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Features

- The ancient board games we finally know how to play – thanks to AI: 2024 Dec 9

- The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate: 2024 Dec 4

- What ancient stalagmites can tell us about life on a hotter Earth: 2024 Dec 4

- Why do Ozempic and Wegovy seem to treat everything?: 2024 Dec 3

- How monitoring your sweat could reveal the state of your health: 2024 Dec 3

HUMANS | DEC 9, 2024, 11:27 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

The ancient board games we finally know how to play – thanks to AI

Many ancient board games have been discovered, but there are no rulebooks so we don't know how to play them. Now AI is bringing these games back to life by working out likely rules

By Jeremy Hsu

This article is paywalled.

LIFE | DEC 4, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate

Natural selection isn't just something that happens to organisms, their activities also play a role, giving some species – including humans – a supercharged ability to evolve

By Kevin Lala

This article is paywalled.

EARTH | DEC 4, 2024, 9:31 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

What ancient stalagmites can tell us about life on a hotter Earth

Wildfires are already changing as a result of climate change but we don’t know what will happen as our planet gets even warmer. The answer could be hidden underground

By James Dinneen

This article is paywalled.

HEALTH | DEC 3, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Why do Ozempic and Wegovy seem to treat everything?

From Alzheimer's disease to depression to heart disease, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist drugs appear to offer a solution. Can one type of drug really tackle so many conditions, and if so, how does it actually work?

By Helen Thomson

This article is paywalled.

HEALTH | DEC 3, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

How monitoring your sweat could reveal the state of your health

From perfecting your hydration levels to tracking hormones, analysing your perspiration can give new insights into your fitness and how to improve it

By Graham Lawton

This article is paywalled.

News

- Screwworm: Why is this flesh-eating parasite making a comeback?: 2024 Dec 6

- Is Google's new quantum computer a big deal?: 2024 Dec 9

- Thirteen proteins in your blood could reveal the age of your brain: 2024 Dec 9

- Mathematicians have figured out the best sofa shape for moving around: 2024 Dec 9

- AI found a new way to create quantum entanglement: 2024 Dec 6

- Believing in Santa Claus doesn't make children act nicer at Christmas: 2024 Dec 9

- Chips linked with light could train AI faster while using less energy: 2024 Dec 9

- Mathematicians have discovered a mind-blowing new kind of infinity: 2024 Dec 6

- 'Killer' cells explain differences in immunity between the sexes: 2024 Dec 5

- These are the most mind-melting physics discoveries of 2024: 2024 Dec 3

- Mesopotamians felt happiness in their liver and anger in their thighs: 2024 Dec 4

- Melting permafrost makes 'drunken forests' store less carbon: 2024 Dec 6

- Conservationists are collecting semen from endangered wild sharks: 2024 Dec 6

- We finally have an explanation for 2023’s record-breaking temperatures: 2024 Dec 5

- Why scientists scanned giant hailstones in a dentist's office: 2024 Dec 6

LIFE | DEC 6, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Screwworm: Why is this flesh-eating parasite making a comeback?

A resurgence of the screwworm parasite in Central America could have a devastating impact on livestock farming, and poses a threat to humans and wildlife too

By Luke Taylor

This article is paywalled.

ANALYSIS | DEC 9, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST AND TECHNOLOGY

Is Google's new quantum computer a big deal?

Google has unveiled a new quantum computer that excels at a benchmarking problem, but it still isn't clear whether these machines can serve a practical purpose

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

This article is paywalled.

HEALTH | DEC 9, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Thirteen proteins in your blood could reveal the age of your brain

Higher or lower levels of certain proteins in your blood appear to indicate if your brain's age is older than your actual age

By Carissa Wong

Researchers trained an artificial intelligence model to gauge people’s ages from their brain scans

laboratory/Alamy

The abundance of 13 proteins in your blood seems to be a strong indicator of how rapidly your brain is ageing. This suggests that blood tests could one day help people track and even boost their brain health.

Most previous studies that have looked at protein markers of brain ageing in the blood have involved fewer than 1000 people, says Nicholas Seyfried at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

To get a broader idea of the impact of these proteins, Wei-Shi Liu at Fudan University in China and his colleagues analysed MRI brain scan data from nearly 11,000 adults from the UK Biobank project, whose ages ranged from around 50 to 80 at the time of imaging.

Using data from 70 per cent of the participants, Liu’s team trained an artificial intelligence model to predict how old the participants were based on features of the brain images, such as the size of different brain regions and how distinct parts connected to each other. When the model was applied to the remaining 30 per cent of participants, its predictions were accurate to within 2.7 years of their actual ages.

Next, the researchers used the model to predict the age of a separate group of nearly 4700 people, aged 63 on average, who also had their brains imaged for the UK Biobank. The team calculated the difference between these participants’ actual ages and the ones predicted by AI, called the brain age gap. “The higher the AI-predicted age is relative to their actual age, the faster their brain is ageing,” says Liu.

