Ukraine had said a satellite reentering the atmosphere was the cause of the phenomenon, but the space agency has denied this
A flash in the sky over the Ukrainian capital prompted confusion and alarm as city authorities said it was caused by a Nasa satellite reentering the atmosphere, while the US space agency denied involvement.
A “bright glow” was observed over Kyiv around 10pm local time, the head of Kyiv’s military administration Sergiy Popko wrote on Telegram.
Continue reading...Dr Stephen Wright’s widow considering legal action against AstraZeneca and government
A doctor died from a rare reaction to the AstraZeneca Covid jab in one of the first rounds of vaccinations, a coroner has ruled.
Dr Stephen Wright, 32, an NHS clinical psychologist and frontline health worker, suffered from a combination of a brainstem infarction, bleed on the brain and vaccine-induced thrombosis, an inquest at London’s Southwark coroner’s court heard.
Continue reading...Elon Musk says launch of most powerful rocket ever built called off due to ‘pressurisation’ issue
The largest and most powerful rocket ever built was readied and fuelled for its first test flight on Monday, but SpaceX cancelled the launch minutes before blasting off after discovering a “pressurisation” problem.
“A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, said on Twitter. Minutes later, the launch was officially abandoned, with operators ending the countdown 40 seconds before lift-off.
Continue reading...Scientists calculate 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano released 1,000 times more energy than Hiroshima bomb
A huge underwater volcanic event in Tonga last year was of a magnitude comparable with the most powerful nuclear detonation by the US, researchers have revealed.
Scientists have used eye and earwitnesses accounts, along with data from tide gauges, satellites, evidence of broken windows and other sources, to calculate that the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, which occurred on 15 January 2022 and was felt around the world, likely involved five blasts. The last of them released energy equivalent to about 15 megatonnes of TNT.
Continue reading...The Labor senator says she’s been boiling eggs wrapped in foil in the microwave for 25 years or more, ‘and I’ve never had a mishap’
Labor senator Helen Polley has raised eyebrows with an unusual technique for cooking hardboiled eggs.
In an “egg hack” video posted to TikTok, the Tasmanian senator completely wrapped a raw egg in aluminium foil, submerged it in a plastic container of water, and said she microwaved it for six to seven minutes for a hard boil.
Continue reading...Exclusive: ‘Everyone told me it would never work’, says professor of nanomedicine, but science needs alternatives to experimenting on animals
Professor of nanomedicine Wojciech Chrzanowski finds it “heartbreaking” to recall some of his early scientific work, where research involving animal testing was inevitable.
“The moment you start working in a lab, and have to start squeezing and cutting animals, you feel sorry for them,” Chrzanowski said.
Continue reading...Experts insist successes of Brussels’ €95bn programme could never be replicated by a UK-only substitute
Leading UK scientists have dismissed government plans to provide a UK alternative to the EU’s €95bn research and innovation programme, Horizon, saying that being a member of a major international programme is essential to the country’s future.
Last week, in an attempt to reassure the science sector, the government announced plans to set up a £14bn post-Brexit alternative to the UK’s membership of Horizon, which would come into operation if ministers could not agree on the terms of an “associate membership” of the EU scheme with Brussels.
Continue reading...Metal used for west African artworks was acquired from manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the slave trade
Scientists have discovered that some of the Benin bronzes were made with brass mined thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland.
The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Continue reading...Report finds that 72 cases of the disease on the vessel, which was housing asylum seekers, were caused by a wastewater leak
A major outbreak of typhoid among asylum seekers living on a ship in the Netherlands has been traced to raw sewage which was allowed to mix with tanks of freshwater for drinking and cooking.
A total of 72 cases of the highly contagious disease were confirmed during the spring 2022 outbreak on the Liberty Ann, an old cruise ship which was being used as emergency accommodation in Haarlem.
Continue reading...Astronomers say gamma-ray burst may have been result of star collapsing to form black hole
A cosmic explosion that blinded space instruments last year may be the brightest ever seen, according to astronomers.
The blast took place 2bn light years from Earth, producing a pulse of intense radiation that swept through the solar system in October last year.
