Sky-gazers stood transfixed across North America on Monday as the sun vanished behind the moon in total eclipse for the first time in nearly a century Continue reading...

While millions across America looked skyward during the eclipse, others looked down to see the event projected onto the ground and other surfaces Continue reading...

Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has described Donald Trump’s actions during Monday’s eclipse – when he watched the sun without protective glasses, prompting a reminder from an aide – as ‘perhaps the most impressive thing any president’s ever done’. Sarcasm or genuine praise? You decide.

The internet has had fun with images of the US president looking up at the sky during the eclipse without glasses, in defiance of repeated health warningsThe internet has made hay with images of the US president looking up at the sky during the solar eclipse without glasses, despite repeated warnings that doing so can lead to permanent eye damage.Donald Trump was filmed on the balcony of the White House, standing with his wife Melania Trump and his son Barron. Before donning special eclipse glasses he squinted up at the sky and pointed. An aide was apparently heard off camera shouting “Don’t look!”. Continue reading...

We asked Guardian readers to submit photos of the total solar eclipse that streaked across American on Monday. As you can see, eclipse photography is tricky but we’re grateful for their efforts Continue reading...

Use this simple test to find out if viewing the eclipse through a kitchen colander has blinded you

A chartered Alaska Airlines flight offered eclipse enthusiasts a chance at a unique view of the phenomenon: ‘A dream come true’

Using lasers and polystyrene, researchers say they have mimicked the high temperatures and pressures thought to cause diamond rain within ice giantsDiamond rain might sound like the stuff of poetry, but deep within the ice giants of our solar system it is thought to be reality – and now scientists say they have recreated the phenomenon.

UK stargazers in the south-west, Wales and Shetland have the best chance of glimpsing a partial eclipse. Here’s a guide to getting a good view

Want to see the total eclipse but overwhelmed by advice? Here’s all you need to know, including maps of the route and how to watch safely

A total solar eclipse will streak across the continental US on 21 August. If you’re along its path, we’d love to see your pictures and videos

A total solar eclipse has always had the power to fascinate humans and affect the actions, purses, thoughts and knowledge of humans all over the world

US scientific advances are making the premise of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind more of a reality – goodbye bad and sad timesNew research shows that weakening the connections between specific groups of brain cells can prevent the recall of fear memories in mice. The study, published earlier this week in the journal Neuron, has led some – including the study authors themselves – to speculate that this will eventually lead to treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and, inevitably, to news stories mentioning the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which an estranged couple undergo a procedure to erase memories of each other from their brains.Related: Mind-control device lets people alter genes in mice through power of thought Continue reading...

As millions watch the total eclipse sweep across America on Monday, an army of ‘citizen scientists’ will provide a trove of information

Here’s just a small selection of the 100 images shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society’s International Images for Science competition. The competition is supported by Siemens as part of the Curiosity Project, which aims to engage young people with science and engineering. The five winners will be announced in an award ceremony in London on 12 September. Continue reading...

Turning the rejection of scientific expertise into a pathology mistakenly presents individual ignorance as the bottleneck in political disagreements

A study at the University of Sussex found that the most insect-friendly plants aren’t the ones recommended by garden centresThere’s lots of publicity urging gardeners to grow flowers that attract bees and butterflies, but are we being led up the garden path? Even though many garden flowers are advertised as bee-friendly, a recent study reveals that most of them are fairly useless at attracting insect pollinators.It’s easy to assume that a flower that is big and beautiful to our eyes will be just as attractive to bees, butterflies and other flower-visiting insects. Researchers at the University of Sussex studied dozens of garden varieties of flowers marketed as bee-friendly. After counting the numbers of insects visiting the flowers in garden centres, gardens and parks, the scientists came to the startling conclusion that most flowers had few visits from bees or any other pollinating insects. Even those flowers endorsed by the Royal Horticultural Society as bee-friendly were actually not very good at the job, and only a small number of the plants were really attractive to insects. Continue reading...

The path of the eclipse is 70 miles wide – meaning most of the US will see a partial eclipse. Mona Chalabi’s visualization will give you a sense of what you should prepare yourself forA total solar eclipse will take place on Monday, the first in 38 years. As the moon passes in front of the sun, a shadow will be cast across all of North America. But the way that will look depends on where you are in the country.The path of the total eclipse (when none of the sun is visible) is only 70 miles wide, so unless you’re an eclipse chaser and willing to travel, you’re more likely to see a partial eclipse. Continue reading...

