Some people may be dreaming of a white Christmas when they wake up on Dec. 25, but for many parts of the world, climate change could soon make this a rare event. And snowfall is not the only part of the holiday that could be affected by extreme weather patterns, as everything from Christmas tree affordability to the prevalence of reindeer could be impacted.

How is holiday weather changing?

Climate change is “causing temperatures to rise across the country, and it’s impacting precipitation patterns,” said Time. In the last 75 years, temperatures in December have “warmed three to five degrees” nationwide, David Robinson, a New Jersey climatologist and Rutgers University professor, said to Time.

This small change in the global temperature “could mean the difference between snow and rain” on Christmas Day, said Time. And such a pattern has already been seen for years. From 2003 to 2024, the “average Christmas morning snow cover blanketed just 36% of the contiguous U.S. states,” according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data cited by Time, though this also factors in areas of the country like southern California, where it rarely snows.

A person’s memory of Christmastime may also play into the phenomenon, whether this frosty recollection is accurate or not. People “tend to remember that one snowy Christmas, and they forget that it was surrounded by five Christmases that weren’t,” Robinson said to Time. This could be contributing to some of the skewed memories of past Christmases.

What else is impacted?

While the drive to the store for Christmas gifts may not be covered in snow, once shoppers arrive, they may be even more disappointed. Many of the “most lucrative Christmas commodities are grown” in areas that are being transformed by climate change, said Mother Jones. In African countries over the past few years, plummeting cacao yields altered the production of cocoa, which goes into “all sorts of holiday classics — from yule log cakes to marshmallow-topped cocoa.” This “points to a new normal in a climate-driven shift,” said Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.

People’s Christmas trees may look different in future years too, as “modern-day circumstances are slowly transforming the tree-farming industry,” said CBC News. Beyond the weather shifting growing conditions for trees, the “high cost of land is also having an impact on the industry,” Kelsey Leonard, the founder and director of the Christmas Tree Lab at Canada’s University of Waterloo, said to CBC News. People may think plastic trees are the solution, but their environmental repercussions are troublesome. Many “artificial trees are some type of plastic by-product, which is a product of fossil fuel consumption,” said Leonard.

Not even classic Christmas characters like Rudolph will be able to avoid the changing climate; global warming could cause a 50% decline in the global reindeer population by the end of the 21st century, according to a study in the journal Science. Population decline could be particularly bad in North America, where “projected losses are expected to exceed 80%.” This may be catastrophic for the only species of deer “adapted to year-round occupancy of the Arctic.”

For more than half a century, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, has been a premier hub for climate and planetary science. That stands to change, however, as the Trump administration announced plans this week to begin “breaking up” the facility for being “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” said Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought on X. News of the center’s dismantling, however, has prompted fierce pushback from advocates who warn that closing the facility would mark a catastrophic milestone for the field of climate science.

‘Symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge’

The NCAR has been vital for critical research on “long-term atmospheric changes, global warming, air pollution, wildfires, extreme weather and geomagnetic storms,” said NBC News. Scientists there have also played “pivotal roles” in “improving weather forecasts, air quality predictions and models of wildfire behavior, flooding and drought risk.” By targeting “one of the world’s leading climate research labs,” said USA Today, the White House plans to “identify and eliminate what it calls ‘green new scam research activities.’” What the White House deems the center’s “vital functions,” including advanced weather modeling, “will be moved to another entity or location.”

The center has played a “key role in developing the science of climate modeling and the measurement of climate observations” for decades, said Michael Mann, the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, to Politico. Closing the NCAR “very much undermines” the nation’s standing in climate sciences and is “symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge.”

The NCAR is “quite literally our global mothership,” said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe on X. Losing the center would be akin to “taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”

Dismantling and dispersing the NCAR would “set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for and respond to” extreme weather, said Antonio Busalacchi, the president of the NCAR’s parent group, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, in a statement following Vought’s announcement.

Possible political punishment

The closure of the center dovetails with the White House’s ongoing effort to dismantle the nation’s scientific institutions at large. Still, scientists have “expressed suspicions that climate research is not the only reason NCAR has been targeted,” said CNN. Instead, some observers speculate that the closure stems from the White House’s “anger over Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ (D) refusal to release” prominent 2020 election denier Tina Peters from prison. Last week, Trump announced he’d pardoned Peters for her role in working to subvert the 2020 elections, although it’s “unclear whether Trump has that authority, because she was not convicted in federal court,” said The Washington Post.

Asked whether Trump’s frustration with Polis was a factor in the NCAR closure, the White House “did not deny the connection,” said CNN. “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump,” a White House official said to the network, “his constituents would be better served.”

The world’s supply of glacial ice is quickly approaching an alarming milestone, as the planet continues heating to disruptive new heights. In a striking study published this week in Nature Climate Change, researchers modeling multiple warming scenarios predict the number of glaciers that disappear annually is set to dramatically increase in the coming decades.

The paper introduces the concept of “peak glacier extinction,” defined by researchers as the “year in which the largest number of glaciers is projected to disappear between now and the end of the century.” Peak glacier extinction is the point when anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 glaciers will disappear annually. With the Alps leading our planet’s glacial disappearing act, the next few years may be a turning point for much of Earth’s ice.

‘We will lose a lot of glaciers’

Although typical glacier studies focus on “mass and area loss,” the newly published research focuses on disappearances of “individual glaciers” — a trend that “directly threatens culturally, spiritually and touristically significant landscapes,” the study’s authors said. The number of individual glaciers is a “less clearly defined metric” that can be “influenced by observational limitations,” but tracking individual disappearances is “important from touristic, cultural and spiritual perspectives.”

The study’s authors used data on 200,000 glaciers obtained from a “database of outlines derived from satellite images” and applied “three global glacier models” to test the ranges under “different heating scenarios,” The Guardian said. Areas featuring the “smallest and fastest-melting glaciers” are “most vulnerable,” unsurprisingly, with about 3,200 glaciers in central Europe set to shrink by 87% by the coming century “even if global temperature rise is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

Regions with “larger glaciers,” such as Greenland and around the South Pole, would likely experience peak glacier disappearance “later in the century,” ABC News said. “The biggest findings,” the lead researcher and ETH Zurich glaciologist Lander Van Tricht said to the network, “are that we will lose a lot of glaciers.”

‘Point of no return’ for global glaciers

Whether or not we will be “witnessing the deaths of 2,000 or 4,000 glaciers” annually depends on “how much is done to rein in global heating,” CNN said. A mere 20% of global glaciers are expected to exist in 2100 “under 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, compared to around 50% at 1.5 degrees.” At 4 degrees the world can expect a “nearly complete loss.”

The study shows we are at a “point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California at Irvine, to CNN. “Reforming a glacier would take decades if not centuries.” The researchers behind the study hope their paper, along with an accompanying database showing the “projected survival rate of each of the world’s 211,000 glaciers,” will help “assess climate impacts on local economies and ecosystems,” Politico said. Even for smaller, remote glaciers that may not affect water-levels or resources, a disappearance could “have a huge importance for tourism, for example,” Van Tricht said to Politico. “Every individual glacier can matter.”

A man has been declared HIV-free, in a case that “upends our understanding of what’s required” for a cure, according to The New Scientist. He was the seventh patient found to be clear of the virus after receiving a stem cell transplant – and, significantly, the second of the seven to receive stem cells that were not actually HIV-resistant. If HIV-resistant cells aren’t necessary to destroy the virus, then scientists have greater options in their search for an effective but less risky cure.

And yet, just as medics make such leaps forward in HIV/Aids treatment, access to both preventive care and medicine for infected patients “remains far from universal”, said The Guardian. Foreign aid cuts have shaken “to its core” the “complex eco-system that sustains HIV services in dozens of low to middle-income countries”.

How close are we to a cure?

The signs are increasingly positive. In addition to the stem-cell study, research released this week highlights another of “the paths scientists are pursuing towards finding an HIV cure”, said The Washington Post. The study, published in Nature, “shows a glimmer of hope” for controlling HIV without the current daily regimen of pills. A small group of patients were given a “experimental immunotherapies” and then taken off their pills; the majority were able to keep the virus “at a low level for months” afterwards.

The standard daily antiretroviral therapy has had a “transformative” effect on managing HIV since its nadir of the 1980s. It works by preventing the virus from multiplying in the body. For many people with HIV, their “viral load” becomes so low as to be undetectable, hugely lowering the risk of them transmitting the virus to somebody else. But, although antiretrovirals can keep the disease in check, it is not a cure.

How have aid cuts impacted HIV/Aids treatment?

Multiple nations are cutting foreign aid funding, on which many lower-income countries depend to deliver health services. For 2025, “external health aid” is expected to have dropped by 30% to 40%, compared with 2023, said the World Health Organisation. “The impact of a sudden acceleration of cuts” to international HIV funding has had a “devastating” impact in the fight against the disease, said a UNAids report published, to mark World Aids Day, on 1 December.

The drop in access to PrEP, a medication that reduces the risk of getting HIV when taken by people at high risk of exposure to the virus, has been “substantial”, said the report: 2.5 million people who used PrEP in 2024 lost access to it in 2025. The number of people treated with PrEP has fallen by 64% in Burundi, 31% in Uganda and 21% in Vietnam. Such failure to meet 2030 global HIV targets could see an additional 3.3 million new HIV infections between 2025 and 2030.

The massive cuts to global health spending made by the US, in particular, has “disrupted HIV/Aids care in many parts of the world”, said NPR. Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term and took an “America First approach”, his administration has slashed international aid programmes. This year was the first year that the US did not formally commemorate World Aids Day.

‘America is losing scientists. Here’s one solution for that.’

Chris R. Glass at The Washington Post

America’s “scientific dominance was never inevitable,” but “policymakers grasped a crucial insight: they were investing in people, not just research,” says Chriss R. Glass. Our “advantage persists. But bureaucratic ossification now threatens it, as our global rivals pick off the best and brightest that we have trained but can’t retain — unless we change our visa system.” America’s “policy assumes that top researchers will endure any visa lottery or processing delay to stay in the U.S. That assumption is obsolete.”

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‘Pharmacy deserts make staying healthy harder’

The Boston Globe editorial board

Pharmacy closures “reflect changes in purchasing patterns, as more people turn toward mail-order prescriptions,” says The Boston Globe editorial board. But having a “physical pharmacy nearby provides health care access that mail order can’t always duplicate.” One “way to prevent closures is through payment reform to ensure that insurers compensate pharmacists — regardless of whether they are independent or part of a chain — a fair amount for dispensing drugs.” But “payment reform can’t be the only solution.”

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‘Europe needs a plan for decoupling from America’

Martin Sandbu at the Financial Times

Europeans are “facing the choice between being in control of their own affairs, and their long-standing partnership with the U.S.,” says Martin Sandbu. President Donald Trump has “tried to bounce Ukraine into conceding to Russian demands for the sake of a superficial and unjust peace,” while the “Europeans have scrambled to change the U.S. president’s mind on something they rightly see as existential. How many more lessons do they need to conclude that the transatlantic relationship is over?”

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‘The only sensible answer to Netanyahu’s pardon request: a resounding “no”’

Haaretz editorial board

The “pardon request that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted to President Isaac Herzog stands out for its chutzpah,” says the Haaretz editorial board. Netanyahu “isn't willing to admit anything, and he doesn't accept responsibility for anything.” Even “while he is asking the president to pardon him, he continues to imply that the cases against him were fabricated and to depict the law enforcement system as criminal.” Netanyahu “seeks to exploit the institution of the pardon to abolish justice.”

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The biological world is always expanding as research is constantly being done. Because of this, many findings often fall under the radar despite having the potential to change the world. Here are some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in biology from the past year.

Slowing Huntington’s disease

Scientists have found a way to slow the progress of Huntington’s disease, a deadly neurodegenerative disorder, by 75%. The disease is largely hereditary and causes a gradual decline in mental and physical functions. Until now, there have been very minimal treatment options.

The new gene therapy treatment, called AMT-130, is “delivered deep into the brain during an eight- to 10-hour surgery,” said Scientific American. A “safe virus” that has been genetically altered to contain a specific DNA sequence is “infused,” where it “acts like a microscopic postman” by “delivering the new piece of DNA inside brain cells,” said the BBC. The treatment “turns the neurons into a factory for making the therapy to avert their own death.” AMT-130 is still in clinical trials and not yet widely available. “We’ve had so many failures, and there’s been a lot of heartbreak over many years in this community,” neurologist Victor Sung said to Scientific American. “So to have something that at least really appears to be having [an] impact is really significant.”

Understanding cell mechanisms

Researchers may be able to see what proteins are doing inside cells more accurately, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The new method uses “natural proteins produced by a cell as tiny sensors to report on their environment and interactions,” said an article by Cornell University. It does so “without traditional invasive techniques that could interfere with a cell’s normal biology and skew research results.” The scientists were able to track flavoproteins, which are in many organisms and contain magnetic properties that can be detected using a technique called electron spin resonance spectroscopy.

Being able to understand the cell’s internal functions is “mainly useful for understanding new biological mechanisms, such as those that could be involved in disease states like cancer or during infection,” Brian Crane, a professor in Cornell’s Department of Chemistry and the author of the study, said in the article. “One could conceivably track the assembly of a virus using this method to understand how and where its components are built within cells.”

Kangaroo IVF

Scientists, in a hopping success, were able to produce the world’s first kangaroo embryo using IVF. This could be a significant step toward protecting endangered species in Australia. The researchers “assessed how kangaroo eggs and sperm developed in a laboratory, before injecting a single sperm directly into a mature egg, using a technique known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” said CNN.

While the eastern grey kangaroo is not endangered, other marsupial species are. “Our ultimate goal is to support the preservation of endangered marsupial species like koalas, Tasmanian devils, northern hairy-nosed wombats and Leadbeater’s possums,” Andres Gambini, who led the research, said to CNN. Australia has a higher extinction rate than any other continent on Earth in recent history, largely because many species are endemic to the region.

Oldest microbial DNA

Researchers “sequenced the DNA of various mammoths — including 440 that had never been sequenced or published before,” as well as “identified DNA from 310 different microbes living on or in the animals’ tissues,” said Smithsonian Magazine. The findings were published in the journal Cell.

