Rare exoplanet alignment set for April Fool's Day 2026

Video: Exoplanets overlap as they cross their star Planet-watchers, mark your calendars for April Fool's Day, 2026. That's when the next known case of a rare celestial alignment in an alien solar system is due. The event involves two planets overlapping as they cross their star – and has only ever been seen once before.In 2012, Teruyuki Hirano of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and colleagues reported the first sighting of this particular...

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Stuff: Goodbye to the disposable age

From self-repairing phones to a weightless collection of digital possessions, the future promises to let us enjoy our belongings without today's drawbacks EVERYBODY has prized possessions. We collect things obsessively and yet simultaneously worry about the rise of clutter and the global impact of wasted stuff. But can technology offer ways to ease this ambivalent relationship?Extending the lifespan of objects could help us minimise the guilt of...

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Five a day is not enough fruit and veg for best health

Forget five a day – you should be aiming for seven or more portions of fruit and veg. So say the authors of a large study, which found that people who ate seven or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day had a lower risk of dying during the seven-year study period than those who ate just five.We have long known that people who eat more fruit and vegetables tend to live longer, but not why that is or how much is optimal. According to the World...

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Stop Nicaragua's canal and save thousands of species

A massive canal bisecting Nicaragua would be an ecological disaster, says Jorge Huete-Pérez, who wants the world to intervene before it's too late You oppose plans for a canal across Nicaragua. What do they entail?There's not much information. This is a major construction project, crossing from ocean to ocean, but the bill was approved in just three days by the National Assembly. It says the canal could go through any region, but the route preferred...

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How climate pain is being spun into corporate gain

Continue reading page |1|2 Book information Windfall: The booming business of global warming by McKenzie FunkPublished by: Penguin PressPrice: $27.95As the Arctic melts, the Russians are eyeing new shipping routes (Image: Jan Vermeer/ Foto Natura/Minden Pictures) The wolves of Wall Street have got climate change, but at a terrifying cost, reveals Windfall: The booming business of global warming by McKenzie Funk MY BOOKSHELVES contain several metres...

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Stuff: The psychological power of possessions

We invest emotion and memories in our possessions, giving them deep meaning, but that doesn't necessarily make us happy – it may drive us slightly mad "HAVE nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This was a golden rule for those struggling to furnish or redecorate their homes, offered by William Morris, a 19th-century British textile designer.Insightful as it sounds, Morris's advice turns out to be...

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Born to chat: Humans may have innate language instinct

People instinctively organise a new language according to a logical hierarchy, not simply by learning which words go together, as computer translation programs do. The finding may add further support to the notion that humans possess a "universal grammar", or innate capacity for language.The existence of a universal grammar has been in hot dispute among linguists ever since Noam Chomsky first proposed the idea half a century ago. If the theory is...

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Face map of mixed feelings could help AIs understand us

Is the person in front of you sadly fearful or fearfully angry? Look closely, you should be able to tell from their face.External expressions of internal feelings have traditionally been studied based on six universally recognised emotions: anger, fear, sadness, joy, disgust, and surprise. The facial muscles and movements everyone uses to pull these faces are well documented. But we all know our emotional lives are much more complex."Why only six?...

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Yum, Lego… Human babies born to move hands to mouth

Don't blame baby for trying to eat that Lego piece. Humans may have a brain circuit dedicated to grabbing stuff and putting it in our mouths, and it probably develops in the womb.Researchers and parents alike have long known that babies stick all manner of things in their mouths from very early on. Some fetuses even suck their thumbs.As putting something in the mouth seems advanced compared to the other, limited actions of newborns, Angela Sirigu...

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Today on New Scientist

Super-submersible Alvin dives again after refit The iconic crewed deep-sea sub that explored the wreck of the Titanic and discovered hydrothermal vents is back in action after a massive overhaulMagnetic bricks beam 3D objects into your screen GaussBricks lets you build shapes on your tablet that turn into digital drawings or make objects that interact with video gamesJapan ordered to stop Antarctic 'scientific' whaling The Japanese whaling programme...

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Super-submersible Alvin dives again after refit

(Image: Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Call it the Joan Rivers of deep-sea submersibles: Alvin has had a longer career than most, but then it's had a lot of work done.Last week, the veteran research submersible passed the field trials for its latest refit, which took three years and $42 million. Alvin is pictured here being recovered after one such test: its new, more dextrous robotic arms are cradling a basket of instruments,...

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Magnetic bricks beam 3D objects into your screen

Video: Magnetic bricks beam 3D objects into your screen Lego constructions can now go beyond the physical and join forces with their digital counterparts. Using magnetic Lego-like bricks, you can now build shapes on your tablet that turn into digital drawings or make objects that interact with video games, for example by creating a real paddle that can deflect graphical balls in the game Pong (see video).Developed by Rong-Hao Liang from the National...

