Science & technology
Life finds a way
Tubeworms live beneath the planetary crust around deep-sea vents
The conditions are hot, sulphurous and low in oxygen
Starship sticks the landing
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has achieved something extraordinary
If SpaceX can land and reuse the most powerful rocket ever made what can’t it do?
Forget about Mars
Could life exist on one of Jupiter’s moons?
A spacecraft heading to Europa is designed to find out
Still waters
Noise-dampening tech could make ships less disruptive to marine life
Solutions include bendy propellers and “acoustic black holes”
The 2024 Nobel prizes
AI wins big at the Nobels
Awards went to the discoverers of micro-RNA, pioneers of artificial-intelligence models and those using them for protein-structure prediction
Flying fish
Meet Japan’s hitchhiking fish
Medaka catch rides on obliging birds, confirming one of Darwin’s hunches
The 2024 Nobel prizes
Google’s DeepMind researchers among recipients of Nobel prize for chemistry
The award honours protein design and the use of AI for protein-structure prediction
The 2024 Nobel prizes
AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics
The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
The 2024 Nobel prizes
A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA
These tiny molecules regulate genes and control how cells develop and behave
Sound of mind
AI offers an intriguing new way to diagnose mental-health conditions
Models look for sound patterns undetectable by the human ear
So much hot air
Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work
Better tools are needed to analyse their effects
Island life
Isolated communities are more at risk of rare genetic diseases
The isolation can be geographic or cultural