Researchers are working to reproduce the smells of heritage and history, from mummies to the Battle of Waterloo. Plus, the best science images of the month and whether we’ve already achieved ‘artificial general intelligence’.
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Credit: Yoshinari Sasaki
The above composite photo of a firefly making its way around a particle accelerator was among this year’s nominees for the Global Physics Photowalk 2025. “Watching its glowing paths is like seeing the streaks of charged particles in a spark chamber or a Cherenkov detector — beautiful, fleeting and absolutely mesmerizing,” says photographer Yoshinari Sasaki.
Below, an animation shows a photo — and a progressively digitally enhanced version — of what could be the oldest known example of rock art in the world. The outline of a hand, dated to at least 67,800 years ago, was discovered in an Indonesian cave. It could be evidence for a controversial theory that early humans arrived in Sahul — the landmass that once encompassed modern-day Australia and New Guinea — by 65,000 years ago, around 15,000 years earlier than otherwise thought.
Nature | Leisurely scroll
Reference: Nature paper
Credit: Maxime Aubert
A 33-year-old man was kept alive for 48 hours by an external artificial-lung system, after complications from a severe infection meant his lungs had to be removed. The system maintained the man’s oxygen levels and continuous blood flow across the heart — a first for an external lung device — until he could receive a double lung transplant. Operating the system currently requires multiple specialist teams, but the team who developed it hope it can be refined for use in any hospital.
Nature | 4 min read
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