What the image of the Milky Way’s black hole really shows
By Katie McCormick The massive object at the galaxy’s center is invisible. But this year’s picture of the swirling plasma around its edges will help to reveal more about the galaxy’s history and evolution. Read more
How to make corn more like cactus
By Kurt Kleiner It’s an agricultural moonshot: Scientists hope to increase plant yields by hacking photosynthesis, the process that powers life on Earth Read more
Europe should shape the clean fuel market now
By Benjamin Görlach and Michael Jakob OPINION: For the world to hit its climate goals, the European Union needs to take the lead, ditch coal and write the rule book for green hydrogen Read more
From the archives
In a report released last week as part of the COP27 climate conference, the United Nations warns that many of the climate pledges by companies and cities are exaggerated or just plain bogus, Gloria Dickie and Simon Jessop write for Reuters. New recommendations laid out in the report are meant to help sort out the good faith efforts from the bad. From our stories, learn more about the challenge of counting carbon emissions and how cities are grappling with the dangers of climate-related flooding and intense heat.
The tricky task of tallying carbon
By Adam Levy To slow or stop global warming, the world agrees it must cut carbon dioxide emissions. But monitoring each nation’s output of greenhouse gases is not always straightforward. Read more
What we’re reading
Up in arms
Tyrannosaurus rex was an impressive creature and its fearsome jaws and size have earned it a place in our dreams and on our silver screens. But from the get-go, everyone’s been curious: What’s the deal with those stubby little arms? For BBC Future, Zaria Gorvett explores the many, varied and sometimes surprising explanations for the tyrant king’s little limbs. Were they used for courtship? Push-ups? Is it possible that the species might eventually have lost them altogether?
Beware the rocket barons
For ardent Star Trek fans, the vision of a Captain Kirk boldly going to space at age 90 might delight — but for many scientists and science enthusiasts, the stunt that took actor William Shatner aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket also stoked unease. Billionaire space capitalists, writes Philip Ball for Open Mind magazine, “look out into the cosmic expanse and see another frontier for business expansion, ripe for profit-making colonies, mining operations, and satellite swarms.” Ball parses the arguments for and against the efforts of space barons like Bezos and Elon Musk, and encourages introspection: “Ask yourself,” he writes, “whether they are the best people to take us up there.”
A package deal
Genes are independent units of information in DNA that get mixed and matched during sexual reproduction. But certain large chunks of the genome can be passed around intact — no mixing — as a unit called a “supergene.” Such groups of genes explain why some species inherit a suite of seemingly disparate traits, such as ones dictating color, toxicity and more. Found in butterflies, sunflowers and probably people, supergenes may help species quickly adapt to new environments, Carrie Arnold writes for Quanta Magazine. But the packages can tally up harmful mutations with surprising speed, too.
Art & science
CREDIT: BERKSHIRE COMMUNITY COLLEGE BIOSCIENCE IMAGE LIBRARY
Smooth operator
This arc of what looks to be a soft and sweet tropical fruit is the last thing you’d find in the produce aisle. It’s hyaline cartilage, the stuff of the pearly caps on the ends of our bones. Packed with collagen and often lacking blood vessels, the tissue lets both halves of a joint slip and slide past each other. The elastic material also makes up large portions of the skeleton of newborn infants. As the baby grows, more of the skeleton turns to bone.
Several close-up photos of this pudding-like material sit in the Berkshire Community College Bioscience Image Library, an online repository of the western Massachusetts college where you can find captivating, magnified images of all kinds of animal and plant cells. The database provides students, educators and the public with hundreds of close-up images and videos at a range of magnifications. A spin through the library is a delight and might teach you something new about how the natural world works — or carry you back to high school science lab.
