Table of contents for May 2026 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

VAVA‘U, TONGA This image of Mãhina, an all-white humpback whale, won the 2026 World Nature Photographer of the Year competition. Seen here swimming with her mother, two-year-old Mãhina is a true rarity – only 1 in 40,000 humpback whales are born with this lack of colouration. The cause of her ghostly complexion is a topic of debate among scientists: it could be either albinism or leucism. Albinism is a genetic mutation that prevents the production of melanin, the pigment that colours the skin, hair and eyes in mammals. But Mãhina's eyes are black, not the red typically seen in albino animals, prompting many scientists to argue in favour of leucism – a partial lack of pigment. But it's not as clear-cut as that, as Migaloo, another famous white humpback whale,…

“Fluctuations in temperature are known to have massive impacts on the global economy” C ompared to every other country in the world, the US is bearing the biggest brunt of the economic losses inflicted by climate breakdown – and will likely continue to do so. That's according to a recent study from Stanford University, in which scientists calculated the economic damage caused by major fossil fuel emitters. Lead author Marshall Burke, professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford, told BBC Science Focus that the study aimed to find a way to link specific emissions to their economic consequences. “This ‘loss and damage’ is a part of climate change that we don't like to talk about,” he said. “The global community had been discussing it for years, but resisted formally defining…

A 74-million-year-old leg bone from a fossil bed in New Mexico could be an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, suggests a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The find adds weight to the theory that T. rex’s lineage originated in what is now the American Southwest, rather than migrating from Asia, and suggests the group was evolving into giants far earlier than previously thought. The shinbone – discovered in New Mexico and dating to the late Campanian – measures 96cm (3.1ft) in length, roughly 84 per cent the size of the tibia belonging to ‘Sue’, the largest known T. rex specimen. Based on its dimensions, the researchers estimate the animal weighed approximately 4,700kg (10,400lbs), making it the largest tyrannosaur from this period. According to the researchers, there are…

When so much of modern life relies on being connected, dealing with slow Wi-Fi can be infuriating. Films buffer, games lag and smart home systems become unusable. It's no wonder that every new iteration of wireless technology promises to make those frustrations disappear. Wi-Fi 7 is the latest wireless standard to do just that, making some incredible claims – chief among them, its headline speeds of “up to 46 gigabits per second (Gbps)”. That's almost five times the 9.6Gbps maximum speeds of Wi-Fi 6/6E, and would be enough to download an entire 4K film in about eight seconds. The problem is that most homes won't see anything that comes remotely close to that. In real-world testing, speeds are far lower – often in the hundreds of megabits per second (Mbps)…

Corneal diseases rob millions of people of their sight each year. The damage that diseases such as keratoconus, keratitis and corneal dystrophy do to people's eyes is a frequent cause of blindness worldwide. But it's reversible. A corneal transplant can restore sight in anyone fortunate enough to receive one. The trouble is, only a tiny fraction of the 12 million people around the world in need of a corneal transplant have any real hope of getting their sight back. There are various reasons for that, including a shortage of donor tissue (corneas, the transparent protective domes at the front of the eyes, must be harvested within 24 hours of a potential donor's death); a risk of rejection (as with any transplant); and complications such as limbal stem cell deficiency, which…

Given that life on Earth operates in a certain chirality, some mirror-image organisms might struggle to break down many of the compounds produced by other organisms. They would, in effect, be primed to feed off chemicals of the opposite chirality to those produced by living organisms. Likewise, by the breakdown of organic matter, which would be in extremely short supply. But many generalist bacteria, such as E. coli, are able to metabolise a range of non-chiral compounds – chemicals that don't have ‘leftand right-handed’ enantiomers. Other bacteria, known as autotrophs, are able to create energy from extremely simple non-chiral chemicals like carbon dioxide, sulphur or nitrogen. Mirror versions of such bacteria would therefore not be limited by a lack of nutrients if unleashed into the environment. Even if mirror bacteria…

