New Scientist Australian Edition 28 January 2023

Tour Darwin’s Galapagos: Ecuador Follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin on a tour of the central and southern Galapagos Islands. Travelling by luxury yacht and accompanied by marine conservationist Jo Ruxton, you will have ample opportunity for wildlife spotting while also learning about initiatives to preserve the islands’ biodiversity. The 10-day tour begins on 11 July and costs £6999. newscientist.com/tours Virtual event Secrets of the Large Hadron Collider Join particle physicist Clara Nellist, part of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, for a deep dive into the past, present and future of the largest particle collider ever built. Find out how the LHC expands our knowledge of the universe and learn what it is like to work on one of the world’s greatest physics experiments. Catch it on 7 February at 6pm GMT/1pm EST. Tickets…

Tour Darwin’s Galapagos: Ecuador Follow in the footsteps of Charles Darwin on a tour of the central and southern Galapagos Islands. Travelling by luxury yacht and accompanied by marine conservationist Jo Ruxton, you will have ample opportunity for wildlife spotting while also learning about initiatives to preserve the islands’ biodiversity. The 10-day tour begins on 11 July and costs £6999. newscientist.com/tours Virtual event Secrets of the Large Hadron Collider Join particle physicist Clara Nellist, part of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, for a deep dive into the past, present and future of the largest particle collider ever built. Find out how the LHC expands our knowledge of the universe and learn what it is like to work on one of the world’s greatest physics experiments. Catch it on 7…

WHAT do endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome, perimenopause and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have in common? They are all hormonal conditions that affect millions, but are poorly understood and managed due to a chronic lack of research funding. At first glance, the characteristic they share is that they are problems that affect the female body. But not all female-dominated health conditions are neglected: breast cancer gets more funding than prostate cancer in the UK and US, for instance. Hormonal conditions are often overlooked because their symptoms are dismissed as minor – a bit of acne, cramping or hot flushes – whereas the deadliness of cancer scares us into action. However, as we explore in our feature on page 42, these symptoms can have profound effects on quality of life: the unpredictable periods, weight gain and…

RESEARCHERS in Antarctica have found a meteorite weighing in at 7.6 kilograms, making it one of the largest ever seen on the continent. Antarctica is one of the best places to find meteorites: its dry, cold weather preserves them, while a uniform white background makes them easy to spot and active glaciers churn up any ancient ones buried beneath the ice. In the past hundred years, more than 45,000 have been found there, most of which have been micrometeorites, which range from tens to hundreds of grams. Maria Schönbächler at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and her colleagues discovered five new meteorites during an expedition near the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research station last month. The team combed through satellite imagery using a machine learning model and identified five icy regions that were relatively…

WHAT do endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome, perimenopause and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have in common? They are all hormonal conditions that affect millions, but are poorly understood and managed due to a chronic lack of research funding. At first glance, the characteristic they share is that they are problems that affect the female body. But not all female-dominated health conditions are neglected: breast cancer gets more funding than prostate cancer in the UK and US, for instance. Hormonal conditions are often overlooked because their symptoms are dismissed as minor – a bit of acne, cramping or hot flushes – whereas the deadliness of cancer scares us into action. However, as we explore in our feature on page 42, these symptoms can have profound effects on quality of life: the unpredictable periods,…

THE solid inner core of our planet may be slowing its rotation and getting ready to switch spin directions relative to the rest of the planet. This seems to be part of a cycle lasting about 60 years in which the core periodically speeds up and slows back down again. Beneath Earth’s mantle is a churning layer of mostly molten iron and nickel, with a dense inner core of iron kept solid by the intense pressure at the centre of the planet. The movement of the inner core relative to the mantle and surface has been under debate for decades, and measurements of earthquakes are now helping researchers to understand it better. Yi Yang and Xiaodong Song at Peking University in China and their colleagues analysed the seismic waves from near-identical earthquakes…