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The huge market for stolen smartphones means that thieves will continue to snatch them, but is there anything we can do to put a stop to this crime wave?

London is a phone-theft hotspotJeff Blackler/Shutterstock

London is a phone-theft hotspot

Even if you have never had your smartphone stolen, you probably know someone who has. In London,80,000 phones were stolenlast year alone. And as victims of phone theft know, while the loss of a pricey gadget can sting, the dreary administrative slog in replacing a device that runs your entire life can, in some ways, be worse. So why can’t we stop phone thieves – and is there a better way to protect your personal data?

The answer is partly down to the numerous ways that criminals profit from stolen phones, but it is also about technology firms prioritising usability over security and international governments failing to arrive at a global solution. In short, it’s complicated.

Your passwords have probably been stolen and sold on the dark webTechnology reporter Matthew Sparkes thought his passwords and personal data were safe, but a tour of the murkier sides of the internet revealed otherwise

Your passwords have probably been stolen and sold on the dark web

Technology reporter Matthew Sparkes thought his passwords and personal data were safe, but a tour of the murkier sides of the internet revealed otherwise

Some victims place the blame with the police for failing to catch phone thieves. When Nav Dugmore from Wolverhampton, UK, travelled to London for the first time, she had her iPhone snatched seconds after leaving Euston train station, a major transport hub. “It traumatised me, if I’m honest,” she says. “There needs to be something else put in place to stop them being able to use your phone, and I think the police need to be doing more.”

London’s Metropolitan Police told her that several other thefts had happened at the same spot in the previous hour and admitted there was “no chance” of recovery. Dugmore had the phone’s face-recognition security setting turned on, but the device was unlocked when it was grabbed and the thief quickly spent £300 in various shops around London. By far the biggest blow was the loss of photos of her three children growing up, she says, which weren’t backed up.

When a phone like Dugmore’s is stolen, it enters a conveyor belt of crime, with multiple possible destinations. The simplest route is the thief simply selling the handset on, often to be resold in another country. Phones can be sold for parts to unscrupulous repair shops, too. Daniel Green, an inspector at the City of London Police, says phone snatchers have links to gangs that export the devices, essentially smuggling them out the same way as drugs are smuggled in. “What we’ve found suggests boxes and boxes of phones going out [of the country],” he says.

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Then there are more involved scams, like removing the SIM card that identifies a phone to the network and placing it into another handset. This allows criminals to read text messages destined for the victim and can get them access to email and websites that use two-factor authentication. This can be combatted by setting up a PIN for your SIM card, but this must be done before the phone is stolen.

The most valuable phone for thieves to target is one with no security protections, but even setting a PIN on your handset won’t necessarily protect you, says James O’Sullivan, who runs an app called Nuke designed to help people in the aftermath of their phone being stolen. Thieves may simply look over your shoulder to see your PIN, or use more devious tricks. For instance, activating an iPhone’s Emergency SOS feature and then cancelling it will temporarily disable access via face or fingerprint recognition, forcing you to input your PIN the next time you unlock it. A clever thief can offer to take a photo for you, surreptitiously pull this trick, then snoop when you enter your PIN after they hand back the phone.

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Should you still learn a second language if AI can translate for you?

With unlocked access, criminal options become even more sophisticated. Thieves can steal money from online banking apps or cryptocurrency wallets, then message the victim’s friends and family to scam them into sending emergency funds. They can even post nefarious links on social media accounts to phish others into providing their logins or private data.

So what can be done? The UK government at least recognises that there is a problem. It launcheda crackdown late last year,promising to pressurise smartphone manufacturers to permanently disable stolen phones. It also pledged to conduct an investigation to learn more about the people who steal phones, where the devices end up and how to stop the problem.

In theory, the technology already exists to disable stolen phones. Each device carries a unique IMEI code and those reported stolen can be blocked from cell phone networks, which already happens on a per-country basis in places including the UK, Canada and the US. But a phone blocked in this way can still access the internet through Wi-Fi connections. The Met Police has long urged technology firms to build on this and alsoblock access to cloud services from those handsets,such as data backup and photo storage, which would reduce their functionality and make them less attractive to thieves. So far, Apple and Google have declined to do so.

Even this wouldn’t help if such restrictions continue to operate on a per-country basis, as is the case with IMEI blocks now, as criminals can simply send phones to a country where they aren’t blocked. Green says he would like to see manufacturers create a permanent kill switch for devices, to completely remove the incentive for criminals to take phones. “I don’t know whether it’s just not a problem for them,” he says. “More pressure needs to be put on them. We’re trying to pick up the pieces on our end and it’s very, very difficult.”