What’s good, what’s bad and why – five food questions answered by consultant cardiologist Ali Khavandi and science writer Dara MohammadiWhether you’re a dolloper or a Jackson Pollocker, a plate of chips just isn’t the same without a good squirt of ketchup. But why does it make chips taste so much better? It’s the same reason Iberico ham is more moreish than the boiled stuff and why a sprinkle of parmesan makes a bowl of pasta that much fresher. The answer is the Japanese word for “savoury” or “deliciousness”, the fifth and most elusive of tastes: umami. Continue reading...

Quarks, basically. But more charming than usualLast month the LHCb experiment, at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), reported the discovery of a new particle. While this received a reasonable amount of attention, it didn’t really cause as much excitement as, say, last year’s unconfirmed hints of a new particle from the ATLAS and CMS experiments (also at the LHC), which turned out in the end to be just a statistical glitch.Those hints evaporated when more data came in, as such glitches do. The new particle at LHCb has passed a much higher statistical threshold, and seems to be here to stay. The animation here shows how the signal developed in the data over time as the LHCb experiment recorded and analysed more data. The peak indicating the presence of the new particle, call a Ξ (pronounced Ksi c c plus plus) is pretty convincing by eye, an impression confirmed by solid statistical analysis. So why isn’t there (even) more excitement about this particle? There are good reasons, and they are worth looking into. Continue reading...

With evidence mounting that many minor operations owe their success to the placebo effect, is it time to call a halt to some routine procedures?What’s the difference between a homeopath and a surgeon? It’s a question that sounds like a joke, and it won’t have many surgeons laughing. Homeopathy is the scientifically implausible idea that diluted substances can somehow treat disease: it has never been shown to work and any effect is, at very best, a placebo effect. It’s a world away from the glinting scalpels and cut-and-dried logic of surgery. See a problem, cut it out, sew it back up. Right?Well, it is until you start looking for evidence of effectiveness for some operations, and then you’re left thinking that the line between the two is not as clear as you first thought. Continue reading...

Crews, an academic, thinks psychoanalysis is an unscientific jumble of ideas, while psychoanalyst Orbach would prefer not to throw the baby out with the patriarchal bias

Personality traits aren’t the only things that define us, says Brian R Little: the projects we choose are also keyDid you know that it is virtually impossible to lick the outside of your own elbow? More significantly, how you respond to this piece of information – and how you attempt the pursuit – can offer a glimpse of the stable traits you are born with and that form the bedrock of your personality.According to personality psychologists, these traits can have major consequences for how our lives play out. The “Big Five” dimensions spell out an acronym – OCEAN (or CANOE if you prefer): openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Because the same dimensions emerge in virtually all countries, cultures and linguistic groups, they can be regarded as universal. Individuals are aligned with each trait on a spectrum, with most of them piled up in the middle and fewer appearing at the extremes. Continue reading...

A transformative visit to Catholic Florence inspired the Puritan poet to write his epic masterpiece, a BBC documentary revealsIt is an epic poem with a daunting reputation that has struck fear into the hearts of many a student of English literature. Recounting the fall of man, and Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Paradise Lost cemented the reputation of its author, the staunchly Protestant poet, John Milton, as one of England’s literary giants.The 10,000-line poem is regarded as one of the defining contributions to the English canon, a work to be mentioned in the same breath as those of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. But 350 years after its publication, some rather surprising influences on the Puritan imagination of its author have emerged, the result of a little-known journey the poet undertook to the heart of Catholic Italy. Continue reading...

The mysterious islands of the Salish Sea, between British Columbia and Washington State, are home to the ecological artist Jill Bliss, who since 2012 has devoted herself to exploring the isolated region, artistically and literally. The archipelago has its own unique ecosystem, and Bliss’s medleys of mushrooms and other arcane plants, which she calls her “living sculptures”, are gathered during a “daily treasure hunt”, hiking through woods and staying in isolated cabins. “This particular medley was made while lost deep in the woods of Cortes Island,” she says of one of her favourite works (see first image, below). “I first spotted the amanita [toadstool] glowing under the shadows of a downed tree.” Continue reading...

Health secretary reacts to physicist’s claim that the Conservatives are trying to implement US-style health insurance systemJeremy Hunt has accused Stephen Hawking of a “pernicious” lie after the physicist said it seemed the Tories were steering the UK towards a US-style health insurance system.

