warn policymakers not to ignore links, and stress that ‘every action counts’Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another.The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises. Continue reading...

A bucolic community was reduced to ash by a new kind of wildfire – the deadliest in California’s history. Survivors recall that horrible day

SpaceX first halted the launch of Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday because of the same technical warning with its sensorElon Musk’s SpaceX has cancelled the long-delayed launch of a navigation satellite for the US military, failing to complete its first designated national security mission for the United States because of technical issue with its rocket.SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a roughly $500m global positioning system (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin Corp, was slated to take off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral shortly after 9am local time (14.00GMT) on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Devil’s ivy with synthetic animal gene inserted helped reduce benzene and chloroform levelsA humble houseplant with a dash of rabbit DNA could help lower our exposure to indoor air pollution, research suggests.Scientists have revealed that by inserting a rabbit gene into devil’s ivy (Epipremnum aureum) the plant is able to clean the surrounding air by breaking down chemicals such as benzene and chloroform, which in certain concentrations can harm health. Continue reading...

Therapeutic Goods Administration takes on Peptides Clinics Australia for alleged advertising breachesFor the first time in almost a decade Australia’s drugs regulator has begun court action against a supplements seller, after the online company claimed its products could help people build muscle while also treating anxiety, depression, heart damage, joint diseases, bone diseases and other ailments.The Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA) alleges Peptide Clinics Australia advertised prescription-only therapeutic goods including peptides on its website and other social media platforms. The online seller did not have TGA approval to state its products could treat diseases. Continue reading...

Amphibian’s behaviour compared to US president’s approach to global warmingA newly discovered blind and burrowing amphibian is to be officially named Dermophis donaldtrumpi, in recognition of the US president’s climate change denial.The name was chosen by the boss of EnviroBuild, a sustainable building materials company, who paid $25,000 (£19,800) at an auction for the right. The small legless creature was found in Panama and EnviroBuild’s Aidan Bell said its ability to bury its head in the ground matched Donald Trump’s approach to global warming. Continue reading...

Australian astronaut Andy Thomas says space tourism bid is ‘really just a high-altitude aeroplane flight’Sir Richard Branson’s bid to take passengers into orbit is dead-end and dangerous technology, Australian astronaut Andy Thomas says.Branson’s Virgin Galactic organisation was celebrating last week after successfully launching a rocket plane into space for the first time. Continue reading...

Provisionally named 2018 VG18, it is 120 times further away from the sun than Earth is

Salley Vickers is another enthusiast for the ideas of child psychologist Donald Winnicott (and so is her granddaughter)I, too, am a great fan of Donald Winnicott (Bear necessities, G2, 12 December; Letters, 17 December), whose greatest contribution was celebrating play as the source of creativity, and my sons, especially the younger (now a children’s writer), had a lively relationship with their toys.This has filtered down to my grandchildren – with the result that each year when my eldest grandchild (14 this week) and I take our annual caravan holiday, I bring with me the 56 toys who lodge in my tiny London flat. They each have a very distinct personality and soothe, amuse, quarrel, act up, boast, swan about and put on excellent plays each year, which I feel sure has led to their mistress becoming rather a good actor in her own right and a promising playwright.

Researchers say tired people are likely to view unhealthy snacks more favourablyHaving even one night without sleep leads people to view junk food more favourably, research suggests.Scientists attribute the effect to the way food rewards are processed by the brain. Previous studies have found that a lack of shuteye is linked to expanding waistlines, with some suggesting disrupted sleep might affect hormone levels, resulting in changes in how hungry or full people feel. Continue reading...

Results of research into 2012 mass deaths offer insights into reef health and throw up further questionsConservationists want major bays and estuaries along the Great Barrier Reef tested for contaminants after a five-year study found “alarming” levels of some chemicals in unhealthy turtles on the reef.Scientists working on the research have also recommended expanded monitoring of turtle-population health on the Great Barrier Reef “as an indicator of the health of the reef itself”. Continue reading...

The solutions to today’s quiz and puzzleEarlier today I set you a quiz about Twitter slang, and a maths puzzle. Here are the answers, with discussion and workings!The following ten words and phrases emerged in Twitter communities, and are beginning to cross over to general users. Under each word or phrase are two possible definitions. Which is the correct one? Continue reading...

