Vetenskapsnyheter

<p>Everyone these days wants to optimise their workouts, but when a study seems too good to be true, it usually is</p><ul><li><p>Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh</p></li></ul><p>We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/28/bizarre-exercises-online-influencer-workout-recommend">optimisation and hacks</a>: how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before.</p><p>It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I had a couple of glasses of wine … it <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2026/06/02/celebrities-take-aim-steven-bartlett-claiming-two-glasses-wine-ruined-life-three-days-28620379/">ruined three days of my life</a>” (that’s Steven Bartlett’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gpz163vg2o">podcast</a>).</p><p>Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/23/fit-five-minutes-workout-exercise-a-day-dont-believe-it">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Met Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for England, with temperatures potentially reaching 40C (104F) in some places. Europe is also dealing with a debilitating heatwave, with schools closed, trains cancelled and France even restricting the consumption of alcohol outdoors to take pressure off the emergency services. The high temperatures coincide with the coming El Niño, which some scientists have nicknamed Godzilla for its predicted strength. To find out whether the two are linked, Ian Sample hears from our Europe climate correspondent, Ajit Niranjan. He explains why it’s so hot, why we could be in for even worse and how we can keep as cool as possible</p><p><em>Clips: Sky News, BBC, Arirang News</em></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/21/el-nino-fears-godzilla-strength-hunger-famine">El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries</a></strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2026/jun/23/extreme-heat-is-uk-becoming-40c-country-podcast">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Observations suggest comet spent billions of years on ‘vast unimaginable trajectories’ around our galaxy</p><p>An interstellar comet that blazed past the sun last year could be nearly three times older than our solar system and is unlike anything ever before seen in our cosmic back yard, astronomers said on Monday.</p><p>The comet 3I/Atlas is just the third visitor from beyond our solar system that humanity has ever observed, its unusual brightness offering scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study something that came from elsewhere in the galaxy.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/22/interstellar-comet-may-be-oldest-object-seen-in-our-solar-system-research-finds">Continue reading...</a>

<p>The solutions to today’s puzzles – and the winner of the Anguish Languish contest</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/22/can-you-solve-it-dotty-data-and-silly-sentences">Earlier today </a>I set these three puzzles about deception. Here they are again with solutions.</p><p><strong>1. Super syllabus</strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/22/did-you-solve-it-dotty-data-and-silly-sentences">Continue reading...</a>

<p>People assume that those with facial hair are more likely to harbour bacteria on their faces than the clean-shaven – but the truth is more tangled</p><p>The idea that beards are dirtier than clean-shaven faces has been floating around for decades, says John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London. There is even research that&nbsp;shows people perceive bearded men as&nbsp;less hygienic: one study found&nbsp;<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11628-017-0346-5">restaurant customers rated</a> waiters with facial hair as dirtier. Science doesn’t necessarily back that&nbsp;up,&nbsp;though.</p><p>One of the earliest studies on the subject, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC547091/">published in 1967</a>, looked at&nbsp;how much bacteria could be recovered from men’s faces after being artificially sprayed on to&nbsp;their skin. Researchers compared washed and unwashed faces, both with and without beards. The dirtiest combination wasn’t with a beard: most&nbsp;bacteria was recovered from unwashed clean-shaven faces, followed by unwashed bearded faces, washed bearded faces and finally washed clean-shaven faces.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/22/is-it-true-that-beards-are-unhygienic">Continue reading...</a>

