Science

The Chincha Kingdom was transporting seabird excrement from islands to valleys as early as the 13th century, and this powerful fertiliser may have been key to its economic success

We must find a balance between haste and getting mired in medical inertia

There are huge benefits to ringing the changes when it comes to exercise, finds committed runner Grace Wade when she analyses the science

In George Saunders's Vigil, a ghost visits Earth to help a dying oil tycoon, while terraforming efforts on Mars are about to bear fruit in The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel. Emily H. Wilson's sci-fi column explores two very different short novels

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

It's hard not to despair about the state of the world today, but here are five reasons to be a little bit hopeful, says Fred Pearce

We are told we need cynical strategies to "play" the dating game, but the science says this is totally wrong. David Robson enjoys an evidence-based takedown from psychologist Paul Eastwick

Feedback is always on the lookout for better ways to measure things, and was delighted to learn how the weight of ice is quantified in Austin, Texas

I missed this Bill Maher “New Rules” clip from last October, but better late than never.  In this segment called “Crazy in gov,” Maher assesses whether Democrats or Republicans are more deranged,  Although he does point out some craziness on the part of “progressives,” but it is the Republicans who get the Most Deranged prize. So much for people who think Maher is right. He’s a classical liberal, for crying out loud!

I feel sorry for press secretary Karoline Leavitt, forced to mouth ardent defenses of Trump, but on the other hand maybe she actually believes the pablum she regurgitates.

Maher’s guests here are Michael Steele, co-host of MNBC Weeknight, and CNN political analyst Kate Bedingfield, who was former White House director of communications under Biden.

In a clockwork predictable Universe, comets and how they will ultimately perform is always a big wild card. A new sungrazer comet discovered at the start of this year has given astronomers pause. C/2026 A1 MAPS could put on a memorable if brief show in early April, if it doesn’t join the long list of comets that failed to live up to expectations.

UPDATE: I couldn’t make out the lyrics, but Grok gave what he sang (h/t Luana), so it isn’t nearly as obscene as the entire lyrics linked here. But there are still obscene bits, not to mention suggestive ones. I suggest you use Google translate on this Spanish: “Si te lo meto no me llame'” And “if I put it in”? What does that mean?

So consider this a partial retraction. However, it’s still a pretty dirty song and there is also the crotch-grabbing and mock copulation.

[Parte II: Yo Perreo Sola + Safaera][Refrán: Nesi & Bad Bunny]
Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (Tú me pichaba’)
Ahora yo picheo (Mmm, nah)
Antes tú no quería’ (No quería’)
Ahora yo no quiero (Mmm, no)
Ante’ tú me pichaba’ (-chaba’)
¡Las mujeres en el mundo entero!
Ahora yo picheo
Antes tú no quería’
Ahora yo no quiero
¡Perreando sin miedo!English Translation:
Before, you ignored me (You ignored me)
Now I ignore you (Mmm, nah)
Before, you didn’t want to (Didn’t want to)
Now I don’t want to (Mmm, no)
Before, you ignored me (-ignored)
Women all over the world!
Now I ignore you
Before, you didn’t want to
Now I don’t want to
Twerking without fear![Coro: Nesi & Bad Bunny, Ambos]
No, tranqui, yo perreo sola (Mmm, ey)
Ey, ey, ey, mueve, mueve, mueve
Yo perreo sola (Perreo sola)
Okey, ey, eyEnglish Translation:
No, chill, I twerk alone (Mmm, ey)
Ey, ey, ey, move, move, move
I twerk alone (Twerk alone)
Okay, ey, ey[Verso: Bad Bunny]
Mi bi anda fuga’o y yo quiero que tú me lo esconda’
Agárralo como bonga
Se mete una que la pone cachonda, ey
Brinca en los Audi, no en los Honda, ey
Si te lo meto no me llame’
Que esto no es pa’ que me ame’
Si tu novio no te—
Pa’ eso que no—, ey, eyEnglish Translation:
My thing is on the run and I want you to hide it for me
Grab it like a bonga
She takes one that makes her horny, ey
She jumps in the Audis, not in the Hondas, ey
If I put it in you, don’t call me
‘Cause this isn’t for you to love me
If your boyfriend doesn’t—
For that he doesn’t—, ey, ey[Puente: Bad Bunny]
En el perreo no se quita
Fuma y se pone bella, ey
Me llama si me necesita, ey
Pero por ahora está solita
Ella perrea—English Translation:
In the twerking she doesn’t stop
She smokes and gets beautiful, ey
She calls me if she needs me, ey
But for now she’s alone
She twerks—The medley transitioned into the next song after this bridge, cutting off before delving into additional explicit verses from the full studio version of “Safaera” (such as references to more graphic sexual acts or substances). This kept the performance energetic but toned down for the event. 

