newscientist

DNA sequencing shows young trees are more likely to have gene variants that confer partial resistance to a fungus that has been wiping out ash trees across Europe

Some ash trees have genetic variants that confer partial resistance to ash diebackFLPA / Alamy

Some ash trees have genetic variants that confer partial resistance to ash dieback

Ash trees in the UK are rapidly evolving resistance in response to ash dieback disease, DNA sequencing of hundreds of trees has shown.

The finding is good news, saysRichard Buggsat the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the UK, but it is unlikely that ash trees will become completely resistant in the near future. “We probably need a breeding programme so that we can help nature along and finish the job,” he says.

Read moreInvasive snake is surviving in Britain by living in attics and walls

Invasive snake is surviving in Britain by living in attics and walls

Ash dieback is caused by a fungus (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus) native to Asia that slowly destroys trees’ ability to transport water. It began spreading in Europe in the 1990s andreached the UK in 2012.

The death of ash trees leads tothe release of carbon dioxideand affects hundreds of species that rely on these trees for their habitat. Falling trees arealso a threat to people and property. “There’s a lot of ash close to footpaths and roads that is now quite dangerous,” says Buggs.

Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.

Because the fungus takes much longerto kill large treesthan young ones, Buggs’s team was able to compare the genomes of 128 adult European ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) and 458 saplings at a site called Marden Park in Surrey. This revealed that thousands of variants his team had previously shown to be linked to resistance were more common in the young trees – probably because those that lacked them had died off.

It is the most detailed genetic picture ofevolution in actionever obtained in the wild. “What’s original about this study is we’ve been able to characterise the genetic basis and then demonstrate a shift happening in a single generation,” says Buggs.

However, each of the gene variants has only a tiny effect, rather than conferring complete resistance. The rate of evolutionary change will also slow in the future as large ash trees die off and fewer fungal spores are produced, meaning young ash trees will have a better chance of surviving, says Buggs.

“It’s a massive problem, but they’re not going to disappear,” he says. “I think our results encourage us that some of these young ash trees will hopefully make it through to adulthood, and hopefully have another generation of natural selection.”

Read moreThe extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate

The extraordinary ways species control their own evolutionary fate

Ash dieback hasn’t yet spread to North America, but an introduced insect pest, the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis),is spreading and killing ash trees there. It isn’t clear what will happen if ash dieback and the emerald ash borer both arrive in the same region, but it could make the situation much worse.

“Globalisation is mixing up the world’s insects and microbes, and so we are increasingly seeing these new tree epidemics, and it is very hard for the trees to keep up with it,” says Buggs. “Trees are facing threats that they’ve never faced before, coming at them at speeds that they never have before.”

He thinks we need to step in to help trees survive the onslaught, for instance by crossing native trees with exotic species to create resistant hybrids.

“One of the answers is to be moving the genetic diversity of trees around the world as well, to keep up with all of the pests and pathogens that we’re moving around,” he says.

Journal reference:ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.adp2990

ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.adp2990

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

There have been hundreds of reports of sightings of a “fireball” in the skies over the southern US – it may have been a meteor breaking up as it falls through Earth’s atmosphere

26 June 2025Last updated 27 June 2025

A fireball captured on a dashcam in South CarolinaKathryn Rose Farr via Facebook

A fireball captured on a dashcam in South Carolina

Sightings of a fireball streaking down from the sky were reported by eyewitnesses in several south-eastern US states on the afternoon of 26 June.

Read moreA supermassive black hole is sending out a mysterious pulsing beat

A supermassive black hole is sending out a mysterious pulsing beat

The American Meteor Society’swebsitehas logged at least 142 reports about the fireball event from observers in multiple states such as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The National Weather Service office in Charleston, South Carolina,saidthat “satellite-based lightning detection” showed a streak in the sky over the border between North Carolina and Virginia between 11.51 and 11.56am Eastern Daylight Time.

A dashcam video from a driver in upstate South Carolinashowsthe fiery object plummeting from the sky before disappearing behind a forested area adjacent to the highway. Another car driving south-west of Columbia, South Carolina, also capturedfootageof the falling object.

“This was clearly a natural rock coming down and not artificial space debris,” saysJonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks space launches.

VIDEO | This was just sent to me taken from a dash camera on I-85 SB in Upstate South Carolinapic.twitter.com/49PvNsorAK

— Cody Alcorn (@CodyAlcorn)June 26, 2025

It may have been what’s known as abolidefireball event, where a brightmeteorexplodes and breaks apart as it falls through Earth’s atmosphere, saidMike Hankeyat the American Meteor Society in aninterviewwith WXIA-TV in Georgia.

