Mapping Ignorance

Arsenic contamination in drinking water poses a critical global public health hazard. Prolonged exposure to inorganic arsenic—predominantly present in groundwater as arsenate, where arsenic exists in its +5 oxidation state—can lead to severe dermatological lesions, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers. To mitigate these health risks, the World Health Organization has established a strict provisional safety guideline of 10 micrograms of total arsenic per liter of drinking water.

Author: Sally Christine Reynolds, Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University The large Harbin skull from China has been linked to Denisovans through DNA and ancient proteins. Source: Take a walk in London’s Trafalgar Square this summer and wilting under the heat will be all sorts of body sizes, some tall, some short: a real mix of sizes. Picking just two from the crowd to represent the whole human species would be a tall order.

The kind of technology that can deliver sound to a single listener—like something out of a spy film—may soon become a reality. Researchers at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have developed a speaker system that can direct speech to a specific person. 1 Schematic of the ultrasonic transducer developed by the research team, integrating two types of metamaterials, together with the directional characteristics of transmitted voice signals.

Author: José Luis Granados Mateo is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and a member of the Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (iHPS) research group. His work focuses on history and philosophy of science, science and values, and the epistemology of scientific practices. Take a glass of water. Nothing about it seems to ask for a theory. It has no colour worth naming, no dramatic smell, no visible architecture.

Author: Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Shackleton crater on the Lunar South Pole. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio How do you explore a place where the Sun never shines? China’s space programme will soon embark on one of the most innovative lunar exploration missions in recent years. We’ve known for nearly two decades that some form of water exists on the Moon.

This computer-simulated image shows gas from a tidally shredded star falling into a black hole. Astronomers observed the flare in ultraviolet light using NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Source: NASA/ S. Gezari (JHU)/ J. Guillochon (UCSC) At the center of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, with a mass millions to billions of times that of our sun and some of the most extreme gravity in the universe. Some stars that venture too close to such black holes live to tell the tale.

Authors: Phil Wiseman, Senior Research Fellow and Ernest Rutherford Fellow in Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton and Mark Sullivan, Professor, University of Southampton JWST Deep field. Source: Nasa, Esa, CSA, and STScI A 2025 study by South Korean researchers caught the attention of the astronomy community when it suggested that the evidence behind dark energy could be wrong. Dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe but nobody knows what it is.

Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have spotted an extremely bright red spot in the early universe. The object resembles an enormous star, spanning the size of our solar system. But it also is putting out 100 billion times more energy than any known star can physically produce. In fact, such energies are closer to what a black hole might generate. The curious combination suggests that the red spot is an entirely new type of astrophysical source.

Author: Melissa Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Monash University Some weeks ago, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced ten advances in mathematics and computer science made with their as-yet unreleased model Astra. The discoveries cover a wide range of mathematical fields, including geometry, cryptography and coding theory. These ten are just the latest in a rapidly growing list of mathematical breakthroughs made by generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

How much ice is stored in the world’s glaciers? And where exactly is it located? A new study led by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, in collaboration with the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-ISP), provides an updated global map of glacier ice volume.