Kate Leahy used to work as cabin crew, until she was signed off sick. Then a young colleague died in 2014. She talks to the former staff looking for answersThree years ago, Matt Bass, 34, died suddenly in his sleep. According to his father, Charlie, he had been feeling unwell for a few months. He’d lost weight, had digestive and respiratory problems, and suffered from severe fatigue. Doctors thought he might have Crohn’s disease, but were struggling to reach a diagnosis.Matt was cabin crew for British Airways, and on the day he died had returned overnight from Accra, Ghana (by cabin crew standards, a relatively short, six-hour flight). He went for a scheduled MRI scan, hoping to get to the bottom of his ill health, then in the evening to a crew friend’s house in Slough for pizza. After a few hours, he said he needed a rest and went to lie down. When his friends couldn’t wake him, they administered CPR. An ambulance arrived and took him to A&E, where paramedics tried to revive him; but he never woke up. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Physicist criticises ministers over funding cuts, privatisation and pay caps before address revealing his reliance on health service

The crisis in the health service has been created by politicians who want to privatise it – when public opinion, and the evidence, point in the opposite directionLike many people, I have personal experience of the NHS. In my case, medical care, personal life and scientific life are all intertwined. I have received a large amount of high-quality NHS treatment and would not be here today if it were not for the service.The care I have received since being diagnosed with motor neurone disease as a student in 1962 has enabled me to live my life as I want, and to contribute to major advances in our understanding of the universe. In July I celebrated my 75th birthday with an international science conference in Cambridge. I still have a full-time job as director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology and, with two colleagues, am soon to publish another scientific paper on quantum black holes. Continue reading...

The biggest news this week is further evidence that the use of vaginal mesh needs to be looked at again: NHS figures suggest that traumatic complications mean one in 15 women fitted with the most common type of mesh support will require surgery to extract it. While we’re down there, a survey has revealed that pubic grooming has a surprisingly high injury rate. And if you need a steadying post-depilation whisky, two chemists say they have discovered why diluting your dram might make it taste better. It may be that whisky is not enough to banish your waxing woe. If that’s the case then good news: memories (specifically those of fear in this study) can be permanently erased, researchers have shown. Their work in mice reveals a new approach to wiping memories from the brain, demonstrating that specific memories can be weakened or strengthened. One thing you won’t want to forget, however, is the excitement of Chilesaurus, “the most bizarre dinosaur ever found”. Originally classified as a relative of T rex, analysis shows Chilesaurus belongs to a different dinosaurian group, with implications for the dinosaur family tree – basically, it’s the missing link in dinosaur evolution. Continue reading...

Theatre 503

Scientist and writer who, under his pen name, Daedalus, entertained readers with his ‘impossible’ inventionsDavid Jones, who has died aged 79, was a physical chemist and writer who, through his columns under the pseudonym Daedalus, entertained readers of New Scientist, Nature and the Guardian for more than 30 years. His ideas for inventions started from secure principles and wove a plausible tale through to the impossible – or so he thought. In fact, many turned out to be feasible. His version of 3D printing with lasers even landed him in a patent dispute in 1974.He described how to coat the moon in a reflective layer so that northerners would be released from their dark winters and “lovers would blink in its unromantic glare”. His remote-controlled painting machine would climb walls with the aid of slug slime and allow mountain bikes to go up vertical cliffs. He foresaw the problems of the information age and proposed a system of computerised billing that paid a fee every time personal information was passed on. Continue reading...

Excavation has brought up silver dollars, pewter jugs and a mystery chest from Rooswijk wreck in Goodwin SandsCovered with seaweed, bits of shell and pebbles concreted into lumps of corroded iron, the wooden seaman’s chest from the Dutch East India ship Rooswijk remains tantalisingly locked after almost 300 years. It will take months of conservation work before the archaeologists discover whether it holds some of the silver treasure the ship was carrying, or a long dead sailor’s old socks.A joint excavation by divers and scientists from Historic England and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands is unravelling the story of the last hours of the Rooswijk, which ran aground and sank in the Goodwin Sands off Kent in January 1740 with the loss of every life on board – almost 250 sailors, soldiers and passengers. Continue reading...

Although almost exclusively American, the 40-year-old Nasa Voyager spacecraft helped raise the ambitions of the UK’s planetary astronomersThe rasp of the filling cabinet’s shutter fills the office, and my guest comes face to face with his past. “My pharaoh’s tomb is open,” he quips, before uttering a more heartfelt, “My goodness me.”His name is Garry Hunt and we are standing in front of more than 80,000 postcard-sized photographs of the outer solar system. They were taken by a pair of Nasa spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, that launched 40 years ago this summer.