<p>When numbers and sounds are not what they seem</p><p>Today’s puzzles – and prize draw! – are about different types of deception.</p><p><strong>1. Super syllabus</strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/22/can-you-solve-it-dotty-data-and-silly-sentences">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Maps created as part of Defra-funded Slimers project allowed test growers to halve amount of slug pellets used</p><p>Farmers believe they have a new weapon in their age-old battle against the slugs that destroy their crops: modern technology.</p><p>Slug prediction maps, which have been created by computer models as part of an research project, are now helping growers to better target the use of pesticides, saving them money and reducing environmental harm.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jun/21/slug-sleuth-farmers-england-prediction-tool-reduce-pesticide-use">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Sudden cardiac arrest is statistically rare but among the leading causes of death for children and young people. And families often have no idea of the risk until it’s too late</p><p>Before Alexandra Thoms goes to sleep, she puts together a flat-pack dining table with her father, Gordon. She needs the table for her otherwise sparse two-bedroom Melbourne apartment which she has moved into just weeks earlier.</p><p>At 23, Alexandra has met the milestones of an ambitious life at lightning speed. She is well travelled, has earned a double university degree and a graduate job at Deloitte. She is healthy; an avid skier and gymgoer. Now, she is also a homeowner. She didn’t have a formal housewarming, though, as most of her friends still live at home.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/21/sudden-cardiac-arrest-leading-cause-death-young-people">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Kennedy overrides CDC order saying an American who came into contact with hantavirus can self-quarantine </p><p>The Trump administration is employing “authoritarian” and “unconstitutional” quarantine measures for at least one person who came into contact with a hantavirus patient, health law experts say.</p><p>The mandatory quarantine, reimposed without an offering scientific evidence, reveals how the US might approach future cases of Ebola and other pathogens in the US – and sets a precedent for detaining Americans with no scientific rationale.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/20/rfk-jr-hantavirus-quarantine">Continue reading...</a>

<p>The reconstruction of the vaquita, whose numbers barely reach double figures in the wild, is designed to help research and conservation efforts</p><p>Scientists have created a digital reconstruction of the world’s most endangered marine mammal, preserving its anatomy in three dimensions to aid research and conservation efforts as the species teeters on the brink of extinction.</p><p>The project digitised the skeleton of a female <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/dolphin-and-porpoise/vaquita/">vaquita, a small porpoise</a> found only in Mexico’s northern Gulf of California, using a combination of medical imaging, ultra-high-resolution micro CT scans and photography.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/20/vaquita-porpoise-worlds-rarest-skeleton-preserved-digital-imaging-aoe">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Experts cast doubt on conclusion of government-funded study of factory emitting forever chemicals near Blackpool</p><p>Questions have been raised about the conclusions drawn by a government-funded study into kidney cancer rates near a factory linked to forever chemicals near Blackpool.</p><p>Pfoa, a known carcinogenic forever chemical that was banned globally in 2020, was emitted from the AGC Chemicals Europe plant in Thornton-Cleveleys, near Blackpool, between the 1950s and 2012. An estimated 49 tonnes of Pfoa were emitted during that period. The factory, which AGC Chemicals Europe bought in 1999, stopped using Pfoa in 2012.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/19/factory-forever-chemicals-kidney-cancer-blackpool">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Study suggests exposure to ‘forever chemicals’ may be a main driver of disease, formerly called PCOS, authors say</p><p>New <a href="https://hsph.harvard.edu/mahalingaiah-lab/news/exposure-to-forever-chemicals-for-mothers-during-pregnancy-may-be-linked-with-higher-rates-of-pcos-in-teenage-daughters-study-suggests/">research</a> for the first time links prenatal exposure to Pfas “forever chemicals” with the development of polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) later in life.</p><p>PMOS, formerly known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), is estimated to impact about 13% of women. Many cases are undiagnosed, and the disease’s cause largely remains a mystery.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/19/prenatal-exposure-pfas-pmos-development-study">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Stand Up for Science founder says proposal to control how grants are spent would ‘dismantle US science ecosystem’</p><p>While waiting to board her flight home at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport recently, Colette Delawalla was reviewing a list of possible impacts from a proposed Trump administration rule on controlling federal money, including grants for research.</p><p>Delawalla, the founder of the group <a href="https://www.standupforscience.net/">Stand Up for Science,</a> had just completed a three-day visit to Capitol Hill, where she met one by one with more than 30 members of Congress, part of a full-court press the organization has launched in recent weeks, sounding the alarm on the office of management and budget (OMB) proposal.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/19/trump-scientific-research-cuts">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Do we really want to play dice with our planet?</p><p>A series in the Guardian recently declared “it’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/series/it-s-time-to-talk-about-geoengineering">time to talk</a> about geoengineering.” So let’s talk about it. And let us start with some simple truths about this cluster of techno-optimistic “quick fixes” which purport to somehow offset our slow progress towards zeroing out planet-warming carbon emissions.</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/22/climate-crisis-emergency-earth-day">Solar geoengineering proposals</a> – reducing sunlight – have received the most attention, but a host of desperate schemes have been proposed in an effort to “fix” the disruption of climate caused by the growing burden of carbon dioxide human activities add to the atmosphere.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/19/solar-geoengineering-risk-to-planet-earth">Continue reading...</a>