I didn’t plan to watch the Superbowl or its halftime show, and I didn’t.  But when I heard that Bad Bunny was the headliner of the halftime show, and reading that this was repeatedly described as “historic”, I figured his ethnicity was what made it “historic”, though I didn’t know his ethnic background.  Looking him up, I saw that he’s a Puerto Rican rapper, producer, and singer, and occasionally a professional wrestler. Wikipedia describes him as being “widely credited with helping Spanish-language rap reach mainstream global popularity and is considered one of the greatest Latino rappers of all time.” The article below says

So I figured, okay, he’s the first Hispanic to perform at halftime after 59 previous Superbowls.  But that seemed weird; surely there were others before him. Sure enough, Grok told me this:

Several Hispanic or Latino artists have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show prior to Bad Bunny’s appearance in 2020. Here’s a list of them, including the years they performed and brief notes on their heritage:

Gloria Estefan (Cuban-American): Performed in 1992 (Super Bowl XXVI, with Miami Sound Machine), 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX, with Miami Sound Machine), and 1999 (Super Bowl XXXIII).

Arturo Sandoval (Cuban): Performed in 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX).

Christina Aguilera (Ecuadorian descent): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).

Enrique Iglesias (Spanish): Performed in 2000 (Super Bowl XXXIV).

Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez of The Black Eyed Peas) (Mexican descent): Performed in 2011 (Super Bowl XLV).

Bruno Mars (Puerto Rican descent): Performed in 2014 (Super Bowl XLVIII) and 2016 (Super Bowl 50).

Gustavo Dudamel (Venezuelan): Conducted the orchestra in 2016 (Super Bowl 50). 

So I didn’t know what was “historic” about Bad Bunny’s appearance, but I supposed that it was because he sang in Spanish. Well, that’s one thing, but probably the most salient reason for all the excitement and praise was that the show occurred at an opportune moment: a time when liberal Americans, in the face of ICE’s assaults, can show their colors by being pro-immigrant (though Bad Bunny is, like all Puerto Ricans, an American citizen by birth).  As the article by David Volodzko in The Radicalist below begins (WARNING: graphic, sexual, and obscene language!):

The Apple Music Super Bowl LX halftime show opened in a sugar cane field with Bad Bunny singing in Spanish about girls sucking his dick, featuring guest appearances by Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, some rapping about fucking girls with big tits in his car with his erect penis, then the dancers waved the flags of various Latin American countries with a sign that read, “Together, we are America,” and Bunny listed the countries of the Americas. At least it was entertaining. The political message was about as subtle as anything else Bad Bunny writes. We are all American. All Latinos are American. All the illegal immigrants coming to America from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras are American. Love defeats hate. Oppose ICE. Or something like that. The guy’s not exactly a philosopher.

As TODAY says, “Bad Bunny celebrated the history, culture and pride of Puerto Rico with his historic Super Bowl 2026 halftime show.” (The link also gives all the songs he sampled in the show.) Also, note that Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Cardi B, and Karol G. made cameo appearances in the show.

Here: take 13 minutes and watch for yourself, and note that, as a few readers said yesterday, he grabs his crotch quite a bit. Watch it by clicking on the “Watch on YouTube below” icon or here.

Click to read.

The point of the article, besides Bad Bunny’s obscenity, is that “Americans” refer to people in the U.S., not generally Latinos. Well, that doesn’t bother me. But Volodzko points out not only that this was not at all the first Spanish artist headlining the Superbow, and that the show was overly woke (again, I couldn’t care less).  The part I’m pointing out here is not only humorous but hypocritical: the nature of the show, with Bad Bunny grabbing his crotch and singing Spanish lyrics so obscene that I have to put them below the fold, would not be tolerated if the show was in English. Even Bad Bunny wouldn’t even get away with it if the lyrics were in English.