Weight-loss jabs. Scan social media, turn on the news, tune in to chat shows and everyone, it seems, is talking about them. Mounjaro, Ozempic and Wegovy have become household names, as famous as the celebrities transformed by them. Hailed as revolutionary, these so-called ‘miracle drugs’ have helped millions lose excess pounds, and their popularity is growing. And the hype isn't empty. They're genuinely changing how we lose weight. Until recently, shedding a significant amount of body fat was hard. Really hard. It demanded relentless discipline, constant hunger and a high chance of failure. Now, for many people, that equation has flipped. With GLP-1 drugs, users can lose up to 20 per cent of their body weight in 16 months, without the white-knuckle battle of traditional dieting. It's little wonder that,…

LAKE MICHIGAN, ILLINOIS No, your eyes aren't deceiving you – this odd-looking sculpture is moving. Running, in fact. That's because it's actually a robot, well, robots. ‘Legged metamachines’, as they're officially known, are made of spherical modules, each containing a motor, battery and computer, and a pair of arms. On their own, each module can roll, turn and jump. But when linked together, they can walk, run and right themselves when flipped over. They can even figure out new ways of moving should they lose one or more of their limbs – if a researcher lops one off to test the machines’ adaptability, for instance. “They can recover easily from major injuries that would be fatal to every other robot,” is how the researchers who built the machines put it.…

Long-term cryosleep and reawakening may no longer be completely in the realm of science fiction, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. A team of researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) and the University Hospital Erlangen, both in Germany, succeeded in freezing brain tissue from mice and then restoring function once thawed. While only a small portion of brain tissue was revived, the neurons were able to share electrical signals and even maintained the complex processes required for memory and learning. “Before doing the experiment, I wasn't convinced this would work,” Dr Alexander German, a researcher at the University Hospital Erlangen and one of the team behind the study, told BBC Science Focus. “The public takeaway should probably shift from [this being] pure science fiction to…

T he difficult people in your life could accelerate your ageing -and even your chances of death, according to a new study. Why? So-called ‘hasslers’ make your life more stressful rather than supporting you, and chronic stress is a key driver of biological ageing. That's because it can cause inflammation, which can compromise your immune system and raise your risk of cardiovascular disease (which causes heart attacks). “What was most striking was that negative social ties were linked not just to self-reported stress or mental health, but to molecular measures of biological ageing,” Dr Byungkyu Lee, assistant professor of sociology and study author from New York University, told BBC Science Focus. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), analysed the biological ages and…

A stronomers have discovered a strange new world just 35 light-years from Earth -one permanently covered in a vast ocean of molten rock. The exoplanet, known as L 98-59 d, defies existing models of planetary formation and may represent an entirely new class of planet, according to a study published in Nature Astronomy. The findings follow observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other ground-based observatories, which had flagged some unusual characteristics. Most notably, the planet, which is 1.6 times the size of Earth, had a very low density and contained a large amount of hydrogen sulphide in its atmosphere. This placed L 98-59 d outside normal categorisation for a planet of its size. Typically, such planets are either designated as rocky ‘gasdwarfs’ with a hydrogen atmosphere or…

A new portal is allowing scientists and doctors – and anyone curious enough – to explore intact human organs in unprecedented detail. The Human Organ Atlas (HOA) enables anyone to examine organs from the macro scale (the organ as a whole) right down to the microscopic level (the individual cells within it). The HOA currently hosts 307 three-dimensional datasets spanning 56 organs from 25 donors, covering everything from the brain and heart to the placenta and prostate. Crucially, the information in the new atlas can be explored by anyone, through a standard web browser. The implications of the atlas could be significant for medicine. In the brain, the data is already being used to improve the surgical placement of deep brain stimulation electrodes. “This is the only database that I…

Chuck Collins was always acutely aware of how money can distort a person's perspective on the world. Growing up as a direct descendant of the business magnate Oscar F Mayer, a figure who made a fortune in the meat-processing industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, money's distorting effects were unavoidable. “Extreme wealth is a disconnection drug,” says Collins, now in his early sixties. “It separates you from a world of reciprocity, of connection, of vulnerability, which I think is part of the human experience.” As an heir to the Mayer fortune, Collins became familiar from a young age with the shadowy web of advisers and managers who assist the ultra-rich in preserving and increasing their wealth. He describes this as an industry that, whether through investments or…

