Emily Smith

Black holes are the perfect place to put Einstein’s greatest theory to the testMARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY By Leah CraneAt the centre of the Milky Way, Einstein’s laws rule. Measurements of light from a star that orbits close to our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole cannot be explained by classical views of gravity and instead…

People on the beach in Camber Sands, EnglandBEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images By New Scientist Staff and Press AssociationThe UK has seen its hottest July day ever as the temperature reached 38.1C in Cambridge. The new record outstripped the previous high for the month of 36.7C, set at Heathrow in July 2015. It makes Thursday the second hottest…

Should you open your windows or close them? Can plants help, and should you get air conditioning? This is your guide to staying cool at home during a heatwave Environment 25 July 2019 Most of our homes have not been designed with heatwaves in mindRudi Gobbo/getty By Sam WongScorching hot summers were once rare in…

Technology 25 July 2019 Could a smartwatch make you smarter?Zinkevych/Getty By Donna LuExams can cause a racing heart or sweaty palms for the best of us, but a simple smartwatch app could help alleviate some of the stress. The app produces a slow soothing tapping that seems to help people perform better in situations filled…

This changes everything | Money-spinning change is on the way to your emojis, gifs and TikToks, as companies like Giphy make plans to monetize animations and wacky videos set to music Technology | Comment 24 July 2019 By Annalee Newitz MY TEXTING style is pretty salty. I curse a lot, generally in a friendly way, but…

The southern edge of the Central Siberian PlateauContains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2019]/Sentinel Hub/Pierre Markuse By Adam VaughanHuge wildfires are continuing to burn across the Arctic, and have now released more carbon dioxide in 2019 than in any year since satellite records began nearly two decades ago. Temperatures have been well above average in the…

Just how much energy do those panels produce?yevtony/getty By Adam VaughanThe UK’s forecasts for solar power generation have become far more accurate through the use of artificial intelligence, in a development that could lower energy bills and carbon emissions. The country’s energy system is becoming more reliant sources of electricity with a variable output. Renewables…

Gas escapes from the hole powering the capsule’s movementWu et al., Sci. Robot. 4, eaax0613 (2019) By Chelsea WhyteTiny self-propelled capsules shed their outer shells and deliver drugs directly to tumour cells. These microrobots, demonstrated in mice intestines, could one day be targeted treatments for cancers in hard to reach places in the body. “When…

Meningeal lymphatic vesselsJi Hoon Ahn and Hyunsoo Cho/Institute for Basic Science Center for Vascular Research, Daejeon, South Korea By Chelsea WhyteHow does the brain clean itself? We now know a major route for clearing toxins out from the brain, and the finding could help us understand what goes wrong in age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s…

Will they collide or shoot apart?NASA/SPL By Leah CraneRound and round the two stars go. Whether they’ll stop, nobody knows. Two white dwarf stars are twirling around one another at an extraordinarily fast rate, and we don’t know whether they will eventually smash together or just keep orbiting. Kevin Burdge at the California Institute of…