A model of Kosmos 482, which was originally set to go to VenusWikimedia Commons More than 50 years after its launch, a Soviet spacecraft called Kosmos 482 is about to come crashing back to Earth. It was originally intended to land on the surface of Venus, but it started to fall apart in low Earth orbit and never made it beyond there. After decades of circling our planet in an oval-shaped orbit, it’s finally about to hurtle back to the ground. Kosmos 482 launched in 1972, but because of secrecy during the cold war period, little is known about its structure or its exact mission. We only know it was headed for Venus because of other Soviet missions that were focused on our neighbouring world at the time and because the spacecraft appeared to attempt to launch on a trajectory there before it went to pieces. It isn’t clear what exactly caused the spacecraft failure, but three of the four fragments fell in New Zealand shortly after the launch. Advertisement The last fragment drifted into a higher orbit, with its closest point to Earth at about 210 kilometres up and its most distant about 9800 kilometres away. Over the years, particles from the very top of Earth’s atmosphere have slowed down this piece, shrinking its path around Earth, and it has finally gotten close enough to fall. It is expected to come down on 9 or 10 May. The remaining bit of the spacecraft, its landing capsule, is estimated to be more than a metre wide with a mass of nearly 500 kilograms. Between its size and the likelihood that it was designed to survive a trip through Venus’s hot, dense atmosphere, it seems likely that it will survive its descent intact and hit the ground hard, at upwards of 200 kilometres per hour. It is impossible to predict where exactly the last piece of Kosmos 482 will smash down. Based on its current orbit, it could hit anywhere on Earth between the latitudes of 52° north and 52° south – an area that covers everywhere from the southern tip of South America to parts of Canada and Russia. Thankfully, despite that huge swathe of possible landing spots, the probability that it will hit an inhabited area is low. “It’s an infinitesimally small number,” said Marcin Pilinski at the University of Colorado Boulder in a statement. “It will very likely land in the ocean.” Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month. Sign up to newsletter Pilinski is part of a team tracking the debris. As it continues to get closer, the possibilities for where and when it will land will narrow down. Space junk falling to Earth like this isn’t uncommon: about one orbiting object that NASA is tracking falls every day, and most either burn up in the atmosphere or hit the ocean. Kosmos 482 is just a particularly big and hardy piece of space junk. Topics:

“A human mind-melded to a rat could move with the rodent, and smell and feel what it sensed…”Shutterstock/Linda Bestwick In T. H. White’s series of novels The Once and Future King, the wizard Merlyn turns the young Arthur, future king of England, into a variety of animals. As a small fish, Arthur swims in a moat and is terrorised by a stronger pike; as a hawk, Arthur learns to respect the dominant old falcon. In giving him these experiences, Merlyn aims to educate Arthur and make him a good king. By the 2040s, it had become possible, to a…

Belgium was one of many counties that saw record temperatures in 2024FREDERIC SIERAKOWSKI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock The past couple of years have set worryingly high temperature records, but was the extraordinary global heat of 2023 and 2024 just a freak event down to natural variability, rather than a sign of something more worrying? Some climate scientists think so. “From a model perspective, yes, it’s variability that we expect,” Karsten Haustein at Leipzig University in Germany told a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna last week.

Elaine Knox We need a social media site that is designed specifically for children and teenagers. And we need to do it as a non-profit, because there is no way that any of the big tech companies would ever build the sort of system that is required. At this point, the problems with social media are all too familiar. Some concerns may be overhyped, notably the claim that social media is responsible for an epidemic of mental health conditions in teenagers. Complaints about “too much screen time” are also simplistic. But many common critiques do stand up. Anti-feminist content has also proliferated,…