While much of the bacteria appeared after the mammoths’ deaths, the scientists also “identified six ‘host-associated’ microbial groups that likely colonized the mammoths when they were still alive” over one million years ago. Host microbes may have “shaped how these Ice Age herbivores digested food, resisted infections and coped with shifting climates,” said Earth.com. “The same methods could be applied to other frozen or well-preserved remains, from ancient horses to extinct cave bears.”

Virtual scientists

Future research could be done in a virtual lab, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Researchers trained AI large language models (LLM) to “mimic top-tier scientists in the same way that they think critically about a problem, research certain questions, pose different solutions based on a given area of expertise and bounce ideas off one another to develop a hypothesis worth testing,” said Stanford Medicine. This essentially led to the creation of a virtual lab, which “consists of an LLM principal investigator agent guiding a team of LLM scientist agents through a series of research meetings, with a human researcher providing high-level feedback,” said the study.

The researchers then had the “lab” devise a new vaccine basis for Covid-19. It created a method using nanobodies that was potentially viable. These types of labs could allow for research to be done quickly, especially when done in collaboration with humans. “Good science happens when we have deep, interdisciplinary collaborations where people from different backgrounds work together, and often that’s one of the main bottlenecks and challenging parts of research,” said James Zou, an associate professor of biomedical data science and lead author of the study.

What happened

Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn. Unlike the orbital rocket’s inaugural launch in January, its booster successfully touched down on Blue Origin’s landing barge, a feat previously accomplished only by Elon Musk’s rival aerospace company SpaceX.

Who said what

New Glenn’s flight “was a complete success,” The Associated Press said, and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos appeared “ecstatic” as the booster landed upright. That was a “major step forward” in the company’s “bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets,” said Scientific American. Reusing boosters cuts costs and allows for more frequent launches.

Blue Origin, founded in 2000, “has long been seen as sluggish and disappointing when compared with SpaceX,” The New York Times said. But with a few more successes, that perception “could totally flip pretty quickly,” University of Central Florida space commercialization expert Greg Autry told the newspaper. SpaceX has never sent anything to Mars, and if Blue Origin can “land something on the moon successfully in the first half of next year, then they can even claim to be ahead of SpaceX in some ways.”

What next?

The Escapade mission’s satellites, named Blue and Gold, are scheduled to start orbiting Mars in 2027 to “study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and take other readings” that “could help researchers understand why the planet lost its atmosphere and inform future crewed missions,” The Wall Street Journal said. Blue Origin’s ambitious launch schedule for next year includes sending a prototype lunar lander to the moon.

The expansion of the universe may be slowing down rather than accelerating, according to a new study that challenges the Nobel Prize-winning theory of dark energy.

“If confirmed, this would have profound implications for the fate of the universe,” said The Guardian. The study raises the possibility that “rather than expanding for ever, the universe could ultimately enter a reverse Big Bang scenario known as the Big Crunch”.

What is happening?

Dark energy is already “mysterious and baffling” and the new findings from a team at Yonsei University in South Korea suggest that this force “may not be driving galaxies apart at an accelerating rate any more”, said Space.com. Instead, researchers propose, it is weakening over time.

In the 1990s, astronomers made the first estimates of the expansion of the universe by studying exploding stars, known as type 1a supernovas. The distant supernovas were dimmer than expected, leading past studies to conclude that the expansion of the universe had sped up and was continuing to accelerate.

But by estimating the ages of 300 host galaxies, the latest study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, concluded that there are variations in the properties of stars in the early universe that mean they produce, on average, fainter supernovas. So there is still an expanding universe, but, the findings suggest, the expansion has slowed down.

Who said what?

There was a “key assumption” that “turned out to be incorrect”, said Professor Young-Wook Lee, one of the study’s authors. “It’s like doing up a shirt with the first button fastened incorrectly.”

But some experts question the new findings. The study is “definitely interesting” and “very provocative”, but it “may well be wrong”, said Professor Carlos Frenk, a cosmologist at the University of Durham.

Although the findings are “likely to be greeted with heavy scepticism”, said The Guardian, the “influential” Desi consortium reached a similar conclusion earlier this year, so “a fierce debate is opening up in cosmology” over the nature of dark energy and the “probable fate” of the universe.

What does this mean for the universe?

If the findings are confirmed the implications are profound: it could “open an entirely new chapter” in the “quest” to “understand the past and future of the universe”, said Phys.org.

The study could “revolutionise” our understanding of the universe, said Space.com, and “offer clues about how our cosmos will end”, because if dark energy has “lost the battle against gravity”, the next step could be “the contraction of space”. That would suggest the universe will end in a ”Big Crunch” – effectively the Big Bang in reverse.

‘California needs supercities — and we should build them now’

Zoltan Istvan at Newsweek

California “needs to lead the nation in constructing a new generation of supercities — planned urban centers built from scratch on farmland, empty coastal areas and stretches of desert,” says Zoltan Istvan. These would be “affordable, sustainable cities for workers, artists, teachers and young people who’ve been priced out of their hometowns.” California “could design them to be free from the regulatory gridlock that has paralyzed housing and infrastructure development across the state.”

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‘The dulling of America’s scientific edge’

The Washington Post editorial board

The U.S. is “still the world’s leading scientific research power, but competition is growing more fierce, and it’s a dangerous time to dull the country’s competitive edge,” says The Washington Post editorial board. Trump’s “effort to take down the wall that progressives built around U.S. academia” is “faltering due to overreach.” The “headwinds threaten to hold back the country’s intellectual might, just as China appears to build momentum in its application of AI-powered technologies.”

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‘Dick Cheney and the sanitizing of a war criminal’

Belén Fernández at Al Jazeera

People will remember Dick Cheney for “rather less warm and fuzzy things than love and fly fishing,” says Belén Fernández. Cheney “died with untold quantities of blood on his hands, particularly in Iraq.” His “fearmongering — and repeated lies concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction — worked like a charm in paving the way for the infliction of ‘death on a massive scale.’” The “media can never bring themselves to call a spade a spade.”

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‘A victorious Mamdani will be forced onto the international stage’

Imran Bayoumi at Foreign Policy

The “focus of Zohran Mamdani’s whirlwind campaign for mayor of New York City was on what he would bring to the city,” says Imran Bayoumi. But New York’s “role as the center of the global economy means that as mayor, he will inevitably have to take on foreign policy.” Mamdani will “likely continue working with other cities across the United States,” and “may seek to build bridges between other left-wing political leaders and movements around the world.”

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About 60 years ago, Russian physicist Lev Artsimovich said nuclear fusion “will be ready when society needs it”.

For decades, scientists have tried to recreate the fusion reaction that powers the sun, hoping to produce potentially unlimited clean energy. But recent advances in science and technology, and funding from tech companies desperate to power the artificial intelligence boom, now make fusion a “realistic option”, said Fortune.

The UK has achieved a “major breakthrough for fusion energy research”, the UK Atomic Energy Authority announced last week. Researchers there stabilised the fusion process in a spherical tokamak – a more compact fusion machine than those used by most researchers – for the first time. This is a “significant step forward”.

What is fusion?

When most people think of nuclear power, they are thinking of nuclear fission. Fission creates energy by splitting heavy atoms – but fusion creates energy by fusing light atoms together.

In fusion, hydrogen isotopes are heated to extremely high temperatures until they form plasma – superheated, electrically charged gas. The atoms’ nuclei then have enough energy to overcome their repulsion and fuse together, forming helium.

In the process, they lose a small amount of mass, which is converted into a massive amount of energy. It’s the same reaction that powers the stars.

Why is it so attractive?

Fusion promises a “virtually limitless, carbon-free source of energy”, said The Times. It is the “holy grail of energy”, nuclear physicist Annie Kritcher told Fortune.

Scientists estimate that one glass of fusion fuel could produce enough energy to power a home for more than 800 years, according to the Financial Times. Unlike fission, it produces no long-lived radioactive waste, and couldn’t cause a runaway nuclear accident like Chernobyl.

“If you know how to build a fusion power plant, you can have unlimited energy anywhere and forever,” said Bill Gates on his Gates Notes website this month. Nuclear fusion could not only meet the soaring global energy demand, but some scientists suggest it could also power a carbon-capture system that could remove CO2 from the atmosphere, helping to reverse climate change.

Why is fusion so difficult to recreate?

Stars can fuse hydrogen because their massive gravity creates extreme pressure and heat in their core. On Earth, recreating those conditions remains one of science’s toughest – and most expensive – challenges.

British scientists first achieved nuclear fusion in 1934, using a particle accelerator, but commercial fusion “remained a distant dream”, said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Bulletin magazine. Achieving controlled fusion, the kind that could one day power a reactor, remained elusive. To sustain fusion, hydrogen isotopes must be heated to tens of millions of degrees until they form plasma. This is so hot, hotter than the surface of the Sun, that it can’t touch any solid surface; it must be contained by powerful magnetic fields or using laser pulses.

Soviet physicists developed the first fusion machine in the 1950s, known as a tokamak – short for a Russian acronym that translates as “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils”. These doughnut-shaped vacuum chambers use powerful magnets to spin and heat the hydrogen, then trap the plasma while it can fuse and release energy.

But for 70 years, no experiment produced more energy from fusion than was put into the fuel. Then, in 2022, scientists at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a landmark breakthrough: their reaction released more energy than the process consumed. It was the “Wright brothers’ moment”, said Kritcher, the project’s designer.

So when might we see fusion deliver power to the grid?

The world’s biggest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is under way in France. It’s a publicly funded project backed by 33 countries, including China, Russia and the US – but it has “suffered multiple delays and setbacks” and isn’t expected online before 2035, said the B1M. It’s also “basically a big experiment” to show how feasible fusion is at scale: it won’t generate electricity.

But the private sector fusion race is “heating up”, said the FT. Tech companies are pouring money into fusion start-ups, hoping for energy to power their data centres. Fusion companies have also received huge private investment – “largely from billionaires” like OpenAI’s Sam Altman – and public funding.

And they are making fast progress. One start-up in the US, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is building a nuclear fusion power plant it aims to turn on in 2027. It is hoped that it will supply electricity to the grid in the early 2030s, which has never been done before. Many private and state-backed Chinese enterprises are also “racing to build a commercial fusion reactor by 2035 or sooner”, said the South China Morning Post.

But even if the most ambitious timelines are achieved, fusion power plants are not likely to be widespread until at least the 2040s.

What happened

Dinosaurs appear to have been thriving before a giant asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, paleontologists working in New Mexico said Thursday in the journal Science. Experts have long debated whether the asteroid was the final blow to a dinosaur population already in decline or if it cut short a flourishing reptilian dynasty.

Who said what

Using “two high-tech dating techniques” on fossil beds in northwest New Mexico’s Ojo Alamo Formation, the paleontologists determined that a wide range of dinosaur species lived in the area within 380,000 years of the mass extinction event, a “blink of the eye in the geological record,” The Washington Post said. That implies “dinosaurs were still going strong up to the moment the asteroid hit,” not “gradually wasting away to extinction as many paleontologists once believed,” said study coauthor Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

Researchers not involved in the study had mixed responses. The “new evidence” is “very exciting,” but “this is just one location, not a representation of the complexity of dinosaur faunas at the time,” said University of Bristol paleontologist Mike Benton. Philip Mannion at University College London told The New York Times that the “robust” analysis showed that if not for the asteroid, “the Age of Dinosaurs would almost certainly have continued for much longer and might even still be the case today.”

What next?

Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, but “accurately dating them can be a challenge,” The Associated Press said. “More work needs to be done to date those sections,” said study coauthor Dan Peppe at Baylor University. But so far, “it seems like the same pattern that we’re seeing in North America is holding up globally.”

“We’re about to have an internet of animals, and that’s super exciting.”

So said Martin Wikelski, from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, on BBC Science Focus. Wikelski was referring to a programme he founded, the International Co-operation for Animal Research Using Space (Icarus).

The “internet of animals” he envisages is a system that monitors animals and collates the data on a freely accessible platform. This month Icarus launches the first of a series of satellites into space that hope to track 100,000 animals worldwide, so data from their movements can inform conservationists about habitat loss and climate change – and, hopefully, help us anticipate natural disasters and zoonotic disease. “The ancient art of augury is now being resurrected for the space age,” said The Sunday Times.

What is the background?

Humans have long observed animals acting differently before natural phenomena like earthquakes. In 2012, Wikelski’s team began tracking goats that graze on Mount Etna, the volcano in Sicily. They found that before an eruption, the goats stayed lower. “They know much earlier than the volcanologists can see on their equipment,” Wikelski told The Sunday Times. “And they know better how big it will be.”

The team also found that farm animals in the Italian Apennine mountains could detect an earthquake up to 12 hours before it hit. About 45 minutes beforehand, it was like a trading floor “in a stock market crash – all the animals were going crazy”.

Wikelski believes the answer lies in the animals’ sensitive feathers and fur. “During the build-up to an earthquake, tectonic plates slide across each other under enormous pressures, and that throws out ions from the rocks into the air,” Wikelski told The Guardian. “The animals may be reacting to that.”

How does Icarus work?

Various terrestrial tracking systems have monitored wildlife worldwide for decades. But Icarus became possible after “a revolution in tagging technology”, said The Guardian, which led to “cheap and plentiful minuscule GPS devices”.

Miniature sensors and communications devices led to the development of “large-scale wireless digital networks that track the location and status of objects”, said BBC Science Focus: the “internet of things”.

The IoT made “two-way digital communications with small devices viable”, while lithium batteries “shrunk to sizes that more animals can carry”, and smartphones made low-cost GPS “increasingly available”, said MIT Technology Review. Wikelski’s team launched “affordable and lightweight GPS sensors that could be worn by animals as small as songbirds”. These “Fitbits for wild creatures” could offer “live location data accurate to a few metres”, while allowing scientists to monitor heart rates and body heat, as well as ambient temperature and air pressure.

The Icarus tags will send their information to receivers on tiny satellites made from 10cm cubes, called CubeSats. From there, the data will be beamed back to Earth and published in a freely accessible database called Movebank. Wikelski describes this as a “permanent digital museum” of animal data, established 25 years ago.

What is the point?

It is “the most ambitious wildlife-tracking project that’s ever been attempted”, said BBC Science Focus. For researchers, “the possible applications are almost endless”.