This group also gave blood samples at around the same time that their brains were imaged. From this, the team pinpointed eight proteins that seemed to strongly increase, and five that became less abundant, with a larger brain age gap.

In an analysis of data from previous studies, the researchers confirmed that the proteins are produced by brain cells and that their levels may influence the risk of dementia and stroke.

This suggests that blood tests for these proteins could indicate how quickly someone’s brain is ageing. “These markers could be the canary in the coal mine to tell you, ‘hey, look, let’s start intervening to slow your brain ageing now while you’ve got enough time’,” says Seyfried.

But for this to be useful, we need to know that these proteins can be altered by lifestyle changes. “You want to be able to say, ‘if you run this much, you lose this much weight, you change your diet, [then] you can modify those levels to bring them back into the normal range’,” says Seyfried.

The research was mostly carried out on white, wealthy people, so further research is needed to see whether the results apply to other populations of more diverse ethnicities and income levels, says Seyfried.

The team now hopes to carry out research in animals to pinpoint how the 13 proteins affect the brain. For instance, the researchers may test whether disrupting levels of these proteins affects cognition or even the development of neurodegenerative conditions, says Liu. “In the next couple decades, this could open up ways to target the proteins to slow ageing and disease.”

Journal reference:

Nature Aging DOI: 10.1038/s43587-024-00753-6

MATHEMATICS | DEC 9, 2024, 9:45 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Mathematicians have figured out the best sofa shape for moving around

The moving sofa problem, which involves negotiating furniture around an awkward hallway, has puzzled mathematicians for decades – but now we have an answer

By Alex Wilkins

This article is paywalled.

PHYSICS | DEC 6, 2024, 4:30 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

AI found a new way to create quantum entanglement

In a surprise discovery, researchers found a new way to generate quantum entanglement for particles of light, which could make building quantum information networks easier

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

This article is paywalled.

HUMANS | DEC 9, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Believing in Santa Claus doesn't make children act nicer at Christmas

You might expect a child's belief in Santa Claus – with his ability to discern whether children have been naughty or nice – would have an impact on their behaviour. But it turns out other festive trappings like Christmas jumpers and carols may play a more important role

By Michael Marshall

This article is paywalled.

TECHNOLOGY | DEC 9, 2024, 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Chips linked with light could train AI faster while using less energy

A technology that packs more optical fibre connections onto chips could let them transmit 80 times as much information, speeding up AI training and slashing data centre energy costs

By Jeremy Hsu

The prototype of an IBM optics module for connecting chips with fibre optics

Ryan Lavine for IBM

An optical fibre technology can help chips communicate with each other at the speed of light, enabling them to transmit 80 times as much information as they could using traditional electrical connections. That could significantly speed up the training times required for large artificial intelligence models – from months to weeks – while also reducing the energy and emissions costs for data centres.

Most advanced computer chips still communicate using electrical signals carried over copper wires. But as the tech industry races to train large language models and other complex AI systems – a process that requires networks of AI superchips to transfer huge amounts of data – companies are eager to link chips using the light-speed communication of fibre optics.

This technology isn’t new: the internet already relies on undersea fibre-optic cables stretching thousands of kilometres between continents. In order to transmit data between fingernail-size chips, however, companies must connect as many hair-thin optical fibres as possible to the edge of each chip.

“As we all know, the best communication technology is fibre optics, and that’s why fibre optics is used everywhere else for long-distance communication,” said Mukesh Khare at IBM Research during a press briefing previewing the technology. “This co-packaged optics innovation is basically bringing the power of fibre optics on the chip itself.”

Khare and his colleagues have developed an optics module that would enable chipmakers to add six times as many optical fibres to the edge of a chip, compared to current technologies. The module uses a structure called an optical waveguide to connect as many as 51 optical fibres per millimetre. It also prevents light signals from one fibre from interfering with its neighbours.

“What IBM has really done here is use all of its materials and packaging technology – the history of leadership in that – to really break through how you do high-density fibre optics by using waveguides,” says Dan Hutcheson at TechInsights, a semiconductor tech research firm headquartered in Canada. “To me, that was the big breakthrough when I saw it.”

IBM estimates that by using fibre optics, chips could exchange information with a bandwidth 80 times greater than that of chips communicating solely with electrical signals. This boost in communication could enable AI developers to train a large language model within three weeks instead of three months, the company says. Switching from electrical wires to optical fibres could also mean a fivefold reduction in the energy cost of training such AI models.

IBM has already put the optical module through stress tests that included high humidity and temperatures ranging from -40°C (-40°F) to 125°C (257°F). Hutcheson expects that major semiconductor manufacturing companies may be interested in licensing the technology.

“We’re really in the early days of all this, but it’s the hottest area in semiconductor technology right now in terms of high-performance computing and AI technology,” he says.