New York City’s skyline may start to look very different if the metropolis keeps sinkingGary Hershorn/Getty Images More than two dozen of the biggest cities in the US are sinking, which could affect thousands of buildings and millions of people. The problem has been reported before, particularly in coastal areas. But by using satellite technology, which sends radar signals towards Earth’s surface and measures the time it takes for them to bounce back, scientists have found that it affects 25 out of 28 of the country’s biggest cities. Advertisement “By comparing multiple images taken over time from the same area, we can detect tiny vertical movements of the ground, down to a few millimetres per year,” says team member Manoochehr Shirzaei at Virginia Tech. “It’s like taking a high-resolution time-lapse of Earth’s surface and watching how it rises or sinks over time.” Fort Worth, Houston and Dallas exhibited the highest subsidence rates of all the large cities, exceeding 4 millimetres per year, on average. For New York, Chicago, Houston, Columbus, Seattle and Denver, the average subsidence was greater than 2 millimetres per year. “Houston – the fastest sinking city out of the 28 most populated US cities – has 42 per cent of its land area subsiding faster than 5 mm per year, and 12 per cent subsiding faster than 10 mm per year,” according to the researchers. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter They say that most of the subsidence is caused by groundwater extraction, however, in some cities, such as New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC, the sinking is primarily caused by “glacial isostatic adjustment”. “During the last ice age, these areas were covered by massive ice sheets. The sheer weight of the ice pushed down on Earth’s crust, like sitting on a memory foam mattress,” says Shirzaei. When the ice melted thousands of years ago, the pressure lifted, and the ground began to slowly rebound, he says. “But this rebound isn’t uniform,” says Shirzaei. “In some areas, like the US East Coast and Midwest, the land is still sinking rather than rising, because they’re near the forebulge, a zone that had been pushed up by the weight of the ice nearby and is now collapsing.” In Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, plate tectonics is probably to blame for the subsidence. “We need to start treating subsidence like the slow-moving disaster it is,” says Shirzaei. The scientists also found that some cities are sinking at different rates in different spots, or sinking in some places and rising in others. “This uneven movement creates angular distortion and stress, potentially leading to cracks in walls and foundations, misaligned windows and doors, or worse, structural failure,” says Shirzaei. Jesse Kearse at Kyoto University, Japan, has used similar satellite data to show that many New Zealand cities are also subsiding. “A key challenge that remains for the geophysics community is how to attribute the observed trends to specific causes, whether they be anthropogenic or natural geological processes,” he says. Journal reference:Nature Cities DOI: 10.1038/s44284-025-00240-y Topics:cities

The most common tools for assessing the rarity of a finding still require plenty of assumptionsShutterstock / Kenishirotie Terry Pratchett was fond of saying that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. On the face of it, this sentence is mathematically absurd, but in the fantasy world of Pratchett’s Discworld books, powered by the magic of narratives, it makes perfect sense. Of course heroes are always going to face incredible odds, and of course they are almost always going to overcome them, because that is what heroes do.

Simon Danaher GIVEN a choice between two sea snail shells, hermit crabs know which will make a better home. That is, unless their thinking has been muddled by ingesting microplastics. Then, they struggle with a decision that could be crucial for survival. They aren’t alone: across the animal kingdom, it appears, tiny bits of plastic change behaviours and mess up cognition. Exposure to these particles makes mice more forgetful and less social. Bees have trouble learning. Zebrafish act more anxious. Such discoveries sound a warning bell for people, too. These so-called microplastic fragments are everywhere, from Arctic snow to the Amazon rainforest. Perhaps worse, they are in our foods: from beer and table salt to seafood and honey. “If you turn the top of your plastic bottle, you shower tiny pieces of plastic down into the water,” says Tamara Galloway, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter, UK, whose work focuses on the environmental and health effects of pollultants like microplastics. People consume around 52,000 microplastic particles per year – or around 121,000 if you include those we inhale. What’s more, recent research shows that some of these can cross the barrier designed to stop toxins from getting from blood vessels into brain tissues. Exactly if and how this might mess with our minds is unclear because we can’t subject people to the sorts of experiments we do with the likes of mice – though Galloway’s opinion is that the effects on humans could be serious. We do however, have animal studies to illuminate how microplastics affect the brain…