Read moreThe truth about social media and screen time's impact on young people

The truth about social media and screen time's impact on young people

Jordan Hare, a former police digital forensics expert who now works at private security firm S-RM, says phones are already equipped with security features that should keep even the most determined crooks at bay. For example, some phones automatically lock if they detect a sudden jerking movement, like being snatched by a thief.

The problem is that many of these options are turned off by default – something Hare suspects is done to make life as simple and seamless as possible for users. “An opt-in for these features actually doesn’t help the general consumer because they don’t necessarily know they’re there,” he says. “Whereas an opt-out scheme, having them on by default, having better information provided when you first set up your phone about ‘this setting is on, this is what it does, this is why you shouldn’t turn it off’, for example, actually puts measures in place ahead of a phone being stolen.”

Meanwhile, other security features that sound promising, like the ability to track the current location of your phone from a web browser, simply fail to make a difference in the real world. If a phone is tracked to a large block of flats, there is little police officers can do without further informationbecause it isn’t possible to get such a wide-ranging search warrant.

That was certainly Dugmore’s experience with her stolen iPhone. “The last location was about 10 miles away from where my phone was stolen,” she says. “The police did say ‘there’s no chance of you getting that phone back’.” When asked about the incident, the Metropolitan Police toldNew Scientist:“Unfortunately the investigation couldn’t be progressed further due to a lack of CCTV in the area. We recognise the victim’s frustration.”

Most major smartphone venders didn’t respond to a request for comment byNew Scientist, with Samsung, Xiaomi and Google failing to reply. Apple did respond, however.

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The AI expert who says artificial general intelligence is nonsense

“We have been working on this issue from a hardware, software and customer-support standpoint for more than the last decade,” says an Apple spokesperson. “We have made and continue to make significant investments to create industry-leading tools and features that put control in the hands of our users in the event of theft.” The spokesperson declined to explain why some security options aren’t turned on by default.

Ultimately, the only way to prevent smartphone theft – other than being careful whenever you use your device in public – is for manufacturers to make it not worth criminal’s while. They have control over the hardware and software, and could bring in unhackable features that completely lock down a phone, its apps and its spare parts from abuse or resale. But O’Sullivan says it just doesn’t seem to be a priority. “If I’m brutally honest, it’s probably not their biggest thing, because stolen phones are reasonably good business for people that are selling new phones.”

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There’s an argument rumbling about why our ancestors evolved language. And surprisingly, one of the possible explanations has nothing to do with communication

My son is a wizard. He walks into the kitchen, looks at me and utters the magic words: “Can I have a cheese and tomato sandwich, please?” A few minutes later, just such a snack appears in front of him.

Other young animals can communicate their desire for food through grunts, tweets and growls. But only humans have the sophisticated system of grammar and vocabulary that allows us to communicate in precise terms.

In fact, with studies of animals increasingly showing that they share many characteristics once thought to be the preserve of humans – fromculturetoemotionsand evenmorality– language may seem like the one thing that truly sets us apart. “I think language makes us feel special as a species,” saysBrian Lerchat the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Given all that, one of the key things researchers want to know about language is how it evolved, and why it only did so in our human lineage.

PsychologistShimon Edelmanat Cornell University in New York state thinkslanguage’s magical powerhas a fairly straightforward evolutionary explanation. With his colleagueOren Kolodny, now at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he argues that it may have emerged 1.7 million years ago, when ancient humans beganmaking stone hand-axesthat are beyond the ability of non-human animals to produce.

The idea is that novice tool-makers would have required guidance from an expert to make their own hand-axes, so tool-making sites became classrooms. Proto-language might have emerged as a way forteachers to communicate to students– which could explain why both language and tool-making seem to require the brain toarrange and order thoughts into structured sequences.

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But about a decade ago, a key experiment challenged that view. In 2014,Shelby Puttat Illinois State University and her colleagues tasked 24 volunteers with learning to make hand-axes from an expert who either talked them through the process or merely made the tools in the volunteers’ presence while occasionally pointing to direct their attention. Surprisingly,both methods were effective, suggesting verbal language isn’t necessary for complex tool-making.

This doesn’t mean Putt sees language and tool-making as completely unconnected. She thinks complex tool-making really did require humans to arrange and order their thoughts to stay on task. This, she argues, led to theexpansion of the brain regions involved in working memory, which we use to briefly hold and manipulate ideas.

But Putt suspects it was only at some later date that humans used this ability to structure and order their thoughts to develop language – presumably because it helped them communicate better and boosted their chances of survival.

