Intergalactic plans by Elon Musk and others have little to do with looking up at the starsWhile no one would rank it among the greatest of Professor Stephen Hawking’s achievements, he plainly had a unique impact on Richard Branson, founder of, among other things, Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company.“I heard Stephen say in a radio interview,” Sir Richard wrote in a tribute, “that his ultimate ambition was to fly into space, but he thought no one would take him. I was on Necker Island and called him up straight away to offer him a seat. We have a strict no free tickets policy, but he was the exception that would prove the rule.” Continue reading...

Could prejudice explain why research into sperm counts fails to win funding?Are men ignoring their “biological clocks”? Or is it rather that they are not adequately served by science, which, in turn is being stymied by lack of funding?The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s 2014-16 report reveals, among other findings, that male infertility is the most common reason (37%) for British couples seeking IVF. Meanwhile, elsewhere, it’s revealed that male infertility is considered such an “unsexy” research area that it’s nigh-on impossible to get funding. While pooled 2017 research found that sperm counts in the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand had halved in 40 years, and one in 20 young men had a low sperm count, the science of male infertility remains stuck at the 1950s level of counting sperm on laboratory slides. Continue reading...

Even if we assess the value of treatment in monetary terms, the investment could be worth itMary Warnock is right that consent has to be assumed from the child if genetic modification can avert a serious and often distressing condition (“We need to use gene editing wisely but also embrace its vast potential,”Comment, last week). The test is of whether the procedure is “in the child’s best interest” and, if confined to serious diseases, as Warnock alludes to, then I believe that most appropriately informed parents will agree that it is.Cost is harder to assess. Not all serious conditions are immediately fatal or life-threatening and the initial expense of testing must be balanced against that of potentially many years of expensive medical care and, quite likely, social support and special educational needs. In addition, the cost of many tests becomes relatively cheaper as they become better established and more readily available. Continue reading...

This year’s despatch from Moriond. Inconclusive LHCb data are already stimulating some strange new ideas...In the middle of the Rencontres de Moriond particle physics conference in Italy, the scientific talks stopped to allow a standing ovation dedicated to the memory and achievements of my inspirational colleague Stephen Hawking, who we heard had died earlier that day.The talks quickly resumed, which I think Stephen would have approved of. The most striking thing about the scientific content of the conference this year was that a whole day was dedicated to the weirdness in bottom particles that Tevong You and I wrote about last November. As Marco Nardecchia reviewed in his talk (PDF), bottom particles produced in the LHCb detector in proton collisions are decaying too often in certain particular ways, compared to predictions from the Standard Model of particle physics. Their decay products are coming out with the wrong angles too often compared with predictions, too. Continue reading...

Breeders will soon be able to produce animals that are immune to disease, says UK’s top animal scientistFarming is poised for a gene editing revolution that could overcome some of the world’s most serious livestock diseases, the UK’s top animal scientist has said.Prof Eleanor Riley, director of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, said new techniques will soon allow breeders to genetically engineer disease resilience and, in some cases, immunity into pedigree animals, saving farmers millions of pounds a year. Continue reading...

Ian Sample talks to two fellow Guardian reporters and a professor of environmental toxicology about the Salisbury spy poisoningSubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom & Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter and email us at Scienceweekly@theguardian.comLast week, the city of Salisbury was thrust into the spotlight when two people were found in critical condition in a local park. Details began to emerge that the man, in his late sixties, was a former Russian spy. The woman found in a comatose state beside him, his daughter. Speculation mounted that they were poisoned, but by what? And by whom? Continue reading...

Andrea Morgale recalls the theoretical physicist’s dry humour. Peter Mussard reveals how he used his work to shock parentsRoger Penrose’s reference to the difficulty of organising events for Professor Stephen Hawking (Obituary, 15 March) evoked memories of when, as PR for Dillons Bookstore, my colleagues and I organised one of his first public lectures in London, at the Institute of Education, as part of the promotion for A Brief History of Time. After the (pre-recorded) lecture, accompanied by slides on an overhead projector, Prof Hawking agreed to take questions, which naturally entailed long pauses while he composed his replies one letter at a time. One particularly extended hiatus after a detailed question was followed by what we can now recognise as a typically witty Hawking response: “Could you repeat the question please?” I will remember the glint in his eye, demonstrating his satisfaction at wrong-footing us all. RIP Stephen Hawking, in whatever universe you now inhabit.