Remember when Justin Timberlake (accidentally) tore off Janet Jackson’s nipple cover at the Superbowl halftime show, exposing her nipple? That caused a huge scandal, which was called Nipplegate and has its own article on Wikipedia. Football is one of our national sports, and Americans want a good, clean halftime show.  I have to say that Bad Bunny’s show was lively and enjoyable, but think again when you read the lyrics below.

Finally, Volodzko avers that trying to mainstream Hispanic culture is unnecessary as it’s already here:

You see, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance signals the mainstreaming of Latin culture in America at a time when Latinos make up 20% of the population. The problem is, this abrasive performance was also totally unnecessary. It comes off like a celebration of Latino diversity, as if America has finally reached a moment when Latinos can be themselves. We’re here — deal with it. Except Latinos don’t need any mainstreaming. Shakira and J. Lo already did the halftime. Despacito was the No. 1 song in the United States and everybody loved it. Coco is one of the biggest Disney movies of all time. Chipotle is everywhere. Americans love Latin culture. Bad Bunny is declaring victory in a war that no longer exists. That’s because the subtext here is Trump, ICE, and immigration. And I’m sorry, but if that’s the conversation we’re having, then we are not all Americans.

I love Latin america. I have lived in many parts, including Puerto Rico. I am married to a Latina and we have a Latina daughter. I speak Spanish, I cook Latin food, and I dance salsa. Latin culture is a permanent part of my everyday life. Saying that we are not all Americans is not in any way disrespectful to Latinos. It’s just a fact.

Again, this isn’t a big deal to me. But the part below is—not that I’m a prude, but that Bad Bunny’s lyrics wouldn’t be tolerated except by people who don’t understand Spanish.  If he sang them in English, it would be a scandal worse than Nipplegate.

Writing for The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Borrelli described it as “close to art” and “a cultural moment, a paradigm shift.” Time characterized the show as “a fierce act of resistance” and “a sharp cultural and history lesson.” I could go on, but I’ll spare you. What I won’t spare you, however, are his lyrics. Yes, I’m exactly the kind of white-privileged male that Fienberg is taking about. One who looks things up. Here are some selected lyrics from the song “Safaera,” which Bad Bunny sang during the show:

GO BELOW THE FOLD TO SEE THESE LYRICS IN ENGLISH, which you can see in Spanish here, I had them checked by a friend of mine of Puerto Rican descent, and she said they were “adequate enough”. She was also said they were “disgusting.”

They are about as graphically obscene as yu can get.  Would they appear in a halftime show in English? Of course not.  They didn’t fly among many Hispanics, either. Here’s a contrast between assessments of Bad Bunny’s sbow by the Washington Post versus UHN Plus, a very popular Spanish-language online newspaper originating in Miami.

REPORT: Washington Post calls BAD BUNNY’S performance “wholesome” and full of “traditional family values” PROVING once again it is less trustworthy than a transgender priest. pic.twitter.com/MDnHxiSDoz

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) February 10, 2026

Wholesome? Did they even translate the lyrics?

I asked Luana, who speaks Spanish as well as her native Portuguese, to translate the UHN bit in the tweet on the right, and it says this: “Critique of the halftime show: images that generate embarrassment and reproach on the part of the public.”

There you go.  In the photo, of course, Bad Bunny is feigning copulation with a woman. I can’t see this as exactly a “wholesome” depiction of Hispanic culture. (It isn’t of course: it’s seen through the misogynistic lens of Bad Bunny.)

Anyway, if you don’t mind sexually graphic lyrics, go below the fold and read what Bad Bunny, who was very bad, sang during the show. Here’s the penultimate paragraph  from Volodzko:

You can decide whether you think the Super Bowl should be family-friendly or whether that ship has sailed. But I don’t think the English equivalent of this song would be allowed. So then what’s going on here? That’s the part that bothers me most about this latest flashpoint in our culture wars. I couldn’t care less whether Bad Bunny performed. I don’t watch the Super Bowl. But it’s the attempt to bullshit me, to gaslight me, to get away with something as if I wouldn’t notice, that rubs the wrong way. For example, to sing about girls sucking you off in front of millions of Americans and then pretend that people are objecting simply because they don’t like the sound of Spanish. Oh, because xenophobia is the problem, is it? Or as if Americans have a serious anti-Latino issue that needs addressing.

Rumors that BB was fined $10 million for crotch-grabbing and obscenity are false, though he was guilty of both!