Survival of the friendliest? Why Homo sapiens outlived other humansWe once shared the planet with at least seven other types of human. Ironically, our success may have been due to our deepest vulnerability: being dependent on others

Survival of the friendliest? Why Homo sapiens outlived other humans

We once shared the planet with at least seven other types of human. Ironically, our success may have been due to our deepest vulnerability: being dependent on others

These scenarios all assume that language is fundamentally a tool for communicating with others. But that might not be the case. A third way to think about the evolution of language focuses almost exclusively on the way it can help individuals “talk” to themselves andorganise their thoughtsto undertake complex tasks.

According to some, including the influential linguistNoam Chomsky, this is what drove the evolution of language, meaning it had nothing at all to do with tool-making. Instead, these researchers think language emerged as recently as 70,000 years ago, perhaps simply because of a random genetic mutation that prompted brain rewiring.

Truth be told, there is still little consensus about quite how language arose. But if Chomsky and his ilk are right, though it didn’t involve magic, it might at least have involved a little luck.

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Astronomers have been trying to detect atmospheres on planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, but bursts of radiation from the star make this challenging

Illustration of TRAPPIST-1, a red-dwarf star with at least seven orbiting planetsMark Garlick/Alamy

Illustration of TRAPPIST-1, a red-dwarf star with at least seven orbiting planets

The search for atmospheres around theTRAPPIST-1 star system, one of the most promising locations for life elsewhere in the galaxy, might be even more difficult than astronomers first thought because of short-lived radiation blasts from the star.

TRAPPIST-1,first discovered in 2016, is a small red dwarf star about 40 light years from Earth with at least seven planets orbiting it. It is a prime target for astronomers hoping to detect extraterrestrial life because several of its planets appear to sit in a habitable zone where temperatures are just right forliquid water.

Read moreAstronomers might finally have explanation for mysterious Wow! signal

Astronomers might finally have explanation for mysterious Wow! signal

But in order to support life, those planets would have to retain atmospheres. So far, extensiveobservationswith the James Webb Space Telescope have failed to find evidence of atmospheres on any of the planets.

Now,Julien de Witat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have detected microflares coming from the TRAPPIST-1 star every hour or so that last for several minutes. These tiny bursts of radiation appear to interfere with our ability to observe the light that passes through the planets’ atmospheres – if they exist – thwarting the main method of detecting what chemicals might be in any atmospheres.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, de Wit and his team looked for a specific wavelength of ultraviolet light coming from TRAPPIST-1 that is absorbed by hydrogen. If they saw less of this light than expected when a planet passed in front of the star, then it might have suggested hydrogen leaking from the planet’s atmosphere.

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They didn’t find any signs of this, but they did find significant variability between different observations, suggesting that extra light was coming from somewhere at certain times. Because the Hubble data can be broken up into 5-minute chunks, they could see the extra light was very short-lived. De Wit and his team say the source must be microflares – bursts of radiation from the star, like the solar flares on our sun but more frequent.

The TRAPPIST-1 star is extremely faint, meaning that astronomers need to observe it for a long time to collect enough light. “On top of that, there is this flaring activity, on a timescale that’s relevant to the timescales of transiting planets,” says de Wit. “It seems like it’s really very difficult to get to say anything truly informative about the presence of [atmospheres on the exoplanets],” says de Wit.

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Dozens of stars show signs of hosting advanced alien civilisations

He and his colleagues also calculated whether these flares could affect the planets’ ability to hold on to atmospheres. One planet, TRAPPIST-1b, on which the James Webb Space Telescope had already failed to find evidence of an atmosphere, could be losing the equivalent of 1000 times all the hydrogen in Earth’s oceans roughly every million years, they found. However, there are still a lot of unknowns and a wide range of different scenarios, says de Wit, partly because we don’t know how many of these flares are actually hitting the planets.

Stars like this can have a range of activity levels, but it seems as if TRAPPIST-1 might be towards the more active side of this range, saysEkaterina Ilinat the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. “It’s not like it’s an absolutely unexpected, otherworldly result; it’s just kind of bad luck. It’s more active than we hoped it would be,” she says. “In a way, it’s genuinely new to see these flares, or what we at least interpret as this, if they are what they think they are. It might be one of the first instances in a star that small.”

Reference:arXivDOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.12140

arXivDOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.12140

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Drone footage has captured killer whales breaking off stalks of kelp and rubbing the pieces on other orcas, a rare case of tool use in marine animals

Groups of killer whales exhibit strong social behaviourShutterstock/Tory Kallman

Groups of killer whales exhibit strong social behaviour

Orcas off the west coast of North America are grooming each other with kelp, in a rare sighting of marine mammals manufacturing and using tools.

For several years, scientists have been keenly observing 80 endangered killer whales in the segment of the Pacific Ocean between British Columbia and Washington state. To get a bird’s eye view of the whales’ lives, the researchers also tracked them with drones.

