Indian startup Team Indus is one of just 16 remaining teams racing to the moon for a $20m prizeSometime in late 2017, a tiny vehicle will blast into space from India on a 10-day journey to the moon.As it finally lands on the lunar surface some 238,900 miles later, its fate will rest entirely on four small aluminium parts in its shock absorbers. They need to work in a vacuum, with lubrication that doesn’t freeze or jam no matter what the angle. And if they fail, there’s no one to go up and fix it – meaning that eight years of work and $20m (£13.2m) in prize money will be lost in space. Continue reading...

Study suggests high levels of skunk use may affect the brain’s white matter, making communication between the right and left hemispheres less efficientHigh-strength cannabis may damage nerve fibres that handle the flow of messages across the two halves of the brain, scientists claim. Brain scans of people who regularly smoked strong skunk-like cannabis revealed subtle differences in the white matter that connects the left and right hemispheres and carries signals from one side of the brain to the other.

Private space company Blue Origin released a glitzy video this week showing its New Shepard rocket blasting off from West Texas, deploying a test capsule, then dropping to a precision landing back on Earth.It is an important milestone for the company. Traditionally, rockets have been treated as expendable – used once, then left to fall into the ocean. Reusable rocket technology is one way to drastically reduce the cost of launches. Continue reading...

American astronauts dig into candied yams, rehydratable corn and potatoes au gratin for Thanksgiving dinner on the International Space Station (ISS). Kjell Lindgren takes a tentative bite of the freeze-dried turkey while Scott Kelly decides to try the yams instead - all in zero gravity

Look sharp! Get on it! Don’t stop! This week it’s time to name songs that, whether in title or lyrics, employ the imperative form. Now get started … please!

With Black Friday, Christmas shopping and the winter sales all approaching, what is it that makes some of us susceptible to irrational purchases?With Black Friday, Christmas shopping and the winter sales all approaching, consumers around the world will once again overindulge in systematic unplanned purchases that provide little more than a short-term emotional fix. At times, this can cause long-term problems, such as regret, debt and spiritual emptiness.It is indeed the season for impulsive buying, one of the few areas in which marketers and businesses appear to be up to speed with the science of psychology, not least because of their desire to leverage it at the expense of consumers’ rationality. From sales assistants who compliment you on your looks, to those who pour you a glass of champagne, and machine-learning algorithms that nudge you into buying things you don’t need – but still want – a big chunk of marketing budgets are devoted to stimulating reckless and mindless spending. Continue reading...

Some made up words, like probble and dolsimp, are more amusing than others. Funniest of all are the likes of clunt, focky and dongl. Why?

What is the correct number of children to have in order to avoid judgment or scrutiny from strangers? Is such a thing even possible?Children. Brilliant, aren’t they? Everyone says so. I’ve got two children myself, and I love them more than anything and would do anything for them.I don’t expect anyone else to feel the same, though. Not anyone outside of my immediate family anyway. They’re MY children; why would I expect complete strangers to give a damn about how I and my wife reproduce? Continue reading...

Male infant called Nangua, Mandarin for pumpkin, is fourth langur to be born at the zoo, the only one in the region to breed the endangered speciesSydney’s Taronga zoo has announced the birth of a bright orange François’ langur, one of the world’s rarest monkeys.The male infant, named Nangua – the Mandarin word for pumpkin – was discovered in his mother Meili’s arms by keepers on 7 November. Continue reading...

Eight key scientific bodies warn Republican congressman Lamar Smith that his committee’s investigation into Noaa could have a ‘chilling effect’ on scienceLeading scientists have accused a Republican-led committee of subjecting climate researchers to politically motivated “harassment” amid an increasingly fractious investigation into the activity of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).Eight key scientific bodies have written to Republican congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House committee on science, to warn that the committee’s inquiry into Noaa could have a “chilling effect on the willingness of government scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions”. Continue reading...

My friend and colleague, Brian Hackman, who has died aged 81, was a geologist and amateur linguist who twice narrowly escaped death on his extensive travels. As a geologist he worked for governments around the world – and as a linguist he spoke German, Russian, French, Spanish and Welsh, as well as Kiswahili, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia.He graduated in geology from the Royal School of Mines in London, and joined the Royal Engineers for his national service in Germany and Egypt, where he saw action during the Suez crisis in 1956. Continue reading...