<p>In this week’s newsletter: The melting of the Arctic’s summer sea ice is the most visible upshot of the climate crisis. Refreezing it might be a long shot – but do drastic times call for drastic measures?</p><p>• <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/sep/20/sign-up-for-the-down-to-earth-newsletter-our-free-environmental-email">Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here</a></p><p>Speeding across rapidly melting Arctic ice on a snowmobile gave me a vivid feel for its beauty and fragility. The brilliant white landscape gleamed ahead, while the sky blue pools of meltwater jetted up on to my boots.</p><p>When I visited Cambridge Bay in northern Canada at the start of this month, the melt season had hit with brutal speed: temperatures were 5-10C above normal, kickstarting the melting almost overnight.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/17/armed-groups-colombian-farmers-election-run-off-guaviare-small-landowners-security-candidate">Why farmers see Colombia’s knife-edge election as a battle for the Amazon’s future</a></strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/jun/14/jamaica-beach-access-crisis-plantation-tourism">Jamaica’s beach access crisis: ‘We shouldn’t be forced to fight for what is already ours’</a></strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/15/shackleton-endurance-shipwrecks-global-heating-antarctic-underwater-protected-area">‘The Antarctic is the last frontier’: the quest to save Shackleton’s Endurance</a></strong></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/19/scientists-refreeze-arctic-melting-sea-ice">Continue reading...</a>

<p>John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden</p><p>He coined the terms petal and pollen, helped to lay the foundations of modern biology and is widely regarded as the greatest English naturalist of the 17th century.</p><p>But it was while he was a young college tutor at Cambridge in the 1650s that the botanist John Ray – also known as “the father of natural history” – created his first known garden and began to systematically study plants for the first time.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/18/cambridge-experts-recreate-336-year-old-garden-to-commemorate-father-of-natural-history">Continue reading...</a>

