Some chimpanzees use sticks to fish for termitesManoj Shah/Getty ImagesWild chimpanzees appear to learn skills from each other and then much as humans do improve on those techniques from one generation to the next.In particular, young females that migrate between groups bring their cultural knowledge with them, and groups can combine new techniques with existing ones to get better at foraging for food. Such cumulative culture means some chimpanzee communities are becoming more technologically advanced over time albeit very slowly, says Andrew Whiten at the University of St Andrews, UK. AdvertisementIf chimpanzees have some cultural knowledge that the community theyre moving into doesnt have, they may pass it on just in the same way theyre passing the genes on, he says. And then that culture builds up from there.Scientists already knew that chimpanzees were capable of using tools in sophisticated ways and passing on that knowledge to their offspring. But in comparison with the rapid technological development of humans, it seemed that chimpanzees werent improving on previous innovations, says Whiten. The fact that chimpanzee tools are often made from biodegrading plants makes it difficult for scientists to track their cultural evolution.Cassandra Gunasekaram at the University of Zurich in Switzerland suspected she might be able to apply genetic analysis to the puzzle. While male chimpanzees stay in their home area, young females leave their native communities to find mates elsewhere. She wondered if those females have brought their skill sets with them into their new groups. A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planets animals, plants and other organisms.Sign up to newsletterTo find out, she and her colleagues acquired data on 240 chimpanzees representing all four subspecies, which were previously collected by other research groups at 35 study sites in Africa. The data included precise information about what tools, if any, each of the animals used, and their genetic connections over the past 15,000 years. The genetics give us a kind of time machine into the way culture has been transmitted across chimpanzees in the past, says Whiten. Its quite a revelation that we can have these new insights.Some chimpanzees used complex combinations of tools, for example a drilling stick and a fishing brush fashioned by pulling a plant stem between their teeth, for hunting termites. The researchers found that the chimpanzees with the most advanced tool sets were three to five times more likely to share the same DNA than those that used simple tools or no tools at all, even though they might live thousands of kilometres away. And advanced tool use was also more strongly associated with female migration compared with simple or no tool use.Our interpretation is that these complex tool sets are really invented by perhaps building on a simpler form from before, and therefore they have to depend on transmission by females from the communities that invented them initially to all the other communities along the way, says Whiten.It shows that complex tools would rely on social exchanges across groups which is very surprising and exciting, says Gunasekaram.Thibaud Gruber at the University of Geneva isnt surprised by the results, but says the definition of complex behaviour is debatable. After working with chimps for 20 years, I would argue that stick use itself is complex, he says.His own team, for example, found what they called cumulative culture in chimpanzees that make sponges out of moss instead of leaves which is no more complex, but works more efficiently to soak up mineral-rich water from clay pits. Its not a question of being more complex, but of just having a technique that builds on a previously established one, he says.Cumulative culture is still markedly slower in chimpanzees compared with humans, probably due to their different cognitive abilities and lack of speech, says Gunasekaram. Also, chimpanzees interact far less with others outside their communities compared with humans, giving them fewer opportunities to share culture.Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3381Topics:

Millions of US residents may be drinking water containing the potentially harmful compoundYiu Yu Hoi/Getty ImagesA common disinfectant in drinking water breaks down into a chemical compound that we know almost nothing about, including whether it has any potential toxic health effects to those who drink it.Chlorine has been used to sanitise drinking water for more than a century. However, some drinking water systems in the US, UK and Australia now useanother closely related chemical disinfectant called chloramine. Thats because chlorine byproducts were linked to bladder and colon cancer, low birth rates and miscarriage, says

An artists depiction of a system showing its host star, transiting planet and misaligned protoplanetary discNASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC)A world seen orbiting a 3-million-year-old star about 520 light years from Earth is one of the youngest known planets, offering a window into early planet formation.The star is an early-stage dwarf star, one much dimmer and less massive than our sun. Its age has been estimated by comparing the intensity and wavelengths of the light it emits with other stars.Madyson Barber at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues studied the star using NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). They found a planet about a third of the mass of Jupiter and 10 times the diameter of Earth by noticing the dip in the stars light as the planet passed in front.AdvertisementThe worlds mass and size suggest it is either a large rocky planet, known as a super-Earth, or a small gas giant, called a sub-Neptune, in the process of formation.We think Earth took between 10 million and 20 million years to form, about 4.5 billion years ago, says Barber. So it was kind of surprising to see anything at 3 million years. Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterThe system is also notable for still having its protoplanetary disc of dust and gas, meaning the star and planets are still in the process of taking shape, although that disc is oddly misaligned out of the plane of the system for reasons that arent clear. Were not super sure what caused the misalignment, says Barber. Its possible a stellar flyby happened as the system was forming.The planet is extremely close to its star, completing an orbit every nine days, which is also puzzling as it is unclear whether planets can form in such proximity. They can move inwards over time, as is thought to have taken place in our solar system when some of the giant planets jostled for position. It hints at fast migration of planets being a thing, says Barber.While we know of other young planets, they have tended to be much larger worlds. This one could give us a closer representation of how the worlds in our own solar system came into being. We try to extrapolate from these other worlds how quickly planet formation might have taken hold in the early solar system, says Melinda Soares-Furtado at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Some young stars have even been seen with gaps in their protoplanetary disc after just half a million years, hinting at the existence of planets forming in tandem with their host stars, she says.It looks like things happen early, says Soares-Furtado, so its really cool to grab snapshots of systems like this one.Journal reference:Nature DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08123-3Topics:exoplanets

TechnologyUsing GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling 20 November 2024 Can AI replicate individual humans?gremlin/Getty ImagesAn experiment simulating more than 1000 real people using the artificial intelligence model behind ChatGPT has successfully replicated their unique thoughts and personalities with high accuracy, sparking concerns about the ethics of mimicking individuals in this way.Joon Sung Park at Stanford University in California and his colleagues wanted to use generative AI tools to model individuals as a way of forecasting the impact of policy changes. Historically, this has been attempted using more simplistic rule-based statistical models, with limited success.

Leader and EnvironmentBy 2050, 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban centres - that's just one reason why mayors will be essential to addressing the climate crisis, making vital adaptations to cities to make them more bearable in a warming world 20 November 2024 Guy Corbishley/AlamyIt hasnt been a good year for people who care about climate change. A hoped-for peak in carbon emissions has failed to emerge, meaning we continue to warm the planet at an accelerating rate (see Humanity has warmed the planet by 1.5C since 1700). Meanwhile, the election of Donald Trump for a second term as US president is likely to see the country retreat on climate action, with his pledge to drill, baby, drill for new oil and gas supplies.Similar sentiments towards fossil fuels come from Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, who has called the natural resources of his oil-rich nation a gift from God. Aliyev made the comments at the COP29 climate summit, hosted in Azerbaijans capital, Baku. Ironically, this gift will become increasingly inaccessible as the Caspian Sea dries up in a warming world, stranding billions of dollars of fossil fuel infrastructure (see COP29 host Azerbaijan faces climate disaster as Caspian Sea dries up).In light of this failure by politicians on the international stage to get to grips with the reality of climate change, other leaders need to step up and, surprisingly, city mayors may be best placed to do so.AdvertisementAdapting cities to cope with the specific effects of urban heat will be essentialWhile mayors cant be expected to influence the global climate, they oversee the well-being of the more than 50 per cent of the worlds population who live in urban centres a figure expected to grow to 70 per cent by 2050, at which point temperatures will have risen by 2.5C under current projections. Adapting cities to cope with the specific effects of urban heat will be essential, from promoting green spaces to investing in buildings that can be cooled without air conditioning (see Extreme heat is now making cities unlivable. How can we survive it?).The good news is many mayors are already aware of their responsibilities. Londons mayor, Sadiq Khan, is aiming for the city to reach net zero by 2030. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, France, has planted trees and banned cars in certain areas. And Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, has promised a green transformation ahead of the city hosting the Olympics in 2028. Organisations like C40 and Climate Mayors are helping unite local politicians across the world in action. This wont solve climate change, but it will make living in a warming world more bearable for many.Topics:

A pigeon-inspired robot has solved the mystery of how birds fly without the vertical tail fins that human-designed aircraft rely on. Its makers say the prototype could eventually lead to passenger aircraft with less drag, reducing fuel consumption.Tail fins, also known as vertical stabilisers, allow aircraft to turn from side to side and help avoid changing direction unintentionally. Some military planes, such as the Northrop B-2 Spirit, are designed without a tail fin because it makes them less visible to radar. Instead, they use flaps that create extra drag on just one side when needed, but this is an inefficient solution. AdvertisementBirds have no vertical fin and also dont seem to deliberately create asymmetric drag. David Lentink at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and colleagues designed PigeonBot II (pictured below) to investigate how birds stay in control without such a stabiliser.PigeonBot II, a robot designed to mimic the flying techniques of birdsEric ChangThe teams previous model, built in 2020, flew by flapping its wings and changing their shape like a bird, but it still had a traditional aircraft tail. The latest design, which includes 52 real pigeon feathers, has been updated to include a bird-like tail and test flights have been successful. The latest science news delivered to your inbox, every day.Sign up to newsletterLentink says the secret to PigeonBot IIs success is in the reflexive tail movements programmed into it, designed to mimic those known to exist in birds. If you hold a pigeon and tilt it from side to side or back and forward, its tail automatically reacts and moves in complex ways, as if to stabilise the animal in flight. This has long been thought to be the key to birds stability, but now it has been proven by the robotic replica.The researchers programmed a computer to control the nine servomotors in Pigeonbot II to steer the craft using propellers on each wing, but also to automatically twist and fan the tail in response, to create the stability that would normally come from a vertical fin. Lentink says these reflexive movements are so complex that no human could directly fly Pigeonbot II. Instead, the operator issues high level commands to an autopilot, telling it to turn left or right, and a computer on board determines the appropriate control signals.After many unsuccessful tests during which the control systems were refined, it was finally able to take off, cruise and land safely.Now we know the recipe of how to fly without a vertical tail. Vertical tails, even for a passenger aircraft, are just a nuisance. It costs weight, which means fuel consumption, but also drag its just unnecessary drag, says Lentink. If you just copy our solution [for a large scale aircraft] it will work, for sure. [But] if you want to translate this into something thats a little bit easier to manufacture, then there needs to be an additional layer of research.Journal reference:Science Robotics DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.ado4535 Topics:

Lasers in a quantum computing set-up at Atom ComputingAtom ComputingUseful quantum computers are one step closer. Microsoft and Atom Computing announced that they have set a new record for the most entangled logical qubits, which are crucial for developing quantum computers that can correct their own errors.We are co-designing and building the worlds most powerful quantum machine, says Krysta Svore at Microsoft.Over the past decade, quantum computers have rapidly increased in size, there are more and more experts who can program themand

Heart cockles come in many colours and host photosynthetic algae inside their shellsDakota McCoyA heart-shaped mollusc has evolved tiny windows that work like fibre-optic cables, the first known example in nature.Heart cockles (Corculum cardissa) are bivalve molluscs a bit like clams that have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae that live inside them. The algae have a safe home, get light to photosynthesise and provide nutrients for their hosts. AdvertisementUnlike other bivalves, heart cockles dont open their shells up wide, yet they somehow funnel light to their interior even while staying shut.Now, Dakota McCoy at the University of Chicago and her colleagues have found that there are transparent calcium carbonate crystal structures in the heart cockle shells that function like fibre-optic bundles, letting light inside to bathe the algae. If you dont have to open and can just have a transparent window, thats a very safe way to irradiate your algae, says McCoy.The researchers examined fragments of different heart cockle shells and the transparent structures within them, as well as the intensity and colour of light that gets through. They found that the windows were made from long, thin fibres of a mineral called aragonite a form of calcium carbonate which lets twice as much of the photosynthetically useful light through as it does harmful ultraviolet light. We put on sunblock because UV causes mutations and cancer. The heart cockles are using these windows as a sunblock, says McCoy. The latest science news delivered to your inbox, every day.Sign up to newsletterHeart cockle shells illuminated from within to show the transparent windows in their shells, which can be little triangles (left) or stripes (right)Dakota McCoyWhile the aragonite threads look similar to manufactured fibre optics, they lack a protective, insulating sheath, called cladding, yet transmit light just as effectively. This could serve as an inspiration for cladding-free fibre-optic cables, which would be cheaper to manufacture.The natural, UV-blocking properties of the shells could also be used to help protect corals, which, like the cockles, host photosynthetic algae inside them, but are more susceptible to environmental stresses like light and heat, says McCoy.Journal referenceNature Communications DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53110-xTopics:

The DESI instrument observing the sky from the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope during a meteor showerKPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. SparksAlbert Einsteins theory of general relativity has been proven right on the largest scale yet. An analysis of millions of galaxies shows that the way they have evolved and clustered over billions of years is consistent with his predictions.Ever since Einstein put forward his theory of gravity more than a century ago, researchers have been trying to find scenarios where it doesnt hold up. But there had not been such a test at the level of the largest distances in the universe until now, says Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki at the University of Texas at Dallas. He and his colleagues used data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona to conduct one.AdvertisementDetails of cosmic structure and how it has changed over time are a potent test of how well we understand gravity because it was this force that shaped galaxies as they evolved out of the small variations in the distribution of matter in the early universe.DESI has so far collected data on how nearly 6 million galaxies clustered over the course of the past 11 billion years. Ishak-Boushaki and his colleagues combined this with results from several other large surveys, such as those mapping the cosmic microwave background radiation and supernovae. Then, they compared this with predictions from a theory of gravity that encompassed both Einsteins ideas and more contemporary competing theories of modified gravity. They found no deviation from Einsteins gravity. Ishak-Boushaki says that even though there are some uncertainties in the measurements, there is still no strong evidence that any theory that deviates from Einsteins would capture the state of the universe more accurately.Itamar Allali at Brown University in Rhode Island says that while general relativity has been shown to hold in extremely precise tests conducted in laboratories, it is important to be able to test it at all scales, including across the entire cosmos. This helps eliminate the possibility that Einstein made correct predictions for objects of one size but not another, he says. Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterThe new analysis also offers hints for how dark energy, a mysterious force thought to be responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe, fits within our theories of gravity, says Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Einsteins earliest formulations of general relativity included a cosmological constant a kind of anti-gravitational force that played the same role as dark energy but previous DESI results have suggested that dark energy isnt constant. It may have changed as the universe aged, says Palanque-Delabrouille.The fact that we see agreement with [general relativity] and still see this departure from the cosmological constant really open the Pandoras box of what the data could actually be telling us, says Ishak-Boushaki.DESI will keep collecting data for several more years and ultimately record the positions and properties of 40 million galaxies, which the three scientists all say will bring clarity on how to correctly marry general relativity and theories of dark energy. This new analysis only used one year of DESIs data, but in March 2025 the team will share takeaways from the instruments first three years of observations.Allali says he is anticipating these results to be consequential in several important ways, such as pinpointing shifts in the Hubble constant, which is a measure of the rate of the universes expansion, narrowing down the mass of elusive particles called neutrinos and even searching for new cosmic ingredients like dark radiation.This analysis will weigh in on a lot more than gravity, it will weigh in on all of cosmology, he says.Topics:

There is a lot to keep track of when working in spaceNASA via Getty ImageAstronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had slower memory, attention and processing speed after six months, raising concerns about the impact of cognitive impairment on future space missions to Mars.The extreme environment of space, with reduced gravity, harsh radiation and the lack of regular sunrises and sunsets, can have dramatic effects on astronaut health, from muscle loss to an increased risk of heart disease. However, the cognitive effects of long-term space travel are less well documented. AdvertisementNow, Sheena Dev at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and her colleagues have looked at the cognitive performance of 25 astronauts during their time on the ISS.The team ran the astronauts through 10 tests, some of which were done on Earth, once before and twice after the mission, while others were done on the ISS, both early and later in the mission. These tests measured certain cognitive capacities, such as finding patterns on a grid to test abstract reasoning or choosing when to stop an inflating balloon before it pops to test risk-taking.The researchers found that the astronauts took longer to complete tests measuring processing speed, working memory and attention on the ISS than on Earth, but they were just as accurate. While there was no overall cognitive impairment or lasting effect on the astronauts abilities, some of the measures, like processing speed, took longer to return to normal after they came back to Earth. Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterHaving clear data on the cognitive effects of space travel will be crucial for future human spaceflight, says Elisa Raffaella Ferr at Birkbeck, University of London, but it will be important to collect more data, both on Earth and in space, before we know the full picture.A mission to Mars is not only longer in terms of time, but also in terms of autonomy, says Ferr. People there will have a completely different interaction with ground control because of distance and delays in communication, so they will need to be fully autonomous in taking decisions, so human performance is going to be key. You definitely dont want to have astronauts on Mars with slow reaction time, in terms of attention-related tasks or memory or processing speed.It isnt surprising that there were some specific decreases in cognitive performance given the unusual environment of space, says Jo Bower at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. Its not necessarily a great cause for an alarm, but its something thats useful to be aware of, especially so that you know your limits when youre in these extreme environments, she says.That awareness could be especially helpful for astronauts on longer missions, adds Bower. Its not just how you do in those tests, but also what your perception of your ability is, she says. We know, for example, if youre sleep deprived, that quite often your performance will decline, but you wont realise your performance has declined.Journal reference:Frontiers in Physiology DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2024.1451269Topics:

The El Capitan supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryGarry McLeod/Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryThe top spot in the league table of the worlds most powerful computers has changed hands, with one supercomputer built for US national security research ousting another.Top500, the definitive list of the most capable computers, is based on a single metric: how fast a machine can solve vast numbers of equations, measured in floating-point operations per second, or FLOPS. A machine called Frontier built in 2022 was the first publicly acknowledged to have reached the exascale a billion billion FLOPS. AdvertisementFrontier was created by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to carry out nuclear weapon simulations, but also to work on a range of complex scientific problems such as climate modelling, nuclear fusion simulation and drug discovery.Now, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California has created El Capitan, which is capable of 1.742 exaFLOPS, more than any other supercomputer.The machine has been built in collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy dedicated to developing nuclear weapons science under tight security. The agency was formed in 2000 after the discovery that nuclear secrets had leaked to China from the Department of Energy.El Capitan will essentially provide the vast computational power necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the US nuclear deterrent without having to carry out physical nuclear testing. LLNL claims that complex, high-resolution 3D simulations of nuclear explosions that would take months on Sierra, its most powerful system until now, will be done in just hours or days on El Capitan.Topics:computing

SpaceElon Musks SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. It aims to conduct the launch at 4pm Central Time (10pm UK). Heres everything we know so far 19 November 2024 SpaceX is making preparations for the sixth test flight of the worlds most powerful rocket, Starship. Elon Musks company has been taking a fail fast, learn fast approach to research and development more akin to the world of Silicon Valley than the aerospace industry, and the pace of launches only appears to be speeding up.When is the next flight?SpaceX sayson its website that it aims to conduct the sixth test flight of Starship on 19 November, with a launch window opening at 4pm Central Time (10pm UK). A livestream of the launch will be broadcast on SpaceXs X account, the social media platform also owned Musk, or you will be able to watch it here at newscientist.comIt took SpaceX 18 months to carry out the first five Starship test flights, with the fifth taking place in the middle of October. If the company carries out the sixth next week, it will mean a gap of just over one month since the last flight its fastest turnaround yet.AdvertisementWhat will SpaceX attempt in flight 6?In many ways, flight 6 will be a repeat of flight 5, but with a few key differences.The booster stage will again attempt a chopstick landing, in which the craft is grabbed and secured as it returns to the launchpad, allowing it to be lowered to the ground. This approach is designed to eventually allow the booster to be re-used multiple times and massively reduce the cost of putting payloads into orbit.Starship during a high-altitude test flightSpaceXThe upper stage will reach space, carry out a partial orbit and then re-enter Earths atmosphere for a splash landing in the Indian Ocean. But this time, the upper stage will attempt to reignite one of its Raptor engines while in space in order to collect valuable operational data. It will also test new heat shield designs during re-entry.Another difference is that the launch will take place later in the day so that the landing of the upper stage in the Indian Ocean can be filmed in daylight, ensuring greater detail. Previous missions have seen night landings and therefore footage while cinematic and dramatic hasnt given engineers as much insight as video of a daytime landing will.What happened during previous Starship launches?Test flight 1 on 20 April 2023 saw three of the booster stages 33 engines fail to ignite. The rocket later span out of control and self-destructed.The second test flight on 18 November 2023 got further, gaining enough altitude that the booster and upper stages separated as planned. The booster stage ultimately exploded before reaching ground level and the upper stage self-destructed, although not before successfully reaching space.Test flight 3 on 14 March 2024 was at least a partial success, as the upper stage reached space once more, but it failed to return to ground level intact.The next flight, on 6 June, saw the upper stage reach an altitude of more than 200 kilometres and travel at over 27,000 kilometres per hour. Both the booster and the upper stage completed soft splashdowns in the ocean.Test flight 5 was the most ambitious to date, with Starships Super Heavy booster dropping back to the launch pad and being safely caught by SpaceXs launch tower, called Mechazilla, in a pair of chopsticks. It is equipped with a pair of chopsticks to grab the craftat a specific point and secure it, allowing it to be lowered to the ground.Topics:

Russias plan to reach net zero by 2060 relies on existing forests to absorb ongoing carbon emissionsVarnakovR/ShutterstockCountries are taking a shortcut to net-zero emissions by including forests and other passive carbon sinks in their climate plans, in a tactic that will thwart global efforts to halt climate change, leading researchers have warned.Relying on natural carbon sinks to soak up ongoing carbon emissions from human activity will condemn the world to continued warming. That is according to the researchers who first developed the science behind net-zero emissions, and who have today launched a highly unusual intervention to call out nations and companies for misusing the concept. AdvertisementThis paper is a call to clarify to people what was originally meant by net zero, Myles Allen at the University of Oxford told a press briefing on 14 November.Natural sinks such as forests and peat bogs play a vital role in Earths natural carbon cycle by absorbing some of the carbon in the atmosphere. But existing sinks cannot be relied upon to offset ongoing greenhouse gas emissions.If they are used in this way, global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will remain stable once net zero is reached, and warming will continue for centuries because of the way the oceans absorb heat, Allen warned. You could think you are on a path of 1.5C, and end up with warming of well over 2C, he said. This ambiguity could, in effect, cost us the goals of the Paris Agreement. Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterTo stop global temperatures rising, emissions need to reach net zero without relying on passive uptake by the land and oceans. This allows existing natural sinks to continue absorbing excess CO2, bringing down atmospheric concentrations of the gas and offsetting ongoing warming from the deep ocean.However, many countries already count passive land sinks such as forests as greenhouse gas removal in their national carbon accounts. Some, including Bhutan, Gabon and Suriname, have even declared themselves to be already net zero, thanks to their existing extensive forest cover.Others have set long-term net-zero targets based on this approach. Russia, for example, has promised to reach net-zero emissions by 2060, but the plan relies heavily on using its existing forests to absorb ongoing carbon emissions.Maybe you will get some countries deliberately using this in a mischievous way, Glen Peters at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway, told the briefing. This is going to be more problematic in countries with large forest areas as a share of their total land.The team fears this issue will become more acute as carbon markets develop and the pressure on nations to decarbonise intensifies. As carbon becomes more valuable, the pressure to define any removal you can as a negative emission, in order potentially to be able to sell it on the carbon offset markets, will become much stronger, said Allen.Nations and companies with net-zero targets in place should revise their approach to exclude passive carbon uptake from their account, the team says.Natural sinks can count as carbon removal if they are additional to what already exists: for example, a new forest is planted or a peat bog is rewetted. However, these kinds of natural carbon sinks are vulnerable to climate impacts such as wildfires, droughts and the spread of invasive species, making them unreliable for long-term sequestration.This hasnt stopped nations from leaning heavily on these natural sinks in their net-zero strategies. One 2022 study found many countries, including the US, France, Cambodia and Costa Rica, plan to rely on forest carbon or other nature-based removal to balance out ongoing emissions. Many national strategies bet on the increase of carbon sinks in forests and soils as a means of achieving long-term targets, the studys authors wrote.Natural carbon sinks must be preserved, but should not be relied on to balance out ongoing emissions, stressed Allen. Instead, he urges nations to aim for geological net zero, which would ensure that all ongoing carbon emissions are balanced with long-term carbon sequestration in underground stores.Countries need to acknowledge the need for geological net zero, he said. Which means if you are still generating carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels by mid-century, you need to have a plan to put the carbon dioxide they generate back into the ground.Geological net zero seems a sensible global goal for countries to aim for, says Harry Smith at the University of East Anglia, UK. It helps clarify a lot of the ambiguity that plagues the way countries currently account for removals on land.But that could have knock-on consequences for climate ambition, he warns. What might the new politics of geological net zero be? How might this impact the climate ambitions of governments if geological net zero moves the goalposts on their climate strategy?Journal reference:Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08326-8Topics:

It can be hard to keep weight offTero Vesalainen/Getty ImagesPeople with obesity who lose weight often put it back on, which may partly be driven by lasting changes to the DNA within their fat cells, a discovery that could one day lead to new treatments.Around 85 per cent of people with overweight or obesity who lose at least a tenth of their body weight regain it within a year. AdvertisementThat is partly because it is hard to maintain low-calorie diets for a long period of time, though that probably plays a relatively small role, says Laura Catharina Hinte at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland. It cant be that we all dont have enough willpower to maintain lost weight.Studies have also shown that the brain interprets a sharp drop in body fat as dangerous and responds by making the body burn less energy.To learn more about this process, Hinte and her colleagues analysed fat tissue collected from 20 people with obesity just before they had bariatric surgery, which shrinks the stomach to make people feel fuller sooner, and again two years later, when they had lost at least a quarter of their initial body weight. They also looked at fat tissue from 18 people with a healthy weight. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday.Sign up to newsletterThe researchers sequenced a type of genetic molecule called RNA, which encodes proteins, in fat cells. They found that people with obesity had increased or decreased levels of more than 100 RNA molecules compared with people of a healthy weight, and these differences persisted at two years after weight loss.These changes seem to ramp up inflammation and disrupt how fat cells store and burn fat, both of which raise the risk of future weight gain, says team member Ferdinand von Meyenn, also at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.To explore whether these RNA changes might drive rebound weight gain, the researchers first confirmed that similar changes persisted after obese mice lost weight. They then fed these mice and mice of a healthy weight a high-fat diet for one month. While the previously obese mice gained 14 grams of weight, on average, the other mice gained just 5 grams.The team also found that fat cells from the previously obese mice took up more fat and sugar when grown in a lab dish than those from the other mice. Together, the results show how obesity-linked RNA changes may increase future weight gain, says von Meyenn.Finally, the team found that molecular tags, or epigenetic marks, on DNA in the fat cells seemed to drive the obesity-linked RNA changes. These alter RNA levels by changing the structure of the DNA that encodes them.While the study didnt look for these molecular tags in the people they studied, or examine whether they regained the weight they lost, the findings probably translate from mice to humans, says Henriette Kirchner at the University of Lbeck in Germany.This is based on similarities between the physiology of these species and how the environment can change the way their genes work, known as epigenetics, she says. In the decades to come, drugs that target epigenetics could help treat obesity, says Kirchner.Journal reference:Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08165-7Topics:obesity

Syncing up time crystals can help harness energyNobi_Prizue/Getty ImagesTo store energy with a time crystal, make it a double. A mathematical analysis shows that putting two time crystals into a coordinated state could create a quantum battery-like device.Time crystals differ from other quantum states of matter by having a structure that repeats in time they cycle through the same set of configurations over and over without any energy input. Though physicists once worried that this would violate fundamental laws of physics and render them impossible, over the course of the past decade researchers have created

How did Earths inner core freeze solid?Rost9/ShutterstockA high concentration of carbon within Earths inner core could explain a long-standing mystery about how the deepest part of our planet froze solid a process that kick-started the magnetic field protecting life on the surface.Earths inner core presents a paradox for geophysicists: it first formed as a massive liquid ball of mostly iron, then began to solidify within the last billion years. In order for that freezing process to start in a pure iron object, it would have had to cool by at least 700 kelvin in

Scientists may have found another reason to prioritise dental hygieneskynesher/Getty ImagesMounting evidence suggests that the microbes in our mouths could be putting us at risk of certain cancers, as well as affecting our prognosis if we do develop them, but the relationship isnt straightforward.Second only to the gut, the mouth is home to a diverse microbial community, with more than 700 species of bacteria alone colonising our teeth, tongues and soft tissues.Over the past decade, research has increasingly linked gum disease