Meteorologist Chris Jacksonpostedon social media that local fire departments were responding to reports of “fireballs falling out of the sky” butaddedthat the emergency responders had not found anything on the ground as of early afternoon.

There are currently no major meteor showersactiveand visible from Earth. The next major meteor shower event involves the Southern delta Aquariids starting next month.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

Natural history museums teach us about our world, but they aren’t telling us the whole story, writes curator Jack Ashby in Nature's Memory

What’s missing? Pondering the displays at the American Museum of Natural History in New York CityJeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

What’s missing? Pondering the displays at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City

Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Nature’s MemoryJack Ashby (Allen Lane)

Museums are strange things, Jack Ashby, assistant director of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, UK, points out in his new book,Nature’s Memory: Behind the scenes at the world’s natural history museums. They are signifiers of our society and natural records of our ecosystems and habitats, yes. But they are also deeply flawed and significantly skewed.

Museums, especially the natural history ones thatAshby focuses on in his book, were once seen as a giant taxonomy of everything that ever lived – and continues to live – on our planet. From flora to fauna, mammals to insects, the goal of early cataloguers was to document and present everything in our world to help us better understand it.

That was then, and this is now. Reality bites, as Ashby deftly shows in this engaging book, which persuasively casts a critical eye over the imperfections of museums and how they aren’t what we have often thought them to be. For one thing, vast volumes of our natural history aren’t actually on display in these institutions, but are consigned to dimly lit storerooms.

We quickly learn how important the areas behind the velvet ropes and polished glass are: around 70,000 more species offlowering plantsare believed to exist in the world than scientists have described, says Ashby, with around half of them probably already sitting in museum back catalogues waiting to be analysed.

His insights into how things work behind the scenes are some of the most arresting points in the book, as he describes how animal skeletons are stripped of their flesh for preservation and how insects are preserved and then pinned to display boards. How taxidermy models are presented and why displayed frogs are rarely real (they shrivel up badly) are two more enlightening passages, as is a section on a premium glass-maker renowned for producing the most realistic recreations of flowers.

But there are even bigger issues at play than those 70,000 missing plants: the exhibits we file past on school trips as we formatively learn about our planet and its populations are biased.

Ashby points to a 2008 case study that found just 29 per cent of mammals and 34 per cent of birds in the average natural history museum are female, vastly understating their contribution to habitats. In part, that is because the male of the species is often more decorative and lends itself better to being displayed. However, it is also because the people who collect and display the items are invariably men – and white, Western men at that, says Ashby.

He is strongest in his rallying cry to change that problem of misrepresentation within museums. Ashby makes a compelling case that we have all been badly educated about our world and nature because of the squeamishness and the proclivities of past generations. Most male mammal skeletons differ from humans in one significant way: the presence of a baculum, or penis bone – not that you would know it from the displays in most museums worldwide, thanks to prudish curators who simply removed the bone from the pelvis.

This book was written before the wilful destruction of scientific institutions in the US, but in the fug of a general anti-expert malaise – and it shows. It is for this reason that it ought to be read. We must consider the consequences of what is left out of museum displays just as much as we do for what is kept in.

As Ashby puts it: “The work taking place in natural history museums has never been more important, and the role they have to play in safeguarding humanity’s future is only just starting to be realised.”

Chris Stokel Walker is a science writer based in Newcastle, UK

New Scientist book clubLove reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.Sign up

Love reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

This shot by the acclaimed photographer, taken from a helicopter, is part of a new exhibition of his work at New York City's International Center of Photography

Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

There is no geophysical logic to the sharp partition in the middle of this picture. A US federal act, the Land Ordinance of 1785, divided North America’s vast western territories into rectilinear townships and sections. So when pumps pull water out of the aquifer beneath Salt River Valley, Arizona, squares ofdesertlike this suburb of Phoenix grow green, settled and busy.

The Indigenous Pima and Maricopa peoples used to farm this land; it was turned into this comfortable conurbation in the 2000s. Valley settlements like this one depend on an increasingly complex and costlywater-managementsystem.

Photographer Edward Burtynsky was in a helicopter on his way to the already-desertified Colorado river delta in Mexico in 2011 when he spotted this place. As a student, his first assignment had been to “capture evidence of the activities of man”. He likes to say that, after 40 years of pioneering effort with large-format colour, digital and drone photography, he has more or less delivered. “I was out there early,” he says, “trying to figure it all out, trying to tell the story of our impact on the planet.”

This shot and more of Burtynsky’s photos are being exhibited in a solo exhibition,The Great Acceleration, at New York City’s International Center of Photography until 28 September.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

The author of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, on why, in a world awash with fictional dystopias, he set out to write the opposite

Adam Roberts’ Lake of Darkness opens as two space ships investigate a black holeScience Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

Adam Roberts’ Lake of Darkness opens as two space ships investigate a black hole

Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

The starting point for this novel was that I wanted to write utopian fiction. I hadn’t done this before: all my previous novels have been straight science fiction. But utopia, the genre that imagines a better, or a perfect, world, is older than science fiction: the first utopian novel, the work that coined the term, was written by Thomas More all the way back in 1516.