Shutterstock/Leka Sergeeva Whether it’s Pandora’s box, Eve’s apple or the cat’s curiosity, there is no shortage of cautionary tales about the dangers of knowledge – but are there really ideas so toxic that they should be suppressed? Well, it depends on whom you ask. When faced with Galileo Galilei’s heretical concept of Earth not being the centre of the universe, the Catholic church came down hard as the idea threatened its teachings. While this did delay heliocentrism, the church apologised… in 1992. Suppression, then, can hold back an idea for only so long, especially if it turns out to be true. And yet, as we report (see “Bitter argument breaks out over controversial theory of consciousness”), some researchers are arguing that we should reject a proposed theory of consciousness because of its implications for thorny questions like the rights of fetuses or artificial intelligences, even as evidence points in its favour.Advertisement This is a long way from inquisitors’ cries of heresy, but there is something uncomfortable about dismissing a scientific idea based on its potential consequences. It is still far from clear whether this idea, known as integrated information theory, is even the right approach to consciousness – but it would be wrong to abandon it prematurely. Ultimately, science is the process of opening a never-ending series of Pandora’s boxes Maybe researchers should simply pursue the purity of knowledge, without concern for fallout? This too would be an error. Take the example of physicists whose explorations led to the conception of the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein, working with others, sent a letter to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 to warn him that scientists in Nazi Germany were probably already working to build one, spurring on the Manhattan Project. Ironically, Einstein regretted sending his letter, feeling that it led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it is hard to argue that he shouldn’t have issued his warning. Ultimately, science is the process of opening a never-ending series of Pandora’s boxes that are home to potential good or ill. Scientists can do their best to shepherd what they have released, but leaving the boxes closed would be a poorer choice. Topics:

Crewed deep-sea submersibles have been around for decadesNOAA The first comprehensive analysis of deep-sea dives has revealed that humans have only directly observed a tiny fraction – less than 0.001 per cent – of the global deep seafloor, leaving the vast majority of our planet unexplored.  Oceans make up 71 per cent of Earth’s total surface area, and around 93 per cent of that area is deep seafloor, classed as seabed deeper than 200 metres. While much of this ocean region has been mapped using satellites and ship-mounted sonar, very little has been directly observed.

Why are dementia cases soaring in China?hanohikirf/Alamy Dementia rates are increasing more rapidly in China than almost anywhere else in the world, with cases more than quadrupling in the country over the past few decades. Daoying Geng at Fudan University in China and her colleagues analysed dementia rates in 204 countries and regions around the world between 1990 and 2021. They used a World Health Organization database to collect information on dementia deaths and cases in people aged 40 and older, focusing on Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, such as vascular dementia and frontotemporal lobe dementia. Advertisement The researchers found that the number of people with dementia worldwide more than doubled during this period, from almost 22 million in 1990 to close to 57 million in 2021. The increase was even more drastic in China, where cases more than quadrupled, rising from roughly 4 million to nearly 17 million over the same time frame. Further analysis revealed that population growth was the main culprit. Birth rates in China spiked in the 1950s. “So those people are getting older today – they are now in their 70s, which is the highest risk group for dementia,” says Xi Chen at Yale University, who wasn’t involved with the study. “Many countries have baby boomers, but not as large a cohort as China’s baby boomers. So that’s the main issue.” The team identified three other major factors contributing to China’s rising dementia rates. The first, smoking, almost exclusively affects men, as only 2 per cent of women in China smoke cigarettes while roughly half of all men do. This is in sharp contrast to wealthier countries such as the US and the UK, where smoking rates have steadily declined, says Chen. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter One Western trend that China has echoed is a jump in rates of diabetes and obesity, particularly in the past few decades, both of which are risk factors for dementia. This is probably because people in China are adopting a more Western diet high in fats and calories, says Chen. He believes that dementia rates in China will eventually resemble those in the US or UK, as younger generations tend to smoke less than older ones. But the condition will still have a huge impact on China in the meantime. “Dementia is one of the most expensive diseases in the world. It requires a lot of caregiving and treatment,” says Chen. “And in terms of an ageing population, China is still the largest in the world. There are fewer young people taking care of a larger cohort of older people with dementia. So, these are all challenges.” Journal reference:PLoS One DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0322574 Topics:

An artist’s impression of Earth in the Archaean Eon, 3.8 billion to 2.5 billion years agoCHRISTIAN JEGOU/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Mysterious microbes living in wetlands in China have helped to narrow down when the ancestor of all animals and plants lived – and the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere may have played a key role in its emergence. The new data brings us a step closer to understanding “an event which happened billions of years ago”, says Burak Avcı at Aarhus University in Denmark. This event was…

Superb starlings appear to swap between parent and ‘nanny’ roles to help raise chicks over their lifetimes, even when they aren’t related to them

Normal potatoes like these turn brown when they are sliced openFormatoriginal / Alamy The potatoes I am eating are nice, but they don’t stand out taste-wise. To find out what is special about them, you need to cut open the raw tubers and keep an eye on them. What you will see is, er, absolutely nothing – unlike normal potatoes, these gene-edited ones don’t turn brown when cut. That means less waste, because many people and businesses discard discoloured potatoes that are perfectly good to eat. The gene-edited versions I tried aren’t on sale yet, but could be…