Are you sitting comfortably? Many people are not – and they insist that the way we’ve been going to the toilet is all wrong• Read the text version here Continue reading...

Test your knowledge of Tweet-speak, plus a social media maths puzzleUPDATE: to read the answers and solution click here.This week, two puzzles about social media. The first is something new for this column, a language quiz, and below it is the usual fare, a mathematical conundrum.In the 1990s, I used to write a weekly column in the Guardian about language. Were I to write the column today, one of my first subjects would be Twitter slang. Tweet-speak is a form of constrained writing: necessarily brief, and with a distinctive holler. Continue reading...

Research suggests body’s response to infection may be responsible for onset of CFSAn overactive immune response appears to be a trigger for persistent fatigue, say researchers in a study that could shed light on the causes of chronic fatigue syndrome.Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating long-term condition in which individuals experience exhaustion that is not helped by rest, as well as pain, mental fogginess and trouble with memory and sleep. It is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Continue reading...

The smallest planet can be seen before sunrise this week together with the largest and the brightestThe elusive inner planet Mercury is making an appearance in the morning sky, just before sunrise this week. Two days ago it reached its greatest separation to the west of the sun, a configuration known as greatest western elongation, and hence it rises before the sun. To see it you will need a good eastern horizon. Start looking about an hour before sunrise. On 18 December the sun will rise at 08:02 GMT from London, 08:21 GMT from Manchester and 08:55 GMT from Inverness. The chart shows the view at 07:15 GMT on 18 December from London. That particular morning, Mercury will be joined in the sky by Jupiter. The largest of all the solar system’s planets, Jupiter has just emerged from conjunction, when its orbit carries it behind the sun from Earth’s perspective. Also in the morning sky this week, but much higher in altitude, will be the dazzling “morning star” of Venus. It will be a radiant beacon of white light, outshining everything in the sky except the sun and the moon. Venus will rise at around 4am and stay be visible until the sun peeps above the horizon. Continue reading...

Physician, scientist and medical researcher who focused on thalassaemia, a group of inherited blood conditionsThe physician, scientist and teacher David Weatherall, who has died aged 85, discovered most of what we know about thalassaemia, a group of inherited blood conditions that affect 1-2% of the world’s population.Thanks to genetic techniques developed by Weatherall, the incidence has been reduced in many countries. Continue reading...

Navigation skills tested through headsets may identify patients far earlierScientists have found an unexpected use for virtual reality headsets: to help pinpoint people who may later develop Alzheimer’s disease.The devices, widely used by computer gamers, display images that can be used to test the navigational skills of people thought to be at risk of dementia. Those who do worse in the tests will be the ones most likely to succumb to Alzheimer’s later in life, scientists now believe. Continue reading...

It’s now become a public ritual for a successful woman to out herself for having self-doubtsAt around the same, distant time that I was meant to be studying comparative – animal – psychology, a couple of US psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, came up with something never yet observed in a herring gull, but frequently – they concluded – afflicting successful women: the Impostor Phenomenon.It designated, they wrote, “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness, which appears to be particularly prevalent and intense among a select sample of high-achieving women”. Continue reading...

8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018

On 1 January 2019 the New Horizons probe will begin transmitting data from Ultima Thule, 4bn miles from Earth in the Kuiper belt. What will it find?Four billion miles from Earth, a swarm of little worlds circles the dark edge of our solar system. The sun is so remote from this place that it appears no brighter than a star. This is the Kuiper belt, a doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects that is one of the most mysterious – and one of the most scientifically intriguing – regions of space around our sun.The belt is made up of rubble left over from the formation of the sun’s planets billions of years ago, fragments that are a fossil record of the solar system’s birth. For decades, researchers have dreamed of getting a close-up look at one but have been thwarted by the utter remoteness of the Kuiper belt. Continue reading...