MATHEMATICS | DEC 6, 2024, 9:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Mathematicians have discovered a mind-blowing new kind of infinity

It may sound strange, but mathematicians have created an entire ladder of infinities, each larger than the next. Now a new kind of infinity threatens to upset that order, and perhaps redefine the structure of the mathematical universe

By Alex Wilkins

This article is paywalled.

HEALTH | DEC 5, 2024, 1:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

'Killer' cells explain differences in immunity between the sexes

Women are more susceptible to autoimmune conditions than men, but also more protected against infections - and we are starting to understand why

By Carissa Wong

This article is paywalled.

PHYSICS | DEC 3, 2024, 9:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

These are the most mind-melting physics discoveries of 2024

We collected some of the wildest physics that New Scientist covered in 2024, findings that are forcing scientists – and us – to rethink reality

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

This article is paywalled.

HUMANS | DEC 4, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Mesopotamians felt happiness in their liver and anger in their thighs

An analysis of ancient cuneiform texts suggests people thought of emotions in a different way almost 3000 years ago, showing how culture influences our most intimate experiences

By Colin Barras

This article is paywalled.

ENVIRONMENT | DEC 6, 2024, 12:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Melting permafrost makes 'drunken forests' store less carbon

As the Arctic ground thaws due to climate change, trees are struggling to stay upright – and this slows their growth and makes them store less carbon

By James Dinneen

This article is paywalled.

LIFE | DEC 6, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Conservationists are collecting semen from endangered wild sharks

Scuba divers will attempt to collect semen from at least nine wild male leopard sharks for the first time, for use in captive breeding programmes aiming to boost wild populations

By Graeme Green

This article is paywalled.

ENVIRONMENT | DEC 5, 2024, 2:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

We finally have an explanation for 2023’s record-breaking temperatures

A decline in low-lying cloud cover means Earth is absorbing more solar radiation, which could explain 0.2°C of missing heat scientists have been struggling to account for

By Madeleine Cuff

There was a sharp fall in the number of low-lying clouds in 2023

Busà Photography/Getty Images

Changes in cloud cover may account for why global temperatures for the past two years have exceeded the predictions of climate models.

2023 and 2024 saw temperature records repeatedly smashed, with both years now showing average temperatures around 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level. Climate change plus an El Niño weather pattern are partly to blame, but neither factor fully explains the extraordinary warmth.

Now, researchers believe the answer lies in a sharp drop in low-lying cloud cover in 2023. This change reduced Earth’s albedo – the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space – causing an increase in temperatures.

Earth’s albedo has been declining since the 1970s, largely due to the melting of polar ice caps, which help to bounce sunlight back into space. But analysis of satellite data by Helge Goessling at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and his colleagues revealed that 2023’s planetary albedo hit a record low.

Goessling and his colleagues then used a combination of weather observations and modelling to understand the causes of this drop, and found there had been a sharp fall in the number of low-lying clouds in 2023. The change was particularly pronounced in the Atlantic Ocean, which experienced some of the most unusual temperature extremes in 2023.

“We were able to get an indication of where the clouds are actually changing, at which altitude in the atmosphere,” says Goessling. “It really is quite striking that this, this decrease of the cloud cover, is mostly happening in the lower levels.”

The findings could explain the additional 0.2°C of missing heat scientists have been struggling to account for, once the impacts of background climate change and the 2023 El Niño are tallied. “It’s another piece of the puzzle, and I think quite an important one,” says Goessling. Even though the study only assessed data from 2023, the findings may also explain why global temperatures have remained extremely high throughout 2024, despite El Niño fading earlier this year.

Paulo Ceppi at Imperial College London says the study is timely because climate scientists are keen to understand the drivers of the recent record warmth. “I think they make a pretty compelling case that albedo changes, in specifically low clouds, have been a major contributor to the changes in the radiation budget – and therefore temperature,” he says.

The next question is why low-lying clouds are disappearing. Broadly, there are three explanations. It could be due to a global reduction in aerosol pollution, which helps clouds form and persist. Alternatively, it could be the result of global warming changing how clouds behave. Or it could simply be natural variability in the climate.

Understanding which of these three factors is dominant is crucial, because it influences how sensitive Earth’s climate is to greenhouse gas pollution. If the lack of clouds is due to a climate change feedback, then the impact will accelerate in the coming years, pushing global temperatures higher than expected. “The answer does have pretty profound implications for what we expect about future climate change,” says Ceppi.

Journal reference:

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adq7280

EARTH | DEC 6, 2024, 12:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Why scientists scanned giant hailstones in a dentist's office

A high-resolution view of hailstones the size of tennis balls can reveal how they form – and help researchers better forecast which storms will generate these destructive pieces of ice

By James Dinneen

A destructive storm in Spain in 2022 produced large hailstones up to 12 centimetres in diameter

Tomeu Rigo Ribas

A scanner at a dentist’s office has produced the first high-resolution 3D images of the internal structure of large hailstones. Such detailed views could help researchers better forecast which storms will generate these destructive pieces of ice.

