Science

Diamonds can store data stably for long periods of time University of Science and Technology of China The famous marketing slogan about how a diamond is forever may only be a slight exaggeration for a diamond-based system capable of storing information for millions of years – and now researchers have created one with a record-breaking

Produce has been the source of many foodborne illness outbreaks in the US this year The Image Party/Shutterstock Apple sauce containing lead. Onions carrying E. coli. Deli meat spreading listeria. The past year has seen alert after alert from US public health officials warning of contamination in the food supply, both in packaged and prepared

Sodium-ion batteries could have advantages over those containing lithium Juan Roballo/Shutterstock The following is an extract from our climate newsletter Fix the Planet. Find out about our range of newsletters and sign up here. The clean energy revolution depends on batteries, but almost all the batteries we use today are made from lithium, a metal

Plastic waste in Indonesia PA Images / Alamy The world currently produces more than 50 million tonnes of “mismanaged” plastic waste each year, and some researchers project this flood of plastic pollution will double by mid-century – but they also say that, if countries can agree to adopt four key policies during global plastic treaty

COP President Mukhtar Babayev (second from right) applauds the end of the climate summit Sean Gallup/Getty Images After a long and fraught night of talks, COP29 in Baku finally concluded in the early hours of 24 November with a deal that will see wealthier countries funnel billions of dollars to poorer countries over the next

Kathy (Nell Barlow, left) and Ruth (Matilda Bailes) in Never Let Me Go Hugo Glendinning/Bristol Old Vic Written by Suzanne HeathcoteBased on the novel by Kazuo IshiguroDirected by Christopher Haydon Bristol Old Vic until Saturday 23 November, then Chichester Festival Theatre from 26 to 30 November. It took Kazuo Ishiguro a long time to write his best-selling novel Never

Spreading crushed basalt rock dust on fields UNDO Projects that spread rock dust on farms are removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than competing technologies – but CO2 removal efforts remain far short of what is needed to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. Known as enhanced rock weathering, the method involves spreading crushed

Judges can use algorithms to help make their decisions Frances Twitty/Getty Images A US courtroom experiment suggests a popular risk assessment algorithm makes harsher recommendations than human judges – possibly because it is worse than people at anticipating which defendants will violate pretrial agreements. “Some jurisdictions wanted to work with us to evaluate whether these

A Martian meteorite nicknamed Black Beauty Carl B. Agee (University of New Mexico) Crystals inside a Martian meteorite hint that there may have been plentiful hot water on Mars when the rock formed 4.45 billion years ago. The rock, nicknamed Black Beauty, was blasted into space by an impact on the surface of Mars before

Satellite image showing channels that formed part of an ancient fishery, and Mayan sites nearby Google Earth Archaeologists have discovered a massive network of ancient fisheries in Belize constructed by hunter-gatherers some 4000 years ago. The system of earthen channels exceeds 640 kilometres in length and dates to the Archaic Period, which preceded the emergence

Bacteria on a sample from the Ryugu asteroid, viewed with an electron microscope Matthew J. Genge et al. 2024 A rock from the asteroid Ryugu that was brought back to Earth appears to be festooned with microbial life. But these microbes almost certainly came from Earth rather than outer space, say researchers. This contamination serves

Millions of US residents may be drinking water containing the potentially harmful compound Yiu Yu Hoi/Getty Images A common disinfectant in drinking water breaks down into a chemical compound that we know almost nothing about, including whether it has any potential toxic health effects to those who drink it. Chlorine has been used to sanitise

Left: An image of the star WOH G64 taken with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile. Right: An artist’s impression of the star ESO/K. Ohnaka et al., L. Calçada Astronomers have taken the first detailed picture of a star in another galaxy, more than 160,000 light years away. The giant star may be showing

A pigeon-inspired robot has solved the mystery of how birds fly without the vertical tail fins that human-designed aircraft rely on. Its makers say the prototype could eventually lead to passenger aircraft with less drag, reducing fuel consumption. Tail fins, also known as vertical stabilisers, allow aircraft to turn from side to side and help

Calories on menus mean we can no longer pretend that fast food is slimming David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images When you go to a restaurant, you may well be presented with a wide array of dishes, each printed on a menu alongside its calorie content. A chicken burger and fries may come to 1597

The DESI instrument observing the sky from the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope during a meteor shower KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Sparks Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been proven right on the largest scale yet. An analysis of millions of galaxies shows that the way they have evolved and clustered over billions of years is consistent with

Bluesky sign-ups continue to grow Anna Barclay/Getty Images As a technology reporter, I like to think I’m an early adopter. I first signed up to the social network Bluesky around 18 months ago, when the platform saw a small surge in users disaffected by Elon Musk’s approach to what was then still called Twitter. It

How did Earth’s inner core freeze solid? Rost9/Shutterstock A high concentration of carbon within Earth’s inner core could explain a long-standing mystery about how the deepest part of our planet froze solid – a process that kick-started the magnetic field protecting life on the surface. Earth’s inner core presents a paradox for geophysicists: it first

A study modelling the impact of melting ice suggests scientists have underestimated the risk that an important ocean current will shut down and cause climate chaos View Source Here

The white or blueish spots are six images of the same quasar created by the lensing effect of two galaxies, one appearing as the light patch in the centre and one as a red arc F. Dux et al. A chance alignment between two massive galaxies could help astronomers better measure the expansion of the