One day, people worldwide will be able to “log on with a smartphone app” to the internet of animals, to “follow their favourite bird or tortoise or fish”, said The New York Times. Wikelski hopes that connecting people to “a single charismatic animal” could help “build support for conservation”. “If people hear Cecil the lion died, it’s very real to them,” he said. “But if you say 3,000 lions died, nobody cares.”

The project could help prevent that, as many animals are on the move due to climate change. Protecting them will “require an understanding of where they are”. Icarus could also “keep tabs” on species that have played a part in epidemics – like bats. “With skin temperature we can see in the ducks in China whether the next avian influenza is starting,” said Wikelski.

“In the wake of the pandemic, the prospects of using animals’ GPS locations to monitor the spread of zoonotic disease is truly beguiling,” said Paul McGreevy on The Conversation.

Critics “question the costs” compared with existing animal monitoring programmes, said MIT Technology Review: about $10 million to $15 million a year. But that is “significantly cheaper than sending humans or drones” to remote locations. Ultimately, Icarus offers “another way to monitor the Earth itself during a period of increasing instability”, transforming animals into “sentinels of a changing world”.

‘Cargo theft: an emerging national and economic security crisis’

Michael Huston at The Hill

“Cargo theft in America is not just a matter of a few stolen goods. It is a growing threat to our national and economic security,” says Michael Huston. Criminals “threaten the integrity of America’s supply chains — supply chains that serve as the foundation of our economy and which keep American families clothed, connected and fed.” To “defend and protect our economy, homeland and supply chains, we must come together to pass the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act.”

Read more

‘Black hole stars challenge our idea of the universe’

Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times

Astronomers have observed dots that “looked like bright mature galaxies but, puzzlingly, seemed anchored in a universe too young to host them,” says Anjana Ahuja. These “are not stars in the usual sense of being powered by nuclear fusion; instead, they comprise a supermassive black hole.” This “may well challenge ideas about how the first celestial objects formed, and in what order.” It “also illustrates how studying extremes can push boundaries by forcing scientists to come up with new ideas.”

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‘It’s time for the US to recognize Palestine’

Leon Hadar at The American Conservative

The “growing international momentum toward recognizing Palestine as an independent state represents a long-overdue acknowledgment of geopolitical realities that Washington has stubbornly refused to accept,” says Leon Hadar. It’s “time for U.S. policymakers to abandon their counterproductive approach and embrace pragmatic statecraft.” The “reflexive opposition to Palestinian statehood recognition serves neither American nor Israeli long-term interests, and certainly does nothing to advance regional stability.” The “focus on ‘process’ over outcomes has become a substitute for serious diplomacy.”

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‘James Comey’s indictment, while without merit, is part of Comey’s own legacy’

Paul Pelletier at The Nation

James Comey “finds himself the object of a grotesque and unfounded abuse of the law as a cudgel to punish political opponents,” says Paul Pelletier. The “impact of this Mob-like model of prosecution is likely to spread far beyond Comey and other public servants.” But the “ironic twist is the active role Comey himself played in his later law enforcement career in dismantling the norms that had been considered vital to an ordered constitutional democracy.”

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Like pipes, statues and nails, the moon can rust. Such rusting has occurred despite a seeming lack of necessary components — but all signs of blame point to the Earth. A new study posits that the relevant rust-forming particles are coming from the Earth’s atmosphere during a short period in the lunar cycle.

Building rust

Hematite, also known as rust, was first found on the moon in 2020 during India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. The discovery puzzled scientists because rust is formed through the process of oxidation, which, like the name suggests, requires oxygen as well as water. But there is no oxygen on the moon and water is extremely limited. “It’s very puzzling,” Shuai Li, a researcher at the University of Hawaii, said to NASA in 2020. “The moon is a terrible environment for hematite to form in.” Now, new research shows the culprit may be the Earth. “Hematite can form when oxygen ions in Earth’s magnetosphere (Earth wind) are implanted into iron-bearing materials” on the moon, said a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Earth and the moon are usually “bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun,” said Nature. But for approximately five days out of the month-long lunar cycle, “Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles.” When this happens, the “moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth’s atmosphere before blowing into space.” This is called Earth wind.

The Earth wind contains ions of nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere. These charged particles can “then embed themselves in the lunar soil and cause the chemical reactions required to create rust,” said The Independent. This still raises the question of where the water required for oxidation comes from. Water on the moon only really exists as ice at the poles, but researchers have come to believe that “hematite may have formed in those polar regions and later spread across the surface by some unknown process,” said Firstpost.

Varying reactions

The presence of rust on the moon is also intriguing because, while oxygen ions are needed to form hematite, hydrogen ions can undo the rust. Earth wind contains both kinds of ions. To test the effect of the hydrogen ions, researchers “irradiated hematite with both high-energy hydrogen, mimicking hydrogen found in Earth wind, and low-energy hydrogen ions, like those from the sun,” said Phys.org. They found that the “high-energy hydrogen ions are capable of reducing hematite back to metallic iron, while low-energy hydrogen ions are largely ineffective.” So, the amount of rust retained on the moon “depends on both the energy and the relative flux ratio of oxygen and hydrogen ions from Earth wind.”

These findings “provide valuable insights into the widespread distribution of lunar hematite and indicate a long-term material exchange between Earth and the moon,” said the study. While the evidence shows strong support for Earth wind as the cause of lunar rusting, lab conditions may not always fully emulate the environment of the moon. As a result, more research, preferably done on the moon itself, is needed to test the processes.

We often wonder whether there are aliens on other planets but what if we ourselves are aliens on the planet we call home?

Panspermia, the “controversial” theory that life “began elsewhere in space” and was “delivered to Earth on comets and asteroids”, is gaining new traction, said BBC Science Focus.

Building blocks of life

New analysis of asteroid rocks brought back to Earth by Japanese and Nasa-led space missions suggests a presence of some of the building blocks of life – which could mean that those “same building blocks”, and “perhaps even primitive microbial life”, could have been delivered to Earth on other asteroids or comets billions of years ago, said BBC Science Focus.

Scientists examining the rock samples have found carbon, ammonia, salts, 14 of the 20 amino acids needed to make proteins, and the “basic constituents of DNA and RNA”.

Of course, “just having the right conditions and ingredients” for life “doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily create life”, but the findings will still gladden the hearts of believers in panspermia.

The origin of those first life-delivering rocks could have been a nearby planet, like Mars, or somewhere light years away. And, if that was the case, the potential consequences are huge – because, if it happened here, it has probably happened on other planets, too.

'Wild' theories 

The theory of panspermia dates back many years and was “popularised in the 1970s” by the British astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, said BBC Science Focus.

Their suggestion that asteroids and comets could have been incubators for life wasn’t taken seriously at first, and the pair were regarded as “crazy”, said Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University.

But the theory gradually “became more alluring”, and “reached a fascinating peak” in 1996 when scientists believed they had discovered traces of microfossils of bacteria inside a meteorite from Mars that had landed in Antarctica. The discovery was later refuted.

Recently, in a “wild” new spin on the theory, known as directed panspermia, it’s been suggested that “aliens sent microbes or simple life forms” to Earth themselves, to “propel evolution”, said the Daily Mail.

Even if the panspermia (or directed panspermia) theory turns out to be true, it doesn’t answer the big question, said New Scientist, because it “simply relocates the problem of how life got going – we haven’t found evidence of life elsewhere”. Besides, we know that space is “hostile to life”, as shown in experiments where bacteria placed outside the International Space Station faced a “heavy toll”, so there are question marks over how life’s building blocks could survive the putative journey through space to Earth.

As the United States and China compete for dominance in outer space, Africa is also looking to get in on the race toward the stars. China aims to enhance its cooperation with Africa by constructing new alliances for its space development, while many in the United States are pushing the Trump administration to shore up its own space alliances in Africa. All the while, the continent is moving ahead with its own space program.

How are the US and China intertwined with African space development?

China has been seeking to broaden its African footprint and has recently been “building space alliances in Africa to enhance its global surveillance network and advance its bid to become the world’s dominant space power,” said Reuters. Not all of this development is done in secret, as China has “publicly announced much of this space assistance to African countries.”

China also has “access to data and images collected from this space technology, and Chinese personnel maintain a long-term presence in facilities it builds in Africa,” said Reuters. This includes a new satellite lab in Egypt where Chinese officials can “scan space-tracking monitors and deliver instructions to Egyptian engineers.”

As China expands its influence, there have been calls for the White House to get ahead of the game, given that Africa's space sector “presents significant opportunities for the United States,” said the international affairs think tank Atlantic Council. The U.S. “will need to take a collaborative approach: In order to harness the opportunities of the African space sector, the United States must also fill the gaps in its space coordination with Africa.”

This could be easier said than done. Trump is “unlikely to prioritize forging bilateral space relationships in the way Beijing has done in Africa,” said Reuters. This also comes as the U.S. “scales back aid to developing countries, creating an opportunity for China to position itself as Africa’s key ally in space development,” said Business Insider Africa.

How is Africa developing its own space program?

Africa is working to cement its own status in space. In May 2025, it “established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing,” said Bloomberg. This came at a time when a “more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information.”

The African Space Agency (AfSA) will help the existing space programs of African countries collaborate. It also “aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across Africa and beyond,” said Bloomberg.

Prior African space initiatives were “happening in a very fragmented fashion,” Meshack Kinyua, a space engineer and an Africa space policy veteran, told Bloomberg. AfSA “brings a coordination mechanism and economies of scale — it puts all members of the African Union at an equal level.”

AfSA “represents a giant leap into the global space arena” for Africa, said Space.com. It is a clear signal that Africa has a “commitment to space exploration and technological advancement.” Other multinational space organizations, including the European Space Agency (ESA), also lauded the group. The “establishment of the African Space Agency is a real milestone for the continent and signals an important advance for Africa’s space strategy,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a statement. “Space has the power to spur innovation and inspiration, and I look forward to working together for the benefit of citizens.”

What happened

NASA announced Wednesday that a rock sample collected on Mars by its Perseverance rover last year contains what appear to be biosignatures, or signs of previous life, on the Red Planet. “This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said at a press conference coinciding with the publication of a paper on the findings in the journal Nature.

Who said what

NASA scientists were “giddy” when Perseverance found the rock with telltale signs of microbial life in a former lakebed called the Jezero Crater, The New York Times said. After a year studying the sample from 140 million miles away, “we are at the point where we are actually saying in detail, ‘Here is what we have found,’” study lead author Joel Hurowitz told the Times. And the chances are “better than a coin flip” that the sample contained convincing evidence of life.

The rock, dubbed Cheyava Falls, is “composed of finely packed sediment and covered in specks resembling poppy seeds and leopard spots,” said The Washington Post. Those specks, the study found, are “minerals that — on Earth — have traditionally been created from microbial activity.” That’s the “closest we’ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars,” NASA science mission chief Nicky Fox told reporters, but it “certainly is not the final answer.”

What happened?

The “underlying elephant in the room” is that for the NASA scientists to confirm their theories, the rock samples “need to be returned to Earth,” said Space.com, and “NASA’s Mars Sample Return program remains in limbo due to budget constraints” and “priority shifts” in the Trump administration.

In Telford's Exotic Zoo, life found a way.

A casque-headed iguana has given birth to eight babies at the Shropshire wildlife park – without any contact with a male, via a phenomenon called parthenogenesis.

"When we confirmed the eggs were fertile without any contact with a male, our jaws hit the floor," zoo owner Scott Adams told the BBC. "For us, it's a powerful reminder that life finds a way in the most unexpected circumstances."

What is parthenogenesis?

A type of asexual reproduction, in which females create offspring without fertilisation from male sex cells. The unfertilised eggs develop into embryos that are genetic clones of the mother. Basically, the female clones herself.

It actually predates sexual reproduction, which evolved to introduce more genetic variation. It's more common in plants or invertebrates than vertebrates – but it has been observed among fish, snakes, sharks, lizards, and even birds. What is "mind-boggling is that parthenogenesis isn't even that rare", said the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. It was first documented in Komodo dragons in 2006, but has since been seen in all "vertebrate lineages" except mammals.

"Komodos are famous for it," Colin Stevenson, head of education at Crocodiles of the World, told The Guardian. "They can reproduce normally, but every now and again, they pop out a parthenogenetic one. The trick is to work out what kicks it off."

Are there other cases?

In January, a baby swell shark, Yoko, was born in a Louisiana aquarium – although the two females in the tank "had not been in contact with a male in over three years", said a Shreveport Aquarium spokesperson. Yoko's birth could be the result of either parthenogenesis or delayed fertilisation – females of many shark species can store sperm inside themselves for months or even years.

Kevin Feldheim of Chicago's Field Museum told NPR that both explanations were possible, and that genetic testing on Yoko would be necessary to compare her to the sharks in the tank. But there have been documented cases of parthenogenesis involving more than half a dozen shark species, he said.

Recently, a new parthenogenetic species of spider was discovered in the Czech Republic. Dysdera parthenogenetica uses "thelytoky" parthenogenetic reproduction, in which "generations are formed by females arising from unfertilised eggs", said the study published in the Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research.

This species is similar to another, Dysdera hungarica, but when researchers put the two together, the parthenogenetic females refused to mate with males. They "did not respond to their courtship behaviour", said the study, and "their copulatory organs were reduced".

So what kicks it off?

"In general, we think parthenogenesis is a last-ditch effort for a female to pass on its genes, so when a female is isolated from conspecific males, she is able to undergo parthenogenesis," Feldheim told NPR.

"How parthenogenesis kicks in or what cues the females use to begin the process remains to be discovered."

What are the downsides?

Organisms born via parthenogenesis, known as parthenotes, "don't have the best track record when it comes to survivorship or fitness", said the Smithsonian. Every zebra shark parthenote has died before reaching sexual maturity. However, one female white-spotted bamboo shark not only survived to sexual maturity, but also gave birth through parthenogenesis.

Yoko is "thriving", said the aquarium, but shark pups born from rare reproductive events usually suffer health issues. "Should Yoko's time with us be brief, it will still leave an unforgettable legacy, contributing invaluable insights to the study of shark reproduction and conservation efforts."