“The first result was impressive,” says Carme Farnell Barqué at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia in Spain. “Wow! We can see the interior of the stone without breaking it. We could see different layers, with different densities.”

The hailstones fell during an intense storm that struck the north east of Spain in 2022, killing one child, injuring dozens of people and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage. The largest hailstones that fell had diameters of 12 centimetres, about twice the size of a tennis ball.

A few days after the storm, Farnell Barqué and her colleagues asked around to see if anyone had kept some of the hail. They collected 14 hailstones, up to 8.5 centimetres in diameter, that people had stored in plastic bags in their freezers.

Hailstones form when layers of supercooled water accumulate on an initial embryonic ice particle in a storm. The shape and density of these layers of ice within hailstones can reveal details about the growth process. But normally, researchers can only study a few cross-sections of a single hailstone by slicing open the ice with a hot knife.

In this case, an orthodontist friend of Farnell Barqué suggested the researchers instead use a CT scanner to reveal the hailstones’ complete internal structure. Such a scanner was available in a dentist’s office.

The team scanned three of the hailstones, generating hundreds of cross-sections showing variations in density within each piece of ice. Some of the details were surprising: for instance, although the hailstones were spherical, their nuclei were located far off centre. Farnell Barqué says this suggests the thickest part of the stone formed as it was falling, rather than when it was cycling between different altitudes on updrafts within the storm.

Julian Brimelow at the Northern Hail Project in Canada says a few other small hailstones have been scanned this way, but the stones from Spain are much larger. “This is important, because we are still not certain how and where in a thunderstorm hail grows to achieve such impressive sizes.”

This better understanding could improve forecasts of hail size in future storms. “We can associate each layer of the growing part with the radar data on the evolution of the thunderstorm,” says Tomeu Rigo at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia. “Then it’s possible to relate this with new thunderstorms and project our results to the future.”

“We probably do need to look at this for more hailstones,” says John Allen at Central Michigan University, who is planning a large hailstone-collecting survey in the US Great Plains in 2025. “The question is: how viable is this method for large numbers of stones?”

Journal reference

Frontiers in Environmental Science DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1479824

Technology

- Tencent seems unaffected by US AI chip export ban, research shows: 2024 Dec 5

- Robotic rat uses AI to befriend real rodents: 2024 Dec 5

- Implant made with living neurons connects to mouse brains: 2024 Dec 4

- DeepMind AI predicts weather more accurately than existing forecasts: 2024 Dec 4

TECHNOLOGY | DEC 5, 2024, 7:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Tencent seems unaffected by US AI chip export ban, research shows

A US ban on exporting high-end chips used for AI development to China doesn't seem to have affected Tencent, as US researchers suggest they may have found signs of the tech giant still using the chips

By Chris Stokel-Walker

This article is paywalled.

TECHNOLOGY | DEC 5, 2024, 5:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Robotic rat uses AI to befriend real rodents

A robotic wheeled rat that was trained with AI learned how to play and fight with real rodents – and could one day offer companionship to lab rats

By Jeremy Hsu

This article is paywalled.

TECHNOLOGY | DEC 4, 2024, 4:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Implant made with living neurons connects to mouse brains

In a unique demonstration of brain implants that incorporate living cells, the devices were able to connect with the brains of live mice

By Jeremy Hsu

This article is paywalled.

TECHNOLOGY | DEC 4, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

DeepMind AI predicts weather more accurately than existing forecasts

The latest weather forecasting AI model from Google DeepMind can beat the leading providers more than 97 per cent of the time, and it is quicker and cheaper to run

By Matthew Sparkes

Today’s weather forecasts rely on simulations that require a lot of computing power

Petrovich9/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Google DeepMind claims its latest weather forecasting AI can make predictions faster and more accurately than existing physics-based simulations.

GenCast is the latest in DeepMind’s ongoing research project to use artificial intelligence to improve weather forecasting. The model was trained on four decades of historical data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’s (ECMWF) ERA5 archive, which includes regular measurements of temperature, wind speed and pressure at various altitudes around the globe.

Data up to 2018 was used to train the model and then data from 2019 was used to test its predictions against known weather. The company found that it beat ECMWF’s industry-standard ENS forecast 97.4 per cent of the time in total, and 99.8 per cent of the time when looking ahead more than 36 hours.

Last year, DeepMind worked with ECMWF to create an AI that beat the “gold-standard” high-resolution HRES 10-day forecast more than 90 per cent of the time. Prior to that, it had developed “nowcasting” models that predicted the chance of rain in a given 1-square-kilometre area from 5 to 90 minutes ahead using 5 minutes of radar data. And Google is also working on ways of using AI to replace small parts of deterministic models to speed up computation while retaining accuracy.