Adobestock/Shutterstock How times have changed since the year 2000. In that year, there were a billion fewer people living on the planet. The International Space Station hadn’t yet housed any resident astronauts. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were in love and got married. And on 24 May that year, a group of mathematicians took to a stage in Paris to set some problems. They used acetate sheets and an overhead projector in their presentation, but this was no high-school maths challenge. These were the seven Millennium Problems, the hardest mathematical puzzles then known. The exercise was organised by the Clay Mathematics Institute, a US-based non-profit foundation that promised anyone who could solve one would have their grit rewarded with a $1 million prize. Twenty-five years later, how have mathematicians got on? At first blush, the answer seems to be: not brilliantly. Only one of the challenges has been solved, which might make you wonder whether the maths world has lost its mojo. Delve below the surface, though, and the story of the Millennium Problems can teach us a lot about the state of modern mathematics and what progress really means in this most abstract of disciplines. Plus, there is reason to believe progress on these puzzles could soon become much more exciting, as machine learning begins to make its mark. “I’ll be very intrigued to see whether the way…

Quantum correlations are the strongest ones ever measuredSAKKMESTERKE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The strange connections between quantum objects are the strongest relationships physicists can detect – and the mathematics of graphs may help explain why that is. “We are touching the question of, in some way, why quantum theory is as it is,” says Carlos Vieira at the State University of Campinas in Brazil. Together with José Nogueira and Marcelo Terra Cunha, also at the State University of Campinas, he has now offered one mathematically compelling answer…

Some people live with pain for years or even decadesAsiaVision/Getty Images Learning how to regulate negative emotions like anxiety could ease chronic pain. Scientists have found that a form of therapy that partly focuses on tolerating distress relieved ongoing discomfort more effectively than existing treatments. “Chronic pain is more than a sensory experience, it’s incredibly emotional,” says Nell Norman-Nott at the University of New South Wales, Australia. “We see increased levels of anxiety and depression in up to about 80 per cent of people with chronic pain.” This leads to a “vicious cycle”, where pre-existing pain amplifies negative emotions, which then worsen pain, she says. Advertisement To see if they could break the cycle, Norman-Nott and her colleagues used a programme based on dialectical behavioural therapy, a form of cognitive behavioural therapy that has been adapted for people who feel emotions very intensely. The programme focused on mindfulness, emotion regulation and distress tolerance. Eighty-nine people with chronic pain, lasting 16 years on average, were randomised to receive either the programme, delivered by a therapist via an eight-week online programme, or to carry on with any treatment they were already receiving, such as medication or physiotherapy. Nine weeks later, those in the therapy group experienced an improvement in emotional regulation of about 5 points more, on a scale of 18 to 90, than those in the control group. The intensity of their pain also started to lessen at week 9, and by 21 weeks they experienced significantly less pain those those in the control group. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter “I think that’s interesting and promising,” says Benedict Alter at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It could also help people with limited access to in-person care, he says. “It’s great that they did this as internet based. It’s a huge problem that there are small numbers of providers who do therapy, and they tend to be in urban areas.” Exactly how the therapy reduces pain is unclear, says Alter, but “at any given pain intensity, if you had better emotional regulation, people’s overall lives would be better: less suffering, less functional impairment. I think pain intensity decreases as everything gets better.” The mechanism could be teased out in larger studies, he says. Journal reference:JAMA Network Open DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.6908 Topics:pain

Space-time is considered the fabric of physical realityScience Photo Library/Alamy The first time a physicist told me they wanted to get rid of space-time, on a cold January morning earlier this year, I stopped typing my interview notes and clutched my New Scientist mug of tea. Space-time is the very fabric of physical reality – the four-dimensional framework that holds everything in the universe. But now the expert on my computer screen was telling me: “The idea of space-time somehow has to go. The notion of space-time can’t really be a totally fundamental one, and has to be…

