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An infestation of caterpillars can make an oak tree postpone when it opens its leaves next year by three days, wrong-footing the insects when they attack again

With progress at COP climate meetings stalling, 57 countries took part in the first of a new series of conferences aiming to develop roadmaps away from fossil fuels, but big emitters like China and the US were absent

Silvia Park, author of the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, reveals how a book that was originally intended to be for children took a darker route following a death in the family

In this extract from Luminous, the May read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet a mysterious robot discovered in a salvage yard in Seoul, in a future reunified Korea

Uranus’s outermost two rings are surprisingly dissimilar, which opens up a mystery about the tiny moons and moonlets that form them

I don't understand why public health figures like Jay Bhattacharya who controlled 58 billion dollars of funding uh didn't use that money to study it definitively and with running high quality trials.

The post Scientific Censor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Doesn’t Realize He’s the Medical Establishment Now & It’s His Job to Generate Evidence for the American People first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

The implications of quantum mechanics suggest reality isn't as solid as we think it is, but physicist David Bohm had a spin on the theory that restores reality. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan explores how we could test Bohmian mechanics – and if it will ever become more widely accepted

You’re on the fourth human mission to Mars, and you’re told the Odyssey spacecraft designed to take you there will be the smoothest ride you’ll ever take. It features a newly christened electric propulsion engine which was in the late stages of testing during the first three missions. The mission starts and the spacecraft travels at a crawl, and you wonder if it’s broken. A week goes by and you’re now traveling at more than 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) per hour, and your mind is blown as to how fast you’re going, how quickly that happened, and that this mission might be more awesome than you thought.

Astronomers now believe there is at least one planet for every star in the Milky Way but new research has revealed a deeply unsettling twist in that picture. The most common planets in our Galaxy, it turns out, are almost entirely absent around the most common stars. Using data from NASA's TESS satellite, researchers found that the small, faint stars that make up the vast majority of the Milky Way seem to host rocky super Earths in abundance, but virtually no sub Neptunes, the planet type previously thought to be plentiful. The finding doesn't just refine existing theories of planet formation, it rewrites them.

An international team of astrophysicists has just released one of the largest cosmological datasets ever assembled. A mouthwatering 2.5 petabytes of simulated universe, freely available to researchers anywhere in the world. Built using a supercomputer and a suite of simulations called FLAMINGO, the data models how matter has evolved since the Big Bang, tracing everything from individual galaxies to the vast cosmic web that stretches across billions of light years.

When NASA's Artemis II crew swung around the Moon in April, the world watched in extraordinary detail and a breakthrough laser communications system was the reason why. Bolted to the outside of the Orion capsule, a compact optical terminal beamed 484 gigabytes of data back to Earth using invisible infrared light, outpacing traditional radio systems by a factor of tens. The result was some of the most vivid imagery ever captured in deep space, and a technology demonstration that will fundamentally change how humanity communicates beyond Earth.

Our Sun is a bit of an outlier in the general stellar population. We typically think of stars as being solitary wanderers throughout the galaxy. But roughly half of Sun-like stars are locked in with more than one companion star. If there are two, it’s known as a “binary” system, but in many cases there are even more stars all collectively tied together by gravity. Astronomers have long debated why this happens, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Ryan Sponzilli, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, makes an argument for a mechanism known as disk fragmentation.

A cryptocurrency that aims to avoid the disastrous energy consumption of bitcoin is actually using 18 times more energy than its makers claim – but it promises improvements are on the way

An ambitious study has explored how the oral microbiome may affect our metabolic health, raising hopes that conditions like pre-diabetes could one day be screened for via a simple mouth swab

As I mentioned, a hen mallard came into Botany Pond yesterday and quickly took up with Armon, with him being protective and driving away other drakes.  Could this have been Vashti returning after she left the pond with her brood? The only way to tell is to compare bill photos, as hens have identifying dark marks on their bill. So I did the comparison, which you can see below.

Vashti: left side of bill (on nest)

New hen: left side of bill. same black markings on upper bill, black bill tip, and freckles on left side of bill:

Vashti: right side of bill:

New hen: right side of bill. This is the most dispositive to me: note the cloudy darkness on the right side with a small black clump on the bottom, along with the line of “freckles” extending ventrally.