I was interested in what happened to the mode: More’sUtopiagenerated lots of imitators. Through the 17th and 18thcenturies,a great many utopian books, novels, tracts and treatises were written. It was a major genre in the 19th century and into the 20th:Erewhon(1872) by Samuel Butler; William Morris’sNews from Nowhere(1892), H. G. Wells’sA Modern Utopia(1905), B. F. Skinner’sWalden Two(1948). Consider Edward Bellamy’sLooking Backward(1888), one of the most impactful novels ever published in the US: a huge bestseller, it led to the creation of hundreds of “Bellamy Clubs” across that country and the founding of a Nationalist Party to run for the US presidency, with the aim of actualising Bellamy’s utopia there.

But nowadays? Nobody really does utopia. Instead we are absolutely awash with dystopias, versions of the worst, not the best, possible future:TheHunger Games,The Road,Divergent,TheMaze Runner, various Cyberpunk hellscapes,Battle Royale,Oryx and Crake, a great dismal river of books and films and video games. It’s an interesting question as to why utopia has gone out of fashion, and why dystopia is now so popular. Why has it gone out of fashion?

Read moreThe best science fiction novels to look forward to in 2025

The best science fiction novels to look forward to in 2025

One answer might be that utopia is unstoryable. When my creative students come to me with their premises for writing, their brilliant science fiction conceits and imagined worlds, I ask them: in this idea, where is the conflict? Because: no conflict, no drama; no drama, no story. Writing the perfect utopia is hard because there can be, by definition, no conflict in the perfect realm. I said nobody writes utopia nowadays and you might object: what about Iain M. Banks’sCultureseries? Isn’t that a utopian space? But actually Banks rarely explores that, because the radical happiness of Culture life isn’t conducive to story: instead Banks’s novels are about the Culture’s dangerous secret-service organisation, Special Circumstances, which goes into all manner of non-utopian worlds and alien species where they can have adventures. In my novel it is likewise: in order for there to be a story, for characters to have adventures, I take them out of the comforts of utopia, confront them with horrors, dangers, monsters.

Rereading the best science fiction writers of all time: Iain M. BanksAt his best, Iain M. Banks could be extraordinarily stylish, inventive and downright funny. So how does his genre-redefining science fiction stand up to the test of time? Emily H. Wilson rereads the greats

Rereading the best science fiction writers of all time: Iain M. Banks

At his best, Iain M. Banks could be extraordinarily stylish, inventive and downright funny. So how does his genre-redefining science fiction stand up to the test of time? Emily H. Wilson rereads the greats

Join us in reading and discussing the best new science and science fiction books

But I wanted to do more than this: I wanted to investigate the logic of utopia itself. Is utopia possible? Not “can the world be a little better?” – obviously it can – but could we reorganise society so as to perfect it, to make a utopia?

Some years ago, I was invited to give the keynote at the Utopiales conference, an event that takes place at various locations around Europe every year. The year I went it was in Tarragona, a beautiful place in Spain. I gave my keynote, the nub of which was: utopia as a mode can’t evade the crunch point of human nature. Some utopias are authoritarian (Thomas More’s original utopia is this, for instance) where structures of authority and force compel the utopian citizens to live in harmony. Others are bottom-up, predicated on the notion that if this or that material or psychological impediment were removed, human beings would just naturally live together in bliss. I must say: I don’t think either of these are viable, practically speaking. As literary critic John Carey puts it, what all utopias share is the desire “to a greater or lesser extent, to eliminate real people”.

This bold, experimental slice of deep-space sci-fi is just brilliantIn Adam Roberts's Lake of Darkness, two spaceships meet to study a black hole. Their research comes to an abrupt halt, however, when crew members start dying horribly, says Emily H. Wilson

This bold, experimental slice of deep-space sci-fi is just brilliant

In Adam Roberts's Lake of Darkness, two spaceships meet to study a black hole. Their research comes to an abrupt halt, however, when crew members start dying horribly, says Emily H. Wilson

In my Utopiales keynote I argued that the most convincing utopia in culture is the TV showTeletubbies. These beings (I’m not sure what they are: posthuman genetically altered cyborgs perhaps), these ’tubbies, do live according to utopian principles, but only because they are little children. Their needs are easily catered for, they are easily distracted and entertained, they are happy in their world. Adults would find Teletubbyland a frustrating and terrible place to live: monotonous, understimulating, restrictive. My argument, in other words, was that there is something radically infantilising about utopia as a concept, something puerile in the strict sense of the word. After the lecture there was a reception, and I wandered around the venue with a glass of wine in my hand chatting to people. Some attendees chatted with me about my talk, but there were a number of people there who “cut” me, literally turned their back to me as I approached. I was puzzled by this, until the conference organiser explained: Utopiales attracts scholars and academics interested in literary and cultural representations of utopia, but it also attracts actual utopians, people who plan to make utopia a reality: as it might be, wealthy American businessmen who, having made their fortune, have retired and plan to buy land and construct a utopian community. These people thought I was mocking them with my keynote. They were angry with me.

