In an interview last weekend, Iran’s ambassador to the UN said his country’s nuclear enrichment ‘will never stop’ because it is permitted for ‘peaceful energy’ purposes. It is the latest development in an escalation of tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme, which erupted when Israel targeted the country’s nuclear facilities in…
It has been 25 years since Bill Clinton announced one of humanity’s most important scientific achievements: the first draft of the human genome. At the time, there was a great deal of excitement about the benefits that this new knowledge would bring, with predictions about curing genetic diseases and even…
Ever since Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, astronomers have been wondering whether Neptune really is the most distant planet from the sun. Now, a new telescope could uncover what lies in the farthest reaches of the solar system. The Vera C Rubin Observatory released its…
More of us are turning to products containing mushroom extracts, with the medicinal fungi market now worth billions of pounds. Promises of benefits to mental and physical health have seen its popularity spill over from wellness influencers to the shelves of Marks & Spencer – but is there any scientific…
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has promised £14bn of investment to build the Sizewell C nuclear power plant, kicking off what the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, says will be a ‘golden age for clean energy abundance’. But for critics, the technology’s high costs and lengthy construction times have always eclipsed the…
As a companion to the Guardian’s Missing in the Amazon podcast, global environment editor Jon Watts goes in search of answers to the question Dom Phillips was investigating when he was murdered: how can we save the Amazon? In the final episode of a three-part series, Jon encounters a radical…
As a companion to the Guardian’s Missing in the Amazon, Jon Watts, global environment editor, goes in search of answers to the question Dom Phillips was investigating when he was murdered: how can we save the Amazon? In episode two, Jon meets the people trying to make sure the rainforest…
As a companion to the Guardian’s Missing in the Amazon, the global environment editor Jon Watts goes in search of answers to the question Dom Phillips was investigating when he was murdered: how can we save the Amazon? In episode one of a three-part series, Watts explores what’s at stake…
The British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian indigenous defender Bruno Pereira vanished three years ago while on a reporting trip near Brazil’s remote Javari valley. The Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, investigates what happened to them in a six-part podcast series. Find episode 2 and all future episodes…
Vast areas of the ocean are getting darker, according to research based on satellite imaging. Marine ecosystems are governed by faint light changes – from mass nightly migrations to coral spawning cycles – so what happens when that light begins to fade? Ian Sample talks to Prof Tim Smyth from…
Ian Sample meets Jaap de Roode, professor of biology at Emory University in Atlanta, and author of the book Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes and Other Animals Heal Themselves. De Roode explains how a chance discovery got him interested in animal medicine, the amazing ways that creatures use toxins…
Ian Sample is joined by Dr James Kinross, colorectal surgeon and author of the book Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome, to answer all your questions about gut health. In episode two, Kinross explains what else, beyond antibiotics, can damage our microbiome, how we can start to repair…
Ian Sample is joined by James Kinross, colorectal surgeon and author of the book Dark Matter: The New Science of the Microbiome, to answer all your questions about gut health. In episode one, James explains how the gut microbiome gets set up, how it impacts our early development, and the…
Doctors in the US have become the first to treat a baby with a customised gene-editing therapy after diagnosing the child with a severe genetic disorder that kills about half of those affected in early infancy. Ian Sample explains to Madeleine Finlay how this new therapy works and how it…
In March 2021, the Toronto-based reporter Leyland Cecco heard about a memo sent by New Brunswick health officials that warned about a possible unknown neurological syndrome thought to be affecting about 40 people. Since then the story has taken many twists and turns, most recently with a peer-reviewed study that…
Geoengineering, the controversial set of techniques that aim to deliberately alter the Earth’s climate system, may be inching a step closer to reality with the announcement that UK scientists will be conducting real-world experiments in the coming years. To understand what’s happening, Ian Sample is joined by the Guardian environment…
For a long time the appendix was considered disposable. After all, millions of people have theirs removed each year and go on to live healthy lives. But as Heather F Smith, a professor of anatomy at Midwestern University tells Ian Sample, researchers are increasingly understanding what this small worm-shaped organ…
Science correspondent Hannah Devlin joins Ian Sample to discuss three intriguing science stories from the week, from a global study that puts the UK third from bottom when it comes to flourishing, to a man who intentionally suffered more than 200 snake bites in the quest to find a universal…
Direct to consumer tests that claim to tell us our biological – as opposed to chronological – age are getting a lot of attention, but what can they really tell us about our health? Science editor Ian Sample talks to Dr Brian H Chen, an epidemiologist at the California Pacific…
Authorities are still trying to understand what triggered the massive power outage that left the majority of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity on Monday. To understand what might have been at play, and whether there’s any truth to claims that renewable energy sources were to blame, Ian Sample hears from…
1 May
16 min
1 – 20
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