This is good enough for me, and I am calling her “Vashti” again. Moreover, she’s back with Armon (they bonded very quickly after the new hen arrived at the pond yesterday), and they were showing breeding behaviors this morning (head bowing, etc.). My guess is that Vashti is going to essay a second brood.

The sad part is that Vashti almost certainly lost her brood after wandering away from Botany Pond, and came back to try again. The good bit is that she’s trying again, and I will be here to oversee the process again. And Armon is overseeing everything.

Duck tending is hard!

There are tens of thousands of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that represent some of the most easily accessible resources in the solar system. If we can get to them at least. Planning trajectories to rendezvous with these miniature worlds is notoriously difficult, and requires a massive amount of computational power to calculate. But a new paper from astrodynamicist Alessandro Beolchi of Khalifa University of Science and Technology and his co-authors offers a much less computationally intensive way to find these trajectories, and has the added bonus of finding the much less energy-intensive paths to boot.

Since the early 20th century, people’s skulls have got rounder and their jaws have got wider, probably because of changes in health, diet and environment

They’re a prolific, yet often elusive for northern hemisphere observers. If skies are clear, watch for a strong annual meteor shower that’s attained an almost mythical status: the May Eta Aquariids. The Eta Aquariid meteor shower is active from April 19th until May 28th, with the key night being the evening of May 5th into the morning of May 6th.

The degree of anti-Jewish violence in the UK has escalated since October, 2023, and has been especially noticeable in the last six months. Here are the antisemitic incidents that Grok describes, including the stabbing yesterday.

• 23 March 2026 – Golders Green arson: Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish volunteer medical charity Hatzola Northwest were deliberately set on fire in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green (a major Jewish neighbourhood in north London). Police treated it as a suspected antisemitic hate crime; multiple arrests followed.
• Mid-April 2026 – Series of attempted arsons on Jewish sites in north London:
  • 15 April: A brick and two bottles (believed to contain petrol) were thrown at Finchley Reform Synagogue.
  • Around 17–18 April: Suspected arson attacks targeted a building in Hendon previously used by a Jewish charity and Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow (where a teenage boy reportedly smashed a window and threw a lit bottle inside).
  • Late April (reported around 27 April): A suspected arson attack on a Jewish memorial wall in Golders Green.

  Counter-terrorism police linked some of these to possible paid criminal actors (with speculation of Iran-related motives in some reporting) and made multiple arrests across the incidents.

• 29 April 2026 – Golders Green stabbing (ongoing investigation as of 30 April): Two Jewish men (aged 34 and 76) were stabbed in the street in Golders Green shortly after 11 a.m. Police declared it a terrorist incident, stating the suspect (a 45-year-old man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder) appeared to be “hunting for anyone visibly Jewish.” Both victims were hospitalized in stable condition. The suspect also allegedly turned the knife on officers.

This was combined with persistent accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, Those accusations againt Labpir seem to have eroded under PM Keir Starmer, whose wife and family are Jewish and the kids are being raised Jewish though Starmer himself is an atheist. Yet, as the Free Press article asserts (see below), Starmer is “failing Britain’s Jews” through inaction against incidents like the ones above. First, an archived article from the Torygraph (click to read), showing journalist Suzanne Moore (not Jewish) fed up with the violence:

A few paragraphs:

I am completely broken over the stabbing of two Jewish people in Golders Green.

I should have said “the stabbing of two of our own”. I am not Jewish, but these are our people in our streets, in the city in which I live. Today’s attack is utterly shaming and enraging, and the latest in a line of appalling anti-Semitic crimes. At this point, I just don’t want to hear any more excuses about why this is happening to this tiny minority.

I don’t want to hear more about Palestine, Zionism, Netanyahu, colonialism, “mental health” or “diversity”. Where have these endless, spiralling discussions got us? We are dancing on the head of a pin about whether anti-Semitism is a form of racism, when it so obviously is.

We are now at the point where ambulances are firebombed, and the leader of the Green Party has the gall to ask whether the problem faced by the Jewish community is simply a “perception” of being unsafe. When random Jews are subject to attack, no one asks their position on the Jewish state before spilling their blood, do they? Or where they stand on Gaza?