Beneath Antarctica's vast expanse of ice sit hundreds of canyons, some up to tens of thousands of feet deep. These complex formations under a seemingly barren landscape play a significant role in global climate change and ocean circulation — and studying them could lead to better climate models and predictions.

Rolling in the deep

Scientists have mapped 332 underwater canyons in Antarctica, according to a research article published in the journal Marine Geology. Some of these are deeper than 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet). Antarctic submarine canyons "resemble canyons in other parts of the world," David Amblàs, a part of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences at the University of Barcelona and one of the authors of the article, said in a statement. "But they tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf."

The canyons also vary significantly between east and west Antarctica. In the east, the canyons are "intricate and branching, with wide U-shaped profiles," while the western canyons "are shorter and steeper, cut into sharp V-shapes," said IFL Science. These findings indicate that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely much older than its western counterpart. "This had been suggested by sedimentary record studies," Amblàs said, "but it hadn't yet been described in large-scale seafloor geomorphology."

Scientists posit that the canyons "may have a more significant impact than previously thought on ocean circulation, ice-shelf thinning and global climate change, especially in vulnerable areas such as the Amundsen Sea and parts of East Antarctica," said the statement.

Zone of interest

Submarine canyons are "vitally important to ecological, oceanographic and geological processes worldwide," said Discover. The canyons "facilitate water exchange between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, allowing cold, dense water formed near ice shelves to flow into the deep ocean and form what is known as Antarctic Bottom Water," said the University of Barcelona statement. They also do the reverse, where they transport "warmer ocean waters from the sea toward the coastline," which helps "maintain and stabilize Antarctica's interior glaciers," said Discover.

The role of submarine canyons is thus far a "blind spot in climate change science," said Discover. There is not much known about the deep-sea gorges because less than one-third of the seafloor has been properly mapped. "Since so many submarine canyons are undiscovered and understudied, they do not factor into many of the current climate change models," the outlet added. This may be understating their effect on climate change. "Omitting these water-transporting canyons drastically limits the ability of climate change models to accurately predict ocean and overall climate changes."

Scientists have identified approximately 10,000 submarine canyons globally, but most remain unexplored, particularly those in polar regions. "Mapping the seafloor and its influence on the movement of water is necessary to build accurate ocean circulation models," said The Guardian.

You can earn £4,400 for lying in bed for two weeks in a swanky room, with access to free WiFi and food delivered to your door. So say enthusiastic "flu camp" volunteers, who've been recommending the experience on social media.

Obviously, you have to get the flu, too. Volunteers at these clinical trial camps are infected with the virus and then given the trial treatment or a placebo, and monitored over a fortnight to see how their body responds. But is being a human lab rat and spending all that time alone in a room as easy as it sounds?

A lot of introspection and a lack of fresh air

"Being deliberately infected with a virus may sound scary", said Vice, but firms like hVIVO, which runs FluCamp, say they only recruit people whose health records show that getting the illness is unlikely to have a serious effect. They also screen applicants to make sure their mental health can withstand a two-week period of isolation.

Once isolated in their room, participants fill in a checklist every morning about their symptoms. "Doctors would come in about four times a day to test your vitals," student volunteer Faith Larkam told Business Insider. "Other than that, you're just left to your own devices."

During her stay, she "binge-watched movies", read a book "in like three hours", did "a lot of introspection" and "banged" out three or four essays for university. She found "the lack of fresh air" and not being able to socialise or exercise increasingly challenging and, "towards the end", she was "desperate to get out".

But she said she has already signed up for a second stay and it's easy to see why. FluCamp's facility in Canary Wharf has "floor-to-ceiling windows" offering views of the Thames, and "ensuite rooms" come with a TV, a PlayStation and "a bell to summon staff" to bring food and drink, said The Telegraph. Other volunteers posting on TikTok have boasted of "feta salad lunches" and "10/10 views".

According to FluCamp, only 50% to 70% of participants develop any symptoms of illness and, for those that do, they are usually mild.

Fast and cost-efficient 

Exposing volunteers to a controlled dose of a virus in a quarantined setting, rather than running clinical-field trials over many years, means firms can quickly get a "clear picture" of treatment's efficacy before they move to larger, later-stage studies, said This Is Money.

And it's certainly proving successful for hVIVO. The firm finished 2024 in "rude financial health, with revenue up almost 12% at £62.7 million" and a "rock solid" balance sheet, "with £44.2 million in cash".

What happened

SpaceX Tuesday evening conducted a largely successful 10th test flight of its mammoth Starship rocket, with both the upper stage and rocket booster making it back to Earth intact and simulating soft vertical landings in the ocean before exploding, as anticipated. In a first for Starship, the uncrewed spacecraft deployed eight dummy satellites during its hour in space.

Who said what

The "successful demo came after a year of mishaps" for Elon Musk's massive rocket, The Associated Press said. After an impressive fifth launch last year, SpaceX "experienced dramatic failures in four recent tests," The Washington Post said.

Tuesday's "nearly flawless" mission was a "likely relief to both SpaceX and NASA," which is "counting on Starship as the lander to put its astronauts on the moon in the coming years," The New York Times said. Musk also has "much riding on the rocket," envisioning it as a reusable vehicle to "carry satellites, scientific devices and, eventually, astronauts," including to Mars, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

SpaceX "appeared to achieve all of their test objectives," but they are still probably "six months behind where they wanted to be" due to this year's earlier failures, Todd Harrison from the American Enterprise Institute told the Times. "If they can get another test flight within six weeks or so, they can start to catch up."

The Trump administration is calling for the destruction of two satellite missions that have been crucial in global climate and ecological monitoring over the past decade. This is part of a larger NASA shift away from climate research.

How is climate research being affected?

While NASA is known for its exploration of the cosmos, the agency also plays a pivotal role in climate science through its collection of climate data. The soon-to-be-ended missions are collectively known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories (OCO), and they can "precisely show where carbon dioxide is being emitted and absorbed and how well crops are growing," said The Associated Press.

They have been operating for more than 10 years, producing data of "exceptionally high quality," said a 2023 NASA review. "Together, the OCO-2, a free-flying satellite, and OCO-3, which is mounted on the International Space Station, measure the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, specifically sniffing out climate pollution," said CNN. The instruments are also "critical for farmers and the researchers studying forest loss."

Decommissioning the satellites is not a simple feat. OCO-3 could be "switched off and remain attached to the ISS, perhaps to be turned on again in the future," said CNN. However, the process for OCO-2 is "far more complicated — and fiery" because it would have to be "moved into a much lower orbit and exist there as space junk for years until it burns up in the Earth's atmosphere."

Can it be saved?

The Trump administration has decided to put climate change data on the back burner, or perhaps take it off the stove altogether. "All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA, we're going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA," said Sean Duffy, the acting administrator of NASA and Secretary of Transportation, to Fox Business. "That's why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sciences."

The president's 2026 budget request includes no money for the OCO. The decision to decommission the missions is "extremely shortsighted," said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, to the AP. A lack of access to climate data may lead to unforeseen consequences down the road, which could be difficult to reverse. Destroying the OCO "will hamstring climate research for decades," said Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times. "The zeroing out of climate research budgets by the Trump White House, of which the cancellation of the OCO program is a part, is taking place just as the value of space-borne climate research has been rising sharply."

But all hope for the research is not yet lost. Congress could potentially come to the rescue and "reject Trump's proposal and offer NASA the budget it needs to maintain U.S. climate and Earth science status quo," said CNN. However, Trump would also have to sign the bill.

The OCO already received funding from Congress through Sept. 30. NASA has also said it would "consider proposals from private companies and universities that are willing to take on the cost of maintaining the device that is attached to the International Space Station, as well as another device that measures ozone in the atmosphere," said NPR.

For thousands of years, the practice of alchemy — chemically transforming minerals into gold — has been attempted and failed. While it is generally considered a pseudoscience by modern standards, recent developments have some researchers reopening the potential golden door. At the heart of this resurgence in alchemy is nuclear power, which itself has seen significant advances in the 21st century. But will it make alchemy possible, or is this just another pipe dream?

What kind of modern alchemy is being attempted?

Several ideas have been proposed with the intention of turning minerals into gold using nuclear power. The most notable comes from Marathon Fusion, which released an action plan detailing its purported ability to "synthesize stable gold from the abundant mercury isotope." Known as transmutation, this is "essentially the process of turning one element into another by tweaking its nucleus," said Gizmodo.

The exact science, according to Marathon, involves "introducing mercury-198 into a fusion reactor and bombarding it with neutrons until it transforms into mercury-197," said Gizmodo. Mercury-197 is a much more unstable isotope of mercury, and because of this it "decays into gold-197, the only stable isotope of gold." The entire process would reportedly take about 64 hours.

Marathon's research "suggests it would be possible to make five metric tons of gold a year for every gigawatt of power generated," said The Times. If this nuclear technology is successful, the "3,500-odd metric tons of gold currently mined every year could soon be dwarfed by the amount produced by fusion."

How promising is this?

There are "lots of reasons to be skeptical about this claim of abundant gold," said The Times. For one, there are the fusion reactors themselves that would be necessary to create gold. Marathon hopes that the "millions of dollars made from selling the precious metal could be used to offset the cost" of nuclear power, said The Atlantic. But while "experimental fusion reactors that can make electricity have been built, the technology hasn't advanced enough to allow fusion to be practical on a commercial scale."

Marathon's alchemy would also require a significant amount of power to run, and scientists are "only beginning to crack the point at which fusion plants generate more energy than they require to operate," said Futurism. This means that scaling the nuclear operations will be "difficult, with scientists struggling to contain extremely high-energy and unpredictable plasma inside enormously complex reactors."

Another notable aspect is the gold itself; because of the nuclear process involved, any gold created from mercury may be at least slightly "radioactive, which could mean it would have to be stored for anywhere from 14 to 18 years before it's safe to handle," said Futurism. This makes it difficult to generate the gold at scale.

Despite these challenges, scientists remain hopeful, though Marathon's proposal has not yet been peer-reviewed. On "paper, it looks great and everyone so far that I talk to remains intrigued and excited," said Dr. Ahmed Diallo, a plasma physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's national laboratory at Princeton University, to the Financial Times.

Gold is "that sweet spot," said Dan Brunner, a former chief technology officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and an adviser to Marathon, to the Times. From a "purely scientific perspective, it looks like it all hangs together. I think the challenge comes" with "actually engineering it into a practical system."

The world is seemingly going to the rats, as the United Kingdom is currently facing a significant infestation of rodents. But the U.K. isn't the only place dealing with rat issues, as several thousand miles away, California farmers are trying to fight off an infestation that is causing significant problems for the almond industry.

This influx of rats could devastate not only the almond supply in the U.S. but globally. All of America's commercially grown almonds are produced in California, and the Golden State is responsible for 80% of the world's almond supply, according to the USDA, so producers are trying to stop the rats before they get out of control.

What is happening with the rats?

Almond growers are "facing an unprecedented challenge this season as a severe roof rat infestation" affects portions of California's Central Valley, said the Almond Board of California. Farmers have "reported an alarming spike in rodent populations." The rats are likely "using irrigation canals and other waterways as corridors, enabling them to rapidly spread between orchards and diverse agricultural fields."

These roof rats, commonly called black rats or house rats, are "arboreal, meaning they spend a considerable amount of their life above ground, often building nests in trees," said the Almond Board. But over the last several years, researchers have "noted that in almonds and other tree nuts, they use burrows extensively."

There is "no clear-cut explanation for why rats on a large scale" suddenly "developed a taste for nut trees," said USA Today. But if a solution is not found, it could decimate the almond industry, as the infestation has already "impacted more than 100,000 acres and caused $109 million to $311 million in losses from damage to equipment and crops over a year." And the rats just keep coming; at least one almond grower said he was "exterminating between 50-100 rats a day," according to the Almond Board.

How are almond farmers fighting back?

Growers have been "caught off-guard by the recent explosion of rodents across the state," said Roger Isom, the chief executive of the Western Tree Nut Association, to the Los Angeles Times. California farmers have "never really had a rat issue in almonds ... so we weren't looking for it, or treating for it, or preventing it."

For now, farmers are implementing a number of methods to halt the flow of rats. They are "using bait stations and aluminum phosphide treatments in burrows in the winter and, during non-winter months, are turning to snap traps, owl boxes and fumigating the rats by applying carbon monoxide" into rat burrows, said the Times. But these methods are often labor-intensive and expensive.

Before deploying these traps, farmers "should track the rodents and use game cameras to pinpoint hotspots," said Patch. They should also make "fresh bait available for at least four weeks, followed by longer-term use" for traps.

There are still concerns among farmers that these procedures simply won't be enough to ward off the infestation. "We've never seen anything like this," Isom told USA Today. "I've had growers who have lost more than half their yield. We're not going to know until this year's crop is in whether it was just weather-related or it was due to rat damage. It has certainly affected orchards. Hopefully we can get ahead of this thing and prevent it from becoming a big, big issue."

There's an eye in the sky — a hurricane eye, that is. High above the North Pole, a cyclone of charged particles can form and cause turbulence in the Earth's geomagnetic field. These storms lead to beautiful lights in the sky, but they can also affect infrastructure in Earth's orbit, as well as navigation systems. And space hurricanes occur more often than previously thought.

Particle pinwheels

Space hurricanes are similar to their terrestrial counterparts, but instead of heavy rains and wind, "electromagnetic tempests are made of plasma, charged particles whipped into motion by Earth's magnetic field," said Space.com. They are "created by an unusually large and rapid transfer of solar wind energy and charged particles into the Earth's upper atmosphere," said IFL Science. This causes vibrant auroras in the sky.

The phenomenon was observed above the North Pole in 2014, when satellites found an auroral spot over 620 miles in diameter that "appeared to look like a cyclone, with multiple spiral arms moving in an anti-clockwise rotation," said Newsweek. This prompted scientists to research space hurricanes more thoroughly. A recent study published in the journal Space Weather elaborated on the effects of space hurricanes on Earth.

Space hurricanes are different from other geomagnetic storms because they are capable of forming in calm conditions. "Most geomagnetic storms and subsequent impressive aurora displays occur when the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) aligns southward, essentially 'opening the door' in Earth's magnetic field," said Space.com. However, space hurricanes form when the IMF aligns northward. This makes them harder to detect in the atmosphere. The northward configuration is "traditionally viewed as quiet and uneventful," said Chron. "This finding calls into question standard forecasting models, which focus on southward-tilting IMF as a storm driver."

