Steve has been around for eons, but has been mis-identified as aurora until nowHands up if you’ve ever seen Steve. No, not the chap living down the road, but Steve the winter sky phenomenon. First spotted by auroral photographers in 2016, “Steve” is a purple band of light, sometimes accompanied by green lines, nicknamed “picket-fences”.Although Steve shares similarities with auroras –...

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Scare stories abound but the evidence remains consistentThe past decade in British healthcare has been disappointing: improvements in life expectancy and neonatal mortality have stalled and public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen sharply.But one positive singled out in a recent review of healthcare developments was the rise of e-cigarettes use, which the article noted had given “tobacco...

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More than a million cases were reported in south-east Asia last year with poorer households most at riskThe global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only...

The solutions to today’s puzzlesEarlier today I set you the following problems:1) How can someone born in 2020 be older than someone born in 2019? Continue reading...

Discoveries by Natural History Museum in 2019 include lichen, snakes and extinct dinosaursMore than 400 new species previously unknown to science have been discovered in the past year by experts at the Natural History Museum.Species described and named for the first time in 2019 include 171 beetles found around the world, one of which was named in honour of the teenage environmental activist Greta...

The new year deconstructed, and a prize challengeIt’s almost the New Year, and – numerically speaking – I’m excited. Not only is twenty-twenty already a bona fide word in the dictionary, but once a month next year there will be a moment in the evening when the time is:20/20/20/20/2020 Continue...

The biophysicist was guilty of illegal practice in trying to alter the genetic makeup of twins Lula and NanaThe scientist who created the world’s first “gene-edited” babies has been sentenced to to three years in prison by a court in China.He Jiankui said in November 2018 that he had used gene-editing technology known as Crispr-Cas9 to change the genes of twin girls, causing a backlash in...

Substance misuse is not a simple problem of brain chemistry. The most powerful influences lie outside our headsI used to think addiction was caused by screwy molecules in the brain, and would be cured by neuroscience. I began learning about how the brain works after I ended up in treatment for drug addiction in the mid-1980s, when hopes for neuroscientific cures were as overblown as the...

The Quadrantids are unusual in that they originate not from a comet but from an asteroidSee in the new year with the Quadrantids meteor shower. Although the peak of the shower does not arrive until the night of 3-4 January, meteor activity can stretch for a couple of weeks around this point, lasting until 10 January. The peak of the Quadrantids can be spectacular but quick, lasting just a few...

Defeating the climate crisis is just the beginning of the struggle – and tough political choices will have to be madeWill 2019 be remembered as the year in which climate change denial was defeated? The global climate strike, Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise to international prominence, as well as several high-profile international conferences and reports – all contributed in putting climate...

It’s feasible to flood space with flotillas of small satellites – but do we really want to?Changing economics and advancing miniaturisation now enable flotillas of small satellites to be launched into space – up to a hundred on a single rocket. These microsatellites are already being deployed, by companies such as Planet Lab in California, to survey every point on the Earth every day, with...

Searching for the missing pieces in his family brought poet and author Michael Rosen closer to the horror of warEvery time the poet Michael Rosen found out something new about what happened to his Jewish relatives during the Holocaust, he would send a round-robin email to his extended family. “My research brought me face to face with the destiny of Jews in Europe, seen through the prism of my...

Scientists reach remote Thwaites glacier, vanishing at increasing rate, for missionAn international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath.The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of...

Ancient building found 100 miles west of Cancùn estimated to be more than 1,000 years oldArchaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the remains of a vast Mayan palace over 1,000 years old in an ancient city about 100 miles west of the tourist hotspot of Cancún.The building in Kulubá is 55 metres long, 15 metres wide and six metres high, and appears to have been made up of six rooms, said...

Happy Christmas from the Science Weekly team. There is no new episode this week as we all take a festive break. The team will be back with a new episode on Friday 10 January Continue reading...

Previous problems appear to have been ironed out in craft’s essential landing equipmentGround tests designed to validate the deployment of the parachutes that will be used on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars lander next year have started well at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. ESA’s ExoMars 2020 mission consists of the UK-built Rosalind Franklin rover,...

People gathered across parts of Asia and the Middle East to watch a rare annular solar eclipse, also known as a ring of fire. The phenomenon, when the moon covers the centre of the sun, giving the appearance of a shining ring, was first visible above Saudi Arabia, travelling towards southern India, over northern Sri Lanka and ending up above the Pacific OceanRare ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse...

Over the holiday period the Guardian’s leader column examines the challenges of the future by fathoming out the present. Today we look at the changing shape of car cultureLewis Hamilton’s recent declaration of support for climate action attracted derision as well as plaudits. “I like fuel. Can I say that? I don’t like electric stuff,” was the deliberately provocative response from a...

Angela Saini’s book Superior showed me our misconceptions about race and science arise from a habit of the mindIt has been common for several years now to assert that science shows the concept of race has no biological basis, and that we must see it instead as a social construct. That case was argued, for example, by Kenan Malik in his 2008 book Strange Fruit, and it is presented, too, in Angela...

Attacks and scepticism are on the rise, even as leaps are made in fields from gene editing and AI to interplanetary explorationThe 2010s were the decade in which we were reminded that science is just a method, like the rhythm method. And just like the rhythm method, it can be more or less rigorously applied, sabotaged, overrated, underrated and ignored. If you don’t treat it with respect, you...

Researchers aim to recreate intense emotional experience astronauts reported on seeing Earth from space for the first timeThe spectacle of Earth suspended in space was so overwhelming for Edgar Mitchell that the Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon wanted to grab politicians by the scruff of the neck and drag them into space to witness the view.Such drastic measures may not be necessary,...

Annular solar eclipse, in which the moon does not completely cover the sun as it transits across the star’s face, was seen from Asia to the Middle East Continue reading...