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èƵ Live 2023

EVROS, GREECE - AUGUST 31: A firefighters runs as wildfire intensifies in the village of Sidiro and Yannuli in Evros, Greece on August 31, 2023. Efforts to extinguish wildfire continues. (Photo by Ayhan Mehmet/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Environment

Why 2023 was almost certainly the hottest year ever recorded

Greenhouse gas levels and the arrival of the El Niño weather pattern pushed the world’s climate into “uncharted territory” in 2023

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Wolf-Rayet stars are known to be efficient dust producers, and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on NASA?s James Webb Space Telescope shows this to great effect. Cooler cosmic dust glows at the longer mid-infrared wavelengths, displaying the structure of WR 124?s nebula. The nebula is made of material cast off from the aging star in random ejections, and from dust produced in the ensuing turbulence. This brilliant stage of mass loss precedes the star?s eventual supernova, when nuclear fusion in its core stops and the pressure of gravity causes it to collapse in on itself, and then explode. As MIRI demonstrates here, Webb will help astronomers to explore questions that were previously only left to theory about how much dust stars like this create before exploding in a supernova, and how much of that dust is large enough to survive the blast and go on to serve as building blocks of future stars and planets.

Space

Six of the most amazing space pictures from 2023

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2RFE6YH LK-99 room-temperature revolutionary superconductor. High quality photo

Physics

LK-99 superconductor mania swept the internet for a few weeks in 2023

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2NK6HH7 CHINESE SPY BALLOON seen from a US Air Force U-2 above America. Photo: USAF

Technology

The spy balloon saga of 2023 inflated US-China political tensions

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NEW DELHI, INDIA - AUGUST 23: People celebrates after successful landing of Chandrayaan 3 on Moon at Nehru Planetarium on August 23, 2023 in New Delhi, India. The Chandrayaan-3 lander module has successfully touched down on the Moon's south pole, making India the first nation in the world to achieve this feat. India is also the fourth nation, after the United States, China and Russia to have landed on the Moon. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Space

India made history with 2023's low-budget Chandrayaan-3 moon landing

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2RF6WE0 FOTOMONTAGE, Miniatur-Roboter auf einer Computerplatine mit dem Schriftzug ChatGPT

Technology

2023 was the year that artificial intelligence went mainstream

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David Smith, Joseph Myers, Chaim Goodman-Strauss and Craig S. Kaplan prove that a polykite that we call

Mathematics

Mathematicians discovered the ultimate bathroom tile in 2023

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Space

2023 saw thrilling space missions and new cosmic mysteries

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Read an extract from Julia by Sandra Newman

Comment

Read an extract from Julia by Sandra Newman

Culture

‘It felt detoxifying’: Retelling 1984 from a female perspective

Comment

‘It felt detoxifying’: Retelling 1984 from a female perspective

Sandra Newman, the author of Julia, the latest pick for the èƵ Book Club, explains why she wanted to rewrite Orwell’s classic dystopia from the point of view of the lover of its protagonist Winston Smith

Culture

Comment

The Future review: Doom is booming in a wild tale with a major twist

Culture

Video

Rollercoasters of the future: How VR is revolutionising thrill rides

Video

Video

Seventh Son author Sebastian Faulks: 'I'm 3.7 per cent Neanderthal'

Video

Comment

Julia review: A brilliant, devastating sequel to Nineteen Eighty-Four

Culture

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