Well, I’m sorry they thought I was insulting them. But I stand by my view, and inLake of DarknessI apply social theory, imagined space opera technology and a series of particular characters and situation to the idea of utopia according to that view.

Adam Roberts’sLake of Darkness(Gollancz)is the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read along with ushere.

Explore the world of science fiction and learn how to craft your own captivating sci-fi tales on this immersive weekend break, with author Adam Roberts.Read more

Explore the world of science fiction and learn how to craft your own captivating sci-fi tales on this immersive weekend break, with author Adam Roberts.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

In this passage from near the opening of Lake of Darkness, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are given an insight into how deep-space travel works in Adam Roberts’s universe

Lake of Darkness is the New Scientist Book Club’s July pick

Lake of Darkness is the New Scientist Book Club’s July pick

You were born, in all likelihood, towards the end of the 20th– or towards the beginning of the 21st-centuries. Yes? I have no desire to condescend to you. Many of the features of life today will be readily comprehensible to you, if you can only — as surely you can — extrapolate from your past into our present with a little common sense.

Take the ship. There are lots of imaginary startships in your popular culture, but many of these are only vaguely thought-through: naval ships, or land-based buildings, foolishly projected into deep space. Corridors? Why would we want corridors in a startship? Rigid external superstructures and frame, containing decks and floor — very fragile, under the kinds of shearing forces and pressures of spaceflight. But you already knew this, if you thought about it for a moment. TheSβOubliettedid not look like a skyscraper lying on its side, or a pyramidically-stacked aircraft carrier. It looked, if you prefer an aquatic analogy, like one of those semi lucent glittering blobs that pulse through the depths of the ocean.

Our favourite science fiction books of all time (the ones we forgot)Following on from our first list, we asked New Scientist staff to pick even more of their favourite sci-fi books of all time. From Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Wars – the list has it all this time, we hope…

Our favourite science fiction books of all time (the ones we forgot)

Following on from our first list, we asked New Scientist staff to pick even more of their favourite sci-fi books of all time. From Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Wars – the list has it all this time, we hope…

Some of a startship is its drive and power-systems: propulsion, guidance and AI. But most of it — nine-tenths, as I mentioned above — is a hospital. Human animals are not built for living in space, and any enterprise that puts human beings in space for long stretches of time must spend most of its time attending to the health of those humans. This is not — or, let’s say, it israrely— a matter of broken bone, or infectious disease, as with older mundane hospitals. It is a congeries of related problems, chief amongst them radiation poisoning and bone-health from calcium loss, with modal health, mental-emotional well-being and temporal dysphasia coming close behind. Deep space is suffused with high levels of various rays and fields that degrade the human body on a cellular level: burns, mutations, cancers, decadences. Much of a deep space mission is attending to these injuries. Cancer cannot be inoculated against, but it can be treated. Cellular and DNA damage cannot be prevented, but can be addressed post hoc. Psychological derangement and distress, and spiritual emptiness, are perennials, and more likely to occur in the constricted environments of a startship than in the stimulus-rich homes and habitats of our utopian collectives, but even they can be coaxed back towards wholeness and health by the right strategies. Solace is possible. And so the mission goes on. For the crew, about a third of their waking hours are given over to ship’s business, a third to health-checks and treatments, leaving a few hours of leisure time per artificial day.

In the case of a ship’s emergency — as now, aboard theSβOubliette— the leisure time is eaten into, and the duty absorbs more of the day. But the healthcare is never stinted.

As for corridors: the interior of any given startship will be different, depending on design and purpose and aesthetics, but the basic structure is a cluster of moveable Meissner tetrahedra, linked together with smartcable. The interiors of these structures, being non-spheres of uniform diameter, are spun in a complex of spiral trajectories to mimic gravity. It’s a poor imitation, and extra work pushing limbs in exercise bands, compressing the body and — most of all — addressing calcium loss and density with medical interventions are also needful. But Meissner bodies make more livable interiors than the circular strips of ribbon rotated like merry-go-round, like in your moving-along picture showTwo Thousand And One Odysseys. Those areverytricky to live in, believe me. Some places do operate them: usually as temporary structures while larger, more stable ones are being built. But you wouldn’t want to live in such a rotating strip. Turn around suddenly — turn yourheadtoo quickly — and you’ll start puking. Large-diameter slow-spinning Meissner bodies, by slowly moving the 3D space on an in-logic inaround, is a much more tolerable arrangement.

