Table of contents for Summer 2025 in BBC Science Focus Magazine

LENA DELTA RESERVE, RUSSIA This is what Russia looks like from above. Well, part of it. Specifically, the Lena Delta Nature Reserve on the northern edge of Siberia. And while it may look like an artwork created by marbling, it’s actually an image, captured by NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite, which was retired in June. Landsat 7’s mission was to monitor Earth’s land, surface waters and coastlines to track changes and supply data to climate scientists. Praised as the most accurately calibrated Earth-observing satellite when it launched in April 1999, it spent the next 26 years capturing images of Earth, like this one, using a multispectral scanning radiometer, known as the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instrument. During the approximately 9,000 days it spent circling our planet, Landsat 7 took over…

Researchers have discovered that endangered killer whales in the Pacific Northwest use tools made from kelp to groom one another – a behaviour never before seen in marine mammals. In a new study published in Current Biology, scientists observed southern resident killer whales manufacturing tools by tearing off pieces of bull kelp and rolling them between their bodies during social interactions. Drone footage captured whales pressing the kelp against their companions and using it to scrub off dead skin cells during prolonged grooming sessions. “What I find most remarkable is that despite this apparently being a common behaviour – we see it most days we fly our drone over these whales – it hadn’t yet been discovered in this population, despite nearly 50 years of dedicated observation,” said lead author…

In a remote mountain range in Chile, a newly unveiled observatory will soon begin mapping the sky. When its survey starts, the Vera C Rubin Observatory will spend every night for the next decade charting the cosmos. And it’ll do so at speed – covering the full southern hemisphere sky every few nights by photographing a different part of the heavens with each shot. Attached to the telescope housed within the observatory is a 3,200-megapixel camera (the world’s largest). It’s set to capture a total of 20 billion galaxies and another 20 billion stars to create an ultra-high-definition timelapse of the changing cosmos. The wealth of data it collects could help scientists unravel some of the Universe’s remaining mysteries. Charting the changing distribution of celestial bodies between each cycle of…

The actor Orlando Bloom recently made headlines when he reportedly paid £10,000 ($13,600) to have his blood removed so that any microplastics in it could be separated and filtered out. His decision to pay for this drastic treatment highlights the growing worry over an unsettling truth: there’s simply no avoiding these minuscule particles of plastic. They’re everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the inside of our brains, according to some studies. They’re also all over the media and, understandably, the perceived danger of having microscopic flakes of plastic floating around inside us has raised public and scientific concern. Microplastics are often linked to disease, but the testing for them and their effects is still at an early stage and no scientific consensus has been reached. So should we…

BBC TWO Watch the five-part series Human on BBC Two and catch-up with all episodes on BBC iPlayer It all used to be so simple. The story of how we – that is Homo sapiens, today’s humans – emerged from Africa and spread across what’s become Europe and Asia was a neat, straightforward narrative. It began around 50,000 years ago when our brains experienced a lightbulb moment of advancing cognition and creativity, stimulating our ancestors to journey beyond our cradle continent. When they reached Eurasia, around 40–30,000 years ago, they encountered another group of humans, a distinct type we now refer to as Neanderthals. Shortly after that, the Neanderthals disappeared and we, H. sapiens, stood alone in their place, monarchs of a planet devoid of competitors. This ‘Out of Africa’ story allowed…

TOP TIPS FOR OBSERVING PERSEIDS UNDER MOONLIGHT ● Use a comfortable platform like a recliner ● Hide the Moon from view behind a fence or building ● Avoid looking at bright lights (phone screens, for example) ● Look at areas of sky away from the Moon ● Look approximately two-thirds up the sky ● Meteor rates naturally increase after 1am BST ● Best nights are likely to be 9–15 August ● 12–13 August is the predicted peak night ● Be patient, under moonlight rates will appear to be significantly reduced Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through the fine dust debris strewn around the orbit of a comet. This happens when Earth is in a similar position in its orbit every year, and meteor showers repeat on an annual basis.…

In 2026, a team of astronauts will float inside a glossy white cylinder orbiting hundreds of kilometres above Earth. But this won’t be the International Space Station (ISS). It’ll be Haven-1 – the world’s first commercial space station, built by a private aerospace company called Vast. Expected to launch in May 2026 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, Haven-1 represents a radical shift in the way people will live and work in space. “If we’re able to do this before we win the NASA contract [to replace the ISS] using our own funding, we’ll be not only the world’s first commercial space station, but the only one of the expected bidders to have done that,” Vast’s CEO Max Haot told BBC Science Focus. KEEPING THINGS SIMPLE Vast’s approach is fast, focused…

In recent years, there has been a huge surge of interest in the link between our hearing and our chances of getting dementia. Stories in the press have suggested that up to a third of dementia cases may be caused by hearing problems. TV doctors are telling viewers that having a hearing test can help prevent the syndrome, while adverts for hearing aids are claiming the devices can slow cognitive decline. But, as so often is the case, the relationship between our hearing and our brain health is complex. And while there are clear benefits to treating hearing loss, the evidence that hearing aids can prevent dementia isn’t quite what it seems. FINDING A CONNECTION Studies linking the decline or loss of senses to poorer cognitive ability date back to…

BBC FOUR WATCH The Sky at Night on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer by DR GEORGE DRANSFIELD George is an exoplanet huntress at the University of Oxford and a presenter on The Sky at Night. Isn’t it amazing that astronomy – humanity’s oldest science – continues to generate such a delightful amount of new knowledge? Seeing as we’ve been studying the motion of the stars for a good long while, you’d be forgiven for thinking that, by now, we would be long past the point of saying “Astronomy? Completed it, mate.” Fortunately, the Universe is vast and unknowable. However big our telescope mirrors and however sensitive our detectors, there will always be some light that’s too faint to see and signals that are too weak to detect. This is good; for…