The black serval (Leptailurus serval) is an unusual, melanistic version of the African serval, a medium-sized wild cat that's native to Africa. Regular servals are stunning; leggy like a supermodel, spotted like a cheetah, with a long neck and oversized ears. Black servals take this elegance to new heights. They owe their unique colouration to an as-yet-unidentified blip in their genetic code, which affects their pigment-producing cells. Black servals have jet black coats, sometimes with faint ‘ghost’ spots. They cut a striking silhouette. Servals have the longest legs relative to the body size of any cat. Standing at around half a metre tall (1.6ft), they can run at speeds of 40 miles per hour (64km/h) and leap up to 3m (9.8ft) high. This comes in handy when chasing down the…

The greatest names in science are often said to be ‘big-brained’, but this cosmic wonder puts them all to shame. Nebula PMR 1 – otherwise known as the ‘Exposed Cranium’ nebula for its distinctive shape – measures around 3.2 light-years across. Although we've known about PMR 1 for nearly 30 years, this image, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), offers the clearest view of it yet. And it's offering up new clues about how the nebula formed, but also what might happen to it in the future. Splitting the stunning golden-orange glow of the two cosmic dust clouds is a dark central lane. Scientists think that hidden in the centre is a star nearing the end of its life, rapidly losing mass and spewing out jets…

When hibernating animals, such as hedgehogs and dormice, disappear for winter, they don't freeze like the Siberian salamander. Instead, their body temperatures drop and their metabolisms slow to a crawl, and rather than eating food, they burn fat reserves to stay alive. Such states are known as ‘torpor’. Hibernation is simply a prolonged version of this, lasting weeks or months. Hummingbirds, for example, enter a state of torpor most nights when it's cold, dropping the rate of their metabolisms by 95 per cent. Meanwhile, bears go into states of torpor for months over winter. Importantly, this is not a form of sleep. In fact, animals emerging from torpor usually go into a deep sleep, suggesting they may have been sleep deprived during their torpor. Humans (obviously) don't enter torpor naturally.…

Venus has been slowly moving away from the Sun's glare over the past few weeks, heading into the evening twilight after sunset. As we approach the June solstice on 21 June, however, the nights are getting shorter and lighter. Although this makes it a little harder to see planets after sunset, it's worth keeping an eye out for Venus because it's heading for an encounter with Jupiter. At the start of May, Jupiter is at 30° altitude, which is around one-third up the sky. Looking due west at around 10:30pm BST, it's the brightest ‘starlike’ object visible in this direction. Venus will be located close to the horizon at this time, so it pays to try and pick it up a little earlier. As May progresses, Jupiter's altitude slowly degrades.…

PENCILS AT THE READY! ACROSS 1 Man finding resin inside seed (6) 4 Bores about dresses (5) 8 Performed like new cadet (5) 9 Told to be part of the family (7) 10 Time and determination to get material (5) 12 New bull promises to be deadly (7) 13 Security is equal to incendiary devices (6,7) 15 Discusses trees lacking iodine (7) 17 Reportedly canvasses Europeans (5) 19 Destiny brings equipment in for ship (7) 20 Room around receptacle (5) 22 City guides, by the sound of it (5) 23 Grand, large awards are spheres (6) DOWN 1 Left direction to a minimum (5) 2 Tug back the stomach (3) 3 Scandalous allegations on apartment seen at low tide (3,4) 4 Temper forced earl to get cross (5) 5 Alter…

Have you ever caught a whiff of plasticine and been transported back to your first days of school? Or noticed a passing stranger's perfume only to get an instant reminder of a long-lost love? If you have, then you don't need telling of the link between smell and memory. Neuroscientists have known for the better part of a century that our olfactory system has direct connections to regions of the brain responsible for memory and emotion, like the hippocampus and amygdala. When we take a sniff, odour receptors in our noses bind with odour molecules – from that plasticine, for example – and brain cells known as olfactory sensing neurons send electrical signals to different parts of the brain. It all happens in milliseconds. “These are very direct connections between…