Existing weather forecasts are based on physics simulations run on powerful supercomputers that deterministically model and extrapolate weather patterns as accurately as possible. Forecasters usually run dozens of simulations with slightly different inputs in groups called ensembles to better capture a range of possible outcomes. These increasingly complex and numerous simulations are extremely computationally intensive and require ever more powerful and energy-hungry machines to operate.

AI could offer a less costly solution. For instance, GenCast creates forecasts with an ensemble of 50 possible futures, each taking just 8 minutes on a custom-made and AI-focused Google Cloud TPU v5 chip.

GenCast operates with a resolution of around 28 square kilometres at the equator. Since the data used in this research was collected, ECMWF’s ENS has been upgraded to a resolution of just 9 square kilometres.

Ilan Price at DeepMind says the AI may not need to follow suit and could offer a way forward without collecting finer data and running more intensive calculations. “When you have a traditional physics-based model, that is a necessary requirement for getting more accurate predictions, because it’s a necessary requirement of more accurately solving the physical equations,” says Price. “[With] machine learning, [it] isn’t necessarily the case that going to higher resolution is a requirement for getting more accurate simulations or predictions out of your model.”

David Schultz at the University of Manchester, UK, says AI models present an opportunity to make weather forecasts more efficient but they are often overhyped, and it is important to remember that they rely heavily on training data from traditional physics-based models.

“Is it [GenCast] going to revolutionise numerical weather prediction? No, because you still have to run the numerical weather prediction models in the first place to train the models,” says Schultz. “If you never had ECMWF in the first place, creating the ERA5 reanalyses, and all the investment that went into that, you wouldn’t have these AI tools. That’s like saying ‘I can beat Garry Kasparov at chess, but only after I study every move he ever played’.”

Sergey Frolov at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) thinks the AI will need training data with higher resolution to progress further. “What we’re fundamentally seeing is that all these approaches are getting stopped [from advancing] by the fidelity of training data,” he says. “And the training data comes from operational centres like ECMWF and NOAA. To move this field forward, we need to generate more training data with physics-based models of higher fidelity.”

But for now, GenCast does offer a way to run forecasts at lower computation cost, and more quickly. Kieran Hunt at the University of Reading, UK, says just as a collection of physics-based forecasts can generate better results than a single forecast, he believes ensembles will boost the accuracy of AI forecasts.

Hunt points to the record 40°C (104°F) temperatures seen in the UK in 2022 as an example. A week or two earlier, there were lone members of ensembles predicting it, but they were considered anomalous. Then, as we drew nearer to the heatwave, more and more forecasts fell in line, allowing early warning that something unusual was coming.

“It does allow you to hedge a little if there is one member that shows something really extreme; it might happen, but it probably won’t,” says Hunt. “I wouldn’t view it as necessarily a step change.  It’s combining the tools that we’ve been using in weather forecasting for a while with the new AI approach in a way that will certainly work to improve the quality of AI weather forecasts. I’ve no doubt this will do better than the kind of first wave of AI weather forecasts.”

Journal reference:

Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08252-9

Space

- How a space elevator could make trips to the moon affordable for all: 2024 Dec 4

- A small asteroid hit Earth and burned up over Siberia: 2024 Dec 3

COLUMNIST | DEC 4, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST AND SPACE

How a space elevator could make trips to the moon affordable for all

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. We journey to 2055, when a space elevator from the moon’s surface to near-Earth orbit was completed, opening space travel to all

By Rowan Hooper

This article is paywalled.

SPACE | DEC 3, 2024, 6:54 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

A small asteroid hit Earth and burned up over Siberia

Astronomers spotted a 70-centimetre asteroid hours before it hit the atmosphere above northern Siberia, making a fireball in the sky

By Matthew Sparkes

An image from a webcam showing the asteroid burning up in the atmosphere above Siberia

LenskLR/YouTube

An asteroid around 70 centimetres in diameter was spotted by astronomers hours before burning up harmlessly but spectacularly in the atmosphere above Siberia.

The European Space Agency (ESA) issued an alert at 9.27 am GMT, warning that the space rock would light up the sky at around 11.15 pm local time (4.15 pm GMT) above northern Siberia.

Speaking before the event, Alan Fitzsimmons at Queen’s University Belfast in the UK says an object this size presents no risk to those on the ground, but the early warning is a positive sign that our ability to spot these entities before they impact Earth is growing.

“It’s a small one, but it will still be quite spectacular,” says Fitzsimmons. “It will be dark over the impact site and for several hundreds of kilometres around there’ll be a very impressive, very bright fireball in the sky.”

Several objects this size strike Earth every year and we are now increasingly able to spot them early. The first was detected in 2008. The next was six years later, but the pace of observations is picking up: C0WEPC5, as today’s asteroid has been named, is the fourth predicted strike on Earth this year.