Join us in reading and discussing the best new science and science fiction books

You don’t care about any of that. Why would you?

This is an extract from Adam Roberts’sLake of Darkness(Gollancz),the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club. Sign up and read along with ushere.

Explore the world of science fiction and learn how to craft your own captivating sci-fi tales on this immersive weekend break, with author Adam Roberts.Read more

Explore the world of science fiction and learn how to craft your own captivating sci-fi tales on this immersive weekend break, with author Adam Roberts.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

Culture editor Alison Flood rounds up the New Scientist Book Club's take on our latest read, a time-travelling romance

Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time was (largely) a hit with the New Scientist Book Club

Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time was (largely) a hit with the New Scientist Book Club

One of the wonderful things about science fiction is the broadness of its church, and this was really brought home to me by our two most recent reads. The New Scientist Book Club moved from the hard science fiction spacefaring of Larry Niven’s classicRingworldin May to the near-future-set time travel of Kaliane Bradley’sThe Ministry of Timefor our June read. The former takes its science seriously, diving into the maths and physics of its set-up with gusto; the latter – not so much.

Our verdict on Ringworld by Larry Niven: Nice maths, shame about TeelaCulture editor Alison Flood rounds up the New Scientist Book Club’s thoughts on our latest read, the science fiction classic Ringworld by Larry Niven

Our verdict on Ringworld by Larry Niven: Nice maths, shame about Teela

Culture editor Alison Flood rounds up the New Scientist Book Club’s thoughts on our latest read, the science fiction classic Ringworld by Larry Niven

The story of an unnamed civil servant who is given the job of supporting an “expat” from history – Commander Graham Gore, a (real) Victorian polar explorer from 1847 –The Ministry of Timeis many things in one: a thriller, a romance, a piece of climate fiction (apparently), a science fiction novel about time. I couldn’t put it down and loved all of it – apart, perhaps, from the ending. But more on that later. This isNew Scientist, so let’s get to the science fictional aspects of this novel first.

Bradley’s time travel is, I would say, a MacGuffin: something that exists for her to have fun with bringing her characters from the past into the present(ish) day. As she puts it: “The moment you start to think about the physics of [time travel], you are in a crock of shit.” I don’t think it’s any the worse for her disinclination to explain time travel – after all, I’m not sure evenour top physics minds are quite there yet– and most of you agreed.

“I actually liked that the time travel was just taken for granted, allowing the main plot to be developed – after all it has been treated in many ways in many other sci-fi novels,” writes Simon Saunders on ourFacebook group. “And that made for very interesting plot and character development. In that way I felt it was more of a novel with a sci-fi backdrop rather than a sci-fi novel as such.”

For Pauline Moncrieff, for whomThe Ministry of Timewas her book of the year so far, Bradley’s approach to time travel was “perfect”, while for Terry James, who has “an ambivalent attitude about time travel” because of the paradox it presents – “If I travel back in time, murder my grandfather, does that mean I stop existing?” – it also worked. “For this reason, I smiled when I saw how the whole technical and physical challenges of time travel was basically skipped by the author. Keep it simple,” he writes.

Join us in reading and discussing the best new science and science fiction books

Read an extract from time-travel novel The Ministry of TimeIn this short extract from Kaliane Bradley's sci-fi novel, her protagonist makes a startling discovery about the nature of time

Read an extract from time-travel novel The Ministry of Time

In this short extract from Kaliane Bradley's sci-fi novel, her protagonist makes a startling discovery about the nature of time

Christen Millard Shore was of the same opinion. “I was glad of the open hand-wavery that said ‘pretend this isn’t a problem and assume it’s ok.’ It is a problem otherwise.”

Gosia Furmanik, however, wasn’t so sure. She “really liked how this was written, the language was very imaginative and colourful, it was gripping and tickled my brain in the right way”. But she “found the plot pertaining to the main intrigue/ time travel quite confusing, nothing much happened or got revealed until the very end, so it was really hard to be engaged in this aspect of the book”. Rather damningly for a book club focusing on science fiction, she felt that “the whole science fiction aspect of the book was somehow secondary to the romance and musings on immigration and identity”.

I think Gosia is right here, but that wasn’t a negative for me – I was absolutely swept away in the romance of this novel and definitely fell for Commander Gore (so did Bradley – check out myinterviewwith her to find out more about her historical crush). I am a big fan of romantic literature in general though, so perhaps it’s not surprising I would like it. And I wasn’t the only one.