If we want to improve how research tackles the world’s health problems, we need to be honest about our current priorities. Ismael Ràfols and Jack Stilgoe report on new data showing the imbalance.

Police matched Eric McKenna’s DNA to the cold cases after he urinated in neighbour’s pot plantA rapist who attacked two women in the 1980s was caught more than 30 years later through DNA evidence because he urinated in a neighbour’s plant pot, Northumbria police have revealed.

Black clay deposit indicates the London suburb was once a woodland marsh by the seaIt was a time when Britain boasted a subtropical climate, dense forests and parts of the south and east of country were under a shallow warm sea. But in Ruislip, west London, you would have needed your wellingtons: 56m years ago, the area appears to have been a wooded marsh.Experts working on exploratory excavations for the high-speed railway HS2 say that samples taken from up to 33 metres below the surface in Ruislip contained a previously unknown material which suggests that in the late Paleocene epoch the region was a swampy area, in close proximity to the sea. Continue reading...

A new study claims that the Nikumaroro Island bones are those of the famous aviator. But some researchers remain skeptical

Readers pay tribute to the theoretical physicist who died this weekRoger Penrose’s splendid obituary of Prof Stephen Hawking (15 March) overlooked one very important aspect. He was a passionate campaigner for peace and protester against nuclear weapons. I only had the privilege to meet him once, at the Royal Society, where he launched in the UK the internationally renowned Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He would not have been pleased by the current hysteria of the cold war being resurrected in such a ghastly way.

Making up for years of delay and denial will not be easy, nor will it be cheap. Climate polluters must be held accountableFifty years ago, the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) delivered a report titled Sources, Abundance, and Fate of Gaseous Atmospheric Polluters to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for the fossil fuel industry.The report, unearthed by researchers at the Center for International Environmental Law, is one of the earliest attempts by the industry to grapple with the impacts of rising CO levels, which Stanford’s researchers warned if left unabated “could bring about climatic changes” like temperature increases, melting of ice caps and sea level rise. Continue reading...

In episode two of the second season of our A Neuroscientist Explains podcast, Daniel Glaser explores the evolutionary origins of social conformitySubscribe and review on Acast, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom & Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter and email us at scienceweekly@theguardian.com.Daniel Glaser explores the evolutionary origins of social behaviour in humans, as per his column Does Our Social Behaviour Hold Us Back?. We hear from the University of Oxford’s emeritus professor of evolutionary psychology, Robin Dunbar, about what our evolutionary past can tell us about our behaviours in the here and now, and how it all ties in to social conformity. Continue reading...

Like no other scientist, Hawking was romanticised by the public. His death allows us to see past the fairytalePoignantly, Stephen Hawking’s death at the age of 76 humanises him again. It’s not just that, as a public icon as recognisable as any A-list actor or rock star, he came to seem a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. It was also that his physical manifestation – the immobile body in customised wheelchair, the distinctive voice that pronounced with the oracular calm of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey – gave him the aura of a different kind of being, notoriously described by the anthropologist Hélène Mialet as “more machine than man”.He was, of course, not only mortal but precariously so. His survival for more than half a century after his diagnosis with motor neurone disease shortly after his 21st birthday seemed to give him only a few years to live is one of the most remarkable feats of determination and sheer medical marvels of our time. Equally astonishing was the life that Hawking wrought from that excruciatingly difficult circumstance. It was not so much a story of survival as a modern fairytale in which he, as the progress of his disease left him increasingly incapacitated, seemed only to grow in stature. He made seminal contributions to physics, wrote bestselling books, appeared in television shows, and commanded attention and awe at his every pronouncement. Continue reading...

Guardian readers share their tributes and memories of the physicist and author of A Brief History of Time

An 84-year-old man admitted to hospital in Northern Ireland was found to have a huge, air-filled cavity in his right frontal lobeAn elderly man who turned up in an emergency department in Northern Ireland after a series of falls has stunned doctors who found a huge air-filled cavity where part of his brain should have been.The 84-year-old was referred to A&E by his doctor after several months of feeling unsteady on his feet and experiencing falls, and three days of weakness in his left arm and leg. Continue reading...