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Orcas have begun wearing salmon hats again – and we may soon know why

While poring over footage from summer 2024, they noticed that the orcas were manoeuvring strands of kelp in odd ways. It was “really weird”, saysRachel Johnat theCenter for Whale Researchin Washington state, “but the whales, they do weird things all the time”.

In the footage, the orcas can be spotted breaking off kelp stalks near where they meet the rock bed by grabbing them with their teeth and jerking their heads back and forth. The short, snapped-off segments were roughly equivalent in length to that of the whale’s beak-like face. Over and over again, the orcas appear to consistently target just that specific segment of the algae, not other random parts of kelp.

After breaking off a strand, a whale would then sandwich the kelp between their head and the bodies of other whales in the pod, rubbing and rolling it onto each other’s sides. They take turns cleaning each other with the kelp, sometimes grooming each other for up to 12 minutes.

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“What’s cool is that they don’t have any kind of hand-like appendages, and so they’re doing all of this using very deliberate movements of their body,” says John.

Orcas are known to rub themselves against kelp on their own, known as “kelping”. This could be a social variation of that behaviour. “We know that the social bonds in this population are super, super strong, and we know that contact is one way that they reinforce those bonds,” says John.

The behaviour was present across all ages and sexes, though the data suggests the whales that were most closely related and those closer in age were more likely to “kelp” together. Crucially, this may be a form of whale hygiene, says John, as the team found that orcas are more likely to scrub each other with kelp if they are shedding their skin.

It might still be too early to confirm whether this skincare has health benefits, saysOlaf Meyneckeat Griffith University, Australia. He would like to see the researchers cross-reference the orcas’ skin bacteria with the properties of the kelp to see if they match.

“It totally makes sense to me that they are seeking out anything that the ocean could offer to help them with potential reduction in skin infections,” says Meynecke. He suspects this is a widespread behaviour among other orca populations and whale species.

Journal referenceCurrent BiologyDOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.021

Current BiologyDOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.021

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In just 10 hours of observing the night sky, the powerful new telescope detected more than 2000 new asteroids, including a few that will pass near Earth

23 June 2025Last updated 23 June 2025

Amid the millions of distant stars and galaxies captured in thefirst images released from the Vera C. Rubin Observatoryare thousands of never-before-seen asteroids whizzing around the solar system.

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Why are the physical constants of the universe so perfect for life?

“These two beautiful galaxies were photobombed by asteroids,” saidŽeljko Ivezićat the University of Washington in Seattle, presenting an image showing several asteroids streaking past two spiral-armed galaxies during a press briefing on 23 June.

During just 10 hours of observing the night sky, the telescope – situated in the clear air high atop a mountain in the Chilean Andes – captured 2104 previously unknown asteroids. Of these, seven are on a trajectory that would pass near Earth, though none pose a risk of hitting us, said Ivezić.

Researchers identified and tracked newly discovered asteroids in images taken over 10 hoursNSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Researchers identified and tracked newly discovered asteroids in images taken over 10 hours

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The telescope was not primarily designed to detect near-Earth objects, but to conduct a decade-long survey expanding our view of the entire universe. But the same qualities that make it useful for that purpose are also good for asteroid detection: “You need to scan the sky very fast, with a very large field of view, for a long time,” said Ivezić.

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The asteroids were identified by scanning the same region of sky and noting what was moving. In a composite image Ivezić displayed during the briefing, the asteroids appeared as coloured streaks on a background of bright objects in deeper space. This gives us a better picture of our planetary neighbourhood and its inhabitants. “They were not a surprise,” he said. “We have exquisite simulations.”

During the course ofits 10-year survey, the telescope is expected to detect about 5 million new asteroids, quintupling the number identified in previous centuries of searching.

Asteroids are marked in coloured dots in front of an image of galaxies visible in the southern skyNSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Copyright: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Asteroids are marked in coloured dots in front of an image of galaxies visible in the southern sky

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Copyright: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Any new detections will be reported on a daily basis to the Minor Planet Center in the US, which will analyse their orbital trajectories and identify any objects that could pose a threat to Earth. “Within 24 hours, everyone in the world will know that there is a particular object which could be hazardous,” says Ivezić.

Matthew Payneat the Minor Planet Center says only an estimated 40 per cent or so of the near-Earth objects large enough to pose a threat have been found. The radical increase in the number of detections from the Vera Rubin Observatory will help quickly find the rest of them, he says.

The huge increase in observations of other objects in the solar system – from the Main Belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter to objects further out beyond the orbit of Neptune – is also expected to give us new insight into our immediate cosmic neighborhood. “It will revolutionise, broadly, solar system science,” says Payne.