Continue reading...Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus will be in alignment near the moon and visible using binoculars from Tuesday evening
A planetary alignment is set to light up Australia’s night sky.
Five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus – will be in alignment near the moon from Tuesday evening.
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Continue reading...Recent auroras have been so intense they have been visible as far north as Auckland
The lure of unusually vibrant views of the southern lights in New Zealand has prompted aurora-hunters to drive for hours through the night to capture the “elusive” sight on camera, with social media groups devoted to swapping tips growing in size.
The aurora australis is always more visible in New Zealand and Australian skies during autumn and winter – beginning in March in the southern hemisphere – but this month, the southern lights have been more visible than usual, analysts say. Auroras – beautiful light shows in the night sky – are seen when sunspots erupt, causing solar storms which send material from the sun towards Earth.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Surgeons raise concerns that people using jabs are unaware of risks of redundant skin
From unbearable side-effects to cravings curbed: readers on weight-loss jabs
A surge in the number of people using slimming jabs to lose weight could lead to a rise in patients travelling abroad for tummy tucks or other surgery to remove excess skin, surgeons have said.
Drugs such as liraglutide and semaglutide, which could help people reduce their weight by more than 10%, have been approved for use on the NHS for certain groups of people with obesity, although supplies of the latter under the brand name Wegovy have yet to arrive in the UK.
Continue reading...Swiss firm’s withdrawal from Leqvio trial with NHS dents government plans to attract post-Brexit research and investment
The Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis has ditched plans for a large clinical trial in the UK, in a further blow to the government’s efforts to make Britain an attractive place for research and investment after Brexit.
The company decided to scrap the Orion-17 trial of its cholesterol-lowering drug Leqvio, involving 40,000 patients in partnership with NHS England.
Continue reading...Previously unseen genomic samples suggest animals at Huanan market were potential source
Newly released data from early in the Covid-19 pandemic has offered a crucial insight into the outbreak’s origins, suggesting that Covid-infected animals were present at a market in Wuhan and could have been a “potential source of human infections”.
A pre-print report on Monday by a team of international researchers fleshed out analysis of previously unseen genomic samples collected by Chinese scientists at the Huanan market in Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Long-tailed macaques at risk of being killed, or laundered or re-trafficked if returned to Cambodia, animal welfare groups say
More than a thousand Cambodian monkeys at the center of a US government investigation into wildlife trafficking are at risk of being killed or returned to their country of origin, laundered and re-trafficked, animal welfare groups say.
The monkeys’ plight first came to light last year when the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) asked the animal rights organization Peta about finding a sanctuary for 360 monkeys. Born Free USA, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) later joined the discussions and the number of monkeys increased to over 1,000 as talks progressed.
Continue reading...Discoveries that could help diabetics titled in honour of activist and journalist murdered in Amazon
Scientists in Brazil have found two new species of fermenting yeasts and named them after journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira, the two men murdered last year in the Amazon rainforest.
The discovery came from four isolates of the Spathaspora species, according to a paper published in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
Continue reading...Melbourne forecast to reach 37C while northern regions of the state could exceed 40C. This blog is now closed
Federal government welcomes decision to hear MH17 case
The federal government has welcomed the International Civil Aviation Organization Council’s decision to hear Australia and the Netherlands’ case against Russia for the downing of flight MH17.
We have maintained since May 2018 that the Russian Federation is responsible under international law for the downing of Flight MH17.
We now look forward to presenting our legal arguments and evidence to the ICAO Council as we continue to seek to hold Russia to account.
Continue reading...Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA
Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.
Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.
Continue reading...Exclusive: rare purple organism preys on trapdoor spider in behaviour reminiscent of its ‘zombie’ relatives that feature in apocalyptic TV show The Last of Us
Scientists believe they have discovered a new parasitic fungus which preys on trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest.
The rare organism, which is purple, belongs to a group of fungi that infect invertebrates and take over the host. A closeup image shows the fungus wrapped around the body of a trapdoor spider, poking out of the burrow from which the arachnid grabs insects.
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