Belinda Parmar was a passionate advocate of the digital revolution – but has started keeping her family’s smartphones and laptops locked away to protect her loved ones. Is she right to be so worried?In Belinda Parmar’s bedroom there is a wardrobe, and inside that wardrobe there is a safe. Inside that safe is not jewellery or cash or personal documents, but devices: mobile phones, a laptop, an iPod, chargers and remote controls. Seven years ago, Parmar was the high priestess of tech empowerment. Founder of the consultancy Lady Geek, she saw it as her mission both to make tech work better for girls and women and to get more girls and women working for tech. Now she wants to talk about the damage it can cause to our mental health, to family life and to children, including her son Jedd, 11, and daughter Rocca, 10.Parmar made her living and lived her life through these devices, so what happened to make her lock them up? Why did this tech evangelist lose her faith? Continue reading...

Researchers find levels of plastic fibres in popular bottled water brands could be twice as high as those found in tap waterThe World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a review into the potential risks of plastic in drinking water after a new analysis of some of the world’s most popular bottled water brands found that more than 90% contained tiny pieces of plastic. A previous study also found high levels of microplastics in tap water.In the new study, analysis of 259 bottles from 19 locations in nine countries across 11 different brands found an average of 325 plastic particles for every litre of water being sold. Continue reading...

Maggie Aderin-Pocock on how the late physicist got people across the world talking and thinking about complex scienceTo my mind, Stephen Hawking’s legacy is twofold: he was both a brilliant scientist who came up with some of the most revolutionary ideas of our time and a great communicator who managed to carry the world with him on a remarkable scientific journey. He got people across the world talking and thinking about complex science.Some of his early work was linked to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which takes space and time and squashes them together to make what we call a spacetime. If you look at the universe this way you see all sorts of strange phenomena, including black holes. Before Stephen’s work it was thought that nothing could escape a black hole, but his theoretical work led to the theory of Hawking radiation, which allows some radiation to leak from a black hole, enabling them to slowly decay and eventually evaporate. Continue reading...

Federal agency calls disgraced firm, which allegedly deceived investors of $700m, ‘an important lesson for Silicon Valley’

The death of a brilliant and complex scientist will mean we are all poorer because his mind will no longer roam the multiversesStephen Hawking was a brilliant, complex man and scientist. Diagnosed at 21 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he had been expected to live a few more years. Hawking lasted another 55. He made his name as a young Cambridge cosmologist with breakthroughs as awesome as anything religion offers: proving that big bang theory must hold true and elucidating the link between gravity and quantum mechanics. From his wheelchair, Hawking’s mind roamed the multiverses. It was his 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time, about advances in cosmology, that made him a pop icon. It kindled Hawking’s showmanship: when asked what his book was about, he replied “the mind of God”. Despite his brilliance, Hawking never won a Nobel prize, as they are not awarded for theory unsupported by observation. Humankind’s new-found ability to generate mini-black holes may mean he will be proved right. Hawking stood out in an age remarkable for secular triumphs. He was proof that more than beliefs were required to win arguments – defending feminism, the EU and the NHS and warning against demagogues in a familiar American-accented voice. Hawking was a way for the cosmos to know itself. His death will mean we know a little less about ourselves. Continue reading...

The late physicist was a genius and a visionary but it is hard to imagine those qualities thriving with cuts to disability support and the NHS under attack

Genetic determinism | Stephen Hawking | Mnemonics | Empty nestersBrian and Deborah Charlesworth, and Anthony Gordon (Letters, 12 March), correctly clarify that geneticists have for many years avoided the stronger claims of genetic determinism. But they are missing the point regarding the origins of “race science”. The issue is not whether DNA interacts with the environment in individuals, it is whether DNA is the sole transmitter of inheritance. There is abundant evidence that it is not. It is the relevant sense of determinism or non-determinism that is in question. The word “determinism” in isolation doesn’t mean very much.

Professors and students at college where he was a fellow praise his achievementsAt the University of Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College, where Stephen Hawking was a fellow for more than half a century, the college flag was flying at half-mast on Wednesday.It had been lowered in acknowledgement of the death of the internationally renowned scientist, who was also one of the college’s most beloved figures. “Stephen’s loss is a great one for the college,” said its master, Prof Sir Alan Fersht, who first met Hawking in 1965 as a student. “Caius is Stephen – they have been intertwined for over 50 years.”