PENCILS AT THE READY! ACROSS 1 Persist at some length as a harridan (6) 5 Graduate with this vowel-less subject (5) 9 Room next to first musician (7) 10 Nonsense without last spin (5) 11 Swagger, revealing a bit of reinforcement (5) 12 Required former pupil to glide about (7) 13 Wept about former queen getting tin mixture (6) 15 The first mistake causes fear (6) 18 Pass glee off in university (7) 20 Chairs, as set out (5) 23 Charitable types getting rid of new openings (5) 24 Strange about fellow, in trouble, getting metal (7) 25 Learn layout of the kidneys (5) 26 Evergreen, heartless talk (6) DOWN 2 It makes a straight line for the sovereign (5) 3 Girls worried about the first additive - you can’t…

Take a look at the image on the page here. Weird, right? It looks like the pattern is rotating, especially when it’s in your peripheral vision, or when your eyes make tiny movements over the picture. Now look again, and this time try to steady your gaze. Fix your vision at a set point and try not to move your eyes. Two things will happen: the illusion should stop moving and, when it does, you’ll have successfully completed your first session of ‘quiet eye’ training. Congratulations! You may be wondering what the point of that exercise was. Well, quiet eye training is a potent, fast-track way to improve different motor skills. Sportspeople, surgeons, soldiers and pilots all use it to hone their abilities. It works by exploiting the way people…

CAMBRIDGE, UK This is a brain. It may not be immediately recognisable as such – it’s far from the pink and wrinkly blob most of us are used to seeing – but it’s a brain nonetheless. This colourful and oddly shaped brain belongs to a postman butterfly (Heliconius melpomene). Well… technically, it’ll soon belong to a postman butterfly, because this image shows the brain of a caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis into its adult, butterfly form. Needless to say, it’s not lifesize – the actual width of this image is a minuscule 0.9mm (0.03in). During metamorphosis, new neurones are produced in the brain, through a process called neurogenesis. Neurogenesis occurs in many species during development and adulthood, and studying it can provide valuable insights into how the nervous system is formed. Disruptions…

“While the science on this is clear, the politics is anything but. Governments around the globe are spending more and more on defence” A new study has revealed the astronomical scale of the US military’s carbon footprint – and how relatively modest budget cuts could significantly reduce it. Published in the journal PLOS Climate, the research found that US Department of Defense (DoD) spending is tightly linked to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing military expenditure, the authors argue, could yield dramatic benefits for the planet. The US military is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any institution on Earth, generating an estimated 636 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent (a standardised measure of greenhouse gas emissions) between 2010 and 2019. If the US military were a country,…

Around 100 million years ago, on a tidal flat near what is now the city of Denver in Colorado, US, dinosaurs may have gathered to dance. According to a new study published in Cretaceous Research, new findings suggest that dozens of mysterious scrape marks preserved in stone at Colorado’s famed Dinosaur Ridge represent one of the largest-known dinosaur mating display arenas – or leks – ever discovered. “Leks (or ‘courtship arenas’) are areas where a number of individuals congregate to participate in courtship display behaviours to attract potential mates,” Dr Caldwell Buntin, lead author of the study, told BBC Science Focus. Many modern birds (the descendants of dinosaurs), including knots and plovers, exhibit such behaviours, Buntin said. The idea that dinosaurs performed such rituals was first proposed by palaeontologist Dr Martin…

New research suggests that the fats in olive oil may lead to greater weight gain than those from other sources. The study, published in Cell Reports, found that the main fatty component in olive oil, known as oleic acid, may promote the growth of new fat cells. Oleic acid is a type of monounsaturated fat, sometimes called omega-9. A major source of oleic acid is olive oil, but the fatty acid is also found in other oils – including rapeseed (canola) oil and sunflower oil – as well as foods such as nuts, meats, cheese, eggs and avocado. “You can think of the fat cells as an army,” said study co-author Dr Michael Rudolph, assistant professor of biochemistry and physiology at the University of Oklahoma, in the US. “When you…

From hot dogs to crispy bacon, American food favourites could be made of gene-edited meat as early as 2026. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the farming of a specific kind of genetically enhanced pig, and regulators around the world may not be far behind. Should we be worried? Will the pork be safe to eat? And how ethical is it to create these pigs? The first thing you need to know is that not every gene-edited animal will be directly spawned from a lab. Rather, such livestock are bred from animals whose DNA has been edited – often when they were at the stage of being a single-cell or fertilised egg – to give them beneficial traits. The second thing to know is that this gene…

Small but mighty If you’ve ever wondered what makes restaurant food so juicy, it’s likely to be steam cooking. Steam ovens are common in pro kitchens because they cook food quickly without drying it out. Steam carries more heat energy than dry air and as it condenses on the food, it releases this energy directly onto the surface, cooking food faster and more evenly. Smeg has built a steam cooker into a combi oven and made the whole thing small enough to sit on top of a counter. Inside, a water tank connects to a boiler system. Choose the steam function, and the boiler heats the water and releases steam into its 30-litre cooking chamber. You can also combine steam with fan heat for crispy roast joints, potatoes or bread,…

The idea that eating less might make us live longer has been around for thousands of years. Even Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek physician, argued that, “When a patient is fed too richly, the disease is fed as well. Any excess is against nature.” Scientists have now spent decades testing whether his advice holds true. The first striking evidence came in the 1930s, when American nutritionist Dr Clive McCay found that rats fed a restricted diet lived almost twice as long as those who were allowed to eat what they liked. And they weren’t struggling on, too hungry to muster the energy to die. These rats were, in fact, healthier in their old age, with better-looking lungs and kidneys and no cancer (until the rats’ food supply was increased again right…