Science

The superclouds probably produce star-forming clouds of gas, since most nearby stellar nurseries are located within the giants.

Since its launch in late 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been glimpsing some of the earliest epochs of cosmic time. Its observations have stretched cosmologists’ timelines of when galaxies may have first started to form. And now some of the telescope’s farthest observations yet have revealed sources of blue ultraviolet light from…

Some people check a wristwatch; others use a smartphone app or the position of the sun. But although these methods will tell you what time it is, they won’t reveal your internal time – that is, the state of the clocks in your cells and tissues. This explains why I am standing in front of…

A rust-based battery system is stored in standard 12-metre shipping containers Ore Energy An iron-air battery that stores and releases energy through a reversible rusting process has become the first of its kind to connect with a public electricity grid. On 30 July, the Dutch start-up Ore Energy announced its batteries had connected to the…

A stick insect from the species Acrophylla alta Angus Emmott/James Cook University A newly named species of giant stick insect found in Australia’s Wet Tropics rainforests is thought to be the heaviest insect ever found on the continent. Acrophylla alta weighs 44 grams, around the same as a golf ball, and is approximately 40 centimetres…

Lung tissue samples from mice, showing the nuceli of cells (blue), cancerous cells (green) and markers of proliferation (magenta) Bryan Johnson Respiratory viruses may activate the growth of dormant cancer cells that have spread to the lungs from elsewhere in the body. Infections like flu seem to spark an inflammatory response that helps the immune…

The crystal structure of hexagonal diamond ogwen/Shutterstock A harder form of diamond that has eluded scientists for decades can now be synthesised in the laboratory, and could be used to make extremely tough cutting and drilling tools. Diamonds as we know them have a cubic arrangement of atoms in their crystalline structure. But for at…

3.0 Magnitude Earthquake Rumbles New York City Less than 2 Years After the Last One The 3.0-magnitude earthquake that shook the East Coast comes a year and a half after a 4.8-magnitude quake shocked New York City and its surroundings By Meghan Bartels edited by Jeanna Bryner A 3.0 magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter near…

The deep-sea environment is partly dominated by marine tube worms Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Ecosystems fed by chemicals from tectonic plate collisions have been found more than 9500 metres beneath the surface of the north-west Pacific Ocean. “Their resilience and beauty left me in awe,” says Mengran Du at the Chinese Academy…

The young man, no older than 25, had gone to the afterlife with an opulent assortment of grave goods, including an entire elephant tusk. Archaeologists who excavated his 5000-year-old remains in 2008 from a site near Seville, Spain, dubbed him the “Ivory Man” and suggested that he might have been the most important person on…