Science

A scanning electron microscope image of the magic mushroom species Psilocybe cubensis, the highly potent psychedlic that the woman with Alzheimer’s was given Ted Kinsman/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A woman with severe Alzheimer’s disease who spent years communicating in monosyllables started initiating conversations after receiving a large dose of psilocybin. The woman, who also had urinary

How does Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World hold up today? Once every few months or so, some passage or another from Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark goes viral online for its seemingly prescient descriptions of a world in which critical thought and skepticism are waning, leaving behind a

The fishing port of Kesennuma, Japan, in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011 Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Around 15 minutes after the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, almost the whole of Japan jumped half a centimetre to the east. This lurch resulted from an immensely powerful seismic wave

What lies at the centre of Uranus? JPL/NASA Uranus appears to have far more water frozen as ice in its interior than astronomers thought, potentially settling a long-running mystery about whether it formed differently to its closest neighbour, Neptune. Ice giants like Uranus and Neptune have thick, gassy atmospheres. This makes it hard to know

Single-hose air conditioners suck hot air in from outside Ton Hazewinkel/Getty Images Thinking of getting a portable air conditioner as sweltering heatwaves become more common? You will want to know that many, if not most, portable air conditioners have a serious design flaw – and that there is no label required to inform buyers of

Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, as captured by the Cassini probe in 2004 NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute A strange substance is hiding on the surfaces of both Pluto and Saturn’s moon Titan, and researchers aren’t sure what it is. Titan’s thick atmosphere means it is extremely difficult to study its surface, so identifying this compound

A scanning electron micrograph of the intestinal lining of a mouse, with several bacteria (green) and one red blood cell (red) CJC Copyright: IKELOS GmbH/Dr. Christopher B. Jackson/Science Photo Library A faecal microbiome transplant (FMT) could make an aged brain as adaptable as a young one. Our gut microbiome has been linked to our risk

Do prebiotics, probiotics or postbiotics help restore balance to the gut microbiome? Joshua Earle/UnSplash I spend a lot of time writing about biomedical sciences, and I have a weird and annoying tendency to develop symptoms of whatever condition I’m looking into. When I was working on a piece about chronic sinusitis, I developed a persistent

A fossil baby embolomere from Mazon Creek, Illinois Arjan Mann A set of exquisitely preserved 300-million-year-old fossils suggests that early four-limbed vertebrates did not undergo a metamorphosis between their juvenile and adult stages, challenging conventional ideas about the evolution of life on land. “We have for a very long time assumed that these animals were

A reconstruction of the summer solstice celebrations as they might have appeared at Bulford thousands of years ago Marijane Porter, Wessex Archaeology Stone Age peoples in Britain built a wooden monument to mark the summer solstice, 500 years before they began building the stone circle at Stonehenge. Stonehenge is also aligned to the summer solstice,

Stroke can cause lasting damage, but quickly cooling down the body could mitigate these effects BSIP SA/Alamy A combination of two drugs used to treat hay fever and psychosis cooled down the core body temperature of mice and monkeys, reducing brain damage after a stroke. These medications have also undergone preliminary testing in people, and

In quantum states that theoretically last forever, particles get bounced around again and again, as if in a hall of mirrors Guy Bell/Alamy; Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room They say nothing lasts forever – but, hey, what do they know? Sure, the passing years soften the carvings on statues, pigments on paintings flake with age,

Neuroscientist Emily Rogalski is uncovering the secrets of superagers Craig Boylan As you age, your memory will likely decline. Your ability to recall where you parked the car or the name of your first teacher will be less sharp in your 80s than in your 50s, if you’re in the majority of people. But a

Using a macro probe lens, Ariel Waldman filmed microbial mats in the desert valleys of Antarctica Ariel Waldman Ariel Waldman is standing all alone on a planet that looks a lot like Mars. At her feet are rock shards and barren soil. Overhead are jagged mountains streaked with dusty ice. The sky is a hazy

Tiny droplets hiding in plain sight in our cells could explain how life got started Sam Falconer In every cell of your body, there are mysterious speckles. You need a microscope to see them, but if you peer closely, you will see lots of tiny dots: some sitting still, some moving around as if swept

Did the black hole at the centre of this galaxy begin before the galaxy formed? NASA, ESA, STScI, AURA; S. Smartt/The Queen’s University of Belfast If, as novelist-philosopher Samuel Butler wrote in 1878, “a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg”, then a galaxy may only be a black hole’s way of

Venus flytraps snap shut to make a meal of insects and spiders Jeanne Bourdier, Corentin Mollier The mystery of how a Venus flytrap closes fast enough to catch insect prey may have been partially solved. Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) are triggered to snap shut once hairs in their traps are touched twice in short succession.

Conceptual illustration of a clock based on atomic nuclei Oliver Diekmann, TU Wien Scientists have built the first working nuclear clock, which uses the vibrations of atomic nuclei to keep time. Nuclear clocks have been sought after for more than two decades and could eventually allow for extraordinarily precise timekeeping and experiments that hunt for

The Advantage2 quantum processing unit D-Wave A quantum computer is successfully mining cryptocurrency in the first experiment of its kind, while also using a lot less energy, researchers have claimed. Cryptocurrencies overlap with quantum computing in two notable ways. The first is that a powerful-enough quantum computer could break the encryption algorithms that currently keep

Should drones be allowed to kill autonomously? Shutterstock/Thongsuk7824 For years, we have had unconfirmed reports and rumours that AI-controlled weapons have killed soldiers on the battlefield without a human in the loop. Now, we know it has happened. As we report here, the use of autonomous killers in a test exercise marks a watershed in