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746 articles · page 8 of 16 · The Science front page
Astronomers have identified the first known green star, a white dwarf designated WD J1330+6435, as part of a new study revealing that white dwarf stars can glow in a range of unexpected colors including pink, purple, cyan, yellow and green.
A pair of the lightest neutron stars ever discovered, orbiting each other every 2.36 hours, has provided a new test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. By measuring radio pulses from one of the stars over five years, Chinese astronomers found that three relativistic effects predicted by Einstein match observations to within about one per cent. The findings were published on September 15 in Physical Review Letters.
NASA researchers have developed a new lidar instrument called CASALS that uses wavelength-steering technology to create continuous three-dimensional swaths of Earth's surface, eliminating the large unmapped gaps left by traditional space-based laser instruments. An airborne prototype flew successfully in November 2024, producing science-quality datasets at 22-centimeter horizontal resolution.
NASA has announced Space Reactor 1 Freedom (SR-1), the first nuclear reactor powered interplanetary spacecraft, with an uncrewed mission to Mars slated for a late 2028 launch and a 2029 arrival. The project represents a significant commitment to nuclear electric propulsion, promising more efficient spaceflight and reduced radiation exposure for future astronauts.
The Met Office has issued an amber warning for Cornwall and parts of west Devon as Storm Austen, the first named storm of the season, is forecast to bring wind gusts of up to 80mph (130km/h) and heavy rain from Thursday night into Friday. In the Republic of Ireland, Met Éireann has issued an orange rain warning for six counties including Cork, Dublin and Kerry, while a nationwide yellow warning for rain and wind is also in effect. A separate yellow rain warning covers much of Scotland, where 20-80mm of rain is expected and flooding is possible.
A new report from the UK Covid inquiry has found that government failings allowed the coronavirus to spread unchecked in care homes, with the sector treated as 'something of an afterthought' in the early stages of the pandemic. The sixth report, published on Tuesday, said there was no 'protective ring' around homes as ministers had claimed, leading to more than 43,000 recorded deaths involving Covid in care homes between March 2020 and July 2022.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, through the Bezos Earth Fund, have committed $100 million as a founding member of the Species Recovery Alliance, a $500 million conservation initiative announced at the COP17 UN biodiversity conference in Armenia. The funding targets species classified as endangered, critically endangered, or extinct in the wild by the IUCN.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has called an extraordinary virtual meeting of national health officials for October 28, as the deadly Ebola outbreak spreads to a fifth country and enters a third region of Africa. The announcement came as Nigeria confirmed its first case of the Bundibugyo virus, sparking a dispute with Uganda over the source of the infection and deepening concerns about the rapidly escalating crisis.
Huda Abu Leila, a mother of five living in a tent in Gaza City, has been forced to serve only tea and bread to her daughters after Israel restricted commercial goods into Gaza and the UN World Food Programme cut food assistance, leaving over 1.4 million people facing acute food insecurity and children at risk of malnutrition.
Queen's Hospital in Romford has secured £42 million to rebuild its overcrowded A&E department, which was designed for 325 patients a day but now sees more than double that number, according to the hospital's trust.
A woman was told she had cancer by a hospital employee who accessed her medical records days before she was due to receive test results from her consultant. Pippa Boardman, from Lostwithiel in Cornwall, said the breach at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro left her feeling that she had lost her dignity and privacy.
A long-standing mystery surrounding a skeleton found inside a Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey has been resolved, according to an expert who says the remains belonged to a medieval abbot, most likely Ælfwig, who died around 1020. Professor Warwick Rodwell, a consultant archaeologist at the Abbey, presented his findings in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, drawing on a 2018 investigation and radiocarbon dating of the bones.
Health experts are warning that Melbourne's coming summer, amplified by an El Nino pattern, poses severe health risks including heart attacks, premature births, and mental health deterioration, with emergency departments underprepared for a surge in heat-related cases.
A £3.6 billion plan to build a giant tunnel diverting sewage away from Windermere has been formally presented to the government, with the water company behind the proposal calling it a '100 year solution' for the polluted lake. The feasibility report, produced by a coalition including United Utilities, environmental campaigners, regulators and local authorities under the banner 'Only Rainwater into Windermere' (ORiW), outlines two options for discharging treated effluent and two ways of funding the project. The government must now decide whether to allow the plans to proceed to detailed design.
Roading contractors from Fulton Hogan rescued six to eight ducklings from a drain in Alexandra, Central Otago, on Wednesday morning. A local cyclist who witnessed the rescue praised the workers for their efforts.
Vast swarms of bogong moths are suspected of fooling weather radars across eastern New South Wales, with the insects showing up as light rainfall on clear, dry evenings. The Bureau of Meteorology says its radars are not malfunctioning, and researchers hope the phenomenon could yield vital data on one of Australia's most under-threat insects.
