Two oak trees in the spring, with varying degrees of leaf growth Sven Finnberg If caterpillars have munched through a lot of an oak tree’s leaves one year, then, the following spring, the tree’s buds open three days later. This delay means the caterpillars don’t have food available when they hatch, and so many die,…
Irene Velez Torres and Stientje van Veldhoven, ministers from Colombia and the Netherlands, embrace at the end of the conference in Santa Marta, Colombia Ivan Valencia/Associated Press/Alamy When almost every country met in Brazil last November for the annual United Nations climate summit COP30, hopes were high they would draft a roadmap for the “transition…
A robot child goes missing in Silvia Park’s Luminous, the May read for the New Scientist Book Club d3sign/Getty Images In 2024, a joke became a headline: “Dog strollers outsell baby strollers in country with world’s lowest birth rate”. As our love for pets grows ever refined and luxurious, our ability to have children feels…
Seoul – the setting for Silvia Park’s Luminous – at night Sean Pavone/Shutterstock That summer was immortal. July was especially savage with sixty-two heat deaths in Seoul, punctuated by the spectacular fizzing breakdown of a GS-100 security android when it crumpled knees-first outside a United Korea Bank. A cleaner broomed away the remains. The head…
A view of Uranus from the Hubble Space Telescope NASA and Erich Karkoschka, U. of Arizona The rings that encircle Uranus may look similar in images, but their compositions are surprisingly different. Understanding the rings could help us unravel the many mysteries of this strange, dynamic system. The outer rings of Uranus – the mu…
A so-called pilot wave is key to David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics Courtesy of Daniel Harris and John Bush, MIT Sometime in the 1940s, US physicist David Bohm decided that the only way to understand quantum mechanics was to write a book about it. He wanted it to offer the reader something they could…
Chia is a cryptocurrency that relies on empty hard disk space Andrey Zhuravlev/Alamy A cryptocurrency marketed as a green alternative to bitcoin is actually consuming 18 times more energy than its makers originally claimed. Even management at the Chia Network admits the figures are “not wildly off”. Bitcoin requires miners to do vast amounts of…
A scanning electron micrograph of bacteria on the surface of a human tongue Science Photo Library/Alamy They say you are what you eat, but the microbes in your mouth may be just as revealing. One of the largest studies yet to explore links between the oral microbiome and metabolic health suggests they may offer clues…
Closed time-like curves offer a route to the past Roman Budnikov/Alamy What if you could send a message into the past? The laws of physics don’t forbid it – and in fact, in some cases, communicating backwards in time might actually be easier than the usual direction. The possibility of sending a message to the…
A shot from Karmela’s trip to The Bone Museum, New York Karmela Padavic-Callaghan Have you ever found yourself spending a Saturday morning staring at a wall covered in human spines? Or, maybe, staring into the eyes of a newly discovered reptile? Recently, I had a chance to do both, as my best friend took me…