Is there hydrogen to be found beneath the Grisons mountains in Switzerland? Thomas Stoiber / Alamy Mountain ranges could be a potential source of clean energy in the form of as-yet untapped hydrogen. While previous research has suggested this “geologic” hydrogen could be found underground, researchers have only recently turned to mountains as a possible store. “Certain minerals react with water and can generate hydrogen like a free green energy source,” says Frank Zwaan at the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany. Advertisement There are vast amounts of such minerals on Earth, but they are mainly found deep below the surface in a layer known as the mantle, he says, where they don’t come into contact with water. But during the formation and uplift of mountain ranges, some mantle rock can be brought close to the surface, where it can react with water in a process called serpentinisation. To get an idea of the potential for hydrogen formation, Zwaan and his colleagues modelled the uplift process, looking at how much mantle material reaches areas where there are optimum temperatures and enough circulating water for this to occur. Their results support the idea that large quantities of hydrogen could be generated under mountain ranges. Serpentinisation also occurs at mid-ocean ridges – some think it drove the origin of life – but hydrogen formed there is unlikely to be trapped, says Zwaan. That is because the temperature is lower than 122°C (252°F), and any trapped hydrogen will be “eaten” by bacteria, but under mountains it is possible to drill down to where the temperature is higher. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter “Nothing wants to live there, so it’s perfect for the hydrogen to be preserved,” Zwaan told a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna last week. “And there might even be another option, to drill into what you can call the hydrogen kitchen – the area where the hydrogen is generated.” The model results are supported by early findings from studies of some mountain ranges. For instance, Gianreto Manatschal at the University of Strasbourg, France, has confirmed there is hydrogen production under the Grisons area of the Alps in Switzerland. But how much there is remains to be seen, he told the meeting. “Our research is just at the very beginning,” he said. There is also hydrogen seeping up from below the northern Pyrenees, reported Alexandra Robert at the University of Toulouse, France. This research, too, is at an early stage. ReferenceEGU General Assembly 2025 DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-2570 Topics:

Local people searching the site of a landslide in Yambali, Papua New Guinea, in 2024Xinhua/Alamy When a dangerous landslide hits, rescuers scrambling to assist need to know exactly where to look – and now a new technique for analysing seismic data can do just that, by tracing the source of the disaster to within a few kilometres in mere seconds. Existing methods can only narrow down locations to within tens of kilometres, says Stefania Ursica at the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany. In remote areas, this can lead to delays if rescuers are sent to the wrong place. “That time loss can be crucial,” Ursica told a press conference at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna last week. Advertisement Many countries have a network of seismic monitors to record activity related to earthquakes and volcanoes. This data can also be used to detect events such as landslides – the risk of which is increasing due to climate change – but the data from these kinds of events is much messier and harder to analyse than that from earthquakes, says Urica. There are two novel aspects to her team’s approach, she says. The first is to analyse five different aspects of the seismic waveform to pick out from the noise exactly when an event occurred. This information is then fed to a dozen or so mathematical agents that search for the location of the event, such as the initial rockfall leading to a landslide. They do this by estimating what waveform would have been produced if the event had happened in a particular spot and comparing it to the recorded waveform. If it doesn’t match, they try a different spot. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter Each agent “moves” in a pattern inspired by the behaviour of animals, from the spiralling of a falcon to the long migrations of elephants, until they have collectively homed in on the most likely location of the event. The entire process takes only around 10 seconds and is much more accurate than previous approaches. “We have basically an order of magnitude [of] improvement,” Ursica says. In addition to helping rescue efforts, it will help researchers locate events in remote areas where satellite data is unclear or unavailable, she says: “We can pinpoint events that we otherwise couldn’t see.” The team plans to publish the details soon and make the code available for others’ use. ReferenceEGU General Assembly 2025 DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17862 Topics:disasters

Data and AI tools enable broad surveillance of social mediaTada Images/Shutterstock The US government is expanding its surveillance of social media to monitor millions of visitors and immigrants – and its embrace of more data analytics and artificial intelligence tools could increase scrutiny of US citizens as well. “It is nearly – if not entirely – impossible for the government to focus only on non-citizens and not look at anyone else’s social media,” says Rachel Levinson-Waldman at the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy non-profit…