Hope alone won’t halt climate change but Al Gore’s latest film highlights the role optimism can play“Hope is essential – despair is just another form of denial,” Al Gore said last week, in an interview to promote the sequel to his 2006 climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. As well as the very bad news of Donald Trump’s science-denying presidency, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which opens in the UK today, brings good news: the plummeting cost of renewable electricity and the 2015 Paris climate agreement.In 2017, denial of the facts of climate change – and myriad linked dangers including air and ocean pollution, famine and a refugee crisis the likes of which we can hardly imagine – is in retreat, with the Trump administration the malignant exception. Virtually all governments know that climate change is happening, and polls show most people do too – with those living in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa particularly worried. The question is not whether global warming is happening, but what we are going to do about it. There are, and need to be, many answers to this. Gore believes the solutions to climate change are within reach, if people can only find the political will to enact them. Even if how to whip up sufficient zeal to make this happen remains a puzzle, his essential message is one of optimism. Continue reading...

Academic titles | Margarets as a dying breed | Big Ben | Girls’ and boys’ clothes | Dogs on escalatorsAlison Hackett (Letters, 17 August) complains at the use of “Dr” and “Prof” titles. But they can prove useful. Our mother Anne McLaren (a single parent, and a biologist who, working with mice, created the world’s first IVF birth, and became the first woman officer of the Royal Society in their 300-year history, as foreign secretary and vice-president), was asked, “Is it ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’?”. We three kids watched and wondered how she would respond. “No,” she said firmly, “It’s ‘Dr’.”

Healthy sperm have been created in mice with a common form of infertility, raising hope for future treatment for men with extra sex chromosomes

Research in mice reveals a new approach to wiping memories from the brain, demonstrating that specific memories can be weakened or strengthenedThe eternal sunshine of a spotless mind has come one step closer, say researchers working on methods to erase memories of fear.The latest study, carried out in mice, unpicks why certain sounds can stir alarming memories, and reveals a new approach to wiping such memories from the brain. Continue reading...

How best to enjoy whisky has long been debated, but two chemists say they have discovered why diluting your dram might make it taste betterNeat, on the rocks, or with a dash of mineral water. Whisky enthusiasts have long disagreed about how the amber nectar is best enjoyed, but now a scientific paper has backed the idea that diluting whisky can enhance its flavour.The work suggests that adding water boosts the concentration of flavour compounds at the surface of the drink, helping to unleash the rich mix of aromas. Continue reading...

Three victims, a country house and poison could be a case for Hercule Poirot. But this is a sad case of botanical ignorance rather than murder most foulA recent report appeared in the news about the sad demise of Mirabel, Adele and Jet of Walton Hall, Cheshire. The deaths were initially suspected of being due to deliberate poisoning when it became clear that there had been intruders in the grounds of the hall. The case seemed to have all the ingredients for an Agatha Christie novel: multiple deaths, poison, suspicious circumstances and even a big country house setting.Except in this case the unfortunate victims were not characters in a novel, or even people: they were African pygmy goats. Four other goats were affected by the poison but have since made a full recovery. And the source of the poison? Rhododendron leaves found in the goats’ enclosure. Continue reading...

Communal bison hunts were used by Native Americans for upwards of 11,000 years on the great plains to procure meat and other goods for the winterIt’s still morning, a slight chill in the air. You feel the rumbling of the earth before you even see the mass of bison pounding across the prairie toward the precipice, and toward you. As you stand beside the rock cairn, boughs of sage or juniper in your hands, and in the hands of your friends flanking you on either side, and across the way, you see the others draped in wolf skins, who lured the animals to this final moment. Your comrade starts the yelling just a moment before the bison reach you, and you join in, urging them towards the edge, reminding the beasts not to turn, before they thunder past, hurtling into the arroyo.Below there are more people, to finish off the bison who survived the fall, and to start separating the useful from the non-useful, and hauling it nearby where even more people are waiting to butcher the sections properly. Continue reading...

Weiser, Idaho, could see its population of 5,507 swell to 70,000 for the total solar eclipse. As the big day looms, will things go smoothly?The portable toilets began arriving in Weiser, Idaho, on Tuesday, the first of around 70 orange outhouses ordered by local agengies for the Great American Eclipse.They will serve a crowd that could reach 70,000 by the time this tiny town on the Oregon border is plunged into total darkness on Monday. Continue reading...

