Could liquid neural networks be the future? 🪱 🧪 www.sciencefocus.com/news/worm-br...

Flying Squirrel Loves It Every Time

A 'superflare' 10 trillion X brighter than the Sun has been confirmed as the most luminous burst of light ever from a black hole. 🧪 ⚛️ What caused such an outburst? Astronomers think a star, >30X the Sun's mass, was being gobbled up by the BH. ⚫ A light snack? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My conversation with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. 🎙️ Fascinating time to talk trust, truth and the future of the internet's biggest bank of knowledge. www.sciencefocus.com/future-techn...

Feels like a really low-energy build-up to COP this year. Is anyone excited or hopeful about what can be achieved? 🌎

Wondering how Melissa became such a beast? This explains it perfectly. 🧪 🌀 (hint: it's climate change dummy) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/o...

🦇 🎃🦇 🎃🦇 🎃

"If that flame had pointed toward the hull, we’d have had rapid decompression, quick suffocation, and we’d all be dead." The tale of how Jerry Linenger survived a fire on Mir in 1997. The whole story is told in a new BBC series: Once Upon a Time in Space 🚀 www.sciencefocus.com/space/fire-i...

Nature's power is mind boggling: the sheer scale of the eye of this storm 🤯 💨 Thoughts are with those in Jamaica at this time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_LI...

Ooo, we’ve got a new ‘quasi-moon’ tagging along with Earth. 🌚🧪 It’s called 2025 PN7 — only about 30 m wide, which might explain why we’ve missed it until now. Intriguingly, it orbits at a similar distance to our Moon… could it actually be a lunar escapee? www.sciencefocus.com/news/quasi-m...

One for the history/science fans (myself included) 🧪 Scientists have uncovered new DNA evidence that challenges assumptions about Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 Russian invasion. Analysis suggests that a grim mix of infectious diseases helped decimate the troops. 😷 www.sciencefocus.com/news/how-nap...

Okay, soooo, terrifying. 🪱 BUT the science of how the NW screwworm was forced south, and the ongoing scientific and logistical struggle to keep it at bay, is nothing short of FASCINATING. If you wrote this in a novel, it almost wouldn't be believable 🧪 www.sciencefocus.com/news/flesh-e...

Lost my Duolingo streak while I was away last week, and I don't think I've ever felt freer 🦉

Really interesting biotech talks on stage at GITEX Global today. Been speaking with lots of leaders about how AI, quantum and other new tech is rapidly accelerating progress in the health space. On stage here: Ashley Zehnder, discussing how she’s looking at evolution/nature for novel discoveries.

Congratulations to Prof Omar Yaghi and his colleagues on winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their pioneering work on world-changing materials. 🧪 I caught up with Prof Yaghi a few weeks ago to chat all about his work. You can listen to our conversation below: pod.link/1296673906/e...

This trend really makes the world seem weird... but not so bad. 🧁 www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

Co-first author Dr Rebecca Andrews: “This is the first time we've been able to look at oligomers directly in human brain tissue at this scale: It’s like being able to see stars in broad daylight” 🧪 www.sciencefocus.com/news/hidden-...

🆕 Our VLT finds a rogue planet growing at record rate: six billion tonnes a second! This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a planet of any kind, providing insights into how rogue planets form&grow: https://f.mtr.cool/pvyxnsjnfx  🔭 🧪 ☄️ #exoplanets Illustration ESO/L. Calçada

Useful explainer www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Long distance ultra runners may be at greater risk of colon cancer. 🧪 🏃 Emphasis on the 'may' here - findings are very preliminary and only based on a small group. Could be to do with blood flow away from digestive system... NB: running is still super healthy www.sciencefocus.com/news/ultra-r...

My pet tortoise, Pepe, approves this message. 🐢 🧪 ➼ 'Long dismissed as unintelligent, reptiles are emerging as cognitively and emotionally complex animals. A new study involving tortoises suggests that they also possess mood states.' www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/s...

6,000 and counting 🧪 The number is somewhat arbitrary, but it's impressive how far we've come in 3 decades since the first exoplanet discovery. We'll no doubt be at 10,000 in a couple of years, tops. www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-t...

Congratulations, you've just lived through the three hottest summers on record 🫠 But with greenhouse gas emissions still piling up in the atmosphere, those records probably won't stand for terribly long. 🧪 (graphic by @unamandita.bsky.social)

Ch-ch-changes 🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P04...

1/ A rising telescope under a rising Sun and Moon! 🔭☀️🌕 This montage is a kaleidoscope of moments from the construction of our Extremely Large Telescope. Creating this #ELT collage took Boris Häußler, an ESO astronomer in Chile, years of meticulous planning.

Artificial sweeteners linked with cognitive decline. 🧪 Curiously, the association was only found in people under 60, not those older. ~ 1 can of diet soda a day was equal to 1.6 years of brain ageing over the study period. 🧠 www.sciencefocus.com/news/artific...