Early warning of small asteroids gives astronomers the opportunity to observe them and gather data, or even attempt to collect tiny fragments that survive. Fitzsimmons says the first such predicted impact in 2008 led to recovery of small parts of the rock and generated important science. “The beauty there was that the reflectivity of the meteorites exactly matched the reflectivity as measured by telescopes before it hit, showing you that really nice direct link between what we saw out there in space and what we then found later on, on the ground,” he says.

If we detect larger and more dangerous objects heading for Earth, it could provide an opportunity to deflect them, or at least evacuate areas at risk.

Map showing the predicted location where the asteroid would hit the atmosphere in Siberia

ESA

Both NASA and ESA now have dedicated programmes for spotting and tracking asteroids, which involve a large network of dedicated observatories, as well as amateur astronomers who take readings of the positions of known objects so that their orbits can be better understood and predicted.

This latest asteroid was spotted by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which has four telescopes operating around the world and is designed to give up to a week’s warning of impacts.

“It’s a win for science, and [for] anybody who happens to be in Siberia this evening, there’s something to take your mind away from the no doubt quite chilly temperatures,” says Fitzsimmons.

Humans

- Toddler bones show mammoths were the main food of the first Americans: 2024 Dec 4

HUMANS | DEC 4, 2024, 2:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Toddler bones show mammoths were the main food of the first Americans

The bones of a child who died nearly 13,000 years ago suggest that the people who moved from Asia into North America at this time ate a lot of mammoth

By Michael Le Page

This article is paywalled.

Life

- Intricate 18th-century illustrations of stunning flora and fauna: 2024 Dec 4

- Plants laced with a variety of fungi are more popular with bees: 2024 Dec 5

- The theory of evolution can evolve without rejecting Darwinism: 2024 Dec 4

- New forms of animals made by fusing several comb jellies together: 2024 Dec 3

LIFE | DEC 4, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Intricate 18th-century illustrations of stunning flora and fauna

Mark Catesby's work documents the plants and animals he saw while journeying in North America and the Caribbean

By Tim Boddy

Pl 147 Greensnake. 147 left Rough greensnake (Opheodrys aestivus); American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) (vol. 2, t. 47)

The rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus)

Bodleian Library Publishing, University of Oxford, 2024

These remarkable and intricate illustrations are the work of Mark Catesby, an English naturalist and artist who made numerous visits to North America in the early 18th century, recording the flora and fauna he saw on his travels.

His work is collected in a new book, Catesby’s Natural History by Stephen A. Harris, an exploration of the naturalist’s landmark treatise, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. “Catesby presented his readers with illustrations of a wide diversity of plants and animals that were being discovered by Europeans in North America and the Caribbean,” says Harris. “Many of these were illustrated for the first time – Catesby became the de facto authority on them.”

Giant hermit crab (Petrochirus diogenes)

Bodleian Library Publishing, University of Oxford, 2024

Featuring more than 400 species, some of which are now extinct, several plates depict a plant and an animal in one image, such as the rough green snake (Opheodrys aestivus), shown top, curling around an American beautyberry shrub (Callicarpa americana). In a similar vein, a giant hermit crab (Petrochirus diogenes) sits on top of what, writes Harris, is “probably” an angular sea whip (Pterogorgia anceps), shown above.

Mutton snapper

odleian Library Publishing, University of Oxford, 2024

Pictured above is a colourful mutton snapper (Lutjanus analis), and the deciduous plant Spanish jasmine (Plumeria rubra) is pictured below.

Spanish jasmine (Plumeria rubra)

Bodleian Library Publishing, University of Oxford, 2024

Catesby “hoped to stimulate curiosity in natural history – beyond the confines of the library”, says Harris. “His work speaks to modern themes of landscape and habitat change, changing species’ distributions and extinction and the value of traditional knowledge held by Indigenous people.”

LIFE | DEC 5, 2024, 11:00 AM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

Plants laced with a variety of fungi are more popular with bees

Bees visited flowers on plants inoculated with diverse fungi more than plants without this treatment – but not every combination of fungus had the same effect

By James Dinneen

This article is paywalled.

LEADER | DEC 4, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST AND LIFE

The theory of evolution can evolve without rejecting Darwinism

Alternative thinking on the evolution of species is a welcome way to highlight some neglected aspects of life on Earth, but it doesn't mean Darwin was wrong

BRDEHN Evolution sign on a theme park ride.

Jarod Carruthers/Alamy

Darwinian thinking has been challenged many times, starting with co-discoverer of natural selection Alfred Russel Wallace, who disagreed with some aspects of Charles Darwin’s arguments, but was eventually proved wrong on most of them. The US botanist Liberty Hyde Bailey published a paper in 1894 pondering whether the formulation of neo-Darwinism, the mainstream version of evolutionary theory, needed extending (it didn’t); in the 1980s the palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould pursued a similar line.