“I wouldn’t normally be interested in romance as the main element of a book – but I was prepared to accept that it was very well done. However I think the book was much more than the romance – it was a meditation on the meaning of empire and what it means to fit in when you don’t have the same family history as your peers and then finally how you can fit in so much and think that you have overcome oppression but become a part of the oppression yourself,” says Alan Perrett. “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Phil Gurski was of a different opinion. “I really liked the concept but this was not really a sci-fi but a romance,” he writes. “Not that I am a prude, but the 4-page sex scenes were unnecessary.”

There were many things I loved aboutThe Ministry of Time, but perhaps top of the list for me was Bradley’s subtle but brilliant sense of humour. There is something innately funny about plonking someone from the 19th century into the modern world and seeing how he deals with everything from Spotify to dishwashers, but what I loved about Bradley’s writing was her lightness of touch.

“I have laughed out loud a number of times,” agrees Christen. “Mostly at the girls talking together and discussions of the chicken purse.” Yes! The chicken purse was a joy. And the girls interacting was definitely a high point. I’m a little in love with Margaret Kemble from 1665, I think, as well as Graham Gore.

Gosia gives the humour a cautious thumbs up. “I initially thought it was quite funny (e.g. nobody was making him watch EastEnders) but then I feel it lost this tone and then was a bit jarring – like it was still trying to be funny, when the content of the book was really not funny anymore?” she writes.

Let’s get on to that ending, though, which is where we all had the most issues withThe Ministry. And here’s your regular spoiler alert, just in case you’re yet to finish. The twist – that Adela was a future version of our narrator – definitely took me by surprise, and made me do that pleasurable thing of going back to check that previous bits of the book actually worked in this context. I’d say they did – but it did all get a bit muddled and rushed as we zoomed towards the end, and I found the up-in-the-air conclusion a little frustrating, having become so very invested in Bradley’s romance. I get what she’s saying – that the story itself is “a kind of time travel” – but I still wanted my resolution!

Our favourite science fiction books of all time (the ones we forgot)Following on from our first list, we asked New Scientist staff to pick even more of their favourite sci-fi books of all time. From Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Wars – the list has it all this time, we hope…

Our favourite science fiction books of all time (the ones we forgot)

Following on from our first list, we asked New Scientist staff to pick even more of their favourite sci-fi books of all time. From Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin to Star Wars – the list has it all this time, we hope…

David Jones is with me on this. “It was one of those books where you finish it and feel let down. I loved the main characters and felt they deserved a better ending,” he writes.

“This author has done a good job and written a very good, thoughtful and interesting book which I enjoyed. However I wonder if the ending was always there or forced by an editor?” wonders Alan. “It felt a bit forced and tacked on – not part of the initial viewpoint of the author.”

“I was about 80% through and still asking ‘where is this going?’. I feel the story cards were played too close to the chest until the end and didn’t feel the pay off was enough. 3/5 from me,” says George Aranda.

Phil writes onFacebookthat he hopes that next time round “theNew Scientistbook club can get back to true science (fiction)”. I’m keen to oblige, Phil: our July read is Adam Roberts’s hard sci-fi novelLake of Darkness, which is just out in paperback and which opens as a spaceship investigates a black hole where signals appear to, impossibly, be crossing the event horizon. Adam has written a brilliantly brainyessayfor us, all about why he decided his future would be utopian, and you can check out an extracthere. Emily H. Wilson, our sci-fi reviewer atNew Scientist, lovedLake of Darknesswhen it came out in hardback – “intelligent, experimental, grippingly propulsive and full of astonishing ideas”, shewrote– and I’m hoping we all enjoy our journey to the far future as much as she did.

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

Geologists have long debated whether a stony formation in Canada contains the world’s oldest rocks – new measurements make a compelling case that it does

The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada may contain the world’s oldest rocksJonathan O’Neil

The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada may contain the world’s oldest rocks

Just over 4 billion years ago, magma from Earth’s mantle infiltrated a fracture in the young planet’s primordial crust. Over the following aeons, nearly all of the planet’s early crust melted back into the mantle except for a small area around this fracture, which survives today.

At least, that is the story according to the latest analysis of radioactive isotopes in this rock, which is still accessible on the surface as part of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, a formation on the shore of Hudson Bay in Canada. This potential sample of Earth’s early crust is the subject of a long-standing debate among geologists: is it the world’s oldest rock, or merely extremely old?

Read moreTowering structures in Earth’s depths may be billions of years old

Towering structures in Earth’s depths may be billions of years old

Jonathan O’Neilat the University of Ottawa and his colleagues kicked off the debate in a 2008 study that estimated the rocks surroundingthe intrusion are about 4.3 billion years old, which would make them the world’s oldest. With that age, they would have formed during the Hadean Aeon just a few hundred million years after the planet itself.