The world capital of astronomy: ChileExperience the astronomical highlights of Chile. Visit some of the world’s most technologically advanced observatories and stargaze beneath some of the clearest skies on earth.Find out more

Experience the astronomical highlights of Chile. Visit some of the world’s most technologically advanced observatories and stargaze beneath some of the clearest skies on earth.

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We're a step closer to two men being able to have genetic children of their own after the creation of fertile mice by putting two sperm cells in an empty egg

Adult male mice that have two fathers and went on to have offspring of their ownYanchang Wei

Adult male mice that have two fathers and went on to have offspring of their own

For the first time, mice with two fathers have gone on to have offspring of their own – marking a significant step towards enabling two men to have children to whom they are both genetically related. However, there is still a long way to go before this could be attempted in people.

Yanchang Weiat Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China achieved the feat by putting two sperm cells together in an egg whose nucleus had been removed. The team then used a method called epigenome editing to reprogram seven sites in the sperm DNA, which was needed to allow the embryo to develop.

Read moreA family tree of humanity released in 2022 shows how we're all related

A family tree of humanity released in 2022 shows how we're all related

Of the 259 of these embryos that were transferred to female mice, just two offspring – both male – survived and grew to adulthood, making the success rate very low. Both then fathered offspring – which appeared normal in terms of size, weight and appearance – after mating with females.

Creating mice with two fathers has proved to be much harder than creating mice with two mothers.The birth of the first fertile mouse with two mothers, Kaguya, was reported in 2004.

Kaguya had to be genetically modified, but in 2022, Wei and his colleagues were able tocreate similarly fatherless mice using only epigenome editing, which doesn’t alter the DNA sequence. This same method was used to make the motherless mice.

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The reason it is such a significant feat to create mammals with two fathers or two mothers is due toa phenomenon called imprinting, which is related to the fact that most animals have two sets of chromosomes, one inherited from the mother and one from the father.

During the formation of eggs and sperm, chemical labels are added to these chromosomes that program some genes to be active and others to be inactive. These changes are called “epigenetic” because they don’t change the underlying DNA sequence, but the labels can still be passed on when cells divide, meaning their effects can last a lifetime.

Crucially, epigenetic programming in mothers is different from that in fathers, with some genes that are labelled as “on” in sperm being labelled as “off” in eggs, and vice versa.

This means that if an egg has two sets of maternal chromosomes, or two sets of paternal ones, it cannot develop normally. A gene that should be active in one chromosome of a pair may be turned off in both, or both copies of a gene may be active when only one should be, resulting in an “overdose” of that gene.

In Kaguya’s case, researchers got around this by deleting part of a gene to make overall gene activity more normal. But creating mice with two fathers requires many more changes.

Earlier this year, a separate team in Chinagot a few mice with two fathers to grow to adulthoodafter making 20 genetic modifications to normalise their gene activity, but these mice weren’t fully healthy or fertile.

While correcting gene activity via genetic modification is useful for studying imprinting in lab animals, it would be unacceptable in people, not least because the effects of the genetic changes aren’t fully understood.

Nature, nurture, luck: Why you are more than just genes and upbringingYour genes and environment play a big part in forming you, but there is an unexplored third element at play too: luck. The chance events that shape your brain in the womb may influence who you become as much as your genetics, and perhaps even more than the effect of parenting

Nature, nurture, luck: Why you are more than just genes and upbringing

Your genes and environment play a big part in forming you, but there is an unexplored third element at play too: luck. The chance events that shape your brain in the womb may influence who you become as much as your genetics, and perhaps even more than the effect of parenting

For their epigenetic approach, Wei and his team used modified forms of theCRISPRproteins that are usually used for gene editing. Just like standard CRISPR proteins, these can be made to seek out specific sites on genomes. But when these sequences are found, the modified proteins add or remove epigenetic labels rather than altering DNA.

The study is a major step forward, saysHelen O’Neillat University College London. “It confirms that genomic imprinting is the main barrier to uniparental reproduction in mammals and shows it can be overcome.”

Because it doesn’t involve genetic modification, the epigenome-editing approach could, in principle, be used to allow same-sex couples to have genetic children of their own. However, the success rate would need to be much higher before the technique could be considered for use in people. “While this research on generating offspring from same-sex parents is promising, it is unthinkable to translate it to humans due to the large number of eggs required, the high number of surrogate women needed and the low success rate,” saysChristophe Galichetat the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in the UK.

There are several reasons why the success rate was so low. For starters, combining two sperm cells means a quarter of the embryos had two Y chromosomes and wouldn’t have developed far. Also, the epigenome editing only worked at all seven sites in a small proportion of the embryos, and it might have had off-target effects in some cases.