Evolutionary biologist Kevin Lala also has doubts about what he calls traditional Darwinian thinking (see “The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate”). Some say this is a straw man argument, as it takes issue with old-fashioned ideas about evolutionary biology, whereas modern thinking is broad enough to encompass all the new aspects we are learning about, from developmental biology, cultural evolution and symbiosis, when two different species live together intimately.

Over the years, the theory of evolution by natural selection has itself evolved, absorbing new findings about genes, DNA, population genetics and epigenetics, all of which weren’t available in Darwin’s time. As we report on page 11, identifying evolutionary drivers is essential if, for example, we are to get ahead of a bird flu pandemic, as well as understanding how species will adapt to climate change. Whether we need to add to the rule book evolutionary biologists already have at their disposal is debatable. There is a danger of allowing a “god of the gaps” argument to creep in, where apparent shortcomings in evolutionary theory are exploited by those who point to non-scientific explanations.

Apparent shortcomings create a danger of a ‘god of the gaps’ argument creeping in

All theories need to be challenged, and assessing modern evolutionary biology brings to the fore many aspects of life that might not be well appreciated. Darwin’s explanation has survived for more than 160 years because it is broadly correct and robust enough to absorb new discoveries. The impact of Lala’s approach is therefore not yet clear – but its scrutiny of neglected aspects of life is to be welcomed.

LIFE | DEC 3, 2024, 2:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

New forms of animals made by fusing several comb jellies together

Parts from dozens of different individual comb jellies have been fused together to create strange new animals unlike anything seen before

By Michael Le Page

This article is paywalled.

Health

- The science of exercise: How a workout benefits your brain: 2024 Dec 4

- H5N1 bird flu is closer to gaining pandemic potential than we thought: 2024 Dec 5

- Five years after the first covid-19 cases, there are lessons to learn: 2024 Dec 4

HEALTH | DEC 4, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

The science of exercise: How a workout benefits your brain

Research shows how exercise has other advantages in addition to the physical, whether in relation to ADHD or mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, finds Grace Wade

By Grace Wade

This article is paywalled.

HEALTH | DEC 5, 2024, 2:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST

H5N1 bird flu is closer to gaining pandemic potential than we thought

The flu virus currently circulating in birds and dairy cows is already better at infecting people than earlier variants, and a single mutation would allow it to bind to key human receptors

By Michael Le Page

A highly infectious strain of bird flu has been circulating worldwide since 2020

ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images

The H5N1 bird flu virus that has spread worldwide is already better at infecting people than earlier strains. What’s more, a single mutation could allow it to infect the cells lining our noses and throats, making it more likely to go airborne.

This change alone is not enough for the virus to be capable of causing a pandemic. However, if a virus with this mutation swapped genes with a human flu virus, it could acquire pandemic potential almost instantly.

“The more people get infected, the more likely it is that something like this could arise,” says Ian Wilson at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Despite this, Wilson thinks the risk remains low.

A particularly virulent form of H5N1 bird flu evolved in the 1990s, probably in domestic birds in China, and spread worldwide. Around 2020, a new variant of this virus emerged and spread even more widely, reaching the Americas and Antarctica. It has infected domestic poultry in large numbers and is also spreading among dairy cows in the US, causing occasional human cases.

A team led by Debby van Riel at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands has now infected human nose and throat cells with H5N1 variants from 2005 and 2022. They have shown for the first time that the 2022 variant is better at binding to these cells and also better at replicating inside them. “It’s bad news,” says van Riel.

“I don’t think the chances of the virus becoming pandemic are extremely high,” she says. But the fact that the virus is better at infecting humans will give it more opportunities to acquire additional mutations that increase its pandemic potential.

Meanwhile, Wilson and his colleagues have been studying the crucial haemagglutinin protein of the flu virus. This protein binds to receptors on the outside of cells, determining which cells the virus can infect. Because it protrudes from the virus, it is also the main target of the immune system.

At present, the H5N1 haemagglutinin binds mainly to receptors that in humans are found deep in the lungs. This means it can cause severe disease but it is unlikely to get out of the body and infect others. To do that, the virus needs to infect cells lining the nose and throat, meaning viruses can be coughed or sneezed out to infect others.

Van Riel’s study suggests the virus can do this to some degree, but it’s not clear whether the virus is binding to the main receptors on these cells. It was thought that multiple mutations would be required for H5N1 to bind strongly to these receptors, but Wilson’s team has now shown that with the current H5N1 variant, a single mutation is all it would take.

This change alone would not result in a virus capable of going pandemic, says team member Jim Paulson, also at the Scripps Research Institute. “We view this property as required – but importantly not sufficient – for transmission, for a pandemic virus,” he says.

Other changes are also necessary for the virus to start to replicate and spread from person to person, says Paulson, and these are not well understood. “There’s a lot of biology that we don’t even know,” he says.