A shingles vaccine seems to provide additional benefitsCavan Images / Alamy Vaccination against herpes zoster, better known as shingles, not only helps prevent this painful infection; it also curbs the risk of cardiovascular problems. A new observational study of more than a million people shows that those who received a single injection of the shingles vaccine Zostavax were 26 percent less likely to die from heart disease or experience a stroke, heart attack, or heart failure, compared to people who hadn’t been vaccinated, says Sooji Lee at Kyung Hee University. Advertisement “We know shingles causes inflammation in the blood vessels,” she says. “So by preventing the infection, the vaccine may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.” Shingles occurs when the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox and then stays in the body after symptoms clear up, becomes reactivated. This can happen at times when the immune system is weakened, such as during periods of stress or chemotherapy. Shingles causes a painful rash, which can sometimes get infected or scar. Although cardiovascular events are not typically listed as complications of shingles, scientists now know that shingles is linked to about a 30 percent greater risk of stroke and a 10 percent greater risk of heart attack, especially within the first year of infection. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter To see if vaccination mitigated this problem, Lee and her colleagues gathered data on 1,271,922 people aged 50 or older, collected between 2012 and 2024 by national health registries in South Korea. The researchers determined whether each person had received a live shingles vaccine or not and compared that to their later development of any of 18 types of cardiovascular disease, such as heart failure, stroke, thrombosis, arrhythmias and ischaemia. The team also investigated other health-related factors like age, sex, socioeconomic status, exercise levels and social habits. Over an average follow-up period of six years, the risk of cardiovascular events after vaccination was 23 percent lower compared to the risk for unvaccinated people, Lee says. Risks were even more reduced in men – with vaccination associated with a 27 percent drop in risk compared to only a 20 percent drop for women – and in people younger than 60, also with a 27 percent decreased risk compared to 16 percent in older people. Rural residents had a 25 per cent reduction versus 20 per cent for people in urban areas, and individuals with low income showed a 26 per cent drop compared to 20 per cent in higher earners. As for people with obesity, their reduction in risk decreased as BMI increased. For specific cardiovascular events, vaccinated people were 26 percent less likely to have a stroke, heart attack or heart failure, and they were also 26 percent less likely to die from heart disease. The risk of coronary artery disease, meanwhile, dropped 22 percent. Benefits were most pronounced two to three years after vaccination, then gradually diminished over the next five years. The study “strengthens our confidence” that shingles vaccinations cut cardiovascular risks, probably by curbing the vascular inflammation caused by the zoster virus, says Galen Foulke at the Pennsylvania State University. “Zoster itself has high morbidity from pain and post-herpetic neuralgia – a painful condition that can last years after shingles eruption,” he says. “But health systems around the world could find enormous healthcare savings through reduction of cardiovascular morbidity by investing in the relatively inexpensive zoster vaccine.” Although more research is needed, the scientists suspect the vaccine helps reduce cardiovascular risks indirectly because it prevents shingles, which can damage blood vessels and provoke clot formation and inflammation, Lee explains. The researchers focused first on the live-virus vaccine Zostavax rather than the newer recombinant vaccine, Shingrix – which contains just a viral protein rather than the virus itself – because Zostavax has been available for longer, which means there is more long-term data about its effects. Now they are turning their attention to Shingrix. “Because it’s more effective at preventing shingles, we think the recombinant vaccine may offer even stronger cardiovascular protection,” says Lee. While the study design doesn’t prove cause and effect like a randomized trial could, it does allow researchers to identify risk associations across large populations. Such large-scale data can reveal risk patterns that clinical trials might miss, Lee explains. Journal referenceEuropean Heart Journal DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf230 Topics:

Psilocybin, a psychedelic drug found in some mushrooms, may reduce inflammationShutterstock / Kyrylo Vasyliev Psychedelic drugs may improve mental health in part by reducing inflammation. In mice, psychedelics reversed signs of anxiety and an accumulation of inflammatory immune cells around the brain, potentially explaining why these drugs have shown promise in treating mental health conditions. It was once widely believed that there was little to no communication between the immune system and the brain, yet a burgeoning body of evidence now indicates that isn’t the case.…