Directional destruction

A space hurricane "appears to strengthen the localized current system, causing intense local geomagnetic disturbances," said researcher Zan-Yang Xing, who worked on the study, to Newsweek. "These findings help clarify their space weather impacts on near-Earth space environments." While space hurricanes do not affect the safety of humans the way earthly hurricanes do, they can have an effect on space weather. This includes the disruption of satellites and space junk in Earth's orbit. But the most significant effect is on navigation.

The study "revealed that space hurricanes can trigger significant ionospheric irregularities," Xing said, which can impact GPS signals. The signals "passing through the storm's outer regions were affected by phase scintillation, a kind of 'twinkling' that occurs when plasma turbulence interferes with radio signals," said Space.com. This may lead to reduced accuracy and reliability of navigation systems.

There is still more research to be done on the effects of space hurricanes. The study's researchers "plan to perform event-specific and statistical analyses of a larger number of events from the space hurricane database," said the study. The aim is to "quantitatively assess their impacts on the polar ionospheric environment." There are likely a lot more storms to examine, too. Other studies have "revealed that these storms are not only more frequent than previously thought, but also occur in both hemispheres — typically during the summer months and possibly up to 10 times a year," said Live Science.

What happened

Rabbits with black, hornlike spikes growing on their heads and other odd or unslightly protuberances are not dangerous and won't infect humans or other species, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said Wednesday, following days of social media posts about sightings of "Frankenstein bunnies," "demon rabbits" and "zombie rabbits" in and around Fort Collins.

Who said what

Rabbits with "wart-like growths" protruding from their faces "like metastasizing horns" may "seem straight out of a low-budget horror film," but they are just infected with the "mostly harmless" Shope papilloma virus, The Associated Press said. The "relatively common" virus, discovered in 1930, has "contributed to scientists' knowledge about the connection between viruses and cancer" and also "likely influenced the centuries-old jackalope myth in North America."

Coloradans are "so used to seeing rabbits, so they're like, 'Oh my god, what is that on its face?'" Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Kara Van Hoose told The New York Times. There is no cure, but the growths don't harm the rabbits unless they spread to the eyes or mouth and interfere with eating, she said, and they typically disappear after the infected animal's immune system kicks in.

What next?

People should avoid feeding or interacting with infected rabbits, especially if they have pet bunnies, but they can appreciate them from a distance, Van Hoose said. "Nature is metal," and "this can be kind of cool-looking on different rabbits."

If you want to know where the next nuclear reactor is being built, you may have to look up at the stars. Transportation Secretary and interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy is moving forward with a plan to construct nuclear reactors on the moon in the hopes of expanding American influence in outer space. But this may be easier said than done, thanks to the government itself, as NASA is facing significant budget cuts courtesy of the Trump administration. This could make the agency's nuclear goals difficult.

What did the commentators say?

The White House claims that the nuclear reactor project "could help accelerate U.S. efforts to reach the moon and Mars — a goal that China is also pursuing," and the "plans align with the Trump administration's focus on crewed spaceflight," said Politico, which first reported the news. It is "about winning the second space race," a NASA official told the outlet. "Let's start to deploy our technology, to move to actually make this a reality," Duffy said in a press conference.

Nuclear technology on the moon would "transform the ability of humanity to travel and live in the solar system," said The New York Times. A single lunar day is the equivalent of four weeks on Earth and cycles between two weeks of sunshine and two weeks of darkness. This "harsh cycle makes it difficult for a spacecraft or a moon base to survive with just solar panels and batteries," making nuclear power an attractive option. A "reactor would be useful for long-term stays on the moon, especially during the two-week-long nights."

Putting a "reactor on the lunar surface to help power moon exploration efforts would keep the United States ahead of China and Russia," said CNN. Both of these nations have announced similar nuclear projects, and if either of these countries managed to "achieve this feat first, it could declare a 'keep-out zone'" that "would effectively hold the U.S. back from its goal of establishing a presence on the lunar surface."

The plans for a lunar nuclear reactor aren't entirely new, as NASA has been considering them for a long time. But the administration's directive could "accelerate NASA's long-simmering — and, to date, largely fruitless — efforts to develop nuclear reactors to support space science and exploration," said Scientific American.

What next?

Duffy said NASA wants a 100-kilowatt reactor on the moon by 2030. However, questions remain about its viability, especially given recent actions by the Trump administration. While the White House has "proposed a budget that would increase human spaceflight funds," at the same time it "advocates for major slashes to other programs — including a nearly 50% cut for science missions," said Politico.

NASA had "previously funded research into a 40-kilowatt reactor for use on the moon," but this research is unlikely to move forward given current budget cuts by the Trump administration. The agency also "plans to award at least two companies a contract within six months of the agency's request for proposals," meaning the nuclear reactor initiative could move forward regardless.

This is "on-brand for America," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to "CBS Mornings." What is "not on-brand is to cut science programs, not only in NASA but across the board, and then say, 'We want to excel in this one spot.'" For the U.S. "to say, 'Let's cherry-pick where we want to show the world where we're the best,' you can't really do that."

What happened

Researchers at Harvard Medical School reported Wednesday that the depletion of lithium in the brain appears to play a significant role in the development of Alzheimer's disease. The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, open up possibilities for new treatments using small amounts of the common metal, found in several foods and drinking water.

Who said what

The Harvard study could be the "holy grail that prevents and even reverses Alzheimer's," The Boston Globe said. Feeding a small dose of lithium orotate to lithium-deprived "aging mice" with fading memories "actually reverted their memory to the young adult, six-month level," study leader Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology, told The Washington Post. "It seems to somehow turn back the clock," he told the Globe.

Yankner's team found that lithium was the only trace metal significantly depleted in the brains of people with early-stage memory loss, bolstering previous studies that tied lithium to lower dementia rates. Genetics and lifestyle also play a role in Alzheimer's, said MIT neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, but Yankner's "very exciting" study "provides a very important piece of the puzzle."

What next?

"The obvious impact is that because lithium orotate is dirt cheap, hopefully we will get rigorous, randomized trials testing this very, very quickly," Matt Kaeberlein, a University of Washington expert on the biology of aging, told the Post. Yankner said that in his lab, the Trump administration's freeze on federal funding to Harvard "will significantly limit our progress going forward."

Archaeologists have been excavating Israel's Tinshemet Cave for nearly a decade, but a recent discovery in the cave is getting attention for what it reveals about human behavior. Experts hope the uncovering of a primitive burial ground will shed new light on how early humans honored their dead and how those rituals persist today.

What did archaeologists find in the cave?

The discovery was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior in March but only gained traction in the news several months later. At the cave, located in the hills of central Israel, archaeologists found what is believed to be "one of the oldest burial sites in the world," where the "well-preserved remains of early humans dating back some 100,000 years were carefully arranged in pits," said The Associated Press.

Archaeologists have found human remains at the cave before, some even older than 100,000 years. But this latest discovery is notable because of "objects found beside the remains that may have been used during ceremonies to honor the dead," said the AP, which could illuminate "how our ancient ancestors thought about spirituality and the afterlife."

Objects found at the burial grounds include "basalt pebbles, animal remains or fragments of ochre, a reddish pigment made from iron-rich rocks," said The Jerusalem Post. Many of these objects had "no known practical use for daily life, suggesting they were part of rituals meant to honor the dead." The remains themselves were also well-preserved, and one was in "such good condition that archaeologists could observe how the fingers were interwoven."

Why is this important?

The discovery is "reshaping our understanding of human interactions during the Middle Paleolithic period," said the American Friends of the Hebrew University in a press release. It can "suggest the presence of shared rituals and strong communal bonds," which could share direct links to the funerary practices of today.

Leaders of the excavation have underscored the importance of the find. It is an "amazing revolutionary innovation for our species," said Yossi Zaidner, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the excavation directors, to the AP. While early humans were known to bury their dead, this burial ground is evidence of the "first time we are starting to use this behavior."

The burial findings are also "bolstering earlier discoveries from two similar burial sites dating to the same period in northern Israel," said Christian Tryon, a professor at the University of Connecticut, to the AP. These caves were excavated 100 years ago and 50 years ago, respectively, so there are "many uncertainties with those sites, but this is confirming it's a pattern we know, and they're really nailing down the dates."

Mysteries still remain, however, and it will "take many more years to fully excavate the site," said Newsweek. This is because archaeologists must use "hand chisels and pen-sized pneumatic drills resembling dental tools" to preserve the cave. But as more of the cave is excavated, researchers "hope to deepen their understanding of how and when early humans began treating death with ritual, symbolism and meaning."

What happened

Researchers said Monday that a bacteria related to cholera was responsible for the deaths of more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific Coast of North America since 2013. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, appears to solve a mystery that baffled marine biologists for more than a decade.

Who said what

Entire sea star colonies fell victim to the wasting disease, which starts with "writhing arms" falling off the starfish before skin lesions form and "internal organs ooze out from the inside," leaving "nothing more than a puddle of goo," The Washington Post said. "It’s really quite gruesome," said study co-author Alyssa Gehman, a marine disease ecologist at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, to The Associated Press.
The disease devastated more than 20 species of sea stars, but the scientists focused their research on the worst-hit, the sunflower sea star, whose numbers have plummeted by more than 90%. They determined the culprit was the Vibrio pectenicida bacteria after four years of experiments. An earlier study had attributed the epidemic to a virus, one of "many false leads and twists and turns" in the quest to isolate the pathogen, the AP said.

What next?

"Now that scientists know the cause," the AP said, they have a "better shot" at successful intervention. The "ultimate goal," said the Post, is to "breed a galaxy of disease-resistant starfish and restore the ecosystems in which they live," primarily through the sea stars eating the kelp-destroying sea urchins that thrived in their absence.

What happened

A Chinese-led team of researchers exploring 9.5 kilometers (31,000 feet) below sea level in the northwest Pacific Ocean discovered "thriving communities" of tubeworms, mollusks and other creatures living in some of the ocean's deepest trenches, as reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. Traveling in a submersible called Fendouzhe for hours at a time, the international team covered 1,500 miles of the little-explored Kuril–Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches over 40 days last summer.

Who said what

It's "exciting" to "go to a place that human beings have not explored," study co-author Xiaotong Peng told the BBC. "And what we saw was quite amazing." The researchers photographed and filmed beds of clams and "dense clusters of tubeworms with tentacles tinged bloodred" being scaled by "iridescent snails" as "bristly, white creatures" wriggled between them "like rush-hour commuters," The Washington Post said. Some of them are believed to be unknown species.

The existence of these creatures, living in the frigid, pitch-black waters under high pressure, challenges "long-standing assumptions about life's potential at extreme depths," the authors said. They posited that the trench-dwelling invertebrates survived off the chemosynthesis of near-freezing methane and hydrogen sulfide seeping from the ocean floor.

What next?

Future studies will "focus on how these deep-sea creatures adapted to survive in such extreme conditions and how exactly they harness chemical reactions for food," The Associated Press said. "They must have some trick, or they must have some unique metabolic pathway, to adapt to the high pressure," said study co-author Mengran Du.

A pioneering new drug that could eventually help people regrow missing or damaged teeth has begun clinical trials in Japan.

If successful, the "groundbreaking medication" may be a "game-changer for the entire field of dentistry", said Japanese daily The Mainichi.

'A third set'

Unlike many species such as reptiles and fish, humans grow only two sets of teeth in their lifetime: the first as a baby and then a second permanent set for adulthood. The premise of the new drug is that "humans once had the ability to grow a third set" and "still possess the buds" necessary to regrow them, reported Discover Magazine.

The team, led by Katsu Takahashi, head of the dentistry and oral surgery department at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, identified a protein called USAG-1 which was found to limit tooth growth. A new antibody medicine that blocked the protein's function was tested on mice in 2018, with hugely encouraging results.

A trial is now under way to test whether the drug is safe and effective for use on humans. It will initially be aimed at treating children aged two to six with anodontia, a hereditary condition believed to affect around 0.1% of people, which causes wide gaps between teeth that make it hard to chew food. Researchers hope to roll the drug out to the wider public by 2030.

'Filling in the gaps'

Nearly 7% of people over the age of 20 worldwide have lost all their teeth, rising to 23% of those over 60, according to the World Health Organization. For these people, right now the "options are pretty much the same as they have been for millennia: artificial replacement", said New Scientist. But "it turns out there are a few ways to successfully regrow a lost tooth".

One method, developed at Tufts University, Massachusetts, uses a cotton wool-like "scaffold" to seed a mix of dental cells from humans and pigs, reported the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. Cultivated in a lab, these could be implanted to fill a gap left by a lost tooth "within 20 years", said The Telegraph.

Another method involves trying to trick cells into behaving like embryonic stem cells. In 2023, scientists from the University of Washington School of Dentistry succeeded in creating proteins that form dental enamel. Professor Hai Zhang, co-author of the study, called this a "critical first step" in the development of stem cell-based dental treatments, said science news website EurekAlert!.

Earlier this year, scientists from King's College London managed to grow a tooth under laboratory conditions. Xuechen Zhang, a final-year PhD student at the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences, said lab-grown teeth "would naturally regenerate, integrating into the jaw" in the same way as real teeth. "They would be stronger, longer lasting, and free from rejection risks, offering a more durable and biologically compatible solution than fillings or implants."

Although this breakthrough may still be a "long way from filling in the gaps in anyone's mouth, researchers say it is filling in the gaps in research", reported the BBC.

The mystery of how life on Earth originated , and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe, are "the raison d’être of space exploration", said Louis Friedman, co-founder of the Planetary Society.

The answer, he wrote in The Washington Post, "might be in one of the test tubes now sitting on Mars". But the samples, collected by Nasa's Perseverance rover, "seem doomed to endlessly wait for no answer" – because Donald Trump is cancelling the mission to bring them home.

'Crowning achievement' of Mars exploration

Since Perseverance touched down on the Red Planet in February 2021, the "car-sized, nuclear-powered robot" has been gathering samples for delivery to Earth, where "close-up inspection" might provide "the first compelling evidence of life beyond Earth", said Scientific American.