George Osborne has unveiled the results of the government’s spending review; here we analyse the key points in 25 main areas Continue reading...

Readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific conceptsScientists have apparently discovered that atomic particles have “twins” with which they can interact instantaneously over any distance, in any part of the universe. But how can they identify the partner of any particular particle?Harry Cole, Winchester Continue reading...

Behaviour could be one cause of the unusual drownings of the birds in large groups in England and WalesStarlings have been consistently drowning in large groups in a phenomenon yet to be fully explained by scientists, according to new research led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).In 12 separate incidents recorded between 1993 and 2013 in England and Wales, starlings were found drowned in groups of two to 80. In 10 cases, at least 10 starlings were found drowned at a time, the research published in the journal Scientific Reports on Wednesday shows. Continue reading...

This is precisely what a company in China is offering. So, if you had the cash, would you duplicate your dog, copy your cat and double your bunny?The biggest cloning factory in the world is due to open in China next year. It’s purpose will primarily be to produce a million calves a year, to stem the shortage of beef in the country, where farmers struggle to meet demand.On top of that, the company, BoyaLife, says it will provide clones of family pets. There is already an industry in cloning pets, but the procedure is expensive, and some argue that the result will not be a success, since much of an animal’s behaviour is down to the way it is treated. Continue reading...

A pair of stranded satellites will perform a test of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity that they were not designed to do. The results will be more precise than previous testsIt’s a total fluke. No one was thinking about making the most precise test yet of general relativity when the Soyuz rocket lifted off from French Guiana on 22 August 2014. The European Space Agency was launching Galileo 5 and 6, a pair of navigation satellites to break Europe’s reliance on the American GPS system.At first everything appeared to be going well. The rocket cleared the launch pad and sped away from the surrounding rain forest on its way to space. But trouble was brewing inside the rocket’s upper stage, the final motor that would put the satellites into their operational orbit. Continue reading...

UN weather body says man-made global warming and El Niño oceanic phenomenon made 2011-2015 the warmest five-year period on recordClimate change made 2011-2015 the warmest five-year period on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) state of the global climate report.

One hundred years ago, as time is measured on Earth, Einstein published his theory of General Relativity. A short video and some links to mark the occasion

Film based on the life of pioneering US astronaut has been orbiting in Hollywood since at least 2003, when Clint Eastwood was attached to directRyan Gosling could be in line to star as the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, in a new biopic from Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle, reports Deadline.Related: Hey, Ryan Gosling, you've given girls guidance, now let us return the favour Continue reading...

The scientist and leading atheist faces a barrage of criticism after posting comments on Twitter about Muslim teenagerRichard Dawkins has sparked a wave of criticism after appearing to draw a tenuous link between Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas Muslim teenager whose homemade clock was mistaken for a bomb, and a child forced by Islamic State militants to behead his victim.

Rare remains of juvenile carnivorous dinosaur estimated to be up to 155 million years old could sell for £500,000A rare almost-complete skeleton of a young dinosaur is expected to fetch up to £500,000 at auction.The remains of the Allosaurus, one of the largest dinosaurs of the late Jurassic period, are believed to be the most complete juvenile of the species discovered so far. Continue reading...

Artwork painted to amuse crew during the 1832 expedition that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is to be sold at Sotheby’s in London next monthA cartoon of Charles Darwin and the crew of the HMS Beagle – believed to be the only image of the great naturalist on the voyage that inspired his theory of evolution – is to be sold at auction in December.

Economic growth is tearing the planet apart, and new research suggests that it can’t be reconciled with sustainabilityWe can have it all: that is the promise of our age. We can own every gadget we are capable of imagining – and quite a few that we are not. We can live like monarchs without compromising the Earth’s capacity to sustain us. The promise that makes all this possible is that as economies develop, they become more efficient in their use of resources. In other words, they decouple.There are two kinds of decoupling: relative and absolute. Relative decoupling means using less stuff with every unit of economic growth; absolute decoupling means a total reduction in the use of resources, even though the economy continues to grow. Almost all economists believe that decoupling – relative or absolute – is an inexorable feature of economic growth. Continue reading...

