This week’s science news has been filled with medical breakthroughs, including the first-ever pig-to-human lung transplant into a brain-dead person.
The experiment, which took place in Guangzhou, China, kept the lungs alive and working for nine days, despite showing signs of rejection early on in the procedure. The researchers behind the study say that their work “paves the way for further innovations in the field,” although questions remain about how successful such a procedure could be for a living patient removed from a life support machine.
Elsewhere, another study has found a potential route to laser-free vision treatment by zapping the eye’s surface into a new shape using an electrical current. And researchers also found a link between gum disease and cardiovascular disease, with treatment reducing the narrowing of the carotid artery in otherwise healthy individuals.
Starship nails test flight
If at first your gigantic rocket explodes… explode it again and again until you succeed. That’s been SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn fast” ethos since it began development of its Falcon 9 rocket 20 years ago, and it finally paid off for its largest rocket, Starship, as it nailed a successful test flight this week.
The 10th test flight marks a comeback for the company after a string of explosive failures, some of which littered the Caribbean with debris. It came just in time for the company, and for NASA too — the rocket, the largest ever built, is key to ambitions to transport crewmembers, spacecraft, satellites and cargo into orbit around Earth, with a moon mission planned as early as 2027.
Discover more space news
— James Webb telescope images reveal there’s something strange with interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
— ‘Potentially hazardous’ asteroid Bennu contains dust older than the solar system itself — and traces of interstellar space
— NASA reveals the dwarf planet Ceres had a hidden ‘energy source’ that may have sparked alien life
Life’s Little Mysteries
Cheetahs, marlins, peregrine falcons — fast animals get all the fame. But what about the slowest animals? And how do they survive in the wild while moving, literally, at a snail’s pace? Here’s our investigation into how Earth’s most unhurried animals live life in the slow lane.
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Strange science
Scientists have created a flexible, machine-washable fiber that can perform computing tasks. In theory, that means they could one day weave them together to form a “fiber computing network” made up of smart textiles.
These fibers have historically had limited computing ability, and scientists weren’t able to embed multiple types of electronic components into them.
The new material weaves eight devices into a single fiber strand, including a photodetector, a temperature sensor, an accelerometer and a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor, which measures changes in light absorption by the skin. The material is also elastic, which makes it practical for clothing applications, the researchers say.
Also in science news this week
— Keratin extracted from sheep’s wool repairs teeth in breakthrough
— ‘This technology is possible today’: Nuclear waste could be future power source and increase access to a rare fuel
— New brain implant can decode a person’s ‘inner monologue’
— Mystery quake that rocked Northern California in 1954 came from ‘eerily quiet’ Cascadia Subduction Zone
Beyond the headlines
There’s the number of candles you blow out on your birthday cake, and then there’s your “biological age,” a measure of how much your biological systems have broken down over time. In other words, how well do your cells, organs and body systems work compared to a typical, healthy 40-year-old?
A number of scientists have touted their ability to measure this biological age with “aging clocks.” These clocks often work by using AI to glean patterns from hundreds of biomarkers, or indirect measures of health, taken from large groups of people. They then compare a person’s biomarkers against this aggregate group to pin down the biological age.
But can they really predict disease, and are the results reliable for commercial use?
Something for the weekend
If you’re looking for something to do over the weekend, here are some of the best polls, book interviews and crosswords published this week.
—Live Science crossword puzzle #7: NASA mission that redirected an asteroid — 8 across [Crossword]
— Do you trust AI? [Poll]
— ‘I would never let a robot incubate my child’: Poll on ‘pregnancy robots’ divides Live Science readers [Poll results]
Science in pictures
A sneak peek of the shortlisted 2025 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition entries was released this week, featuring a heartbreaking shot of a sloth clinging to a wooden post, a lioness staring down a cobra, an ethereal jellyfish swarm, and clouds reflected in salt ponds in San Francisco Bay.
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