Where I live in Hackney, east London, Hasidic Jews and Muslims live alongside each other. Many of the local Haredi schools resemble fortresses with 24-hour security. No other community is living like this. Churches and mosques do not need armed guards, and if they did, we would see this situation for what it is – a national emergency.

In the past few years, long before October 7, waves of open anti-Semitism have crashed over us. Labour twisted itself up over it, and those they expelled went straight to the Greens.

Killing Jews in their place of worship in Manchester was shocking enough, but just like the dreadful massacre in Bondi Beach, no one was really that surprised. Jews don’t stab themselves, do they? Yet there is this disgusting underlying sentiment that somehow they have always had it coming. Jews are always held somehow responsible for the murderous violence against them.

She has a point.  Jews are not stabbing Palestinians, driving their cars into crowds of Arabs, or burning mosques.  She calls for action, as does Jonathan Sacerdoti below, who gives a number of suggestions.  And nobody asks the people who are attacked what their views are on Zionism or Netanyahu. This alone shows that it’s not Zionism or the current Israeli PM that’s prompting the violence: the target is Jews, pure and simple. As Moore says, “We need to protect each other, or we’re done for.”

The Green Party of England and Wales—it would be called “progressive Left” in the U.S.—has been accused by many, including at least two of my non-Jewish British friends (as well as by Suzanna Moore above) as being a refuge for British antisemites. One of the accused, Zack Polanski, has been leader of the Green Party for nearly a year, and happens to be Jewish, but Brendan O’Neill at the Spectator (not Jewish) calls out Polanski for weaselspeak. (Click below to read.)

 

Again, a few paragraphs:

Hey, Jews – have you ever considered the possibility that you’re making a fuss over nothing? That a few petrol bombs through the windows of your synagogues is not really a big deal? That your feelings of fear after two Jews were slain in Manchester on Yom Kippur and Jewish property was incinerated in Golders Green and Jews were spat at for wearing a Star of David pendant in public might be a tad overblown?

That’s what I heard when Zack Polanski wondered out loud this week if Britain’s Jews are experiencing ‘actual unsafety’ or just a ‘perception of unsafety’. It is one of the most tone-deaf, pitiless sentences I have heard a politician utter. The Jews of London were terrorised all last week. There were attempted firebombings at numerous synagogues. And here is the leader of the Green Party asking if Jews, the poor dears, merely feel unsafe. Callous doesn’t cover it.

It was an Israeli journalist who asked Polanski about the recent wave of Jewphobic violence. To be fair, Polanski, who is himself Jewish, did express concern about ‘the rise in anti-Semitic attacks’. But it felt perfunctory. He swiftly moved on to ‘the conversation’ he thinks we should be having. ‘There is a conversation to be had about whether it’s a perception of unsafety or whether it’s actual unsafety’, he said. He generously acknowledged that ‘neither are acceptable’. But there it was, out in the open, that slippery left instinct to minimise Jewish pain.

There is no other way to interpret his Kafkaesque formulation: ‘perception of unsafety’. That turgid piece of academese, which will doubtless go down a storm with the keffiyeh-wearing PhDs who swell the ranks of the Green party, seems expressly designed to downplay Jewish fear. Are you really at risk from the fire and the fists of the Jew-haters in our midst, or are you just imagining it? That was the toxic essence of Polanski’s unfeeling remarks.

. . . This isn’t all in Jews’ heads. They aren’t dumbly falling for a fear narrative. Their safety really has been compromised by the post-7 October frenzy of Jew hate. Imagine if petrol bombs were being thrown at mosques and Muslims had been murdered on Eid by a knife-wielding lowlife. Do you think Polanski would be holding forth on whether Muslims really are unsafe or are merely suffering from a ‘perception of unsafety’? Every single one of us knows he would not.

I am not keen on the word “Jewphobic” (it’s not a phobia; the word “antisemitism” will do nicely), but what’s going on in the UK is not simply a “perception of unsafety”. It is unsafety!  Look at the incidents above, all of which happened in the last two months. And is being stabbed simply a “perception” of being pierced with a knife?

Finally, to Labour PM Starmer himself. Today’s Free Press has an article critical of the inaction of Labour; the author is Alex Hearn, a co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism.

The “J’accuse” paragraphs:

Within hours of the stabbing, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the attack “deeply concerning.” He said we must be “absolutely clear in our determination to deal with any of these offenses.” I have been a Labour Party supporter for decades and I have to say plainly: The prime minister’s platitudes are not enough. They have not been enough for some time.