With the publication of the spending review on Wednesday (Report, 24 November), it’s imperative the government invests in psychological therapies. Failure to address mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, devastates lives, puts a huge strain on the government budget and undermines economic productivity. Psychological health problems have a worse impact on people’s happiness and life satisfaction than physical health problems. In financial terms, the cost of mental ill health in England has been estimated to be £105bn per year.Fortunately, a number of evidence-based psychological therapies exist and are effective. Investment in psychological therapies to date has been a success, but it is a success that could be multiplied. The improving access to psychological therapies programme is only funded to reach “at least 15%” of the people who need it, and retention and recovery rates could be improved. Everyone with a need for psychological therapy should be able to access it within 28 days. We urge more research funding to show which therapies work best for which people. And we advocate training to ensure the NHS workforce can deliver in practice the full range of evidence-based therapies that it offers in theory. We believe this would go a long way towards improving the wellbeing of the nation and the state of the public finances.

Privy council to rule on claim by Norman Murray Pringle that he is rightful heir to baronetcy of Stichill due to an affair in early 20th centuryAn accountant from High Wycombe could become the next baronet of Stichill if the UK’s most senior judges rule in his favour in a legitimacy test case pioneering the use of DNA to prove aristocratic entitlement.The seven judges of the judicial committee of the privy council will consider on Wednesday whether an affair in a previous generation has tainted the bloodline in an attempt to resolve the family discord. Continue reading...

Leading behavioural scientist in the field of cancer preventionJane Wardle, who has died aged 64 from cancer, was an outstanding behavioural scientist in the field of cancer prevention. Alongside the clinical gifts of empathy, listening and insight into human motives, she had a rigorous, quantitative approach to research. She made major contributions to screening, early diagnosis and survivorship – maximising the chances of good longterm outcomes – in the process taking behavioural prevention from a somewhat marginal position to the very heart of Cancer Research UK’s activities. Her contribution went far beyond her studies – she trained a generation of behavioural scientists and helped to transform the field in a way that will have an enduring impact.Jane saw that effective cancer prevention needs both a science of what drives behaviour (for example, the control of food intake) and then well-designed interventions to use that understanding to help change behaviour to reduce cancer risk. She made important contributions at both levels. Continue reading...

The Sun’s recent controversial front page is just the latest in a long line of worrying claims and reports based on stats, surveys and polls that turn out to be less reliable than you’d hopeYesterday saw an angry backlash against The Sun’s front page which stated that one in five Brit Muslims are sympathetic to Jihadis. A very worrying finding; there are about three million Muslims in the UK, and 600,000 of them support violent terrorists? A terrifying thought, in the wake of the recent Paris attacks.Luckily, many people have taken The Sun to task and shown how the data they base this claim on actually says nothing of the sort. But The Sun shouldn’t really be singled out for this behaviour: it happens all the time. Last week saw the Daily Mail front page saying 60% of Britons think we should bomb Syria, while Jeremy Hunt was criticised by statisticians for his misleading claims about weekend hospital visits. Given the power and influence these people or publications wield, these dodgy statistics are genuinely dangerous. Continue reading...

Tianjin facility aims to produce thousands of cow embryos as well as racehorses and sniffer dogsThe scientist behind plans to build the world’s largest animal cloning factory in China has hailed the venture as an “extremely important” contribution that could help save critically endangered species from extinction.Xu Xiaochun, the chief executive of BoyaLife, the company behind the 200m yuan (£20.6m) project, said it would begin operations in the first half of 2016 in Tianjin, a city about 160km (100 miles) from Beijing. Continue reading...

The ultra-thin ‘uterine’ vellum of medieval books has puzzled scientists for years. Is it really made of foetal tissue? Scientists have found the truth at last Continue reading...

Scientists aim to tackle malaria by creating insects unable to spread the parasite, but caution urged over unpredictable ecological consequencesHundreds of genetically modified mosquitoes that are incapable of spreading the malaria parasite to humans have been created in a laboratory as part of a radical approach to combating the disease.The move marks a major step towards the development of a powerful and controversial technology called a “gene drive” that aims to tackle the disease by forcing anti-malarial genes into swarms of wild mosquitoes.

Museum to celebrate scientific side of Renaissance painter – with drawings and models of his pioneering ideas for flying machines and building equipment

Here’s the solution to the self-enumerating crossword puzzle.Earlier today I asked you to fill in the grid below with entries of the form[NUMBER][SPACE][LETTER](S) Continue reading...