Haeata Community Campus in Christchurch has been granted an exemption from the Ministry of Education's centralised Ka Ora, Ka Ako school lunch programme, following a contentious dispute over mouldy meals last year. The school will take over its own catering from Term 1 next year, a move its board says is a victory for the community.
Whakaari/White Island is continuously passively erupting small amounts of volcanic ash, prompting Earth Sciences New Zealand to raise the volcanic alert level. An observation flight on Tuesday confirmed a blanket of ash around the active vent, with a weak discharge of steam and gas. The agency says there is no evidence of an explosive eruption and that any significant impact on the mainland remains very unlikely, though a sulphur smell and light ashfall may be noticeable.
Artificial intelligence trained on electrocardiogram (ECG) data recorded during sleep can predict a person's risk of developing atrial fibrillation, stroke, heart failure, or dying from any cause within the next 10 years, researchers at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology have found. The study, published in the journal SLEEP and supported by the US National Institutes of Health, suggests that subtle changes in heart activity during early sleep stages contain early warning signals currently overlooked in standard sleep tests.
The UK government has published long-awaited plans to regulate high-risk cosmetic procedures in England, including liquid Brazilian butt lifts, vampire facials and deep chemical peels. Under the draft rules, only doctors and other trained health professionals will be allowed to perform the most dangerous treatments, with new criminal offences and fixed fines of up to £4,000 for rogue providers. The announcement follows years of pressure after patients suffered life-threatening complications and deaths at the hands of unlicensed practitioners.
A 75-year-old man died after being swept away by floodwaters in Saint-Mitre-les-Remparts near Marseille, while a second person is missing in Ghisonaccia, Corsica, when their 4x4 was carried away by the Fium'orbu river, rescue authorities confirmed Tuesday. The severe weather, which began Monday, has caused widespread flooding across southeastern France, prompting evacuations and transport disruptions.
Scientists have produced a global map of where ancient rains on Mars may have delivered formaldehyde, a key building block for life, billions of years ago. The map, led by researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo, could help future robotic and crewed missions select landing sites where evidence of past microbial life might still be preserved.
A randomized trial has found that external counterpulsation (ECP), a non-invasive heart treatment developed in the 1970s, improved cognition and daily function in patients with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease. The company-funded study of 190 patients reported that 78 percent improved over their personal baseline after six months, with an average gain of five points on standard cognitive scales.
New Australian-led research published in The British Journal of Psychiatry has identified a distinct subtype of depression driven by a disrupted circadian rhythm. The study of 11,380 adults diagnosed with depression found that one quarter of participants, and as many as one in three younger people, have what the authors term 'circadian depression'. The research challenges the longstanding assumption that sleep problems are merely a symptom of depression, arguing instead that the disturbed body clock is the primary driver for this group. Crucially, the researchers warn that standard treatments including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and cognitive behavioural therapy may be ineffective or even harmful for these patients.
Police in Guinea-Bissau on Monday raided the offices of Danish researchers Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn, seizing doses of hepatitis B vaccine destined for a trial on newborns that international health experts have branded 'unethical.' The trial, which would have exposed infants to the risk of lifelong hepatitis B infection, had drawn intense scrutiny over its funding and links to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken vaccine skeptic.
SpaceX on Tuesday outlined a major pivot toward artificial intelligence infrastructure during its third quarter earnings call, with company officials detailing plans to provide up to 10 gigawatts of compute capacity by 2027. At the same time, CEO Elon Musk confirmed the company will attempt to catch both the Starship spacecraft and its Super Heavy booster for the first time next month, a milestone that would mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system.
Tomás Villalón Jr., an MIT alumnus who grew up seeing the smog of Monterrey, Mexico, co-founded Phoenix Tailings in 2019 to develop a cleaner way to extract rare earth metals from mining waste. The company says its proprietary electrochemical process generates no toxic byproducts and can be carbon-free when powered by renewable energy.
Researchers have developed a robotic rehabilitation system that combines generative AI with real-time force feedback to learn how human therapists assist patients, a response to a global shortage of physical therapists that leaves many of the five million people impaired by stroke each year unable to get the care they need.
The RSPCA says it has been plunged into a crisis of unwanted cats, with numbers of homeless felines reaching unprecedented levels and more cats arriving into its care than can be rehomed. Charity chiefs are urging owners to neuter their pets after a sharp rise in large-scale rescues added to the strain on centres and staff.
A long-lost manuscript by quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger, unearthed in an Austrian archive by physicist Flavio Del Santo of the University of Geneva, is reshaping understanding of the Nobel laureate's philosophy. The three-page document, written in response to a heated 1944 debate in the journal Nature over the 'collapse of determinism,' reveals Schrödinger actively critiquing arguments against hidden variables, offering insight into a philosophical position more complex than his popular image as a champion of determinism.