Scientist was defender of health service and attacked Jeremy Hunt for privatisation plans

To mark the 75th birthday of the late Prof Stephen Hawking, Ian Sample talked to family, friends and colleagues about his incredible contribution to scienceSubscribe and review on iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud and Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter

Growing up disabled, I had few role models. But this brilliant, witty scientist helped shift the negative stereotypes many faceAs with most of the famous figures whose passing now hits us via a news alert on our phones, I never met Stephen Hawking. In the vastness of the entire universe, you could say I was one speck and he was another. And yet I thought of him as a continual presence in my life, who – perhaps paradoxically, in the light of his illness, not to mention of his work on time – would always be there, somehow.Related: Stephen Hawking: a scientist who never forgot the value of the NHS | Jonathan Freedland Continue reading...

The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time has died at his home in Cambridge. His children said: ‘We will miss him for ever’

We are far more than just stored memories. To come back as an artificial being bereft of family and friends seems meaninglessAre you longing for your brain and all its memories to be preserved for ever? That once fanciful idea seems creepily closer now that a complete pig’s brain has been successfully treated, frozen, rewarmed and found to have its neural connections still intact. This achievement, by the cryobiology research company 21st Century Medicine (21CM), has just won the final phase of the Brain Preservation Foundation’s prize – a prize that demanded all of a brain’s synaptic connections be preserved in a way that allowed for centuries-long storage of the entire information content of a whole large mammal’s brain.Related: Startup wants to upload your brain to the cloud, but has to kill you to do it Continue reading...

The physicist and author, who has died at home in Cambridge, made intuitive leaps that will keep scientists busy for decades

Hawking’s fascination with the cosmos never stopped him speaking out on an everyday issue of vital importanceIn one of his last articles for the Guardian, Stephen Hawking confessed that, thanks to the celebrity he had gained – not many theoretical physicists could boast cameo roles in Star Trek and the Simpsons – and “the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller”.And yet the last scholar who could be accused of living in an ivory tower, aloof from the problems of the world, was Stephen Hawking. Though he gazed at the stars, he never lost sight of the troubles of the Earth, including those of his own country. Continue reading...

PMs, astronauts, scientists and celebrities pay tribute to a ‘colossal mind and wonderful spirit’

The late physicist’s editor, Peter Guzzardi, recalls his first meetings with Hawking and how his book became a bestseller

A recent Observer article insisted millennials are embracing astrology. Like astrology itself, this claim is very questionableI once wrote a spoof horoscope column for a short-lived comedy publication under the pseudonym “Mystic Bob”. Spoofing horoscopes is a comedy staple, and my own take on it was that given how most horoscopes are largely just a jumble of vague generalisations and unspecific predictions, I figured it would be funny to do ones that were almost terrifyingly precise. The juxtaposition of painstakingly detailed claims in the horoscope section struck me as inherently amusing, So much so that I even repurposed the idea for this very blog some years later.Hilarious, right? But apparently my mockery was misplaced, what with the recent publication of an Observer article all about how millennials are flocking to astrology. That’ll show me and my snark. Continue reading...

The physicist and author of A Brief History of Time has died. Share your tributes hereStephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76.Related: Stephen Hawking, cosmology's brightest star, dies aged 76 Continue reading...

Theoretical physicist who made revolutionary contributions to our understanding of the nature of the universe

Other animals have us beat over short distances, but in an interspecies Olympic ultramarathon, Homo sapiens would likely take all the medalsRoger Bannister’s four-minute mile, while a remarkable human milestone, is noteworthy from a comparative physiology standpoint only for its mediocrity. A seminal paper by AV Hill on biomechanics illustrates the point with a table of maximum speeds across the animal kingdom – humans are outperformed by almost every animal on the list, including the wild donkey, the ostrich and the elephant. We just about beat the black rhinoceros, while the cheetah would complete the mile in about a minute.Related: An updated formula for marathon-running success Continue reading...

Stephen Hawking, the brightest star in the firmament of science, whose insights shaped modern cosmology and inspired global audiences in the millions, has died aged 76. Continue reading...