This herbivorous creature could be the missing link in the dinosaur family tree, changing everything we think we know about their evolutionChilesaurus doesn’t look like the kind of dinosaur that would kick up much of a fuss. The Jurassic saurian – named for the country, not the tasty peppers – was a small, bipedal herbivore that munched on plants over 150m years ago. It didn’t have nasty teeth, crazy horns, or the immense body size that typically launch the careers of Mesozoic celebrities. The creature’s secret is more subtle, and plays into a controversial reshuffling of the dinosaur family tree.Related: 'Most bizarre dinosaur ever found' is missing evolutionary link – study Continue reading...

Critics called it shocking and harmful, but BBC2’s gentle documentary shows us the major impact of unconscious sexism at schoolNo More Boys and Girls: Can Kids Go Gender Free? (BBC2) caused a minor controversy before it aired, labelled “shocking” and “bold” by some reports, and even “potentially very harmful” by Grassroots Conservatives’ reliably facile Mary Douglas. This is not surprising. Such is the frenzy and hysteria about trans lives right now – particularly from otherwise sensible and compassionate people who have a blind spot when it comes to empathising with transgender people – that “gender-free” invokes a ridiculous bogeyman image of, say, experimental Scandinavian neutrality where saying “boy” or “girl” is forbidden, or pre-puberty hormone-blockers being forced upon girls who are tomboys. It is transparently a disproportionate and irrational fear, yet it’s little wonder that a show that promises to discuss gender with a classroom full of seven-year-olds has stoked these paranoid flames.The title, though, is far more fiery than anything contained in the programme, which isn’t even vaguely about questioning gender identity. This two-part documentary, the brainchild of presenter and Médecins Sans Frontières doctor Javid Abdelmoneim, is actually a rather gentle social experiment that asks: what would happen to a classroom of seven-year-olds if they weren’t treated differently as boys and girls? This translates to such things as painting the pink and blue coat cupboards a universal orange and no longer segregating children according to gender, or introducing the kids to people who have jobs they might not expect, such asa female mechanic or a male dancer, or reading them stories in which the princess is also the hero of the story, and does not need rescuing by a prince. Potentially very harmful, indeed. Continue reading...

Do web porn clicks deliver data that ‘Freud and Foucault would have drooled over’, or are we not as weird as our online behaviour suggests?Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wanted to call his new book How Big Is My Penis?, but his publishers demurred. He settled for Everybody Lies. The book is subtitled What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are and it’s a polished display of some of the early fruits of “big data” science. Its principal defect, perhaps, is that it doesn’t say enough about how many of these fruits are rotten.Stephens-Davidowitz’s first source, when he set up as a data scientist, was Google Trends, which records the relative frequency of particular searches in different places at different times. He soon added Google Adwords, which registers the actual number of searches. Then he moved on to other vastnesses: Wikipedia, Facebook and then PornHub, one of the largest pornographic sites in the world. PornHub gave him its complete data set, duly anonymised: every single search and video view. He also “scraped” many other sites, including neo-Nazi sites such as Stormfront, which account for the internet’s resemblance to the box jellyfish, a highly poisonous predator with 60 anuses. Continue reading...

Australian researchers hail breakthrough after ‘life-changing’ tolerance persists for up to four yearsAustralian researchers have made a breakthrough in the treatment of peanut allergy in children.A small clinical trial conducted at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has led to two-thirds of children treated with an experimental immunotherapy treatment being cured of their allergy. Importantly, this desensitisation to peanuts persisted for up to four years after treatment. Continue reading...

Babies born before the 37th week of pregnancy are also less likely to have severe disabilities, although some risk of delayed development remainsPremature babies born in recent years are more likely to survive and less likely to have severe disabilities than those born in the mid-1990s, research has revealed.According to the World Health Organisation, around 15 million babies worldwide are born before the 37th week of pregnancy every year, with premature babies at higher risk of severe disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, as well as a greater chance of delayed development of language and motor skills. Continue reading...

The devices have benefited a large number of women – but thousands have suffered serious adverse effectsThe numbers tell their own tale. Thousands of women have undergone surgery to have vaginal mesh implants removed after suffering complications. Around one in 15 of those fitted with the most common type of mesh have required operations, according to NHS data obtained by the Guardian. In short, the problems are much more widespread than previously acknowledged. The removal rate was previously estimated at less than 1%.But numbers are not enough. Each case is a woman with a disturbing story; and listening is as important as tallying them. Carolyn Churchill had to give up work after she was left in agony, with persistent bleeding. Yet she said she was made to feel like a baby for complaining. Others describe being left unable to walk or have sex – and of being assured that the implant was not responsible. So even this data under-represents the problem. Women may not be referred for removal, or may decide against it given the risks. Continue reading...