15 articles from SUNDAY 3.10.2021

Sir Antony Hewish obituary

Radio astronomer who won the Nobel prize for physics for his role in the discovery of pulsarsIn 1967, a team led by the radio astronomer Antony Hewish, who has died aged 97, discovered pulsars, rapidly pulsating radio sources that turned out to be due to rotating, magnetised neutron stars, the ultra-dense collapsed remnants of massive stars. This was one of the most exciting astronomical events of...

Covid: scientists warn UK may have worst to come; Israel tightens vaccine passport rules – as it happened

Fears the indoor socialising will spread virus in UK; Israel says people only eligible for green pass if they have received a booster jab. This live blog has closed – for the latest on the global Covid situation, please see our dedicated pageUK might not be over the worst, scientists warnNew Zealand widens Covid lockdown as Delta spreadsUK to slash international travel ‘red list’ to just...

Jim Townsley obituary

My father, Jim Townsley, who has died aged 85, was a gentle, generous and thoughtful man who spent his working life as an industrial chemist. In retirement, his aptitude for listening, understanding and supporting the emotional needs of others found expression through voluntary work as a trained counsellor.Born in Ilford, east London, to Jim Sr, a post office worker, and Gertrude (nee Knight), a...

Rules and advice don’t slow the spread of the virus – human behaviour does | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

Surveys can help us understand how the pandemic is influenced by our choicesRecent queues for fuel have shown the consequences of abrupt changes in behaviour. Almost as sudden were the changes around the first lockdown in March 2020, when close meetings between people plummeted by about three-quarters. We know this through the CoMix contact survey from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical...

UK might not be over the worst, scientists warn, as Covid case numbers stay high

Inoculation programme must be stepped up before the onset of winterCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageBritain is heading into winter with the number of Covid cases remaining at a worryingly high level. At the same time, the nation’s vaccination programme appears to have stalled.That is the bleak view of leading epidemiologists who have warned that the worst effects of...

Gene editing will just perpetuate disastrous factory farming | Letters

Instead of trying to cosh nature into submission, our farmers should be improving the health of the soil and the diversity of their crops and animalsA quotation leapt to mind when reading “Gene editing ‘would allow us to create hardier farm breeds’ (News): “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” (HL Mencken). Application of magic bullet...

BepiColombo spacecraft sends its first images of Mercury during flyby

European-Japanese probe swoops in to almost 200km above Sun’s nearest planet, photographing its pock-marked featuresThe European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back its first images of Mercury, as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.The mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11.34pm GMT on Friday,...