Self-centred, spoiled and lonely? Examining the only child stereotypeMore and more parents are choosing to only have one child. Here’s what the evidence says about how growing up without siblings affects their personality traits and well-being

Self-centred, spoiled and lonely? Examining the only child stereotype

More and more parents are choosing to only have one child. Here’s what the evidence says about how growing up without siblings affects their personality traits and well-being

The success rate andhealthof the animals could probably be improved by altering more than seven sites. Another issue is that in people a slightly different set of sites might need altering.

If human babies with two fathers are ever created in this way, they would technicallybe three-parent babiesbecause the mitochondria in their cells, which contain a tiny amount of DNA, would come from the egg donor.

In 2023, a team in Japan announcedthe birth of mouse pups with two fathers using a third techniquethat involves turning mouse stem cells into eggs. However, it isn’t clear if any pups survived to adulthood, and so far no one has managed to turn human stem cells into eggs.

Journal reference:PNASDOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425307122

PNASDOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425307122

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From four-dimensional hexagons to the mind-bending amplituhedron, geometrical shapes are wilder than we learn at school – and they are a crucial tool for understanding reality

Can you imagine the imprint a four-dimensional hexagon might leave as it passes through your three-dimensional kitchen table? Probably not, but some people can.

One such person was mathematician Alicia Boole Stott, daughter of logician George Boole. Early in the 20th century, she made models of the shapes four-dimensional objects would create when passing through three-dimensional objects. Decades later, when mathematicians could check such things using computer programs, they found Boole Stott had possessed an uncanny gift for getting these shapes right.

For most of us, geometry conjures up thoughts of pencils, rulers, triangles and circles. It means those complicated questions you got asked at school involving parallel lines and angles. But as Boole Stott’s story shows, researchers have been taking geometry way beyond this for some time.

Geometry can stray far from the comprehensible world of two- and three-dimensional shapes – and in so doing, it can be extremely illuminating. Perhaps the best example is general relativity, Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, which joins the three dimensions of space with time, creating a four-dimensional stage on which everything in the universe plays out.

But geometry can also make use ofdimensions that aren’t physically real. Think of meteorology, for instance, where a point in the atmosphere can have many “dimensions” – latitude, longitude, temperature, pressure, wind speed and so on.

Read moreWhat are fractals and how can they help us understand the world?

What are fractals and how can they help us understand the world?

Researchers map these dimensions as shapes that extend into higher dimensions to help understand the workings of the atmosphere. “From things like this, you can apply mathematical models and actually work out what happens to [those properties] in many dimensions,” says mathematicianSnezana Lawrenceat Middlesex University in London.

For theoretical physicists, extra dimensions seem to be a necessary part of any full description of the universe, with some proposing that our reality is a “projection” from a higher dimension, for instance. This may sound outlandish, but if physicists make certain simplifying assumptions related to this idea, it suddenly makes it possible to carry out calculations to do with fundamental particles and black holes that are otherwise impossible.

Some physicists are banking on even stranger geometrical ideas being a route to a “theory of everything”, a single framework that explains the cosmos and everything in it. One of these is the “amplituhedron”, a mathematical object developed byJaroslav Trnkaat the University of California, Davis, andNima Arkani-Hamedat the Institute for Advanced Study, New Jersey. Think of this as an abstract, multi-dimensional crystal, the properties of which provide an alternative way of describing the fundamentals of particle physics.

The physicist who argues that there are no objective laws of physicsDaniele Oriti’s pursuit of a theory of quantum gravity has led him to the startling conclusion that the laws of nature don’t exist independently of us – a perspective shift that could yield fresh breakthroughs

The physicist who argues that there are no objective laws of physics

Daniele Oriti’s pursuit of a theory of quantum gravity has led him to the startling conclusion that the laws of nature don’t exist independently of us – a perspective shift that could yield fresh breakthroughs

Or there is “causal dynamical triangulation”, developed byRenate Lollat Radboud University in the Netherlands. This stitches together an ensemble of geometrical shapes to create a description of space-time that seems to have some of the properties of both quantum theory and general relativity – two ideas that are normally incompatible. It is, she says, not just an abstract geometrical notion, but a testable reflection of the universe’s real properties that could be mirrored in our observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation that fills the whole of space.

Neither of these ideas yet amount to a theory of everything. But some suspect that to have any hope of finding one, we need a fresh vision forphysics– and there is an increasing sense that this might be written in the language of geometry. Whether that is true or not, geometry is definitely more than hexagons – even four-dimensional ones.