The skeleton of Navaornis hestiae, an 80-million-year-old bird fossilS. Abramowicz/Dinosaur Institute/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyAn 80-million-year-old fossil bird has been discovered with a skull so exquisitely preserved that scientists have been able to study the detailed structure of its brain.In both age and evolutionary development, the new species, named Navaornis hestiae, is almost midway between the earliest known bird-like dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, which lived 150 million years ago, and modern birds. It lived in the Cretaceous Period alongside dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. AdvertisementThe fossil, which bears a superficial resemblance to a starling, was found near Presidente Prudente, Brazil, in 2016 and was immediately recognised as significant because of the rarity of a full bird skeleton, particularly one of that age.But Daniel Field at the University of Cambridge says it wasnt until 2022 that he and his colleagues realised the skull was so intact that they could possibly scan it and create a 3D model of its brain.High-resolution CT scanning allows palaeontologists to peer inside fossils. This involves careful digital dissection: separating out each individual component of the skull and then reassembling them into a complete, undeformed three-dimensional reconstruction, says Field. A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planets animals, plants and other organisms.Sign up to newsletterThe new fossil provides unprecedented insight into the pattern and timing by which the specialised features of the brain of living birds evolved.Based on the teams reconstruction of the brain, Field says the cognitive abilities and flying capacity of Navaornis were probably inferior to those of most living birds.Artists impression of Navaornis hestiaeJ. dOliveiraThe portions of the brain responsible for complex cognition and spatial orientation arent as enlarged as those of modern birds, he says.Although the cerebrum of Navaornis is greatly expanded relative to the condition in a more archaic bird relative like Archaeopteryx, it is not as expanded as what we see in living birds.The enlarged brains of modern birds support a huge range of complex behaviours, says Field, but understanding how their brains evolved has been challenging due to a lack of adequately complete and well-preserved fossil bird skulls from early bird relatives.Navaornis fills a roughly 70-million-year-long gap in our understanding of how the distinctive brains of modern birds evolved.Journal reference:Nature DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08114-4Topics:

Moon over Col de Sarennenagelestock.com/AlamyObservational astronomers hate the moon. This might be surprising to some of you after all, the moon is gorgeous, its the closest astronomical object we can observe and the dominant feature of the night sky on Earth. But that very spotlight is the problem: when the moon is out, its glare can hide nearly everything else. When you are looking for tiny details or deep-sky objects, that is a problem.Even in just the next couple of months, there are two meteor showers that will each happen within a few days of the full

Steve NelsonEarth isnt doing so great. Thanks to human-induced climate change, the seas are warming and rising, while the land in many places is alternately choked in drought or inundated with floods. As for us humans, we are engaged in warfare on multiple continents, far-right movements are ascendant across the world and, as of last month, dude wipes are available with a pumpkin spice scent in the United States.Meanwhile, the escape hatch to space is creaking open. Elon Musks company SpaceX has a growing fleet of cheap, reusable rockets. In October, the booster stage for its mega-rocket, Starship, was caught in the grip of a skyscraper-high tower as it descended back to Earth. It was an impressive feat. But Musks goal with these vehicles is even more audacious: to start a self-sustaining million-person city on Mars in the next 30 years.Has anyone really thought this through? Well, yes, as it happens, albeit not Musk. We are a wife-and-husband research team a biologist and cartoonist, respectively and we have spent four years looking into how humans will become space settlers for our latest book, A City on Mars. We set out to write the essential guide to a glorious off-world future. What we learned, however, made us space settlement sceptics.Heres the thing: Mars sucks. When you dig into what life would really look like on the Red Planet, in terms of the squishy details of human existence, it becomes hard to avoid an inconvenient conclusion that moving to Mars to escape Earth would be like moving

Indigenous artist KiteFlorian Voggeneder/vog.photoPST ART: Art & science collideMulti-venue, Southern CaliforniaCloses 16 February 2025The myth of the irreconcilably divided worlds of art and science is still alive. But its nonsense, says Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation the two have always been intertwined. She stresses this in her role as chief architect of PST ART: Art & science collide, a programme of over 70 exhibitions in Southern California over the next three months designed to interrogate the bonds between the two.In 2017, Weinstein began talking to museum directors about the theme. Everyone started sparking

The shadow of a laser beam appears as a horizontal line against the blue backgroundAbrahao et al. (2024)Light normally makes other objects cast shadows but with a little help from a ruby, a beam of laser light can cast a shadow of its own.When two laser beams interact, they dont clash together like lightsabers in Star Wars, says Raphael Abrahao at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. In real life, they will simply pass through each other. Abrahao and his colleagues, however, found a way for one laser beam to block another and make its shadow appear. AdvertisementThe crucial ingredient was a ruby cube. The researchers hit this cube with a beam of green laser light while illuminating it with a blue laser from the side. As the green light passed through the ruby atoms, it changed their properties in a peculiar way that then affected how they reacted to the blue light.Instead of letting the blue laser pass through them, the atoms affected by the green light now blocked the blue light, which created a shadow shaped exactly like the green laser beam. Remarkably, the researchers could project the blue light on a screen and see this shadow of a laser with the naked eye.Abrahao says he and his colleagues had a long discussion of whether what they created really qualified as a shadow. Because it moved when they moved the green laser beam, they could see it without any special equipment and they managed to project it onto commonplace objects, like a marker, they ultimately decided in the affirmative. Untangle the weirdness of reality with our monthly newsletter.Sign up to newsletterHistorically, understanding shadows has been crucial for understanding what light can do and how we can use it, he says, and this experiment adds an unexpected technique into scientists light-manipulation toolbox.TomsChlouba at the University of ErlangenNuremberg in Germany says the experiment uses known processes to create a striking visual demonstration of how materials can help control light. The rubys interactions with the laser, for instance, are similar to those of materials used in laser eye surgeries, which must be able to respond to laser light by blocking it if it gets dangerously intense.Journal reference:Optica DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.534596Topics:

Readers rated AI-mimicry of Shakespeares poems above the authors real worksNorth Wind Picture Archives / AlamyMost readers cant distinguish classic works by poets such as William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson from imitations generated by artificial intelligence. And when asked which they prefer, they often chose the AI poetry.Over 78 per cent of our participants gave higher ratings on average to AI-generated poems than to human-written poems by famous poets, says Brian Porter at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.Porter and his team prompted OpenAIs

A classic study found that people can fail to notice a gorilla when they are focusing on something else, but new experiments suggest this "inattentional blindness" might not tell the whole story

It has been 50 years since archaeologists discovered Lucy, perhaps the most famous ancient hominin ever found. But the scientists who have studied her say that this fossil gave us a misleading image of the nature of her species

Do you speak AI?Shutterstock/Ole.CNXMicrosoft has created an artificial language that allows AI models to talk to each other faster and more efficiently than in English, with the hope that groups of models will be able to team up without having to resort to clumsy and sprawling human words.Many researchers believe that using several artificial intelligence models, each with different specialisms and abilities, to solve problems collectively holds promise for tackling thorny problems that individual ones cant solve. Although large language models like ChatGPT have been shown to be capable of communicating at high speed, even reaching consensus

Planned legislation could see Australian teenagers banned from all of these appsShutterstock/ViktollioA plan to ban all Australian children under 16 from social media is unworkable, unenforceable and ultimately wont help the people it aims to protect, experts have told New Scientist.While social media platforms are banned outright in some authoritarian regimes, no democratic country has gone as far as the proposal from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in completely restricting them for under-16s.