Mind From anger to envy, research is revealing how to shift your mental state and put bad feelings to good use – with benefits for longevity, relationships and mental health 5 May 2025 Peter Strain Ethan Kross always shared a special bond with his grandmother, Dora, whom he considered a “second mom”. She lived just a few blocks away from his childhood home, and when he came by each day after school, she would shower him with kisses and lavish him with food – matzo balls, chicken broth and noodle pudding. Despite their closeness, she would barely ever talk about the horrors she had endured during the Nazi occupation in Eyshishok, modern-day Lithuania, before she had emigrated to the US and found a home in New York. How did she rebuild her life to become such a stable figure for her family? And why did she never discuss her trauma, except on specific occasions like Holocaust Memorial Day? “I found it puzzling, how she could mostly avoid speaking about those events but still be OK,” says Kross. Such questions would follow Kross through his adolescence; as an experimental psychologist and director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan, he has spent his career seeking an answer. “Emotions are full of richness and utility, but they can also get the better of us when we are most vulnerable,” he says. “So why does that happen? And what can we do to handle them more effectively? That’s what I went to graduate school to figure out.” Kross’s new book, Shift: How to manage your emotions so they don’t manage you, is the product of all he has learned. He also isn’t the only psychologist fascinated by the idea of mastering our…

Illustration of a chip containing quantum bits, or qubitsPete Hansen/Shutterstock The effort to build truly useful quantum computers often comes down to making them bigger by adding qubits, the quantum bits that are the basic building blocks of these devices. But creating quantum chaos inside them could have the same effect – and let quantum computers perform some tasks that seem too big for them to handle. Creating true quantum randomness – which is distinct from quantum chaos, and can be a useful resource in quantum technologies…

The megalithic graveyard of Carrowkeel in Sligo, Irelandscenicireland.com/Christopher Hill Photographic/Alamy Ireland’s megalithic tombs might not have been burial grounds for elite dynasties, as some thought, but rather places of community bonding. In 2020, researchers found genetic links among dozens of people in ancient tombs scattered across Ireland and evidence of incest in a man buried in an elaborate sepulchre, leading them to conclude that the tombs held members of a hereditary ruling class, somewhat akin to Egyptian pharaohs. Like many archaeologists, Jessica Smyth…

Is there an upside – or downside – to longer races?Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images Ever since I announced in my previous column that I am training for a half marathon, friends keep asking me whether a full marathon is up next. My answer is always the same – no way. While running 21 kilometres seems a manageable challenge, running 42 just feels self-punitive. But all of this inquiring has me wondering whether there is an upside – or downside – to longer races. Research in this area is scant, but a few studies do indicate declining returns, and even some evidence of harm.…

We are very proud of our Weekly podcast, which we have been putting out every week for over five years. In that time the podcast has won a number of awards and been listened to in over 160 countries. We love being able to bring science to new audiences, and we love the flexibility, informality and intimacy that conversation brings to science reporting. View this post on Instagram A post shared by New Scientist (@newscientist) But it is time to shake things up. We have relaunched and renamed our weekly show. Introducing: The world, the universe and us. Hosted by me and my colleague Penny Sarchet, we will be joined each week by expert journalists and scientists to discuss the latest science news, and what it really means. From the evolution of intelligent life to the mysteries of consciousness, from the threat of the climate crisis to the search for dark matter, The world, the universe and us is your essential weekly dose of science and wonder in uncertain times.Advertisement The show draws on New Scientist’s unparalleled depth of reporting to put the stories that matter into context. Feed your curiosity with a podcast that will restore your sense of optimism and nourish your brain. Get it, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts. And we are also on YouTube, if you want to watch us – do come and say hello. Topics:Podcasts

It can be difficult to work out which books count as climate fiction. Emily H. Wilson reads the shortlist for the Climate Fiction prize – and discovers Roz Dineen's powerful novel Briefly Very Beautiful

Where does consciousness come from?Shutterstock/3Dsculptor Supporters and detractors of a leading theory of how consciousness arises are stuck in an increasingly bitter debate. Opponents suggest that integrated information theory (IIT), which claims that consciousness can be defined on a mathematical spectrum, is pseudoscience that could be misused to influence sensitive debates around abortion and the sentience of artificial intelligences – while supporters say the detractors are just jealous. Scientists have long sought to explain how the brain gives rise to conscious experience, but two prominent ideas have recently come to the fore: IIT and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT).…

A map of the universe created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Each dot is a galaxy, with Earth in the centreDESI collaboration and KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor In the wake of bombshell findings that suggest dark energy might be weakening as the universe expands, physicists are considering replacing the standard cosmological model of the universe with exotic new theories that say gravity works differently to how we thought. Ideas involving string theory, a new fundamental force or even a form of gravity that changes over time are all options on the table. Our best model of the universe…