For those more visually inclined, here's pretty much everything you need to know about US CO2 emissions, in charts. 📈 📊 theconversation.com/where-americ...

Meanwhile, back in reality, global ocean heat content just updated through June 2025 and set a new record high. Time to wake up! Data (anomalies) & methods from www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/globa...

Say it louder for the people in the back 👏 arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Cats get dementia too, and it looks a lot like Alzheimer’s in humans 🧪 🐈 This could offer a naturally occurring model to study the disease, as opposed to artificial models induced in rodents. www.sciencefocus.com/news/cat-dem...

The Trump administration's gutting of science is having serious impacts on climate research in the US. 🧪 Scientists inside NOAA told me they're afraid to even use words like 'climate change' in research proposals now, for fear that they won't get funding. 🌎 www.sciencefocus.com/news/noaa-ch...

Financial institutions funnelled $8.9 trillion into companies driving deforestation last year. 🌳 Vanguard, BlackRock and JPMorgan together provided over $1.6 trillion to companies driving deforestation. More info on the Forest 500 report here 👇 trellis.net/article/fina...

A discovery on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has pushed back the timeline of early human sea crossings and deepened the mystery of who made them. 🧪 “This is by far the earliest known evidence for the presence of early humans on Sulawesi,” Adam Brumm said. www.sciencefocus.com/news/stone-t...

If you're curious about the state of play at the Global Plastics Treaty talks, this is brilliant (and terrifying, and disappointing): plasticspolicy.port.ac.uk/with-24-hour...

165 sustainable aviation fuel projects announced by airlines over the past 12 years. Only 10 have reported producing any fuel so far. www.reuters.com/graphics/AVI...

The Tintina fault, which runs from northeastern British Columbia through to central Alaska, has been quietly accumulating strain for at least 12,000 years. 🧪 Previously thought to be relatively benign, new analysis suggests it’s still very much active. www.sciencefocus.com/news/tintina...

Over 100 countries have backed a plastic production cap. The US is firmly against it. Hopefully there will be some way around this impasse. Perhaps an agreement without the US is better than no agreement? www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

As governments and stakeholders gather in Geneva, the outcome of the plastic treaty talks will shape global plastic policy for decades — and have ripple effects across supply chains. trellis.net/article/plas...

The iconic Helix Nebula! 🤩 The blue-green glow comes from oxygen atoms shining under the intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by the central star and the hot gas. Discover more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0907a/ 🔭 📷 ESO

Most US adults have a heart that’s ageing faster than they are – sometimes by more than a decade – according to a new study led by researchers at Northwestern Medicine. ♥️ 🧪 Quite big disparities between sex, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. www.sciencefocus.com/news/heart-a...

I watched the launch of the ChatGPT agent last night. Seems like it could be a game changer. Interested to see how the risks Sam Altman highlighted are managed. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

🚨 Astronomers have witnessed the dawn of a new solar system! They observed the first specks of planet-forming material — hot minerals beginning to solidify around HOPS-315, a baby star 1300 light-years away. Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2512/ 🔭 🧪 ☄️ #planetsci

Astronomers have, for the first time, spotted the very start of a new solar system. 🧪 ⚛️ This 't=0' moment marks the point where the very first crystalline minerals solidify from the hot gas in the baby star's disc. A stunning JWST-ALMA collab. 🤝 🔭 @eso.org www.sciencefocus.com/news/earlies...

Accessibility is key to making science useful. While the National Climate Assessments are not disappearing from the internet, this is a clear obfuscation tactic. insideclimatenews.org/news/1507202...

🧠 Had the pleasure of sitting down with @leorzmigrod.bsky.social a few weeks ago to chat about her new book, The Ideological Brain. 🧪 We talked politics, neuroscience, and how they come together in the emerging field of (you guessed it)… political neuroscience. open.spotify.com/episode/2WdQ...

5 years in the making, this study blows apart the alpha male theory of primates. 🦍 🧪 www.sciencefocus.com/news/alpha-m...

Well worth reading to understand how the tragic flash flooding in Texas occurred. "Sometimes, the worst case scenario sadly happens." balancedweather.substack.com/p/balancedwx...

1-in-500 chance Earth gets knocked out of orbit or collides with another planet before the Sun explodes. Should I be worried? 🧪 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/s...

Interesting asymmetry found between budget cuts and increases and their impact on the planet regarding the US military. 🧪 With the current administration, however, cuts seem unlikely. www.sciencefocus.com/news/us-mili...

Enjoyed sitting down with Max Haot and the Vast team to chat about their mission to launch the first commercial space station next year. 🚀 The race is on to build the next-gen station that will replace the ISS. Will Vast nudge ahead by getting up there first? www.sciencefocus.com/space/vast-h...