This is the latest in a huge surge of antisemitic attacks in London in recent months. Only last week, a viral video circulated of an Orthodox Jewish man harassed in the street and called a baby killer. Weeks before, ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity were set on fire. Each time, the prime minister says “Antisemitism has no place in the UK,” or some similar platitude.

But a man is judged by his deeds, and unfortunately, Keir Starmer is failing British Jews. On his watch, Jews are struggling to recognize the tolerant country we once knew. As everyday racism has been accommodated and tolerated, we’re long past expecting action.

On Wednesday, Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, said that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.” He called for “meaningful action.” The Israeli foreign ministry was even more blunt: “The UK government can no longer claim this is under control.” The Israelis are right, and they are saying what most Jews in Britain now know to be true.

Consider what British Jews have seen happen in their country in the last three years. Ever since October 7, they have watched streets close in central London, week after week, for marches characterized by racism and hate. Each time, the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state is chanted as a moral demand.

They have watched sitting members of Parliament attend those marches, where being “visibly Jewish” is deemed a provocation. They have watched as smashed windows of Jewish businesses are waved away in the pages of The Guardian as “small acts of petty symbolism.” They have seen an Israeli soccer team’s fans banned from Birmingham over concocted charges of hooliganism. They have watched students at Britain’s finest universities abuse Jewish professors and students, helping to create a culture where one in five British students said they would not house share with a Jew. They have watched parliamentary candidates campaign on Gaza, celebrating October 7. They have watched synagogues implement airport-style security, and their children required to undergo security briefings for kindergarten.

And they have watched a Labour government respond with the language of management, and with total inaction. “Concern.” “Determination.” “Resolve.” The vocabulary of bland press releases and the hope the news cycle will move on before anyone asks what, exactly, is being done to prevent the next attack.

But in the five years since Starmer took over as leader of the Labour Party and in the nearly two years since he has been prime minister, the problem has only gotten worse. Instead of just the Labour Party needing cleaning up, the entire country does. The prime minister has not summoned the heads of the universities where Jewish students have been spat at and chased. He has not used his office to name the Islamist ideology that has driven a series of recent terror plots. He has not demanded the proscription of organizations whose leaders openly celebrated October 7. He has not designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s version of the SS, as a terror group in the UK. And he cannot stop his own MPs from joining the hate rallies.

The last paragraph has a number of suggestions that Starmer could heed to lessen the antisemitism—or at least the acts that pervasive antisemitism has prompted. (I use “pervasive” antisemitism deliberately, as that’s exactly what seems to be true of the UK.) To me, some of the suggestions abrogate American-style free speech, but Britain has no First Amendment. That said, the leadership needs to cultivate a climate of tolerance, and stop having the law demonize Islamophobia but go soft on antisemitism.

Finally, this seven-minute BBC Berkshire video featuring Jonathan Sacerdoti (a pro-Jewish brodacaster) has caused a kerfuffle on social media. People object to the interviewer speaking over Sacerdoti, who ticks off a list of antisemitic incidents and criticizes Starmer for inaction. Finally, the interviewer actually mutes Sacerdoti’s microphone when he criticizes the Green Party.  The man is quite eloquent, and offers tangible suggestions to erode public antisemitism, but either the broadcaster wanted to end the segment for political reasons or simply was in a rush to wrap things up. You be the judge. But muting the microphone is not the way to go. (In my view, the interviewer is pushing back not only on what Sacerdoti “characterizes” which is not a characterization but a description of reality, and also lauds the BBC’s evenhandedness, though most people recognize that the Beeb has been anti=Israel since October 7.)

As for stopping antisemitism, well, Sacerdoti’s suggestions will make public acts of antisemitism less frequent, but will it eliminate  the sentiments behind them? And why is this stuff now fulminating in the UK?

Despite outward appearances, the internal workings of ice giants like Uranus and Neptune are extremely chaotic. Pressures millions of times greater than Earth’s sea level combine with temperatures in the thousands of degrees to make some pretty weird materials. Now, a new paper from researchers at the Carnegie Institution, published in Nature Communications, describes a completely new state of matter that might exist in these extreme environments - a “quasi-1D superionic” phase.