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Geoengineering comes in many forms and the risks and potential benefits vary widely. But many researchers now feel it’s time to investigate this controversial idea

mdesigner125/iStockphoto/Getty Images

mdesigner125/iStockphoto/Getty Images

We know the only safe and long-term solution to climate change is cutting our greenhouse gas emissions. But in the face ofstill-rising emissionsand escalating climate impacts, some are considering an option that – until recently – would never have escaped a researcher’s lips without a good deal of trepidation.

“Geoengineering” is a catch-all term used to describe human interventions in climate systems, generally with the intention of preserving ecosystems or cooling the planet. But defining what counts as geoengineering is tricky. At its most broad, it can capture anything from planting trees topropping up ice sheets with giant underwater curtains.

Some geoengineering ideas are more contentious than others. Large-scale reforestation, when done right, is widely accepted as a positive climate action. But more extreme ideas, such asmodifying the way sunlight behaves in Earth’s atmosphere, cause more concern.

Read moreIs climate change accelerating and is it worse than we expected?

Is climate change accelerating and is it worse than we expected?

It is “different levels of risk and return”, saysJanice Lachanceat the non-profit American Geophysical Union (AGU), which recently drew up an“ethical framework”for scientists working in this space. “Planting trees in a park… will probably be very quick, very noncontroversial,” she says. “However, it quickly changes when you start thinking about new technologies, new ways of doing things.”

Take the idea of reflecting more sunlight back into space to cool the planet, known as solar radiation management (SRM). This could potentially be done in three basic ways (see graphic below), and most modelling studies suggest the technique could provide some cooling effect within a few years of first deployment, although it might also cause substantial disruption to rainfall cycles and cloud formation.

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SRM has long been a taboo research topic, but as temperatures continue to rise and climate impacts become increasingly severe,it is attracting more attentionfrom scientists, governments and philanthropists.

Some activists say we should stay well away from even researching this kind of intervention, warning it risks distracting people from the need to rapidly cut emissions. ButAndy Parkerat The Degrees Initiative, a nongovernmental organisation focused on SRM, warns emissions cuts are no longer enough for humanity to cope with the impacts of climate change.

He says we “need to consider how we manage risks from greenhouse gases we’ve already emitted”. Plus, without international research and discussion on geoengineering, there is an increasing risk that a “rogue actor”, such as a country suffering acute climate impacts, could decide to unilaterally start geoengineering.

Against this backdrop, a growing number of scientists now support research into geoengineering strategies. “There’s a recognition among some scientists that we are not doing well in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement,” says Lachance. That is what prompted the AGU to compile its ethical framework to steer research on climate interventions.

It isn’t just how research is conducted that has people worried – who conducts it is also a pressing concern. Planetary-scale geoengineering ideas often put lower-income countries, particularly those around the equator, on the frontline of unintended consequences, such as disruption to monsoon patterns. But most of the research into geoengineering techniques happens in higher-income nations, with less skin in the game.

As part of The Degrees Initiative, Parker is working with researchers across poorer countries in the southern hemisphere to build research capacity in SRM, with the hope that it will ensure any future decision on deployment is influenced by those who have the most at stake. “We’ve got no position on whether SRM is ever used or not,” he says. “But we do think that developing countries need an informed voice to do their own research.”

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Humans established a wild population of brown forest wallabies in the Raja Ampat Islands thousands of years ago for their meat and fur in one of the earliest known species translocations

Brown forest wallabies spread to several islands thousands of years agoMehd Halaouate, Birdingindonesia.com

Brown forest wallabies spread to several islands thousands of years ago

Mehd Halaouate, Birdingindonesia.com

As early as 12,800 years ago, people captured wild wallabies and transported them in canoes to islands dozens or even hundreds of kilometres away.

Native to Sahul –the prehistoric landmass that later split into Australia and New Guinea– the marsupials probably accompanied human explorers and traders to islands across South-East Asia as sources of food, decorative pelts and eventually bone tools. The imported animals established colonies and thrived there for thousands of years, in one of the world’s oldest known cases of animal translocation, saysDylan Gaffneyat the University of Oxford.

Read moreVast submerged area near Australia may once have hosted 500,000 people

Vast submerged area near Australia may once have hosted 500,000 people

“This builds into a global picture where these early people were moving, managing and rearing animals in much more complicated and purposeful ways than we thought – possibly in some ways that early agriculturalists would have,” he says. “They weren’t just surviving in these tropical island environments; they were actively shaping them.”

Scientific work on species translocations has typically focused on European explorers – like their introduction of invasive rabbits into Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries, or the reintroduction of horses to the Americas in the late 1400s and early 1500s.

