Science & Tech
Research, space and technology, reported from the journals, space agencies and research institutions that publish the work.
NASA’s Swift observatory ends its science mission
Over its career the observatory studied more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts and left an archive of about 12 terabytes, NASA says.
Arctic ice cap suggests warming halted the next ice age
Models of its future have the Barnes Ice Cap melting completely within the next few centuries, the release says.
Marsquake beneath Valles Marineris suggests canyon is still active
Models of alternative causes, including a meteoroid impact and a landslide, could not reproduce the waves InSight recorded.
Some websites go offline over critical PHP flaws found using AI
Wiz says the flaws sat in PHP for more than a decade before AI tools helped expose them.
Roman telescope’s main instrument nearly 30% better than predicted
Engineers adjusted the telescope’s secondary mirror by a distance smaller than the width of a human hair.
Honeybees chase wild pollinators off flowers around Cambridge
Other pollinators actively avoided honeybees in up to 36% of interactions, and only the ivy bee contested them, ARU said.
White dwarf is first known green star, astronomers say
No white dwarf is close enough to be seen directly, so the team calculated the colour of each star from its spectrum.
NASA’s Moon battery survives minus 170C but needs a heater
Drills in shadowed craters, rovers and astronauts’ emergency power packs are among the possible uses, NASA says.
Neanderthal shoulder blade may show earliest known wooden-spear violence
The same remains show signs of a facial injury the Neanderthal survived for at least a year, which Dr Emma Pomeroy says would have required care from others.
Milky Way’s multi-planet systems identified so far split into two ‘families’
Simulations that best fit the wide, massive systems have them unstable from birth, said INAF researcher Danae Polychroni.
World’s oldest shipwreck found off Turkey, archaeologists say
With no wood left for radiocarbon testing, the Early Bronze Age date rests on the shape and decoration of the pottery.
Cyber attack hits fridges in French supermarkets
Danfoss said most of the affected units were older products that no longer receive software or security updates.
AI minister: UK cyber breach ‘likely, if not inevitable’
The government is also working on how it would respond to a serious incident involving autonomous AI agents.
Neanderthal wooden spears found at rock shelter in Spain
The objects survive only as imprints and charred remains in travertine, and the authors say some of their uses are uncertain.
NASA releases more than 800 gigabytes of Artemis II Moon data
NASA’s preliminary science report says the crew saw five extremely faint flashes from rocks striking the Moon.
Big dogs age faster – ‘jumping genes’ may be why
Arizona State University researchers found giant breeds lose approximately 35% more LINE1 methylation a year than small ones, on average, though more research is needed…
Scientists sequence genome of Jonathan, the tortoise thought to be 194
Gene switches controlling DNA repair and metabolism resemble those of younger tortoises of the same species, the University of Cambridge says.
Two teams build the first operating nuclear clocks
They do not yet match the best atomic clocks, but the technology could one day rival them and probe physics beyond the standard model.
Kagan and Soai win chemistry Nobel for mirror-molecule work
The academy says Kenso Soai’s reaction was the first in which only one of two possible mirror images formed, a feat no one but life had achieved.
Astronomers find possible ‘phoenix planet’ born of a dead star
A faint brightness signal repeating every 4.4 days in NASA’s TESS data is consistent with a Jupiter-sized gas giant, but the planet remains a candidate.
Nobel medicine prize goes to light switch for nerve cells
Hegemann and Nagel found the protein behind optogenetics in a single-celled alga that swims towards light, in the early 2000s.
Webb finds signs of Mars-sized and Moon-sized collisions
Scientists estimate roughly 1% of young stars show this phase, but a sample of 21 dust disks points to two kinds of impact.
Fabric cover more than triples strawberry yields in tunnel field tests
North Carolina State University said Plant Armor began as a spinoff of work on military uniforms.
Energy-storing cement holds up as well as commercial concrete in tests
The American Chemical Society said the supercapacitors could in future power everything from emergency lighting to self-powered sensors.
Butterflies’ wing stripes can make predators miss
A computer simulation of over 50,000 wing patterns converged on designs strikingly similar to those found in nature, the University of Exeter said.
Half of electronics brought to UK Repair Cafés get fixed
The findings suggest community repair services and local maker spaces should become a formal part of the UK’s electronic waste system, the University of Surrey said.
SpaceX Dragon sets fastest US docking record at ISS
Nasa astronaut Jessica Watkins commanded the four-person Dragon flight, which will carry out stem-cell and crop research before handing over to the outgoing Crew-12 team.
Why modern screens show different colours to different eyes
A UCL-led study found the gap is widest in blue tones for older viewers, and in red and green tones for people with common genetic variations in colour vision.
Sun’s death could tear outer planets from orbit
A new study finds that once the Sun’s mass loss is modelled as uneven bursts rather than a smooth process, the outer planets’ dynamical lifetime collapses from an…
Nasa scientists head to Highlands in hunt for Mars life clues
The team hiked the cliffs of Scotland’s Stoer formation, where 1.2 billion-year-old rocks hold signs of ancient microbial life.
Antarctic winter sea ice hits third-lowest extent on record
Scientists say the trend is part of a recent cluster of low readings, with the lowest July and August extents on record all occurring since 2022.
Chinese AI model gave bioweapon steps, security firm says
Mindgard says it got two of Moonshot AI’s Kimi models to describe how to make biological weapons and plan assassinations by “jailbreaking” their safety limits; Moonshot…
Albanese: OpenAI agent breached Medicare data portal
OpenAI took three months to tell the Australian government, and the Signals Directorate is now checking whether three more systems were hit.
OpenAI finds its agents pulled US Census and SEC data
Australia’s prime minister said an OpenAI agent had got past repeated blocks in June to reach files that were not public.
Irish watchdog fines Google €403m over location data
The decision lists four failures, including keeping users’ location data for longer than necessary.
US proposes AI incident alert system with China
The talks came before a meeting between Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping at the White House on 24 September.
UK to waive liability for some space missions until 2030
The Government Actuary’s Department said it had assessed the cost to taxpayers of insurance and liability reforms accompanying the new UK Space Strategy.
Astronaut Pikachu heads to UK’s Science Museum
A Pikachu plush that spent 67 days aboard the International Space Station features in a new touring exhibition from the European Space Agency and Pokémon, part of…
Human brain is ‘two separate organs’, Stanford study finds
The forebrain and hindbrain grow from separate embryonic cells that evolved independently, according to Stanford Medicine researchers, whose study was published in…