<p>The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt</p><p>Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.</p><p>Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.</p><p>Manuscript on parchment from the <em>Circa instans</em>. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/18/natural-world-digital-biodiversity-heritage-library-scientific-knowledge-free-access-aoe">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Sea ice is melting fast and worsening the climate crisis. But what if there were a way to thicken it again? Madeleine Finlay is joined by environment editor Damian Carrington to discuss a bold attempt to refreeze the Arctic which is showing early signs of success. He visited the project to find out how it will work, how much it will cost and whether it really has potential to improve the fate of the Arctic’s ice</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/16/arctic-sea-ice-rethickening-climate-geoengineering">‘At first, the idea does sound crazy’: meet the scientists trying to refreeze the Arctic</a></strong></p><p>Support the Guardian: <a href="http://theguardian.com/sciencepod">theguardian.com/sciencepod</a></p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2026/jun/18/inside-the-audacious-plan-to-refreeze-the-arctic-podcast">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Wessex Archaeology suspect they have uncovered a prototype for world-famous Stonehenge site in Wiltshire</p><p>A 5,000-year-old monument that was aligned with the summer and winter solstices and may have served as a prototype for the later solar alignment at Stonehenge has been discovered close to the famous neolithic site, in what archaeologists have described as a “once in a lifetime” find.</p><p>The structure at Bulford, 5km (3 miles) from the world heritage site in Wiltshire, has been carbon dated to around 3000BC, the same time as the earliest phase of construction at Stonehenge and 500 years before its huge trilithon stones were carefully placed to line up with the midsummer and midwinter sun.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/18/solstice-aligned-monument-archaeology-wiltshire-stonehenge-prototype">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Study reveals positive news, but experts say deaths and cases may rise again as fewer teenagers get vaccinated</p><p>Women who received an HPV vaccine in early adolescence have virtually zero risk of dying from cervical cancer before the age of 30, according to a groundbreaking study, but falling vaccination rates could see a rise in avoidable deaths.</p><p>Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, according to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/world-health-organization">World Health Organization</a>, and high-risk human papillomaviruses (HPV) cause <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/cervical-cancer#tab=tab_1">99% of cases</a>. About 3,300 women in England are diagnosed with the disease every year.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/17/hpv-jabs-reduce-risk-dying-cervical-cancer-before-30-zero-study-finds">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Rouser Lab says the steel structure will record ‘every step’ humanity takes towards climate catastrophe</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2026/jun/18/australia-news-live-non-stop-sydney-london-flights-qantas-one-nation-pauline-hanson-labor-anthony-albanese-economy-cost-of-living-ntwnfb">Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates</a></p></li><li><p>Get our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/email-newsletters?CMP=cvau_sfl">breaking news email</a>, <a href="https://app.adjust.com/w4u7jx3">free app</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/series/full-story?CMP=cvau_sfl">daily news podcast</a></p></li></ul><p>It was designed to survive the apocalypse, as humanity’s last testament to its failure. But for a while it seemed the “Earth’s Black Box” hadn’t even survived its own planning process.</p><p>Now, five years after it was announced to much fanfare, followed by years of ominous silence, the box is back. Its creators say parts assembly is under way and, in December, the full monolith will be installed near Queenstown on the edge of a remote western Tasmanian airfield.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/18/earth-black-box-climate-apocalypse-tasmania-australia">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Discovery in Siberia suggests bacterium from raw marmots devastated hunter-gatherer tribes about 5,500 years ago</p><p>The earliest evidence for an outbreak of plague has been uncovered at late stone age cemeteries in south-eastern Siberia where dozens of hunter-gatherers and their children were buried.</p><p>Ancient DNA collected from the remains suggests the disease tore through the sparse communities in devastating waves that began about 5,500 years ago, at least two centuries after the bacterium responsible, <em>Yersinia pestis</em>, first emerged.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/17/ancient-dna-evidence-earliest-known-plague-outbreak">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Researchers also discover bees can adjust their diets when pollen sources do not provide healthy level of nutrients</p><p>Honeybees blend a special “baby food” to give their larvae a balanced diet, with adult bees also able to regulate their feeding to avoid overconsuming certain nutrients, according to a study.</p><p>Researchers have discovered that bees can adjust how much they eat when pollen sources do not provide them with the ideal balance of essential amino acids, the essential building blocks of protein that animals cannot make for themselves and must obtain from their diet.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/17/honeybees-blend-food-pollen-larvae-balanced-diet-study">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Spielberg’s sci-fi blockbuster starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor may be spectacular, but it misjudges how much abuse of groups we see as ‘other’ humans are prepared to tolerate</p><p>Steven Spielberg has converted his longstanding fascination with the possible existence of aliens into considerable commercial and critical success and now, 49 years after Close Encounters and 44 after ET, the film-maker has returned to the subject for the sci-fi spectacular Disclosure Day.</p><p>The film follows cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) as they become state-secret whistleblowers, working with Hugo (Colman Domingo) to expose nearly eight decades’ worth of evidence that the US government has known about extraterrestrial life.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/17/disclosure-day-aliens-spielberg-emily-blunt-and-josh-o-connor">Continue reading...</a>

<p>Minnie the Minx and Macbeth feature in National Library’s exploration of how rainfall has shaped Scottish science, literature, history and identity</p><p>It seems fitting that, 250 years ago, one of Scotland’s foremost scientists took a close interest in what is arguably the country’s most famous feature: rain</p><p>James Hutton, celebrated by Scots as the father of modern geology, went so far as to write a formula for “a theory of rain”. In 1784, he sketched out the key principles for the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsnr/article/79/1/20240030/116637/James-Hutton-and-the-measurement-of-atmospheric">“condensation of aqueous vapour contained in the air”</a>.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/17/rain-exhibition-national-library-scotland">Continue reading...</a>