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Japan ordered to stop Antarctic 'scientific' whaling

Japan's scientific whaling programme in the Antarctic is not "for purposes of scientific research", and therefore must stop. That is the ruling by the International Court of Justice, the highest United Nations court, today in The Hague, the Netherlands.Australia was suing Japan over the issue of commercial whaling, which is banned under the international whaling treaty of 1986. Japan insisted its whaling activities were carried out to gain scientific...

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Biology doesn't justify gender divide for toys

There is concern at the increasing segregation of toys and books for boys and girls. Is there any scientific justification, asks the author of Delusions of Gender Caught on camera in the "pink aisle" of a US toy store, 5-year-old Riley posed a multi-billion dollar question: "Why does all the girls have to buy pink stuff, and all the boys have to buy different coloured stuff?"Her impassioned critique of profit-boosting gendered toy marketing has been...

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How climate change will affect where you live

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change spells out how climate change will affect each part of the world, and what can be done about it. For many regions the IPCC only makes vague predictions, and in some cases the impacts are deeply uncertain.Here is our rough guide to the main impacts this century, and some tips for coping with them. It is partly based on draft versions of the report's many chapters, the final text...

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World must adapt to unknown climate future, says IPCC

Continue reading page |1|2 There is still great uncertainty about the impacts of climate change, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released today. So if we are to survive and prosper, rather than trying to fend off specific threats like cyclones, we must build flexible and resilient societies.Today's report is the second of three instalments of the IPCC's fifth assessment of climate change. The first...

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Stuff: The bare necessities, then and now

What is the smallest set of things that we need in a modern consumer society? ON SOCIAL media site Instagram, thousands of people in the US post photos with the hashtag #edc, meaning "everyday carry". These show the tools, weapons and accoutrements that they haul around day in, day out. Men also show off the contents of their pockets through #pocketdump (currently 17,900 photos), whereas women tend to favour #whatsinmybag (25,450 photos).The core...

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Stuff: Humans as hunters and mega-gatherers

How did we evolve from indigent apes with no possessions into hoarding humans with more stuff than we can track? Our urge to accumulate has deep roots WHEN I moved house recently, I was overwhelmed by the number of boxes containing my family's possessions. It made me feel quite sick.Even so, I couldn't bring myself to throw any of it out. Possessions define us as a species; a life without them would be barely recognisable as human. Without clothes,...

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Second skin diagnoses symptoms then delivers drugs

Why wait for the doctor to see you? A smart patch attached to your skin could diagnose health problems automatically – and even administer drugs.Monitoring movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease or epilepsy relies on video recordings of symptoms and personal surveys, says Dae-Hyeong Kim at the Seoul National University in South Korea. And although using wearable devices to monitor the vital signs of patients is theoretically possible, the...

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Obesity linked to our ability to digest carbohydrates

"I'm off the carbs" is a familiar refrain among dieters. But could this approach to losing weight be more beneficial to some people than others?That's the implication of research suggesting that obesity may be linked to how our bodies digest the starch found in carbohydrate-rich foods like bread, rice and potatoes.When we eat, an enzyme in saliva called salivary amylase kick-starts digestion by breaking down some of the starch found in carbohydrates...

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Battle-hardened oyster may help toughen combat shields

Video: Mollusc shells take a beating without shattering Mighty molluscs with transparent shells could help protect soldiers in battle. Analysis of oyster shells shows how they can take repeated beatings without shattering, perhaps inspiring tougher combat armour.Current transparent shields and visors are made from laminated glass, which fractures if it takes a bullet. That makes it hard to see through and vulnerable to breaking with a second hit,...

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Zoologger: Sex in the city no lure for urban owls

Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world Species: Athene cunicularia Habitat: Old mammal burrows throughout North and South AmericaWhat's out of sight is out of mind. It's perhaps not surprising that relatively rare predatory birds like owls are faithful to their sexual partners. After all, if they don't come into contact with many other owls, any temptation to stray...

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Frozen forest bent double by two-day ice storm

(Image: Judson Edeburn, director of Duke Forest) You know something serious has happened when you see a scene like this. It might be drought or disease or mysterious meteoric events – but ice can also bend the mighty tree to its will, as here in Durham, North Carolina.Freezing rain and ice struck the 2800-hectare wood on 6 and 7 March. It left pine trees over 3 metres high bent with their tips nearly touching the ground, and others uprooted or broken....

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Don't let vaping, obesity and boozing become norms

Sally Davies , chief medical officer for England, thinks society needs to wake up to problems with body weight, drinking and e-cigarettes What is the biggest health challenge that we face in the UK?It is the normalisation of unhealthy behaviours. We have normalised obesity, and over drinking, and we are normalising e-cigarettes. We have normalised not taking sufficient physical exercise and the expectation that when people go to their GPs, they will...

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