This programme, a collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency known as Mars Sample Return (MSR), is the "crowning achievement" of half a century of Mars exploration, the product of decades of planning and "many billions of dollars".

Unless, that is, "the Trump administration gets its way". The US president's recent "budgetary bombshell" proposed to cut Nasa's funding by a quarter and "entirely eliminate MSR", which the White House claimed was "grossly over-budget". The samples, it said, would be collected by "human missions to Mars". That is "nonsense on several levels", said Scott Hubbard, Stanford University scientist and Nasa's inaugural Mars program director. "I know of no credible 'humans to Mars' scenario that is earlier than 2039 or 2040."

It's true that "multiple independent reviews" of MSR have mentioned its "swelling price tag and slipping schedule", said Scientific American. One 2023 Nasa review estimated that the project would cost up to $11 billion (£8 billion), comparable with the James Webb Space Telescope – the most expensive astronomy project in history. But "any remotely realistic plan for a crewed Mars mission would be far more expensive".

Whether or not the European Space Agency can retrieve the MSR samples without Nasa is unclear, but a statement issued in response to Trump's proposed budget "carefully emphasises the importance of US-European cooperation in space activities".

'Strong indications' of life beyond Earth

Finding out whether the dozens of samples show evidence of life will require sophisticated equipment and "hundreds of chemical experiments", said Friedman. But these samples have been "carefully selected in potentially habitable regions"; at least one has "strong indications of past microbial life".

The answers to how life began could also "advance" fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, communications, synthetic biology, chemistry, and more. Which is why China and India are pursuing similar missions: China is planning to retrieve samples from Mars in 2028, which would make it "the first country to return potentially biologically active planetary material – including potential life forms – from beyond Earth", said Space.com.

"By abandoning return of Mars samples to other nations, the US abandons the preeminent role that JFK ascribed to the scientific exploration of space" in his 1962 Rice University speech, said the 2023 Nasa independent review of the project. In his speech, entitled "We Choose to go to the Moon", Kennedy said "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people."

"We do have to be a little bit honest and say that, to many, it seems like left-leaning atheists have a monopoly on science," said Ella Al-Shamahi, presenter of the BBC's new series Human, in The Sunday Times. Al-Shamahi describes her politics as "definitely left-wing" but believes including more religious and right-wing biases in science will lead to better outcomes.

Her words are a "rare admission of a well-known development" said The Spectator. "They confirm what many have come to recognise: science as presented to the public has taken a decidedly left-wing turn in recent years, and in many cases has been contaminated by hyper-liberal ideology."

Finding common ground

The head of one of the world's largest biomedical funders agrees. John-Arne Røttingen, chief executive of Wellcome UK, told Research Professional News that the scientific community had a "responsibility" to demonstrate why research matters to people who are not politically left-leaning. With a clear reference to what is happening to academic funding in the US, he said that greater transparency over decisions was needed to "sustain the political will to fund science".

The response to a left-wing bias within the scientific community – real or imagined – has been an "unprecedented assault" by the Trump administration on institutions and those who work in them, said Byline Times. US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has threatened to ban government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals. Such "orchestrated attacks" are a threat to the bedrock of "evidence-based policy-making and scientific progress". Funding has been cut, climate research buried and "public health is in jeopardy".

The US is "not the first country to try to dictate the kind of science that can be done within its borders", said Nature. Neither will it be the last. But with regards to its "national and global impact, the United States stands apart."

Rebuilding trust

America is in the midst of an "epistemological crisis", said New York Magazine, and one "most visible and most urgent in the realms of health and medicine". Concerns like "vaccines and fluoridation, nutrition and the chronic-disease epidemic, whether and how to fund cancer research" are now central to a divided debate not just about "what's right but about what is real" when previously they would have been "contested at the fringes of politics without clear ideological valence".

A recent Kaiser poll found nearly one in four Americans report having "not too much or no confidence at all" that scientists operate with the best interests of the public in mind. Nearly half think scientists should play less of a role in policy debates. This matters, said Al-Shamahi, because "if you can't demonstrate that scientists and research labs don't belong to just one tribe, then suddenly it doesn't become a priority to fund them".

Canvasing academics and experts as to a possible solution, The Times said "many researchers want their work to change the world for the better", but need to watch when using their results to "support or call for particular political policies, as this could damage trust in their neutrality".

"There's a role for scientists as political advocates, and I respect that," Jim Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford, told the paper. "But once you take your lab coat off and argue for a political objective, you enter an arena that's played by political rules." In today's realm, you can't then "put the lab coat back on and say, 'I'm neutral and above the political fray'".

Humans will likely go extinct eventually, leaving behind a planet that has to adjust in their wake. While there is no true consensus as to what a human-free world will look like, there are a number of theories.

What will the Earth look like?

It is most likely that humans will be the cause of their own demise. "While there's a chance our species can survive the effects of climate change, it looks increasingly likely that we and many other living things will go extinct," said JV Chamary at the BBC. While warmer surface and ocean temperatures will affect biodiversity long into the future, without humans, an ice age could hit the planet. "Climate change may have postponed the next Ice Age, which could occur within 100,000 years," said the BBC.

The dregs of humanity, however, will likely stick around for a while. Humans "would leave mountains of waste that would persist for thousands of years, poisoning, trapping, cutting and harming other species in numerous ways," said The Spectator. The wooden houses and buildings left behind, though, would be "destroyed by termites, and creepers would grow through the cracks, causing the wood to rot and eventually collapse," said Science ABC. Concrete structures, on the other hand, would "deteriorate due to extreme weather conditions, leading to their eventual collapse."

What would happen to other species?

It's no secret that humans have a significant impact on the entire planet, essentially living and operating on every corner of the world. As such, their disappearance would have major effects on many other animals. "Natural selection will drive some populations to split into distinct species" to "exploit vacant ecological niches," said the BBC. "This 'adaptive radiation' is why mammals diversified after dinosaurs died out." Farm animals would be "easy prey for bears, coyotes, wolves and panthers," said Carlton Basmajian, an associate professor of urban design at Iowa State University, at The Conversation. "The cats would go feral — that is, they would become wild, though many would be preyed upon by larger animals. Most dogs wouldn't survive, either."

Perhaps a new dominant species could take control. Some experts have suggested that the octopus could become the next big species after humans because of its potential for "filling an ecological niche in a post-human world," said Tim Coulson, an Oxford University biologist, at The European. Other primates, birds, fish and even insects are potential apex species as well. Much of how the world will look depends on the world that humans leave behind. If an ice age came to fruition, for example, larger animals would be evolutionarily favored.

How would the Earth recover?

While the Earth would go through turmoil in the immediate aftermath of human extinction, "in a thousand years, the world you remember would still be vaguely recognizable," said Basmajian. "Some things would remain; it would depend on the materials they were made of, the climate they're in and just plain luck." Chances are, the loss of humans will prove to be a positive for nature. For example, air pollution improved during the Covid-19 pandemic due to protocols during the lockdown. However, there are many still many variables, such as "when the mass extinction occurs, the power of technology at that time, the probability of wide-scale explosions and unforeseen climate changes, that impact what the outcome would be and how long it would take," said the Spectator.

Based on what is known about previous mass extinctions, "we often see biodiversity recovering after major mass extinctions within roughly 2-5 million years," said Erin Saupe, a palaeobiologist at Oxford University, to the BBC. But "recovery can take longer for the most severe environmental perturbations."

Ultimately, the extinction of humans "would reveal something about the way we treated the Earth," said Basmajian. "It would also show us that the world we have today can't survive without us and that we can't survive if we don't care for it. To keep it working, civilization, like anything else, requires constant upkeep."

The concept of the alpha male isn't standing up to reality. A large majority of primate communities have shared dominance, meaning either sex can come out on top. And though the idea of male dominance has been disseminated across society, humans share many traits with non-male-dominated species.

Not all males

Primate societies in which males "win nearly all aggressive encounters against females are actually rare," according to a study published in the journal PNAS. The study found that in 70% of the studied populations, there were moderate sex biases, signifying both males and females could hold dominance. There was, in addition, male dominance in 17% of primate societies and female dominance in 13%. Male dominance is "not a baseline, as was implicitly thought for a long time in primatology," said Élise Huchard, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Montpellier in France and coauthor of the study, to The Washington Post.

In instances where males or females dominate, it's circumstantial. Female dominance is mainly observed in species where females are "monogamous or similar in size to males" and where "females control reproduction" and decide "when and with whom to mate," said El País. Male dominance occurs where males are "larger, groups are terrestrial and many females mate with multiple males."

Only 30% of the studied populations show a specific sex holding dominance. "Strict male dominance" is "really a minority of systems," Huchard said to the BBC. "We didn't expect it to be a majority because we already knew the literature quite well," but "under 20%" is "probably smaller than what we would have expected."

Social systems

The concept of the "alpha male" originated from a book about wolf ecology from 1970. The author of the book later said the text made inaccurate claims. Even though the idea was disproved, the alpha male concept began being applied to other animal species and also to humans.

The belief that males are inherently dominant is likely because researchers "often projected their own biases and expectations onto animal behavior," said El País. "It's difficult, even for scientists, to free themselves from their subjectivity, as we are also influenced by the society in which we live," said Huchard.

The concept of men dominating women has pervaded culture and politics, and many describe themselves as alpha males. Still, there's "scant evidence to support the theory that sex-based inequities in humans originated from our primate relatives," said the Post. Rather, "humans share traits such as monogamy with groups of primates that don't exhibit clear male dominance." The dynamics seen in most of the primate communities "corroborate quite well with what we know about male-female relationships among hunter-gatherers, which were more egalitarian than in the agricultural societies that emerged later," Huchard said to AFP.

"When we think about power in animals as more than just who is biggest or baddest, when we recognize economic forms of power, such as the leverage that females derive from controlling reproduction, we find a wonderfully complex landscape of power," said Rebecca Lewis, a biological anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, to the Post. The research is an "important step forward in our understanding of which selective pressures lead to inequality between the sexes."

Colossal Biosciences is working on bringing back a long-dormant animal, and it has found a partner to help. The genetics company is teaming up with "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson to resurrect an animal resembling the giant moa, an extinct species native to New Zealand that died out about 600 years ago. Colossal is the same company that made waves in April for resurrecting wolves with the genetic properties of the extinct dire wolf. As with that case, however, there is more to this "de-extinction" than meets the eye.

'Working diligently'

Jackson seems like a natural teammate on the project for Colossal, as the acclaimed filmmaker "owns one of the largest private collections of bones" of the giant moa and has long had a "fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird," said The Associated Press. Colossal will begin working to resurrect a giant moa-type animal using $15 million in funding from Jackson.

As a native New Zealander, Jackson has long been working on conservation projects for the country's species. The giant moa in particular "remains a symbol for the people of the South Island and its potential resurrection fits within the country's many ongoing conservation efforts," said USA Today. With the "recent resurrection of the dire wolf, Colossal has also made real the possibility of bringing back lost species," Jackson said in a press release. The Colossal team is "working diligently towards bringing back" extinct animals that "hitherto only lived in our imaginations."

Skepticism remains

It is unclear how far the company will get in recreating the giant moa. Colossal undergoes "efforts to create animals with the attributes of species that have died off," said Rolling Stone, as it did with the dire wolf. When the company undertook this project, it "brought back" dire wolves by "editing parts of genomes sequenced from ancient DNA fragments into the genome of gray wolves, giving them dire wolf attributes."

This led to some in the scientific community criticizing Colossal for claiming it had made the dire wolf "de-extinct," noting that they "weren't actually dire wolves, just genetically-modified gray wolves with a stellar PR team," said Rolling Stone. It appears that a similar process will be undertaken for the giant moa, as Colossal has "created a genome of the tinamou, thought to be the closest living relative of the moa," said USA Today. But before the project can continue, Colossal must "identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA," said the AP.

And while the dire wolf project involved implanting DNA from fossils into a domestic dog, the process with "extinct moa is harder since the incubating will be done outside the body, inside an egg," said Time. And if Colossal accomplishes this, it will be successful not in creating an actual giant moa, but in "creating a tall bird with huge feet and thick pointed claws resembling the moa," said the AP.

Despite the controversy, officials at Colossal remain optimistic about their "de-extinction" efforts. The company has previously pushed back against criticism that its dire wolves weren't really dire wolves because the animals have similar genetic attributes, and would likely take a similar stance about the giant moa. As Colossal Chief Science Officer Beth Shapiro previously told Rolling Stone, "If it looks like a dire wolf and it acts like a dire wolf, I'm gonna call it a dire wolf."

Some tomatoes have evolved to possess the characteristics of their ancestors. While it is rare, there have been instances of species displaying traits from further back in evolution. But for the first time, scientists have now been able to prove it through genetic evidence. And there's potential for similar evolutionary changes in the future as the environment changes, even in humans.

Blast from the past

Wild tomatoes on the Galápagos Islands are using chemical defenses that are reminiscent of their ancestors, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. The flowering plants have "quietly started making a toxic molecular cocktail that hasn't been seen in millions of years, one that resembles compounds found in eggplant, not the modern tomato," said scientists in a statement about the study.

Tomatoes are nightshades, like potatoes and eggplants, and nightshades produce alkaloids, which are "bitter toxins that protect the plants against predation," said the BBC. Researchers discovered that tomatoes "on the older eastern islands produced alkaloids found in modern cultivated tomatoes," while tomato plants "on the younger western isles were making unique alkaloids." And the latter alkaloids were largely produced by ancestral tomatoes.

"Some people don't believe in this," said Adam Jozwiak, a molecular biochemist at the University of California, Riverside, and the lead author of the study, in the statement. But the "genetic and chemical evidence points to a return to an ancestral state. The mechanism is there. It happened."

Researchers deemed the phenomenon a possible case of "reverse evolution." Usually, evolution "moves forward, adapting organisms to current conditions," said Earth.com. The "idea that it can loop back and restore long-lost traits isn't just controversial — it's considered highly unlikely."

The case of the tomatoes is especially interesting, as the plants developed the ancestral trait using the same genetic route the ancestral plants did. The researchers pinpointed a specific enzyme responsible for the tomatoes' alkaloid production and "confirmed its ancient roots," said ScienceAlert. Species can sometimes "re-acquire features similar to those of their ancestors," said the statement, but "doing so through the exact same genetic pathways is rare and difficult to prove."