A new experience transports you back 67 million years to view time-travelling scientists studying dinosaurs in the wildWhere most efforts at “edutainment” fall down is on being overly bombastic, with too little actual science and far too much whizz-bang. But Dinosaurs in the Wild, a mixture of puppets, models and 3D films (all accompanied by live actors), merges the two brilliantly and is both fun for all ages and genuinely absorbing. It’s also impossible to come away without learning a great deal about the world of the dinosaurs and how they lived.The central conceit is simple but well presented – tourists are offered the chance to “travel back in time” to a working research lab in what are now the fossil-rich beds of Montana, but 67 million years ago was a location full of dinosaurs, including Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus and the colossal Alamosaurus among others. You get to move between various research stations and see dinosaurs being studied and lab work going on to learn about their biology and behaviour, and also see outside to dinosaurs in the wild. Continue reading...

The British physicist and author had a way with words. Here are a collection of some of his greatest quotations

The celebrated scientist frets about fame and his brain ‘going off with age’ in candid, soon to be auctioned correspondence with his sister, MajaA glimpse at the “private, hidden face” of Albert Einstein, including the celebrated scientist’s thoughts on everything from his fears that his best work was behind him to his equivocal feelings about his fame, has been revealed in a cache of letters he wrote to his beloved younger sister, Maja.The collection, which includes a previously unknown photograph of Einstein as a five-year-old and the only surviving letter written by Einstein to his father, comes from the archive of Maja Winteler-Einstein and her husband Paul Winteler. A mix of letters, postcards and photographs, many of which have not previously been published, the documents range in date from 1897 to 1951. Continue reading...

The scientist’s fame led to appearances on sitcoms, films about his life and music being written about him

The world-renowned British physicist has died aged 76. Here are images from his extraordinary life and times Continue reading...

Burketown, Queensland, named as origin of dominant Pama-Nyungan family of languagesMost Indigenous languages in Australia likely originated from a remote spot in far north Queensland as recently as 4,000 years ago, before slowly spreading across the country, a new study has claimed.The paper, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, mapped the origins of the Pama-Nyungan family of languages, which encompasses about 90% of the continent. It traced the dominant family of languages back to an area near an isolated place known today as Burketown. Continue reading...

Users of new iQOS ‘heat not burn’ devices speed up their ‘puff rate’ to inhale more nicotine, researchers findThe new “heat not burn” smokeless cigarette devices are not as harmless as their manufacturer claims, according to a new study.iQOS – which stands for “I quit ordinary smoking” – is made by Philip Morris International, best known as the manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes. PMI, the biggest tobacco company in the world, says its future is “smoke-free”, and it is investing in heated tobacco products, such as iQOS, and e-cigarettes, both of which it says are safer options. Continue reading...

The winged Late Jurassic creature would take to the air in frenetic, flapping bounds, fossil x-rays showArchaeopteryx, one of life on Earth’s first stabs at building a bird, evaded predators and cleared obstacles on the ground by bursting into flight like a startled pheasant, a new analysis suggests.High-resolution x-ray images of the creature’s skeleton reveal tell-tale similarities with the bones of birds that cannot glide or soar but instead take to the air in frenetic, flapping bounds, scientists say. Continue reading...

My mother-in-law, Dr Isabel Gal, who has died aged 92, was working at Queen Mary’s hospital for children in Carshalton, Surrey, in the 1960s when her research suggested that a hormone-based pregnancy test drug called Primodos caused birth defects similar to those seen with thalidomide.Her findings were published in the journal Nature in 1967. In 1975 the Committee on Safety of Medicines issued a warning which was printed on the packaging, but the drug remained in use in the UK until 1978 – and Isabel believed that she was subsequently frozen out of the medical profession. Continue reading...

The principles that define a good life protect me from despair, despite this diagnosis and the grisly operation I now faceIt came, as these things often do, like a gunshot on a quiet street: shocking and disorienting. In early December, my urine turned brown. The following day I felt feverish and found it hard to pee. I soon realised I had a urinary tract infection. It was unpleasant, but seemed to be no big deal. Now I know that it might have saved my life.The doctor told me this infection was unusual in a man of my age, and hinted at an underlying condition. So I had a blood test, which revealed that my prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels were off the scale. An MRI scan and a mortifying biopsy confirmed my suspicions. Prostate cancer: all the smart young men have it this season. Continue reading...