But in the 1990s, researchers found bones of two kinds of marsupials – the cuscus (Phalanger orientalis brevicepsorPhalanger breviceps) and the bandicoot (Echymipera kalubu) – on islands east of New Guinea, and brown forest wallabies (Dorcopsis muelleri) on islands as far west as Halmahera, about 350 kilometres away from the ancient coastline of Sahul.

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Based on the age of nearby charcoal and the depth of the remains, those teams estimated that the wallabies arrived about 8000 years ago, and the other animals between 13,000 and 24,000 years ago.

How those animals got to the islands – whether by human transport or on their own – has not been established. To find out, Gaffney and his colleagues investigated a new archaeological site in the Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia, which lay a few kilometers offshore from northwest Sahul when sea levels were low thousands of years ago.

There, skeletons with ages thousands of years apart suggest that colonies of brown forest wallabies lived and reproduced on the islands for generations before vanishing about 4000 years ago, for reasons yet unclear.

Radiocarbon dating in an inland cave showed people were butchering and cooking wallabies as early as 13,000 years ago – 5000 years earlier than on islands further west – and were still doing so around 4400 years ago.

The team also found several bone tools, probably used for hunting and textile work, including one confirmed by molecular analysis to have been made from a bone of the wallaby family about 4300 years ago.

Read moreOur human ancestors often ate each other, and for surprising reasons

Our human ancestors often ate each other, and for surprising reasons

To address the question of how the animals got there – and to islands farther away – the team used computer modelling, accounting for sea levels and environmental conditions at the time.

The modelling supports the idea that humans transported the animals by canoe, Gaffney says. Without human help, the wallabies would have had to swim across the open ocean for more than 24 hours in powerful currents or cling to vegetation rafts for up to 10 days to reach some of the islands, making their survival highly unlikely. And while it is feasible that the animals could have reached nearby islands by swimming, no one knows whether forest wallabies – modern or ancient – could swim at all.

Canoe trips, by contrast, would have lasted just a few hours to two days depending on the route – probably short enough for captive animals to survive the trip, he says.

The findings highlight just how far back human-driven species movements go – well before European colonial expansion, saysTom Matthewsat the University of Birmingham, UK, who wasn’t involved in the study. “We often assume introductions only started in the last 500 years, but this shows humans were reshaping ecosystems thousands of years ago.”

Journal reference:Journal of Archaeological ScienceDOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2025.106241

Journal of Archaeological ScienceDOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2025.106241

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A high-speed crash between two dwarf galaxies might explain a unique feature in space – and provide useful information on dark matter

A line of galaxies formed after two dwarf galaxies collided head-on, ripping gas from each otherKeim et al./DECaLS

A line of galaxies formed after two dwarf galaxies collided head-on, ripping gas from each other

A strange line of dwarf galaxies may have been the result of a bullet-like cosmic collision.

Michael Keimat Yale University and his colleagues used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to study a unique trail of 12 small and faint dwarf galaxies about 75 million light years from the Milky Way.

Read moreMerging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe

Merging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe

The orientation and speed of the galaxies suggest they originated from a head-on collision between two galaxies in a group called NGC 1052. The collision left gas in its wake, which eventually clumped into groups of stars under gravity.

“They’re very unique,” says Keim. “It’s the only system like this that’s known.”

There is a similar collection of larger galaxies called theBullet Cluster, so Keim and his colleagues have nicknamed this system the “bullet dwarf”.

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The two galaxies are thought to have crashed into each other at 350 kilometres per second relative to each other about 9 billion years ago. As they passed through one another, gas was ripped from each galaxy. “It’s unlikely that two stars will collide,” says Keim. “But that’s not true for clouds of gas.”

Curiously, each of the clumps of stars left behind from the collision is devoid of dark matter. This is very unusual as most galaxies have a large amount ofdark matter, sometimes accounting for more than 90 per cent of their total mass.

Read moreAstronomers have spotted the largest known object in the universe

Astronomers have spotted the largest known object in the universe

Keim and his team think this might be because while the gas was torn from the galaxies, dark matter does not interact with matter – or even itself – so it was unaffected.

That could refute alternative ideas for dark matter that suggest our evidence for its gravitational influence result from a mismeasurement of how stars and galaxies behave. “This is saying dark matter is a particle, and it can become separated from a galaxy,” says Keim.

Reference:arXivDOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.10220

arXivDOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2506.10220

The world capital of astronomy: ChileExperience the astronomical highlights of Chile. Visit some of the world’s most technologically advanced observatories and stargaze beneath some of the clearest skies on earth.Find out more

Experience the astronomical highlights of Chile. Visit some of the world’s most technologically advanced observatories and stargaze beneath some of the clearest skies on earth.

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