Back to the future

Reverting to an ancestral genetic trait could be a response to the harsh Galápagos environment. "The plants may be responding to an environment that more closely resembles what their ancestors faced," Jozwiak said to the BBC. The geography supports that claim. The eastern islands are "biologically diverse and more stable. Here, the tomatoes "produced modern alkaloids," said IFLScience. On the other hand, the western islands, where the plants are producing the ancient alkaloids, are "younger, the landscape is more barren, and the soil less developed."

This phenomenon may not be exclusive to tomatoes. It has also been seen in snakes, fish and bacteria, though it's "rarely this clear or this chemically precise," said the statement.

This looks like evolution is "going backward." But what it really shows is the "amazing flexibility of evolutionary processes," said the BBC. And given the reality of climate change, other species may eventually go through similar processes. "I think it could happen to humans," said Jozwiak. "It wouldn't happen in a year or two but over time, maybe, if environmental conditions change enough."

As scientific research opportunities are increasingly at risk, the U.S. is creating refugees of science. Instead of sticking around and remaining worried about their U.S. jobs, scientists are turning to international institutions to create new opportunities for themselves without fear of the Trump administration.

Background

President Donald Trump halted research funding in several disciplines, leaving many scientists stranded. "Federal science budgets have been slashed," said The New York Times. "Stricter immigration policies have spread fear among international scientists working in the United States, and those who had hoped to. Graduate and postdoctoral students have had their visas canceled, or worry they will." This has created a scientific "brain drain" in the U.S.

Trump has severely curtailed research involving diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as climate and biomedical research. As a result, 75% of scientists have considered leaving the U.S. to pursue scientific opportunities elsewhere, according to a poll taken by the scientific journal Nature.

The latest

Where one door closes, another one opens. Scientists who have felt abandoned in the U.S. are being courted by institutions across the world. Aix-Marseille University (AMU), located in France, "introduced eight U.S.-based researchers who were in the final stage of joining the institution's 'Safe Place for Science' program, which aims to woo researchers who have experienced or fear funding cuts under the Trump administration," said Politico. The program has received close to 300 applications from some of the top institutions in the U.S.

Despite AMU not being a well-known university outside of France, the program has still drawn significant attention from American scientists. "Moving to a new country where English is not the official language is a big step," said Politico. "There's also the issue of salaries, which are lower for academics in France than in the United States, and the fact that there's less money for research." However, the "principle of academic freedom, as well as the entire system of research and higher education in the United States, is really under attack," said Brian Sandberg, a history professor at Northern Illinois University who applied to the program, to AFP.

The reaction

The scientific refugees of the Trump administration provide an opportunity for other countries. "With France even considering a scientific refugee status as a result of the U.S. exodus, the country is laying the groundwork to capture that talent," said Monocle. "While the U.S. shoots itself in the foot, Europe might receive a shot in the arm." Other countries are also looking to acquire U.S. scientists. Several Chinese universities are "aggressively recruiting Chinese undergraduates abroad to skip traditional academic pathways and enroll directly into PhD programs," said the South China Morning Post.

There are also new scientific refugees in the making. Trump's "big, beautiful bill" calls for a 56% cut to the National Science Foundation budget and a 73% reduction in staff and fellowships. It also cuts resources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture and U.S. Geological Service. There is a "whole generation of young scientists who see no pathway into the field for them," said Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist at the University of Maine, to The Guardian. "I cannot stress enough how deeply upsetting and demoralizing these cuts are to a community of people who only ever wanted to solve problems and be of use."

Mice with two fathers have, for the first time, gone on to have babies of their own, showing that mice created with two sperm cells can be healthy and fertile – and paving the way to a future in which two men may be able to have a genetically related child.

There are huge barriers to overcome before this could become a reality for humans, but the mouse breakthrough, led by Yanchang Wei at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and published in PNAS, is significant: previous attempts, using a different method, weren't able to produce mice that were healthy or fertile.

How did they create mice with two dads?

The scientists put two mouse sperm cells into a mouse egg which had been emptied of its nucleus (where the maternal DNA is contained). Then they used a method called epigenome editing to "reprogramme" parts of the sperm DNA so that it could develop into an embryo. The embryo was then placed into the uterus of a surrogate mouse mother.

The method produced three living pups, two of which grew to adulthood and were able to mate successfully. However, the process was far from efficient: those two mice were the only ones to survive from the 259 embryos transferred to female surrogates. That's a 0.8% success rate.

What are the scientists trying to achieve?

Unlike previous experiments, which involved genetic modification and deleting sections of DNA, the new epigenome editing method doesn't modify genes but instead controls their activity.

This means it can overcome the issue of genetic imprinting. During the formation of eggs and sperm, imprints (a set of chemical labels) are added to the chromosomes which "pre-programme" some genes to be active and others to be inactive. These imprints are different in maternal chromosomes and paternal chromosomes, and affect development in different ways. So combining genetic material from two parents of the same sex can produce unviable offspring.

In 2004, scientists were able to overcome this genetic imprinting issue to produce embryos from the DNA of two female mice, but achieving the same with two male mice has been much more complicated.

Wei's epigenome editing method allowed his team to target the imprints, adding or removing the chemical labels to reprogramme the genes, rather than modifying the genes themselves.

Can it ever be used on humans?

In theory, yes. The epigenome editing method shows that genetic imprinting can be overcome – and it's a more acceptable method to use on humans than genetic modification (the effects of which are not yet fully understood).

But there are unlikely to be any children born to two fathers in the foreseeable future. Human embryo research is heavily regulated, and the success rate of this research so far is extremely poor.

The new research is "promising", Christophe Galichet at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre told the New Scientist, but it is currently "unthinkable to translate it to humans" because of the "large number of eggs required, the high number of surrogate women needed and the low success rate".

Tylenol could potentially be made greener and cheaper with the help of bacteria. Scientists were able to use a bacterial chemical reaction to convert a plastic water bottle into paracetamol with no environmental strain. This development could alter the way drugs are produced and provide a much-needed solution to the plastic pollution problem.

Plastic pills

The bacteria Escherichia coli or E.coli, common in the gut microbiome, can be used to break down plastic into paracetamol, according to a study published in the journal Nature Chemistry. Paracetamol, or acetaminophen, is the main active ingredient in the painkiller Tylenol. It is generally produced using fossil fuels, namely crude oil, which has been known to worsen climate change. But "by merging chemistry and biology in this way for the first time, we can make paracetamol more sustainably and clean up plastic waste from the environment at the same time," said Stephen Wallace, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and the lead author of the study, to The Guardian.

The researchers triggered a chemical reaction in E.coli known as the Lossen rearrangement that "until now had only been observed in test tubes," said Spanish newspaper El País. The E.coli was genetically modified to be able to break down polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic used in food packaging and bottles, and ultimately produce paracetamol. This process can occur at room temperature and produces no carbon emissions. "It enables, for the first time, a pathway from plastic waste to paracetamol, which is not possible using biology alone, and it's not possible using chemistry alone," Wallace said to Science News.

Break it down

While it will take time before the painkiller can be widely produced using this method, "this could mark part of a broader shift toward more sustainable, biology-based manufacturing practices, both in the pharmaceutical industry and in plastic recycling," El País said. Plastic waste has been known to harm the environment and can pollute waterways and leach chemicals into the ecosystem. Microplastics have also been found almost everywhere on Earth and in our bodies. "I genuinely think this is quite an exciting sort of starting point for plastic waste upcycling," Wallace said.

PET plastic "creates more than 350 million tons of waste annually," said a news release about the study. While PET recycling is possible, "existing processes create products that continue to contribute to plastic pollution worldwide." This research could be the solution to the pollution. The study's findings indicate that "PET plastic isn't just waste or a material destined to become more plastic," Wallace said in the release. "It can be transformed by microorganisms into valuable new products, including those with potential for treating disease."

This is not the first time bacteria have been used to break down plastic, and it likely will not be the last. However, the ability to create medicine from plastic introduces a fresh area of research. "Based on what we've seen, it's highly likely that many — or even most — bacteria can perform these kinds of transmutations," Wallace said. "This opens up a whole new way of thinking about how we might use microbes as tiny chemical factories."

Could humans be capable of growing new limbs? Scientists are trying to figure that out with the aid of an unexpected resource: salamanders. Research shows that the amphibians' regeneration abilities come from mechanisms that humans could also potentially access. This would open the door to a new understanding of human genes and their capabilities.

Going up in arms

Salamanders famously have the ability to regrow their limbs, but "one of the outstanding questions that has really plagued the field is how a salamander knows what to grow," said James Monaghan, a Northeastern University biologist, to The Washington Post. At long last, researchers have gotten some answers thanks to a study led by Monaghan and published in the journal Nature Communications.

The study examined the aquatic salamander, or axolotl. "This species is special," said Monaghan to the Post. They have "really become the champion of some extreme abilities that animals have." The axolotl is considered a "comeback king" because it is "able to regrow not only lost limbs but also tissue in the heart, lungs and even the brain," said the Post. The key to these abilities lies in retinoic acid. Found in retinol acne and anti-aging treatments, the substance is "responsible for signaling what body parts an axolotl's injured cells should regenerate — and how," said CNN.

But that was only half of the story. "For years we've known that retinoic acid, a derivative of vitamin A, is a crucial molecule that screams to cells 'build a shoulder!'" Monaghan said to Wired. "But the puzzle was how the cells in the regenerating limb-stump controlled their levels so precisely to know exactly where they were on the axis from shoulder to hand." As it turns out, the answer was in the exact concentration of retinoic acid in the body.

"Higher concentrations of retinoic acid tell an axolotl's body to keep growing leg length, while lower concentrations signal it's time to sprout a foot," said Popular Science. "Too much retinoic acid, and a limb can grow back deformed and extra-long, with segments and joints not present in a well-formed leg, hampering an axolotl's ability to easily move." One enzyme in particular, CYP26b1, is responsible for setting the correct concentration of the acid.

Getting a leg up

Retinoic acid is "important in the development of human embryos too, telling the cells where to grow a head, heads and feet," CNN said. However, "for an unknown reason, most of our cells lose the ability to 'listen' to the molecule's regenerative cues while in utero." For that reason, people can grow limbs while in utero, but not out of it. The question remains as to whether humans could actually find a way to access those same genetic mechanisms after birth.

"We might not need to turn on thousands of genes or turn off thousands of genes or knock out genes," Monaghan said. "It might just be triggering the reprogramming of a cell into the proper state where it thinks it's an embryo." This may potentially be done using CRISPR, a technology that can modify the DNA of living organisms. "While we are still far from regenerating human limbs, this study is a step in that direction," said Prayag Murawala, an assistant professor at MDI Biological Laboratory in Maine, to the Post. "Better understanding of gene regulatory circuit is essential if we have to re-create this in humans."

What happened

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) Monday said she had ordered the state's public energy utility to build New York's first new nuclear power plant since 1989. The plant, to be constructed somewhere in upstate New York for an unknown cost, will produce at least a gigawatt of energy, enough to power a million homes. New York's three active nuclear plants produce 3.3 gigawatts, or about 20% of the state's power.

Who said what

Nuclear energy has "enjoyed a resurgence of interest from states and companies in recent years" due to its emissions-free power and ability to "run at all hours, unlike wind and solar," The New York Times said. But utilities have been "deterred by the high price tag." The country's two newest reactors, completed in Georgia last year, cost nearly $35 billion, more than double the initial estimate, and were finished seven years behind schedule.

Nuclear plants also create radioactive waste and can cause catastrophic damage if they fail, as happened in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. The new plant will be a "model of 21st century nuclear design with safety at the forefront," Hochul said. "This is not your grandparents' nuclear reactor."

What next?

Hochul said there is high interest in hosting the new upstate plant and the jobs it will provide. "Everybody is raising their hand right now," she said. "It's going to be hard to decide." The project will also "offer a practical assessment" of President Donald Trump's executive orders aiming to "accelerate development of nuclear-power projects," The Wall Street Journal said.

Five years removed from the onset of Covid-19's global sweep, research into another subset of the coronavirus has scientists worried about another possible pandemic. This virus originated in bats, as most scientists believe Covid-19 did, and for now, the research has stressed that it is unable to do much damage to humans. But a potential viral mutation may change that.

What is the virus?

The pathogen in question is HKU5, which is naturally found in the Japanese house bat. HKU5 is a subgroup of the merbecovirus, which is itself a subcategory of the coronavirus that causes diseases like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications examined a "scalable approach to assess novel merbecovirus cell entry across the entire merbecovirus subgenus," said the study's publication.

This marks a ramping up of research into HKU5, and what type of threat viruses like it could pose. In the "past two decades, scientists have cataloged the genetic sequences of thousands of viruses in wild animals," but in "most cases, little is known about whether these viruses pose a threat to humans," said the University of Washington, which helped spearhead the study.

Could HKU5 cause another pandemic?

While HKU5 in its current form is unlikely to infect humans, scientists say this could change if it were to mutate. Even though most merbecoviruses are "unlikely to have the capacity to infect humans, the HKU5 subgroup can," said Newsweek. The study found that HKU5 is able to "latch onto the ACE2 receptor on target cells." This is the same method that the coronavirus strain identified in 2019 uses to transmit Covid-19.

At the moment, HKU5 viruses are "only able to adequately exploit the ACE2 receptor in bats — and are far less proficient at latching onto those found on human cells," said Newsweek. Still, scientists have already identified potential mutations that "might allow the viruses to bind to the ACE2 receptors in other species, including humans."

HKU5 is similar to the type of merbecovirus that has caused a MERS outbreak since 2012, so there is legitimate cause for concern. HKU5 "may be only a small step away from being able to spill over into humans," Michael Letko, a virologist at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and author of the study, said in the university's press release.

While there is "no evidence they've crossed into people yet, the potential is there — and that makes them worth watching," Letko said of these viruses. This is why the study was "offering insights into mutations and potential treatments," and this "research highlights the importance of monitoring these viruses closely," said KAYU-TV Spokane.

