The Soviet cosmonaut almost didn’t make it back into his capsule in 1965, when his suit inflated in the space vacuumAlexei Leonov, the legendary Soviet cosmonaut who became the first human to walk in space 54 years ago, has died in Moscow at 85.The Russian space agency Roscosmos announced the news on its website on Friday, but gave no cause of death. Leonov had health issues for several years,...

Fossil fuel companies have worked for decades to shape attitudes and undermine science. The crisis dictates that they must now be confrontedThe huge differences in the voting records of MPs on climate issues, revealed in the Guardian’s rankings today, should immediately disabuse anyone of the notion that Britain’s elected politicians are united – apart from a handful of contrarians – in...

Having a few ‘green policies’ is no longer enough. Ask yourself: what will your next MP do to save the world?The government that wins the next election stands to govern for half of the decade that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we have left to tackle the climate emergency. It will also oversee next year’s international conference on the climate crisis (COP 26) – the...

Whether for ancestry or health, millions of us are choosing to have our genetic fingerprints analysed by using direct-to-consumer kits from private companies. But can the results of these tests be trusted in a clinical setting? Senior doctors have called for a crackdown on home genetic-testing kits and this week, Hannah Devlin finds out why Continue...

Eysenck’s ‘cancer-prone’ personality theory had come under criticism for decadesThe work of one of the most famous and influential British psychologists of all time, Hans Eysenck, is under a cloud following an investigation by King’s College London, which has found 26 of his published papers “unsafe”.King’s says the results and conclusions of the papers “were not considered...

Project to record cultural, geological and environmental treasures at risk from climate crisis A project to produce detailed maps of all the land on Earth through laser scanning has been revealed by researchers who say action is needed now to preserve a record of the world’s cultural, environmental and geological treasures.Prof Chris Fisher, an archaeologist from Colorado State University, said...

Allendale, Northumberland: Fungi and leaf mould are all part of the recycling that makes my garden thriveAutumn is a rich, woodsy potpourri of scents as I rake leaves from the garden paths. Seeing them as a harvest rather than a nuisance, I lay the leaves over the shady border to rot down and improve the soil. Bulbs will push up through the leaf mould in spring. One path that I clear by hand has...