Factory aerosols can transform the clouds aboveGetty Images/iStockphotoPlumes of pollution from large factories can trigger snowfall and leave holes in clouds that stretch over large areas, satellite images have revealed.It has long been known that tiny particles of pollutants like soot, known as aerosol pollution, can affect clouds in many ways. Water vapour can condense on pollutant particles, triggering cloud formation, and pollutants can also alter the properties of existing clouds. AdvertisementWhile studying these effects, Velle Toll at the University of Tartu in Estonia noticed that there were sometimes holes in clouds downwind of major pollution sources. He and his colleagues have now analysed thousands of satellite images of North America and Eurasia and found 67 places where this effect can be seen, during the correct atmospheric conditions.Weather radar confirmed that these events were causing snowfall. In the biggest instance the team found, up to 15 millimetres of snow fell over a 2200-square-kilometre (850-square-mile) area.This happens because pollutant particles cause supercooled water droplets in clouds to freeze around them, producing ice crystals that grow into snowflakes, says Toll. And if we have water coming out of the cloud as snow, then we end up with less clouds. Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterIn the absence of any particles, water droplets in clouds can stay liquid even when the air is as cold as -40C (-40F).This satellite image shows reduced cloud cover downwind of a copper smelter in CanadaVelle TollThe 67 pollution sources the team found are mostly oil refineries and factories producing metals, cement or fertilisers. But surprisingly, the researchers occasionally saw a similar effect near four nuclear power stations that dont produce any aerosol emissions.This might be because the warm air rising from these power stations is lifting up aerosol pollution from elsewhere, but the team hasnt confirmed this. We dont have a definite explanation for that, says Toll.In theory, the aerosol effect could be used to deliberately trigger snowfall, but it would only work where clouds of supercooled liquid water droplets are already present, says Toll.Journal reference:Science DOI: 10.1126/science.adl0303Topics:weather

Weight-loss drugs are helping pin down a potential source of chronic painneotemlpars/ShutterstockMedications like Ozempic and Wegovy may be able to reduce both chronic and acute pain. This makes these types of drugs promising safer alternatives to pain treatments such as opioids.Ozempic and Wegovy work by mimicking a hormone released after eating known as GLP-1, which reduces appetite and regulates blood sugar levels. While these medications are only approved for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes, a growing number of studies have shown that

Nash WeerasekerI vividly remember getting my first pair of glasses as a child. My mum is very near-sighted and dispatched me to the optician every year. My older sister was diagnosed at around the age of 8 and I prayed I wouldnt follow suit for fear of being made fun of, but by the time I was the same age, the world was becoming a blur. That years visit to the optician confirmed it, and I have worn glasses or contact lenses ever since.Back then, in the late 1970s, it was quite unusual to need glasses at such a young age. Not any more. Over the past 30 years, there has been a surge in near-sightedness, or myopia, especially among children. Today, around a third of 5 to 19-year-olds are myopic, up from a quarter in 1990. If that trend continues, the rate will be about 40 per cent by 2050 or 740 million myopic young people.That is more than an inconvenience. Myopia is a disease, says K. Davina Frick at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Maryland, who co-chaired a recent US National Academy of Sciences committee on the condition. It has wide-reaching quality-of-life and economic implications, she says, not least the risk of going blind in severe cases. Increasingly, however, researchers think the epidemic can be slowed or even reversed.Most cases of myopia are axial, meaning the axis of the eyeball the distance between the cornea at the front and the light-sensitive retina at the back grows too long. This means that light entering the eye is focused in front of the

Leader and EnvironmentFood production is responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions. To get everyone the food they need in a warming world, governments worldwide must invest in securing our food systems 13 November 2024 Shutterstock/KzenonThere are two monumental problems with the worlds food system. Firstly, hundreds of millions of people cant afford to buy enough nutritious food to stay healthy. Secondly, it is incredibly destructive. We are still razing rainforests to make way for ranches, and both conventional and organic farms produce all kinds of pollutants, with food systems generating more than a third of greenhouse gases.As the world soars past a 1.5C rise in temperature (see 2024 is set to be the first year that breaches the 1.5C warming limit), things could get much worse. But there is plenty we can do, from eating less meat to reducing food waste (see Is the climate change food crisis even worse than we imagined?). With the amazing advances in genetic technologies in recent years, there is also huge scope to improve the plants and animals that provide our food. We can make them more nutritious, healthier, better able to cope with changing conditions and less susceptible to diseases that are thriving as the world warms. We should also be able to create plants that need less fertiliser and capture more of the suns energy.It is astounding that most countries arent investing heavily in improving cropsAdvertisementThe benefits from all this would be enormous: more food from less land, lower prices, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and less chance of viruses such as H5N1 bird flu causing another pandemic.So it is astounding that most countries arent investing heavily in improving crops. There is some private investment, but those companies are unlikely to make their technologies freely available, slowing their adoption.We are also restricted by the notion that more natural means of farming are better, with opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops making it difficult and expensive to get them approved.This is starting to change, with many countries making it easier for gene-edited crops and animals to get to market, but we need more action and fast.The idea that organic food is better for the planet and GM foods are worse for it is a false narrative that hides a much more unpalatable reality: that continuing as we are will lead to even more destruction and increased hunger.Topics:

A perforated pebble from the Nahal Ein Gev II archaeological site, which may be an ancient spindle whorlLaurent DavinA set of 12,000-year-old pierced pebbles excavated in northern Israel may be the oldest known hand-spinning whorls a textile technology that may have ultimately helped inspire the invention of the wheel.Serving as a flywheel at the bottom of a spindle, whorls allowed people to efficiently spin natural fibres into yarns and thread to create clothing and other textiles. The newly discovered stone tools represent early axle-based rotation technology thousands of years before the first carts, says Talia Yashuv at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. AdvertisementWhen you look back to find the first vehicle wheels 6000 years ago, its not like it just came out of nowhere, she says. Its important to look at the functional evolution of how transportation and the wheel evolved.Yashuv and her colleague Leore Grosman, also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studied 113 partially or fully perforated stones at the Nahal Ein Gev II site, an ancient village just east of the Sea of Galilee. Archaeologists have been uncovering these chalky, predominantly limestone artefacts probably made from raw pebbles along the nearby seashore since 1972.3D scanning revealed that the holes had been drilled halfway through from each side using a flint hand drill, which unlike modern drills leaves a narrow and twisting cone-like shape, says Yashuv. Measuring 3 to 4 centimetres in diameter, the holes generally ran through the pebbles centre of gravity. Keep up with advances in archaeology and evolution with our monthly newsletter.Sign up to newsletterDrilling from both sides would have helped balance the stone for more stable spinning, says Yashuv. Several of the partially perforated stones had holes that were off-centre, suggesting they might have been errors and thrown out.The team suspected that the stones, weighing 9 grams on average, were too heavy and ugly to have been beads and too light and fragile to be used as fishing weights, says Yashuv. Their size, shape and balance around the holes convinced the researchers that the artefacts were spindle whorls.To test their hypothesis, the researchers created replicat whorls using nearby pebbles and a flint drill. Then they asked Yonit Kristal, a traditional craftsperson, to try spinning flax with them.She was really surprised that they worked, because they werent perfectly round, says Yashuv. But really you just need the perforation to be located at the centre of mass, and then its balanced and it works.If the stones are indeed whorls, that could make them the oldest known spinning whorls, she says. A 1991 study on bone and antler artefacts uncovered what may be 20,000-year-old whorls, she adds, but the researchers who examined them suggested the pieces were probably decorative clothing accents. Even so, it is possible that people were using whorls even earlier, using wood or other biological materials that would have since deteriorated.The finding suggests that people were experimenting with rotation technology thousands of years before inventing the pottery wheel and the cart wheel about 5500 years ago and that the whorls probably helped lead to those inventions, says Yashuv.Carole Cheval at Cte dAzur University in Nice, France, is less convinced, however. Whorls work more like a top than a wheel, she explains.And while the artefacts might very well be whorls, the study lacks microscopic data that would reveal traces of use as yarns would have marked the stones over time, Cheval says.Trace analysis was beyond the scope of the current study, says Yashuv.Ideally, researchers studying ancient whorls would be skilled in spinning themselves which the study authors were not, says Cheval. It really changes the way you think about your archaeological finds, she says.Journal reference:PLOS One DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0312007 Topics:archaeology