Mars will become the fifth ringed planet as the largest of its two moons disintegrate - in 20 to 70 million years, according to new dataMars is on course to become the fifth ringed planet in the solar system according to astronomers, who claim that its mini moon, Phobos, will one day disintegrate into a hoop of dust and rubble.The small ball of rock is spiralling inexorably down towards Mars; when the tidal forces become too strong to withstand, Phobos will be ripped apart to leave a huge ring of material, much like that seen around Saturn, researchers say.

A new university initiative encourages creative approaches to solving some of today’s hardest problemsThere are increasing calls for cross-disciplinary research as a way to address society’s greatest challenges. This week’s Government spending review is likely to point towards more joined-up funding for research in the UK. Last week’s review of Research Council funding spoke about the benefits of interdisciplinary research. Realising those benefits will require more experiments in collaborating inside and outside universities.The Wellcome Trust recently announced £75m for transdisciplinary research on public health and the environment. Last month, Sir Mark Walport, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, wrote of the “invaluable insights” that anthropologists and other social scientists provided in tackling the Ebola crisis: Continue reading...

A blind cave arachnid has been named after a Lord of the Rings character soon after the naming of a golden-bottomed fly – these creatures deserve better from us homo sapiensBlame Carl Linnaeaus. The father of modern taxonomy started it all when – possibly mind-numbingly bored by the prospect of assigning Latin binomials (double-barrelled genus/species names) to every living species – he decided to have some fun with the blue whale. The larky Swede dubbed it Balaenoptera musculus – big-winged mouse. Hilarious, eh? Ever since, the conformities of scientific naming have produced in-jokes, excruciating puns and dodgy cultural references. Hence the latest, a new species of blind cave arachnid or harvestman from south-eastern Brazil has sent scientists to their much thumbed copies of the Lord of the Rings. Pale and rather elegant, Iandumoema smeagol refers to Smeagol, the hobbit who became the troglodytic, sibilant-voiced Gollum.Related: When it comes to conservation, common names count | George C McGavin Continue reading...

Archaeological study dismisses abbey’s links to King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea, saying many stories were created to raise funds after a fire

William Ruckelshaus, who this week will receive the presidential medal of freedom, says candidates are harming US’s reputation ahead of Paris climate talksThe man considered the father figure of environmental protection in the US has attacked Republicans for “going through all the stages of denial” over climate change, accusing leading presidential contenders Donald Trump and Marco Rubio of ignoring science for political gain.

Here’s a self-referential puzzle for our self-obsessed age.Hello guzzlers.First I’d like to introduce my friend Lee Sallows, who is a master at writing sentences that count the number of letters they contain. Like this classic: Continue reading...

Report suggests World Health Organisation should lose its role in declaring disease outbreaks to be international emergencyThe World Health Organisation should be stripped of its role in declaring disease outbreaks to be an international emergency following the catastrophic failure to warn the world of the dangers of Ebola in west Africa last year, according to an independent panel of experts.The recommendation is made in a report, published in the Lancet medical journal, by 20 experts convened by the Harvard Global Health Institute and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who analysed the response to the Ebola epidemic. Continue reading...

Take this simple Observer quiz to find out your overall intelligence levelAlthough a full IQ test takes an hour or more and costs hundreds of pounds, performance on this one simple test is highly predictive of your overall intelligence.Look at the four cards above. We know for a fact that each card has a letter on one side and a number on the other. Truthful Terry says: ‘Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other.’ What is the fewest number of cards you need to turn over to find out whether Truthful Terry is actually telling the truth? And which ones? The answer is shown at the bottom of the page. Continue reading...

A century and a half ago, James Clerk Maxwell submitted a long paper to the Royal Society containing his famous equations. Inspired by Michael Faraday’s experiments and insights, the equations unified electricity, magnetism and optics. Their far-reaching consequences for our civilisation, and our universe, are still being explored

Evolution provides the answer – or, rather, a whole lot of intriguing answersThe stunning display of autumn is almost over – a few tattered yellow and russet leaves still cling to almost bare branches. I’ve loved these last few weeks, getting out into the woods to soak my retinae in the reds, oranges and yellows against lingering green. With all that wealth of colour at my feet as well, it’s impossible not to come home with leaves stuffed in pockets. Some of them will be laminated and turned into bookmarks or mobiles. Musing on variation within a leaf, I found one miniature escutcheon emblazoned with a broad V-shaped stripe of yellow and orange, on a green background. I thought I’d never seen anything like it before, but having found one I started to find more and more.Most likely, then, I’ve seen these patterned leaves many times before, without seeing them. Continue reading...