A federal judge has limited a U.S. Bureau of Land Management roundup of wild horses in southeastern Oregon, allowing about 140 captures instead of the estimated 418 horses the agency had planned to gather from the Riddle Mountain herd.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission successfully launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on October 20, 2026, beginning a journey to Mars and its largest moon, Phobos, with arrival at Mars expected in August 2027. The mission aims to collect and return the first-ever samples from the Martian system, potentially settling a long-running debate over whether Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids or remnants of a giant impact on Mars.
Christina Applegate, who has been open about her struggles with multiple sclerosis since 2021, revealed on her podcast that a doctor has told her she does not have the disease after all. Far from relieved, Applegate said the news has left her confused and frustrated, with her symptoms unchanged.
Quantinuum has announced that its current generation of quantum computing hardware can scale error correction well beyond the breakeven point, improving performance by over a factor of ten with each step up in logical qubit size, according to a report from Ars Technica.
Nearly 200,000 Bronx residents could be spared from the new federal Medicaid work requirements set to take effect in January, as New York State plans to invoke a little-known hardship exemption based on the borough's high unemployment rate, state health officials said. The exemption would apply automatically to eligible recipients without additional paperwork.
Nigeria has recorded its first known case of Ebola in the current outbreak, the Health Ministry confirmed on Tuesday, prompting a contact-tracing effort involving 44 people. The patient, a woman who recently arrived from Uganda, was admitted to a private Abuja hospital before being diagnosed.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a third measles death this year as the country grapples with its largest outbreak in decades. The federal death count remains lower than figures reported by state officials, particularly in Pennsylvania, the hardest-hit state.
A five-month-old baby girl who died from meningitis might have survived if doctors had tested her for the infection sooner rather than putting her symptoms down to Covid, an inquest jury has found. Esta High died at Leeds General Infirmary in November 2023, days after being taken to the emergency department with a high temperature and vomiting. The jury concluded that her death was contributed to by neglect.
NASA announced progress on the Space Reactor-1 (SR-1) Freedom, the first fission-powered spacecraft designed to operate beyond Earth orbit. Key contract actions have been taken to advance the development of the nuclear power module, a critical element of the spacecraft's propulsion and power systems. The mission is scheduled for launch in late 2028, when SR-1 Freedom will deliver the SkyFall science payload, a trio of Mars helicopters evolved from the Ingenuity design, to collect scientific data, identify potential water sources, and demonstrate exploration zones.
A growing body of evidence suggests that Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) is as prevalent in men as in women, yet stigma and a lack of obvious warning signs mean many male athletes suffer in silence. A recent meta-analysis found nearly half of male athletes had low energy availability, a condition that can lead to brittle bones, serious injuries and long-term health problems if left untreated.
Heavy rain from a Mediterranean weather system has caused flooding across parts of south-eastern France, particularly in the Bouches-du-Rhône department around Marseille. Authorities have placed seven departments under orange weather alerts as the region continues to be hit by intense downpours, with up to 235 millimetres of rain recorded locally in Saint-Chamas.
Families bereaved by deaths on English mental health wards have called on an inquiry to ban Oxevision, an infrared camera monitoring system used in half of the country's mental health wards, saying patients' lives are at stake while it remains in use.
New high-resolution simulations run on the Japanese supercomputer Fugaku suggest that magnetars, neutron stars with magnetic fields a thousand times stronger than average, can form directly from the merger of two low-mass neutron stars. The simulations show that within milliseconds of contact, turbulence in the neutron fluid amplifies the magnetic field by a factor of more than 300, creating conditions characteristic of a magnetar.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have spotted what may be one of the most distant supernovas ever observed, an explosion that lit up when the universe was less than a tenth of its current age. The flash was seen as it appeared just days after the star died, more than 12.5 billion years ago.
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has declared a critical incident after recording three of its highest emergency department attendance figures in history over the past fortnight, with more than 100 patients waiting for treatment and staff working under 'extreme pressure'.
The James Webb Space Telescope has unveiled a new image of the stellar nursery NGC 7129, revealing more than 130 stars in the early stages of formation. Located about 3,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus, the region was previously opaque to visible-light telescopes, but Webb's infrared sensitivity exposes a dynamic environment of hot and cold gas, cavities, and bow shocks sculpted by young stars and their outflows.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sending its fourth Spaceborne Computer to the Moon later this year, aboard Astrolab's Flex Lunar Innovation Platform (FLIP) rover. The system will run AI and high-performance computing experiments near the lunar south pole, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
NASA scientists have finally discovered why asteroid Bennu loses heat so rapidly despite being covered in massive boulders. Analysis of samples returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx mission reveals hidden networks of cracks within the rocks, solving a puzzle that has puzzled researchers since the spacecraft arrived in 2018.