While afew mineral grainshave been found that are older than that, complete Hadean rocks would offer a new window on this early period of Earth’s history, perhaps shedding light on geological mysteries like thestart of plate tectonicsand the make-up of thefirst oceans.

However, the method the researchers used to date the rocks made the 4.3-billion-year-old age controversial. Ideally, very old rocks can be dated using a hardy mineral called zircon, which maintains its original chemical make-up over billions of years. But these volcanic rocks didn’t contain zircon. “We can’t date these rocks using that technique that everybody loves,” says O’Neil.

Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.

Instead, they measured the atomic weight of neodymium and samarium in the rock. As samarium decays, it produces different isotopes of neodymium at known rates. The ratio of neodymium and samarium isotopes remaining in the rocks can thus serve as a “clock” counting up from the time the rock crystallised from magma. In fact, two isotopes of samarium decay at different rates, allowing them to serve as two parallel clocks. The trouble was, the two clocks didn’t agree on the age of the rock, leading researchers to dispute that it actually was Hadean.

“I don’t think a majority of the early-Earth-studying community was convinced,” saysRichard Walkerat the University of Maryland.

Now, O’Neil and his colleagues have counted neodymium and samarium isotopes in rocks that intrude into the layer they think is 4.3 billion years old. By definition, such intrusions are younger than the strata that surround them. Therefore, dating the intrusion would set a minimum age for the surrounding rock.

A detailed view of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in CanadaDavid Hutt / Alamy

A detailed view of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada

In the intrusion, unlike the older rock that surrounds it, the two clocks tell the same story: the rock is about 4.16 billion years old. “Both clocks are giving the exact same age,” says O’Neil. This supports the idea that the surrounding rock formed well within the Hadean Aeon, which would make it the only known remnant of Earth’s early crust.

“I think they make as good a case as you can make,” saysGraham Pearsonat the University of Alberta in Canada.

“The simplest explanation for this data is that these are the oldest rocks in the world,” saysJesse Reiminkat the Pennsylvania State University. However, this is unlikely to be the last word on the matter, he says. “When dealing with the oldest rocks and minerals, there’s no such thing as settled.”

Journal reference:ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.ads8461

ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.ads8461

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

Large sea anchors could be used to drag water under a bold plan to keep the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation moving – but some experts are sceptical

The plan to maintain the ocean current would involve much larger versions of parachute sea anchorsEd Dunens (CC BY 2.0)

The plan to maintain the ocean current would involve much larger versions of parachute sea anchors

Shipping tankers, drones and fishing boats could be used to drag giant parachutes through the waters of the Atlantic Ocean as part of a drastic plan to avert catastrophic climate change.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) transports warm water from the tropics northwards, helping to keep northern Europe temperate.

Read moreThe jet stream may be starting to shift in response to climate change

The jet stream may be starting to shift in response to climate change

However, a rapidly melting Arctic and warming ocean temperatures are weakening the current, with some scientistsfearing it could shut down altogether at some point in the coming century. This would plunge oceanic ecosystems into chaos and rapidly cool Europe’s climate by several degrees.

Greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut rapidly to reduce the risk of AMOC collapse and other catastrophic climate “tipping points”, experts stress. But some are considering other, more radical approaches to keep the current going.

Stuart Haszeldineat the University of Edinburgh, UK, andDavid Sevierof UK water treatment firm Strengite presented one idea at theArctic Repairconference in Cambridge, UK, this week. They say that just 35 sea tugboats could be used to pull underwater parachutes, each about the size of half a football pitch, to move enough water to maintain the current. “You can have that very large effect with a very small intervention of energy and equipment,” says Haszeldine.

Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month.

The parachutes – similar in design to existing sea anchors, which are used to stabilise vessels in inclement weather – would help to propel the water flowing along the surface of the ocean. Each one would feature a hole with a 12-metre diameter in its centre to allow marine life to escape.

Drones, shipping tankers, tugboats or wind kites could be used to drag the parachutes, operating 365 days a year on a rotating-shift basis. “It’s a small but continuous intervention,” says Haszeldine.

Sevier described the idea as a “Hail Mary” to prevent the catastrophic consequences of an AMOC collapse. “This is about buying time,” he argues, for the world to cut emissions enough to stabilise global temperatures at a safe level.

However, the idea has been met with scepticism from leading AMOC researchers.René van Westenat Utrecht University in the Netherlands points out that differences in water density between cold, salty water and warm, fresher water are key to the downwelling and upwelling motion that sustains the AMOC.

