Orbital Samantha HarveyVintage Publishing; 2024. 144 pp. Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, Orbital, traces the view of six astronauts across the 16 orbits of the Earth made by the International Space Station (ISS) in a day, as the Sun repeatedly rises and sets over our planet. It is Harvey’s attempt to capture the sense of timelessness that comes with being severed from our 24-hour

The 2024 Nobel prize for Physics was awarded for foundational contributions to the development of artificial neural networks. The award reflects a shift in how we understand boundaries between scientific fields — or whether such boundaries are still useful at all.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, tell me just how far you are. Richard I. Anderson discusses standard candles and their applications.

This, of course, misses the point that modern human culture has evolved over the most recent 10,000 years, a period of relatively stable climate. A rapid departure from this zone could easily pose a serious threat to our ability to adapt and thrive. Moreover, as we know, past episodes of rapid climate change drove many other species extinct. Still, the argument seems to persuade many people, and I

Correction to: Nature Physics https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02628-4, published online 17 September 2024.

Weirdly enough, the term held a much smaller place in science until about 50 years ago. Scientists were well aware, of course, of nonlinear interactions, effects, equations and processes, but few people noticed their profound importance. The famous Fermi–Pasta–Ulam experiment in 1953 showed that nonlinearity threatened the legitimacy of fundamental assumptions in statistical mechanics — namely, the

Adapting an experimental tool for use in a new field can be as powerful as inventing a new technique.

Correction to: Nature Physics https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02560-7, published online 1 July 2024.