Air pollution is hard to avoid, particularly for city dwellersRon Adar/AlamyAir pollution is increasingly being linked to a raised risk of eczema, with the latest study showing a clear relationship between the exposure and the skin condition.Vehicles and power plants release pollutant particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less, called PM2.5. These have previously been linked to a higher risk of eczema, which is thought to be the result of an over-active immune system causing inflammation that makes skin dry and itchy. AdvertisementTo gather more evidence, Jeffrey Cohen at the Yale School of Medicine and his colleagues analysed the medical records of more than 280,000 people, who were mostly in their 50s and took part in the All of Us Research Program. This collects health data from a diverse group of people in the US, with an emphasis on those who are usually underrepresented in research, such as ethnic minorities.The researchers also looked at average PM2.5 levels where these people lived, using data collected in 2015 by the Centre for Air, Climate, and Energy Solutions in Virginia.They then compared PM2.5 levels in 788 locations across the US against eczema cases, which were diagnosed up until mid-2022. They found that for every 10 microgram per cubic metre increase in PM2.5, eczema rates more than doubled. In more polluted areas of the country, there was more eczema, says Cohen. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday.Sign up to newsletterThe team accounted for factors that could affect the results, such as ethnicity and whether people smoked or had food allergies.The study brings forward the science by nicely showing a clear correlation in a large population, says Giuseppe Valacchi at North Carolina State University. PM2.5 may trigger the immune system to cause inflammation when it comes into contact with skin, like pollen or dust mites can, says Valacchi. Inhaling it may also play a role, as this can ramp up inflammation around the body, he says.This research should give governments another reason to enforce policies that reduce air pollution, says Cohen. Meanwhile, people living in polluted areas can reduce their risk by wearing long sleeves or staying indoors when pollution levels are particularly high, says Valacchi.Journal reference:PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310498 Topics:

Measuring the massive coralInigo San Felix/National Geographic SocietyIn the south-west Pacific, off the coast of one of the tropical Solomon Islands, a giant structure beneath the waters surface has just been identified as the worlds largest known coral.Visiting the remote site in mid-October, a team of scientists and film-makers from National Geographic thought the object was so large, it must be the remains of a shipwreck.But when underwater cinematographer Manu San Flix jumped into the water to take a closer look, he was astonished by what he saw.AdvertisementI remember perfectly just jumping and looking down, and I was surprised, he told reporters during a briefing. Instead of a shipwreck, San Flix had stumbled upon the largest coral ever discovered. It is enormous, he said. The size is close to the size of a cathedral.The coral, which lies a few hundred metres off the eastern coast of Malaulalo Island, has been identified as the species Pavona clavus. It measures 34 metres wide by 32 metres long, making it larger than a blue whale, and is thought to be 300 years old. A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planets animals, plants and other organisms.Sign up to newsletterThe discovery was a happy accident, says Enric Sala of National Geographics Pristine Seas project, whichaims to inspire governments to protect ocean ecosystems through exploration andresearch. It is by far the largest single coral colony ever discovered, easily beating the previous record holder a giant Porites colony found in American Samoa in 2019, which was 22.4 metres in diameter and 8 metres in height.Over the past two years, record-breaking ocean temperatures have triggered a wave of coral bleaching events across the world. But while other reefs around the Solomon Islands are showing signs of bleaching, Sala says the huge P. clavus coral is looking healthy. It is a vital habitat for ocean life, he says, providing shelter and food for fish, shrimp, worms and crabs. Its like a big patch of old growth forest.But the coral isnt immune from ecological threats, from local pollution and overfishing to global climate change. Sala says he would like to see more marine protected areas (MPAs) established to shield marine life from local pollution, alongside global action to tackle climate change. Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean, he says. We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions. But MPAs can help us buy time by making the reefs more resilient.Topics:

Eurasian reed warblers migrate between Europe and AfricaAGAMI Photo Agency / Alamy StockMany migratory birds use Earths magnetic field as a compass, but some can also use information from that field to determine more or less where they are on a mental map.Eurasian reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) appear to calculate their geographical position by drawing data from different distances and angles between magnetic fields and the Earths shape. The findings suggest that the birds use magnetic information as a sort of GPS that tells them not only where to go, but where they are initially, says Richard Holland at Bangor University in the UK. AdvertisementWhen we travel, we have a map which tells us where we are and we have a compass, which tells us which way to go to reach our destination, he says. We dont think birds have quite this level of accuracy or degree of knowledge of the whole Earth. Even so, they see how magnetic cues change as they move along their normal path or even if theyre far displaced from that path.Scientists have known for decades that migratory birds rely on cues from the sun, the stars and Earths magnetic field to determine which direction to head towards. But figuring out direction using a compass is markedly different from knowing where in the world they are, and scientists still debate about whether and how birds figure out their current map position.Florian Packmor at Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park Authority in Germany suspected birds could detect detailed aspects of the magnetic field to determine their global position. Specifically, he thought they might use magnetic inclination the changing angle of Earths surface relative to its magnetic lines and magnetic declination the difference in direction between the geographic and magnetic poles to understand more precisely where they are located in the world. A monthly celebration of the biodiversity of our planets animals, plants and other organisms.Sign up to newsletterTo test that theory, Packmor, Holland and their colleagues captured 21 adult reed warblers on their migration route from Europe to Africa in Illmitz, Austria. There, they placed the birds temporarily in outdoor aviaries, where the researchers used a Helmholtz coil to interfere with magnetic fields. They artificially altered the inclination and declination in a way that corresponded to a position in Neftekamsk, Russia, 2600 kilometres away. Thats way out of their direction, says Packmor.The team then put the birds in a special cage for studying migratory instincts and asked two independent researchers who were unaware of the changes in magnetic field to record which way the birds headed. In the modified magnetic field situations, most of the birds showed a clear penchant for flying west-southwest, as though they were trying to return to their migration route from Russia. By contrast, the same birds wanted to fly south-southeast out of Austria when the magnetic field was unmodified.This suggests that the birds believed that they were no longer in Austria, but in Russia based on their magnetic inclination and declination alone, says Packmor.Of course, they dont know its Russia, but its too far north and east of where they should be, says Holland. And then at that point, they look at their compass system to work out how to fly south and west.However, we still dont fully understand the neurological mechanisms that enable birds to sense these aspects of Earths magnetic field.This is an important step in understanding how magnetic maps of songbirds and in particular, reed warblers work, says Nikita Chernetsov at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, who was not involved in the study.While the research confirms reed warblers rely on these magnetic fields for positioning, it doesnt mean that all birds do so, he adds. Not all birds work the same way.The birds were released two to three weeks after the study, at which time they could continue their normal migration, Packmor and Holland say. Indeed, one of the birds they studied was captured a second time a year later, meaning the teams research did not prevent it from migrating successfully.Journal reference:Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1363Topics:

Wildfires in the tropics drove some increase in CO2 emissions but the bulk was driven by burning fossil fuelsCarl De Souza/AFP/Getty ImagesCarbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2024 are set to blow past last years record levels, dashing hopes this year will see the planet-warming emissions peak.Reducing emissions is more urgent than ever and theres only one way to do it: massively reduce fossil emissions, says Pierre Friedlingstein at the University of Exeter, UK. AdvertisementThat is according to the latest Global Carbon Budget report, a preliminary accounting of CO2 emissions to date with projections to the end of the year, produced by Friedlingstein and his colleagues. It was released at the COP29 summit now underway in Azerbaijan, where countries aim to set new financial targets to address climate change.Last year, some researchers were forecasting a peak in emissions in 2024, but the report finds human-caused CO2 emissions are set to reach a record 41.6 gigatonnes in 2024, a 2 per cent rise on 2023s record. Almost 90 per cent of that total consists of emissions from burning fossil fuels. The rest is from changes in the land driven mostly by deforestation and wildfires.At 0.8 per cent, the growth rate of fossil fuel emissions is half that of 2023, although it remains higher than the average rate over the past decade. [The slower rate] is a good sign, but its still miles away from where we need to get, says Friedlingstein. Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterDespite a long-term downward trend, projected emissions from land use change also increased this year, largely due to drought-driven wildfires in the tropics. Some of the increase is also down to a collapse of the carbon land sink in 2023, which usually removes about a quarter of our annual CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. This sink declined by more than 40 per cent last year and the early part of 2024 as global temperatures spiked under the influence of El Nio.2023 is an incredible demonstration of what can happen in a warmer world when we had peak records in global temperatures combined with El Nio droughts and fires, says Pep Canadell at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, a co-author of the report. Put all these things together and last year we had almost a third less help removing atmospheric CO2 by the worlds forests than we have had over the last decade.While this also added to emissions in 2024, the researchers expect this land carbon sink has mostly recovered as the warming influence of El Nio has faded. Its not a long-term collapse, says Friedlingstein.The report finds CO2 emissions in China, which generates nearly a third of the global total, are only projected to increase by 0.2 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023. Canadell says that because of the large margin of error in this projection of Chinas emissions, it is actually possible they have stayed steady or gone down. Indias emissions also increased at a slower rate than last year, rising by just under 5 per cent. In the US and the EU, emissions continued to decline, albeit at a much slower rate than last year.Hot temperatures that boost electricity demand to power air conditioning are also a key reason why fossil fuel emissions have continued to rise despite the massive build-out of renewables in 2024, says Neil Grant at Climate Analytics, a think tank in Germany. Whether due to electric vehicles, data centres or manufacturing, most people have been caught a bit surprised by the level of electricity demand this year, he says.If emissions continue at this level, the report finds that within six years the world will exceed its remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, and will exceed the budget to stay within 2C warming within 27 years.We have to accelerate, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate the transition to renewable energy, says Candell. Climate change is like a slippery slope that we can just keep falling down. We need to slam on the brakes as hard as we can so we can stop falling.Topics:

Bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice were used to estimate past temperaturesaldiami/Andreas Alexander/AlamyHumans have already caused approximately 1.5C of warming since the start of the industrial revolution, according to new estimates based on temperature data gleaned from bubbles of air trapped in ice.Measurements of human-caused global warming generally use the period from 1850 to 1900 as the pre-industrial baseline, since this is when temperature records began. 2024 is almost certain to be the first year where average temperatures rose more than 1.5C above this baseline. This data for a single year is influenced by naturally occurring factors such as a strong El Nio event, which pushed up global temperatures. AdvertisementOnce this natural variability is removed, scientists think humanity alone has caused 1.31C of warming since the industrial revolution. But by 1850, the industrial revolution was already well under way, with fossil fuel-powered engines in use around the world.Andrew Jarvis at Lancaster University and Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, both in the UK, set out to establish a new pre-industrial baseline using data from Antarctic ice core samples. The duo analysed the composition of air bubbles trapped in ice cores to establish the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere during the period from AD 13 to 1700, before humans had any meaningful impact on atmospheric temperatures. They then used this CO2 data to establish global mean temperatures during the same period, assuming a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature increase.Using this new pre-1700 baseline, humanity had caused 1.49C of warming by 2023, meaning the 1.5C level has now in effect been reached, the team write in a paper reporting the findings. We have provided a new, scientifically defensible way of coming up with a pre-industrial baseline against which we are measuring the warming, Jarvis told reporters in a press briefing. Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.Sign up to newsletterJarvis says the new method can also help reduce uncertainty around temperature estimates based on the current 1850-1900 baseline, which is used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using ice core data to establish the 1850-1900 baseline, the team says humans have caused 1.31C of warming. That is in line with existing central estimates, but with a vastly reduced uncertainty range, the team points out.The problem with just looking at surface temperature observations is that the further back in time you go, they become more uncertain, says Forster. We can be far more certain than before that we are currently at about 1.3C.Jarvis and Forster hope their new method will be adopted by scientists and policy-makers as the main way of judging humanitys progress against global climate goals. I do think there is still scope for the policy community and the science community to rethink the pre-industrial baseline, said Jarvis. We know that there is warming baked into the 1850-1900 estimate, simply because that is not the beginning of the industrial revolution. We are offering a way out there, to a much more scientifically secure baseline to operate from.However, the new method may not be future-proof. The linear relationship between CO2 concentrations and global temperatures may falter as climate change advances, for example if we trigger so-called tipping points in Earth systemsthat cause a cascade of warming events.The new method also doesnt change the climate change effects being felt on the ground, says Forster. The impacts today we are experiencing of people being killed in Spain and by these hurricanes the impacts are exactly the same if you call that 1.3C above pre-industrial levels or if you call that 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The impacts are the impacts.Richard Betts at the Met Office, the UKs weather service, says the new method provides a clear and simple way to give up-to-date estimates of the current level of human-induced global warming. That is, in part, because it is able to produce a real time estimate for human-driven warming rather than relying on a rolling 10-year average like current estimates.He says the method will be useful to provide a more up-to-date picture of the current level of warming for policy-makers, but warned that changing the baseline used in assessments could be seen as moving the goalposts for climate action. Even without changing the baseline, its clear that current warming is much closer to 1.5C than expected from using an out-of-date, 10-year average, he says.Journal referenceNature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01580-5Topics:

The northern pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides) brings unexpected ecosystem benefitsAll Canada Photos/AlamyTwo years after Mount St Helens erupted in 1980, a team of researchers helicoptered in a gopher to the ash-covered landscape. Decades later, the activity of that single gopher burrowing for a single day may have helped the decimated ecosystem regrow by boosting the diversity of soil fungi.Theres something to be said about learning lessons from the gophers, says Mia Maltz at the University of Connecticut, who has used the eruption to understand how forests might recover from other stresses including wildfires and

Ice collapsing into the water at Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, ArgentinaR.M. Nunes/AlamyEven a few years delay in reaching net-zero emissions will have repercussions for hundreds or even thousands of years, leading to warmer oceans, more extensive ice loss in Antarctica and higher temperatures around the world.Nations around the world have collectively promised to prevent more than 2C of global warming, a goal that can only be achieved by reaching net-zero emissions effectively ending almost all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions before the end of the century. But once that hugely challenging goal

Ice collapsing into the water at Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, ArgentinaR.M. Nunes/AlamyEven a few years delay in reaching net-zero emissions will have repercussions for hundreds or even thousands of years, leading to warmer oceans, more extensive ice loss in Antarctica and higher temperatures around the world.Nations around the world have collectively promised to prevent more than 2C of global warming, a goal that can only be achieved by reaching net-zero emissions effectively ending almost all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions before the end of the century. But once that hugely challenging goal