Other researchers have downplayed the idea that HKU5 could ever make its way into humans. Chinese scientists first identified the strain in early 2025, and "there is no reason to believe it currently poses a concern to public health," a spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told CNN at the time. Even the "researchers themselves point out that this should not cause panic," Dr. Amira Roess, a global health professor at George Mason University, said to the outlet. Research "helps us understand what happens in the event that this does spill over and pose a risk. It's good to get ahead of that."

The moon is likely to become the next mining hot spot, as there may be extensive platinum and other metal deposits in its craters. Guidelines about resource mining on the moon are still not solidified, so this could lead to problems with more countries and private companies trying to stake their claim. But the potential for platinum could also entice private companies to invest more in space exploration.

Mine on the moon

There might be more than $1 trillion worth of platinum deposits on the moon, according to a paper published in the journal Planetary and Space Science. Of the 1.3 million craters on the moon with a diameter greater than one kilometer, "nearly 6,500 were made by asteroids containing commercial quantities of platinum," said New Scientist. This "highlights the potential viability and profitability of lunar mining endeavors compared to mining asteroids in orbit," said the paper.

Countries have already been involved in a modern space race to put humans back on the moon, and the profit potential could bring more interested parties. Nobody owns the moon because of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. But as the potential for resources becomes imminent, the rules are likely to change.

The treaty notably "leaves key questions unanswered," said Rebecca Connolly, an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Law School, to New Scientist. This includes "clarity on the rules and governance for ownership of extracted resources, commercial licensing rights, equitable benefits sharing, environment protection standards to avoid harm, and regulations for long-term occupation and permanent infrastructure on the moon."

To address some of the unknowns, NASA and the U.S. spearheaded the Artemis Accords in 2020. These "provide a common set of principles to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space," said NASA. Though the accords are nonbinding, 55 countries have signed on as of last month. Russia and China, two of the most proactive countries trying to reach the moon, have not signed on.

Exploration economics

A monetary incentive for reaching the moon could change space exploration as we know it. Astronomy is "done to satiate our curiosity," said Jayanth Chennamangalam, an astrophysicist and the lead author of the study, to New Scientist. It has "very few practical applications" and is "mostly paid for by taxpayer money." If we can "monetize space resources, be it on the moon or on asteroids, private enterprises will invest in the exploration of the solar system."

While that could lead to wider research being done, it could also lead to the exploitation of the moon. It was recently listed as a threatened historic site for this very reason. "Take one last good look at the moon tonight," Luis Prada said at Vice. "There might be a time when the moon is not so innocent and pretty anymore and you only see cynical corporate greed."

Scientists may have discovered a dwarf planet far beyond Neptune — an unearthing that may disprove a longstanding theory about the possibility of a giant ninth planet. The dwarf planet's existence also opens the likelihood of many more like it in our solar system waiting to be found.

A planet far, far away

A possible dwarf planet, like Pluto, has been observed in our solar system, according to a preprint published in arXiv. The area of space where this planet was found was previously thought empty. The potential planet, which has been temporarily called 2017 OF201, takes "more than 24,000 years to travel around the sun just once along a highly elliptical orbit, coming as close as 4.2 billion miles and moving as far out as 151 billion miles," said The New York Times. It is also about only 430 miles wide.

A dwarf planet is "classified as a celestial body that orbits the sun that has enough mass and gravity to be mostly round, but unlike other planets, has not cleared its orbital path of asteroids and other objects," said NBC News. Its discovery was "not very different from how Pluto was discovered," said Sihao Cheng, a member at the Institute for Advanced Study who led the research team for the study, to NBC News. "This project was really an adventure." Scientists studied archival data from the Blanco telescope in Chile and the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii and tracked 2017 OFF201's motion for seven years.

The potential dwarf planet may not be the only one. "The discovery of 2017 OF201 suggests a population behind it with hundreds of objects possessing similar properties because the probability for 2017 OF201 to be close enough and detectable is only 0.5% given its wide and eccentric orbit," said the preprint.

A world unknown

There has been a theory among scientists that there is a "huge and mysterious planet lurking in the darkness at the edge of our solar system, evading all our efforts to spot it," said CBS News. This potential planet has been called Planet Nine or Planet X. A potential ninth planet could "explain an unusual clustering of objects and other anomalies observed in the outer solar system." Celestial objects previously found beyond Neptune had unusual orbits, which "hinted that another large mass in the outer solar system was gravitationally pulling on the miniworld[s]," said Live Science.

However, rather than finding Planet Nine, researchers found 2017 OF201, which may disprove the Planet Nine theory. The researchers found that the dwarf planet's "orbit would remain stable for the next billion years or so — if there were no Planet Nine," said the Times. If there were one, that Planet Nine would "nudge the closest part of 2017 OF201's trajectory inward until Neptune flung it out of the solar system." Because 2017 OF201 is there, that could be an "argument that Planet Nine is not." Despite this, "people have considered a whole host of different orbits for these hypothetical planets," Chad Trujillo, an astronomer at Northern Arizona University, said to Science News. "This object being incompatible with one is not [detrimental] to Planet X."

Elon Musk has no shortage of targets for his animosity: the media, "woke" progressives, the trans "agenda" and, most recently, his former best buddy Donald Trump. But one less expected Musk adversary is more powerful than them all: the Sun.

SpaceX's vast network of Starlink internet service satellites are "dropping like flies", due to an extraterrestrial weather phenomenon caused by the Sun, said Futurism. And it's only set to get worse.

'Particularly prone' to early burn-up

The thousands of Starlink satellites orbiting our planet have given space scientists a "golden opportunity to study the effects" of the Sun's activity on the lifespan of these "minimalist, constellation-based spacecraft", said Futurism. And it appears that Musk's "space internet constellation" is "particularly prone to the effect of geomagnetic storms", triggered by eruptions from the Sun, said The Independent. These "ferocious solar storms", Nasa scientists have found, are causing many of Musk's low-orbit satellites to fall to Earth "faster than expected".

The impact is particularly significant at the moment because the Sun is approaching the peak of an 11-year activity cycle, "known as the solar maximum", which provokes "large amounts of extreme space weather".

The earlier than predicted satellite "re-entries" could "increase the chances of them not burning up properly in the Earth's atmosphere". and debris reaching the Earth. However, so far, the "only known instance" of this happening was in August 2024, when a piece of a Starlink satellite was discovered on a farm in Canada.

'Only so much can be done'

The solar storm problem threatens one of Musk's biggest power grabs to date. When his engineers "bundled a batch of prototype satellites into a rocket's nose cone six years ago, there were fewer than 2,000 functional satellites in Earth's orbit". Now more than 7,000 of his satellites now surround Earth, "like a cloud of gnats", said The Atlantic.

This is the most dominant any individual has been in the "orbital realm" since the late 1950s, when Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the Soviet engineer who developed Sputnik and its launch vehicle, was "the only guy in town" as far as satellites were concerned, space historian Jonathan McDowell told the magazine.

But the Sun is an adversary not even Musk can overcome. Solar storm forecasting "has significantly improved over the past few years", Piyush Mehta, a US professor of aerospace engineering, wrote on The Conversation in 2022 but "there is only so much shielding that can be done in the face of a powerful geomagnetic storm". The Sun is "essential for life to go on," he said, but, like a child who often throws tantrums, "its ever-changing disposition make things challenging".

Amanda Feilding – the future Countess of Wemyss and March – was a notable eccentric on London's bohemian social scene in the late 1960s and 1970s, said Tatler. One night in December 1970, when she was 27, she arrived at a party draped in a Moroccan kaftan, with her beloved pet pigeon Birdie perched on a shoulder; on her head, a silk turban; and in her forehead, a 4cm hole that she had bored herself earlier that day, using a pedal-operated dentist's drill.

She was an advocate of trepanning, an ancient practice that she thought would improve blood flow to the brain. She had prepared carefully for the surgery (even bringing a spare drill, which she needed as the first broke) and filmed it, for use in a documentary. "Heartbeat in the Brain" was so gruesome that at a screening, a reviewer reported that people fainted, "dropping off their seats like ripe plums".

Feilding was ridiculed as the Crackpot Countess and Lady Mindbender – yet her legacy is a serious one, said The Daily Telegraph. When she was 22, someone spiked her drink with LSD, giving her a massive overdose from which she took months to recover. Nevertheless, she came to believe that psychedelics had potential mental health benefits, and in the 1990s she launched The Beckley Foundation, to drive serious research into the area. "I am happy to be proved wrong," she said. "What I want to do is know."

She was born in 1943, and brought up at Beckley Park, a triple-moated Tudor lodge in Oxfordshire. Her parents were unconventional and so was her upbringing. "We ran wild," she once said. "We were like the Mitfords without the politics." She left school at 16, went travelling and, for a period, made money selling hand-coloured prints on London's Portobello Road. By the mid 1960s, she and her friends had discovered that small doses of LSD could make them feel "sparkly" and better able to concentrate, rather than high.

Over time, she "cannily" stopped championing trepanning, which just made her seem "batty", and instead focused her efforts on psychedelics. In 2008, she co-founded a research programme at Imperial College, with Professor David Nutt; and in 2016, a Beckley/Imperial study published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry found the first evidence that psilocybin, the LSD-like ingredient in magic mushrooms, could, when used in conjunction with psychotherapy, be effective for treatment-resistant depression. She is survived by her husband, the 13th Earl of Wemyss and 9th Earl of March, and her two sons.

What happened

The most effective way of reducing the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses is cutting off their horns, conservationists and researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. The study, covering seven years at 11 nature reserves in Southern Africa, found that dehorning reduced rhino poaching by 78% while other, more expensive efforts had no measurable impact.

Who said what

Rhino horns fetch tens of thousands of dollars in Asia, where they are "falsely believed to be effective at treating fevers, pain and a low sex drive in traditional medicine," said The Guardian. Dehorning rhinos — sedating the animals and cutting off their keratin horns with a chainsaw — is believed to be painless and has been used to combat poaching in Africa for decades. But until this study, there wasn't much hard data on whether it works.

Some previous studies have found that dehorning makes critically endangered black rhinos more timid and reduces their home range, but it doesn't have an adverse effect on rhino breeding or mortality rates. "It is a big part of what a rhino is, having a horn," Tim Kuiper, a biodiversity scientist at South Africa's Nelson Mandela University who led the new study, said to The Associated Press. "So having to remove it is kind of a necessary evil, if I can put it that way. But it's very effective. There's no doubt it saved hundreds of rhinos' lives."

What next?

Some poachers still kill rhinos for stubs or partially regrown horns, and "dehorning is not a long-term solution" or a "silver bullet," Kuiper said. But "it's a small thing that can be done to hopefully buy time for the broader work that needs to happen."

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has dominated space exploration – but its star could be about to wane.

Donald Trump has proposed cutting Nasa's budget by a quarter, effectively cancelling current programmes, jeopardising planned missions and leaving scientists "reeling", said New Scientist. The draft 2026 budget, released last week, allocates just $18.8 billion (£13.9 billion) to the agency, a cut of almost 25% from 2025, slashing Nasa's workforce by almost a third, and halving funding for its science programmes. A day later, the president also "removed his nomination" of billionaire Jared Isaacman for Nasa administrator, leaving the agency in "turmoil".

What did the commentators say?

It's the biggest single-year cut to Nasa's budget in history, and (after adjusting for inflation) the smallest budget since 1961, said US space-exploration advocacy group The Planetary Society. "This is the biggest crisis facing the space agency in its history," the group's chief of space policy told New Scientist.

The reason for Isaacman's withdrawal as candidate isn't clear but he'd not been supportive of the proposed budget cuts, said the magazine. It leaves Nasa with only an acting administrator to lead it through a critical time.

These "major setbacks" also spell trouble for an agency that "faces stiff competition" from the commercial sector, said space policy expert Wendy Whitman Cobb on The Conversation. Planned and operating missions to Mars and Venus have been "targeted for elimination". The budget instead proposes a commercial "Moon to Mars" programme, under which Nasa would use systems such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship to send Americans off-world.

"Since its founding, Nasa's mission has been largely centred on sending humans to space. If that role shifts to commercial companies, Nasa will need to grapple with what its identity and mission is, going forward."

But this isn't just about space, said Miles O'Brien on PBS. The budget targets Nasa science that has "anything to do with climate change". It cuts climate monitoring satellites, eliminates green aviation programs, and "zeroes out science education efforts, declaring them woke". More broadly it's part of the Trump administration's "wholesale targeting of federally funded science".

"What we see is a full-scale assault on science in America," said California congressman George Whitesides, a former Nasa chief of staff. "It's a poorly wielded chainsaw."

Some Republicans think that chainsaw "is required" to "refocus the federal science enterprise", said O'Brien. A lot of things "need reorientation", said Mark Albrecht, who helped lead the Trump transition team at Nasa. This reorientation could result in "a big push in new science that is managed differently".

Nasa also "offers plenty of targets" for cutting government waste, said The Economist. Artemis – "the late-running, $92 billion-and-counting programme to return astronauts to the Moon" – is one. The first four flights would cost an estimated $4.1 billion (£3 billion) each: "perhaps 20 times the price" of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets. Other aspects have run wildly over budget and schedule, and either "do not function" or are "pointless". "Old Nasa hands admit Artemis is a mess" but it has proved "impossible to kill, or even modify".

Nonsense, said The Planetary Society in a statement. This budget isn't about efficiency; the proposal "wastes billions in prior taxpayer investment", as well as terminating "healthy and productive projects". It would cancel a third of Nasa's science projects, which would require "billions of new spending to replace", and create "economic uncertainty in the American industrial base". This is "an extinction-level event" for Nasa's "most productive, successful, and broadly supported activity: science".

What next?

"I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space," Trump posted on Truth Social.

Some of the names being "bandied about" are retired Air Force generals, said O'Brien on PBS, which "would indicate a shift in an entirely different direction" from the commercial future Isaacman – who has close ties to Elon Musk – represented. Many Republicans "would like to see space being moved more into the militaristic sphere".

The proposed budget must be debated and approved by Congress; Trump has requested it be finalised by 4 July. It could be "watered down, or even scrapped entirely", said New Scientist, "especially considering the proposed cuts would remove funding to many states, including some key Republican strongholds".

And yet my research suggests Congress "rarely appropriates more money for Nasa than the president requests", said Whitman Cobb on The Conversation.