“If [this idea is] possible, they can only maintain the surface layer using the overhead winds,” says van Westen. “The ocean density differences are far more important for the AMOC and hence, I’m not convinced that this can sustain the AMOC.”

Read moreFive climate megaprojects that might just save the world

Five climate megaprojects that might just save the world

Stefan Rahmstorfat the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany agrees. “The issue is not to move surface water along horizontally; it is to make it sink down to a depth of 2000 to 3000 meters and flow back to the south as a cold deep current,” he says.

Meric Srokoszat the UK’s National Oceanography Centre says the proposal is “unlikely to work”, given the challenges of deploying equipment in the ocean in unpredictable weather conditions.

Haszeldine says he welcomes any feedback from other scientists on the idea and hopes ocean and climate modellers will help to investigate the ecological and environmental impacts of the plan. “We believe this to be worth investigating further,” he says.

More broadly, there should be more research focused on climate-intervention strategies to maintain ocean circulation, Haszeldine argues: “I don’t see anyone else working on ocean currents.”

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.

All of us hold metaphysical beliefs, whether we realise it or not. Learning to question them is spurring progress on some of the hardest questions in physics

Metaphysics has something of an iffy reputation. “I think a lot of people think it’s a complete waste of time,” says philosopherStephen Mumfordat the University of Durham, UK, author ofMetaphysics: A very short introduction. “They think it’s all just arguing over pointless questions, like, classically, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?”

It isn’t difficult to see why. Classical metaphysics – the term comes from the Greek “meta”, meaning beyond – does ponder some bizarre-sounding questions. What is a table, for instance? What form of existence do colours have? In addition, it does so through reasoning alone, with tools such as “reductio ad absurdum” – a mode of argumentation that seeks to prove a claim by deriving an absurdity from its denial. It is a far cry from the empirical knowledge scientists pursue through observation and experiment.

But the idea that metaphysics is all just abstract theorising with no basis in reality is a misconception, says Mumford: “Metaphysics is about the fundamental structure of reality beyond the appearances. It’s about that part of reality that can’t be known empirically.”

Indeed, as modern science has expanded its reach into territories that were once seen as the purview of metaphysics, such as the nature of consciousness or the meaning ofquantum mechanics, it has become increasingly clear that one can’t succeed without the other.

To see why, the first thing to understand is that everyone has metaphysical beliefs, saysVanessa Seifert, a philosopher of science at the University of Bristol, UK. You probably believe objects exist when we aren’t looking at them, for instance, even though there is no hard and fast empirical evidence that this is true.

Read moreWhat does quantum theory really tell us about the nature of reality?

What does quantum theory really tell us about the nature of reality?

It is also important to recognise that there is such a thing as “naturalised metaphysics”, which is distinct from classical metaphysics in that it is informed by science, says Seifert. “You look at what science tells us about the world, and you investigate how literally you can take that.”

This brand of metaphysics provides a vital service for science because it examines the assumptions underlying our attempts to understand the world. “In many cases, metaphysical beliefs are the fundamental bedrock upon which empirical knowledge is built,” says Mumford.

Take causation – the idea that effects have causes – which we all believe despite the fact that causal connections aren’t observable. “Basically, the whole of science is premised on this metaphysical notion of causation,” he says.

These days, scientists routinely grapple with all manner of other concepts that are deeply infused with the metaphysical. From chemical elements, space and time to the concept of species and the laws of nature themselves – plus loads more.

How to wrap your head around the most mind-bending theories of realityFrom the many worlds interpretation to panpsychism, theories of reality often sound absurd. Here’s how you can figure out which ones to take seriously

How to wrap your head around the most mind-bending theories of reality

From the many worlds interpretation to panpsychism, theories of reality often sound absurd. Here’s how you can figure out which ones to take seriously

We have a choice, says Mumford. We can either scrutinise our metaphysical beliefs for their coherence or ignore them. “But in the latter case, we’re just assuming them unreflectively,” he says.

One of the most striking cases in which science and metaphysics collide isquantum mechanics, which describes the world of atoms and particles. It is a hugely successful scientific theory, yet when grappling with its meaning, physicists must confront metaphysical questions, like how we should interpretquantum superpositions, the apparent ability of a quantum system to exist in multiple states simultaneously.

Here, all we have are competing interpretations of what is actually going on that won’t submit to experimental testing, and it is becoming clear that progress will be impossible without confronting our hidden assumptions. To do so, some researchers have recently begun to revive a tradition known as “experimental metaphysics”, in which they test the coherence of the metaphysical beliefs underlying the various interpretations of quantum theory.

“In the end, you can’t do physics without metaphysics,” saysEric Cavalcantiat Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, one of the foremost proponents of this approach. “You have to deal with both at the same time.”

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox!
We'll also keep you up to date withNew Scientistevents and special offers.