Tim Lott dances, roars and talks intimately at a masculinity workshop which ends in tears, praise and profound insightsDespite spending 62 years as a man, I have never quite worked out what the possession of my defining Y chromosome implies. I doubt, in truth, that much of the damn thing survives anyway. I was brought up in a generation when nearly all the parenting was done by mothers and I have now helped to bring up four daughters as well as having been through the crucible of two marriages. In short, I have lived most of my life in the penumbra of women.Lately, in the tremors of #MeToo, #TimesUp, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and the emergence of “incels” (involuntary celibates) and Mgtow (men going their own way), I find myself puzzling over the question: what is masculinity anyway? To try to answer the question, I signed up for a weekend intensive course run by the media platform and transformational workshop company Rebel Wisdom, titled The New Masculinity, at a retreat in a converted barn in Buckinghamshire. Continue reading...

Struggles remain on enacting 2015 Paris accord despite more clarity on emissionsThe UN met on Saturday in Poland to discuss a draft agreement on climate change, which sources said was likely to pass, as exhausted delegates made compromises on some key issues but left other contentious problems to be resolved next year.The result will not be the breakthrough campaigners and some countries were hoping for, but will keep discussions alive on formulating key aspects of the implementation rules for the 2015 Paris accord. Continue reading...

Solving the RSS’s fiendishly tricky festive quiz will require general knowledge, logic and lateral thinkingFor the last quarter-century, the Royal Statistical Society has published a fiendishly difficult Christmas quiz to entertain puzzle fans over the festive break – and this year’s special 25th anniversary edition, devised by Dr Tim Paulden, is sure to get the cogs spinning after a glass or two of mulled wine. Cracking the 15 problems below will require a potent mix of general knowledge, logic, and lateral thinking – but, as usual, no specialist mathematical knowledge is needed.Two helpful tips for budding solvers: Continue reading...

Slow progress on 2015 Paris agreement comes as scientists warn of need to get on trackNegotiators at the climate conference in Poland have inched closer to an outcome, as the official deadline for finishing a deal ran out.The conference was meant to approve a rulebook which would govern how nations put into action the goals set in the landmark Paris agreement of 2015, when the world resolved to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspiration to limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5C. Continue reading...

At the COP24 conference, leaders lack the urgency felt by communities on the frontlines of a global threatAs wildfires burn, as temperatures rise, as the last remaining old-growth forests in Poland are logged, world leaders are in Katowice to negotiate the implementation of the Paris climate agreement. To outsiders, UN climate talks may seem like a positive step. Unfortunately, this is COP24.For 24 years, world leaders have annually talked at each other instead of to one another in hopes of reaching an agreement on how to mitigate the climate crisis. In all that time, they have barely scratched the surface of an issue that the world’s top climate scientists say we now have 12 years to stop – and that is an optimistic estimate. Continue reading...

Nasa's Juno craft has captured the chaotic weather systems on Jupiter as well as taken new measurements that will help to build a map of the planet's interior. The $1.1bn probe entered into an orbit pattern in July 2016 on a mission to peer through the clouds that shroud Jupiter and learn how the planet, and ultimately all the planets in our solar system were formed around the nascent sun 4.5bn years ago Continue reading...

The unhealthy narcissist’s secret fear is that if he’s not God, he’s nothing. The healthy narcissist knows the middle wayIn what undoubtedly qualifies as one of the sickest burns in modern politics, Denmark’s finance minister, Kristian Jensen, observed last year, “There are two kinds of European nations: there are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realised they are small nations.” Jensen’s not-so-veiled swipe at Britain was more accurate than he knew. In a recent study, people from 35 nations were asked “What contribution do you think the country you are living in has made to world history?”: 0% meant none, 100% meant they were responsible for all of it. The average British answer was 55% – a level of self-importance exceeded only by Russia, at 61%. The Swiss came bottom at 11%; the Americans, despite a reputation for national egomania, at a relatively modest 30%. Of course, there’s no way to measure a country’s true “percentage of history-making”, as Jesse Singal put it on the Research Digest blog. But we can be sure that people wildly overestimate their own: added up, the averages from each country came to 1156%.Look around and you might conclude we could do with much less “national narcissism”, as the study labels it, and less of the individual variety, too. But the fact that it’s so universal (let’s face it, even that Swiss percentage is surely far too high) suggests a caveat. While too much narcissism is unhealthy, for nations and individuals alike, a certain degree of inflated self-regard may be natural, even necessary. Wouldn’t it be psychologically crushing to go through life with an absolutely objective understanding of how little you and your country matter today, let alone in the context of history? National narcissism may be a bit like the (admittedly controversial) idea of “depressive realism”, which suggests that depressed people have a more accurate sense of their ability to influence events than the non-depressed. With a genuine idea of your own importance, it might be hard to get out of bed in the morning. Continue reading...

