Science

A cylinder seal and its design imprinted onto clay Franck Raux © 2001 GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre) The world’s oldest known writing system may have had its origins in the imagery on decorated cylinders used to denote ownership or record transactions. Some of the symbols on these cylinder seals correspond to those used in proto-cuneiform,

Sunrise over rice terraces in Bali, Indonesia Aliaksandr Mazurkevich / Alamy A common sunscreen ingredient, zinc nanoparticles, may help protect rice from heat-related stress, an increasingly common problem under climate change. Zinc is known to play an important role in plant metabolism. A salt form of the mineral is often added to soil or sprayed

COP29 will begin on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan Aziz Karimov/Getty Images In just a few days’ time, thousands of delegates from almost every country on Earth will arrive in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. The meeting is a chance for countries to come together and thrash out the international

Some 47,000 trees in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest are in fact a single, ancient organism named Pando George Rose/Getty Images The world’s largest tree has been rigorously dated for the first time, confirming it is at least 16,000 years old. Named Pando, the tree is a quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) with around 47,000 stems connected

Have we found a new limit on the universe? kkssr/Shutterstock A newly proposed cosmic speed limit may constrain how fast anything in the universe can grow. Its existence follows from Alan Turing’s pioneering work on theoretical computer science, which opens the intriguing possibility that the structure of the universe is fundamentally linked to the nature

A bacteriophage virus can kill microbes, influencing what happens to the carbon their bodies contain nobeastsofierce Science/Alamy Viruses that infect other microbes may influence the movement of more than a billion tonnes of carbon in soil, according to the first attempt at quantifying their role in one of the planet’s main carbon stores. “While there

Mass-shifting particles have finally been spotted LAGUNA DESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Strange particles that have mass when moving one direction but no mass when moving in another were first theorised more than a decade ago. Now, these mass-shifting particles have been glimpsed in a semimetal exposed to extreme conditions. “This [particle] is very bizarre. You can

Every time H5N1 infects a mammal, it has a chance to develop mutations that make it more transmissible Alamy Stock Photo It’s been detected in birds on every continent except Australia, seals in South America, foxes in Canada, as well as poultry, dairy cows and dozens of farm workers who have had contact with them

A new material can bend light University of Glasgow Scientists have discovered a technique whereby light can be bent around corners, inspired by the way clouds scatter sunlight. This type of light-bending could lead to advances in medical imaging, electronics cooling and even nuclear reactor design. Daniele Faccio at the University of Glasgow, UK, and

A power substation near a data centre in Virginia Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images Silicon Valley’s scramble to build more data centres could boost US gas demand by the equivalent of another New York State or California within a decade, with much of this expansion due to the energy cost of training and using artificial

“Alas, poor ape, how thou sweat’st!” Colin Waters/Alamy If every chimpanzee on Earth were given a typewriter, they wouldn’t reproduce the works of William Shakespeare even if they kept on typing until the heat death of the universe, researchers have calculated. The so-called infinite monkey theorem states that if you had an infinite number of

The US government uses census data to distribute resources fairly Valentyn Semenov/Alamy A change to the US government’s system for processing the census could improve the accuracy of publicly disclosed data – without compromising the privacy of individual citizens and residents. The government relies on national census data – gathered every 10 years by the

Plans to pave the Trans-Amazonian highway in Brazil could accelerate deforestation Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images Deforestation has pushed the Amazon to the very edge of a tipping point that would see it become a net source of CO2 and accelerate climate change, according to research using new technologies to map carbon emissions in the rainforest

Simulations suggest that when a quantum battery shares a quantum state with the device it is powering, the device can gain more charge than was stored in the battery to begin with View Source Here

China is embracing solar power, with panels on the North Barren Mountain in Zhangjiakou Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images A massive rollout of wind and solar power across China may mean the country’s emissions peaked in 2023, in what would be a historic turning point in the fight against climate change. China’s CO2 emissions hit an all-time high

A typically fragile quantum superposition has been made to last exceptionally long, and could eventually be used as a probe for discovering new physics View Source Here

Blades and other artefacts were traded across France during the Stone Age Jacques Descloitres/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team Around 7000 years ago, long knives, bracelets and other stone goods fashioned by skilled Parisian crafters were reaching people hundreds of kilometres away, via complex trade networks that are now being mapped for the first time. By

A tiny soft lithium-ion battery made from droplets University of Oxford The smallest soft lithium-ion battery ever made consists of just three tiny droplets formed from a silk-based hydrogel. The droplet battery can deliver defibrillator electric shocks to beating mouse hearts, along with providing pacemaker-style control – but it may eventually power biomedical implants and

Weaving tales of magical fruit and vegetables into your children’s stories may encourage them to eat healthy snacks View Source Here

The complete skeletal remains of the “Well Man” Age Hojem, NTNU University Museum A Norwegian saga written more than 800 years ago describes how a dead man was thrown into a castle well – and now, researchers believe they have identified the remains of this man. The Sverris saga is an 182-verse Old Norse text