Doing something out of the ordinary with your partner can expand your sense of self and bring you closer Shutterstock/Mauricio Graiki Think back to the great loves of your life, and you may remember a heady period when every day seemed to glitter with new possibilities. It was as if you had been reborn and…
Artist’s depiction of QT45 (based on AlphaFold3 prediction) overlayed on a microscopy image of the frozen environment that aids RNA replication Elfy Chiang, microscopy image by James Attwater According to the RNA world hypothesis, life began when RNA molecules evolved the ability to make more copies of themselves. Now we have discovered an RNA molecule…
Artist impression of the planetary system around the star LHS 1903 ESA Astronomers have found a planetary system that seems to have formed inside-out. While most systems, like our own, have rocky planets closest to their star and gaseous ones further out, the LHS 1903 system has a rocky world at its edge, challenging established…
Your limits when exercising really could be all in your head Cavan Images/Alamy Researchers have identified neurons in mice that help build endurance after running. They suspect that similar cells exist in people, which could be targeted with drugs or other therapies to amplify the effects of exercise. We have known for decades that the…
Illustration of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing complex (pink and purple) bound to DNA (helix) Science Photo Library/Alamy Imagine if, instead of delivering a leaflet individually to each home, a postal worker just had to give one to a volunteer on each block, who then photocopied it and handed out copies to neighbours. That postal worker would…
Adrià Voltà It is easy to be defeatist about the fate of our planet. There is an ongoing climate crisis, extinctions are in overdrive, forests are disappearing, water cycles are collapsing and pollution is choking cities and creating dead zones in the oceans. And there is also US President Donald Trump, who thinks the science…
Jessie Buckley as Agnes in Hamnet AGATA GRZYBOWSKA/2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC The film Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, rightly emphasises the relationship between people and nature. We meet Agnes (Jessie Buckley, pictured above), Hamnet’s mother and wife of William Shakespeare, in the woods, asleep. She is said to be the daughter of a wood…
The ancestors of the British Bell Beaker people lived in a wetland area and relied heavily on fishing SHEILA TERRY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Analysis of ancient DNA has uncovered the origins of a mysterious group who appeared in Britain around 2400 BC and, in a century or less, all but replaced the people who built Stonehenge.…
The gene therapy is administered as a mist that is inhaled Nico De Pasquale Photography/Getty Images A first-of-its-kind inhalable gene therapy for lung cancer that genetically modifies people’s lung cells has been fast-tracked towards potential approval after promising clinical trial results. “Very encouragingly, the hypothesis was proven – that there was actually shrinkage of the…
South Australia has built huge solar farms like this one in in Port Augusta Brook Mitchell/Getty Images As South Australia gets close to its goal of running purely on solar and wind energy, its electricity prices have dropped by a third in a year and are now the lowest in Australia. The state serves as…