Once an H5N1 virus infecting a human acquired the receptor-switching mutation, however, it would then have a chance of evolving these other changes as well.

What’s more, in theory, it could acquire all the abilities it needs in one fell swoop by swapping genes with a human virus infecting the same individual. Several previous flu pandemics were caused by animal and human flu viruses swapping genes, says Paulson.

“This is highly concerning,” says Aris Katzourakis at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in either study. “Each spillover to a human gives the virus a roll of the dice.”

How deadly would an H5N1 pandemic be?

If H5N1 bird flu does manage to start spreading from person to person, the big question is how deadly it would be. Of the people confirmed to be infected with the virus since 2003, half have died. However, the true infection fatality rate could be lower as many cases have probably gone undetected, and milder ones are more likely to be missed.

Among the 60 or so people infected in the US since the dairy outbreak began, almost all have had mild symptoms only. Why is not understood, but one explanation is that many were infected via the eyes. “That is known to have far milder outcomes,” says Katzourakis.

It is also thought that when viruses switch from binding to receptors deep in the lungs to those higher in the respiratory tract, they become less dangerous. But the puzzling aspects of the cases in the US have left Paulson unsure that this will hold true with H5N1. “Now I just don’t know what to think, to be honest,” he says.

“I don’t think there is any reason to be complacent in this respect, and anticipate ‘mildness’ should this virus become readily human-to-human transmissible,” says Katzourakis.

Wilson’s team studied the haemagglutinin protein in isolation, so there was no chance of a lab leak of the mutant protein. “There was no virus used at all here,” he says.

Reference:

bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2024.11.27.625596

Journal reference:

Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adt0180

COMMENT | DEC 4, 2024, 1:00 PM EST | VIEW ON NEW SCIENTIST AND HEALTH

Five years after the first covid-19 cases, there are lessons to learn

Hindsight makes it clear that the fight against covid-19 was also a struggle against the quiet epidemic of suppressed science, says Dali L. Yang

By Dali L. Yang

This article is paywalled.

Table of Contents

New Scientist: 2024 Dec 9

Features

The ancient board games we finally know how to play – thanks to AI: 2024 Dec 9

The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate: 2024 Dec 4

What ancient stalagmites can tell us about life on a hotter Earth: 2024 Dec 4

Why do Ozempic and Wegovy seem to treat everything?: 2024 Dec 3

How monitoring your sweat could reveal the state of your health: 2024 Dec 3

News

Screwworm: Why is this flesh-eating parasite making a comeback?: 2024 Dec 6

Is Google's new quantum computer a big deal?: 2024 Dec 9

Thirteen proteins in your blood could reveal the age of your brain: 2024 Dec 9

Mathematicians have figured out the best sofa shape for moving around: 2024 Dec 9

AI found a new way to create quantum entanglement: 2024 Dec 6

Believing in Santa Claus doesn't make children act nicer at Christmas: 2024 Dec 9

Chips linked with light could train AI faster while using less energy: 2024 Dec 9

Mathematicians have discovered a mind-blowing new kind of infinity: 2024 Dec 6

'Killer' cells explain differences in immunity between the sexes: 2024 Dec 5

These are the most mind-melting physics discoveries of 2024: 2024 Dec 3

Mesopotamians felt happiness in their liver and anger in their thighs: 2024 Dec 4

Melting permafrost makes 'drunken forests' store less carbon: 2024 Dec 6

Conservationists are collecting semen from endangered wild sharks: 2024 Dec 6

We finally have an explanation for 2023’s record-breaking temperatures: 2024 Dec 5

Why scientists scanned giant hailstones in a dentist's office: 2024 Dec 6

Technology

Tencent seems unaffected by US AI chip export ban, research shows: 2024 Dec 5

Robotic rat uses AI to befriend real rodents: 2024 Dec 5

Implant made with living neurons connects to mouse brains: 2024 Dec 4

DeepMind AI predicts weather more accurately than existing forecasts: 2024 Dec 4

Space

How a space elevator could make trips to the moon affordable for all: 2024 Dec 4

A small asteroid hit Earth and burned up over Siberia: 2024 Dec 3

Humans

Toddler bones show mammoths were the main food of the first Americans: 2024 Dec 4

Life

Intricate 18th-century illustrations of stunning flora and fauna: 2024 Dec 4

Plants laced with a variety of fungi are more popular with bees: 2024 Dec 5

The theory of evolution can evolve without rejecting Darwinism: 2024 Dec 4

New forms of animals made by fusing several comb jellies together: 2024 Dec 3

Health

The science of exercise: How a workout benefits your brain: 2024 Dec 4

H5N1 bird flu is closer to gaining pandemic potential than we thought: 2024 Dec 5

Five years after the first covid-19 cases, there are lessons to learn: 2024 Dec 4