Click “continue reading” to see the lyrics in English:

Part of the lyrics from “Safaera,” sung during halftime:

Pussy with dick, dick with ass (push it in)
Pussy with dick, dick with ass, yes (push it in)
Pussy with dick, dick with ass (push it in)
Your tits rubbing my nipples (push it in) …

Really big tits like Lourdes Chacón
Really big ass like Iris Chacón
I don’t know why I haven’t seen the pussy
But let’s go to bed to fuck you in panties …

I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt
To see what is hidden in your pants
I want to grind on you and grind on you and grind on you (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and grind on you and grind (hard, hard)
I want to grind on you and smoke a blunt, a blunt (hard, hard)
The ecstasy is already kicking in …

My dick is being chased and I want you to hide it
Grab it like a bonga
She took a pill that made her horny
She fucks in the Audi, not in the Honda, ayy
If I give it to you, don’t call me
Cause this is not to make you love me, ayy
If your boyfriend doesn’t eat your ass
He better fuck off

Come down to my house, I’ll lick it all up
Mami, I’ll lick it all up
Come down to my house, I’ll wear you out, ayy
I’ll wear you out
Come down to my house, I’ll lick it all up (papi, keep going!)
Mami, I’ll lick it all up (papi, keep going!)
Tell me, servant (papi, keep going)
If you smoke weed (papi, pa-papi) …

The dealer is twerking (hard!)
It seems like she fucks well while high
I want to take a selfie with that huge ass (wow)
Erect, erect, I’m erect, and it shows (whoa, whoa)
What are we gonna do with that huge ass?
In university they’re all A, A, A
But those tits are C
You are super horny, mami, I already know
I’m also horny, what are we gonna do?
With that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
Go crazy with that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
If you have that bum-bum, go crazy, bum-bum
If you have that bum-bum, go crazy, buoh!

Biologists have long thought that speaking to nature’s economic value would persuade boardrooms it was worth saving. It hasn’t worked – so what, if anything, will?

About 4600 years ago, the population of Britain was replaced by a people who brought Bell Beaker pottery with them. Now, ancient DNA has uncovered the murky story of where these people came from

For millions of years, a frozen wanderer drifted between the stars before slipping into our solar system as 3I/ATLAS—only the third known interstellar comet ever spotted. When scientists turned NASA’s Swift Observatory toward it, they caught the first-ever hint of water from such an object, detected through a faint ultraviolet glow of hydroxyl gas. Even more surprising, the comet was blasting out water at a rate of about 40 kilograms per second while still far from the Sun—much farther than where most comets “switch on.”

In April of 2025, HHS secretary RFK Jr. stated: “The autism epidemic is running rampant,” said U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “One in 31 American children born in 2014 are disabled by autism. That’s up significantly from two years earlier and nearly five times higher than when the CDC first started running autism surveys in children […]

The post Latest Autism Data first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Sending a mission to the Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) is the most effective way of actually directly imaging a potentially habitable planet, as well as its atmosphere, and even possibly some of its cities. But, the SGL is somewhere around 650-900 AU away, making it almost 4 times farther than even Voyager 1 has traveled - and that’s the farthest anything human has made it so far. It will take Voyager 1 another 130+ years to reach the SGL, so obviously traditional propulsion methods won’t work to get any reasonably sized craft there in any reasonable timeframe. A new paper by an SGL mission’s most vocal proponent, Dr. Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, walks through the different types of propulsion methods that might eventually get us there - and it looks like we would have a lot of work to do if we plan to do it anytime soon.

A gene therapy that patients breathe in has been found to shrink lung tumours by inserting immune-boosting genes into surrounding cells

A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed like Jupiter, by slowly building solid cores. That’s unexpected because these planets are far bigger and orbit much farther from their star than models once allowed.

South Australia is proving to the world that relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 per cent in a year and sometimes going negative

Free-Floating Planets, or as they are more commonly known, Rogue Planets, wander interstellar space completely alone. Saying there might be a lot of them is a bit of an understatement. Recent estimates put the number of Rogue Planets at something equivalent to the number of stars in our galaxy. Some of them, undoubtedly, are accompanied by moons - and some of those might even be the size of Earth. A new paper, accepted for publication into the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and also available in pre-print on arXiv, by David Dahlbüdding of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and his co-authors, describes how some of those rogue exo-moons might even have liquid water on their surfaces.