University grows 60 plants on coco peat and rock wool, avoiding soil-borne diseaseA Dutch university has grown the Netherlands’ first crop of bananas as part of a research programme that could help protect the fruit from a deadly fungus that threatens production worldwide.Wageningen University grew 60 banana plants in its greenhouses on coco peat and rock wool, avoiding the threat of a soil-borne fungal disease that could destroy hundreds of thousands of hectares of banana plants around the world, local media reported. The crop will be offered to local hospitals and restaurants. Continue reading...

Trial seeks further proof that tuning into our internal organs’ activity can reduce anxiety

Nascent industry aims to reduce environmental impact of beef productionThe first steak grown from cells in the lab and not requiring the slaughter of a cow has been produced in Israel.The meat is not the finished article: the prototype costs $50 for a small strip, and the taste needs perfecting, according to its makers. But it is the first meat grown outside an animal that has a muscle-like texture similar to conventional meat. Continue reading...

Author of LSE research says findings show scope for ‘changing attitude later in life’Being the father of a school-aged daughter makes men less sexist, according to a new study.The team behind the work say the findings support the idea that men become more aware of the challenges facing women when they see the female experience of life up close through their offspring – something dubbed the “mighty girl” effect. Continue reading...

Nicola Davis asks what’s behind one of humanity’s most powerful and possibly evolutionarily important emotionsWhen it comes to emotions, words such as joy, anger and disgust immediately spring to mind. But in recent years, psychologists have been turning their attention to a lesser-studied emotion: awe. Whether it’s a breathtaking landscape or a glorious sunset, this research is painting awe, and the effects it has on us, as potentially one of the most important in our emotional repertoire. But what might be going on psychologically? How might these effects have helped our ancestors? And could we all do with more awe?To help answer all this and more, Nicola Davis talks to University of California, Berkeley’s Professor Dacher Keltner, who, in 2003, co-authored one of the field’s most important theoretical papers. And to see how this theory is backed up by the experimental evidence, we hear from the University of Houston’s Dr Melanie Rudd, whose work has found links between time perception, wellbeing and awe. Continue reading...

Chang’e-4 is second spacecraft in Chinese mission to land on far side of the moonChina’s lunar lander Chang’e-4 has successfully entered orbit around the moon.After a voyage of 240,000 miles (385,000km) that lasted 110 hours, the spacecraft fired its retrorockets on 12 December while just 80 miles above the lunar surface. This placed it in a stable elliptical orbit, where it will stay until the landing attempt, which is expected next month. Continue reading...

Key sticking point at UN negotiations is how countries should account for their greenhouse gas emissionsChina called on rich countries to “pay their debts” on climate change at global talks on Thursday, criticising developed countries for not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide finance to help poor countries do the same.The trenchant intervention by Xie Zhenhua, the minister who leads the Chinese delegation and a veteran of the UN climate negotiations, came as China faced increasing pressure to shift its stance on some of the key rules required to implement the 2015 Paris agreement. Continue reading...

Doctors should decontaminate tools more thoroughly as a precaution, say researchersSurgical instruments used in brain operations should be treated to ensure they are not contaminated with proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease, according to scientists who found evidence that they may be spread by certain medical procedures.The researchers urged doctors to decontaminate neurosurgical tools more thoroughly as a precautionary measure to reduce the potential risk of spreading abnormal proteins known to build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Continue reading...

Spacecraft launched on Thursday in test mission became first commercial US flight beyond the atmosphere since 2011A Virgin Galactic rocket plane blasted to the edge of space on Thursday, capping off years of difficult testing to become the first US commercial human flight to reach space since America’s shuttle program ended in 2011.The test flight foreshadows a civilian space race that could kick off as soon as next year, with the British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling other billionaire-backed ventures to be the first to offer suborbital flights to tourists who pony up the hefty fares. Continue reading...