Climate change may help eliminate malaria from West and Central Africa | New Scientist

Malari-prevention strategies like bed nets are crucial in the fight against the infection

Hajarah Nalwadda/Getty Images

By the end of this century, malaria could be eradicated in West and Central Africa, two of the worst-affected regions. A modelling study suggests cases will plummet in these areas if the extreme heat caused by climate change makes them uninhabitable for mosquitoes. But this also means malaria is expected to become more pronounced in the cooler regions of Africa.

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Getting outside despite your 9‑to‑5 job can improve your mental health

Getting outside despite your 9‑to‑5 job can improve your mental health
Urban parks are great places to soak in the outdoors without planning an elaborate trip. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

The modern workday unfolds largely indoors. Long hours spent commuting, sitting in meetings and staring at screens can make time outdoors feel like a luxury. Finding time for nature in an already packed workday can feel impossible, especially if you think nature only "counts" when it involves hiking boots and camping gear.

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Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy

Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy
Comparison of color-composite images of IC 1101 obtained from different imaging surveys. From left to right: SDSS DR16, the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9 based on DECaLS imaging, and the INT/WFC data presented in this work. Credit: Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa et al. (2026). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.15340

Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy's outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on July 16.

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Falls in whale sightings, rare seabirds appearing—is something unusual happening in the Southern Ocean?

whale watcher
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In late June, whale watchers in southwest Western Australia sounded the alarm. They had seen far fewer humpback whales at a time when they normally migrate up from the Southern Ocean to calve and feed. Numbers were 60% below normal.

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Ancient stardust grains were seeds for the earliest solids in the solar system

Ancient Stardust Were Seeds for the Earliest Solids in the Solar System
False color electron images of meteorite inclusions used in the study by Marquez et al. (2026). Note the bands of minerals at the edges of high-temperature oxides (light blue), which hint at the multiple episodes of crystal growth invoked by the study. Credit: R. Marquez

How did the first solids that made up planets, moons and asteroids form from the "hot soup" that characterized our solar system's earliest years? New research from Caltech analyzing pieces of a meteorite has found that, just as snowflakes crystallize around grains of dust, ancient stardust grains left over from long-gone suns may have been the seeds of our solar system's earliest solids.

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Rainfall across the US is increasingly coming from farther away

Rain falling across the US is coming from farther away
Schematic diagram of moisture tracking with WAM2layersv3 and how ρ c , τ v , and d v are calculated from the E-DRoPS data set. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2026gl122565

Before rain falls, the moisture that forms it may have traveled anywhere from just a few kilometers to hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. It usually begins as water that evaporated from oceans, lakes, forests or fields. According to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, rain in parts of the United States is increasingly arriving from farther away.

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Light's hidden properties save quantum information from the chaos of bad weather

Light's hidden properties save quantum information from the chaos of bad weather
Credit: Wits University

For years, researchers have tried to harness the "twist" of light to transmit data. This property describes how light spirals as it travels forward, and because it can be molded into a virtually infinite number of different twists, it provides a massive, promising alphabet for high-capacity communication.

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Volcanic eruptions in Pacific Ring of Fire may have cooled Earth for centuries

Unsplash / Ben Turnbull
Credit: Unsplash / Ben Turnbull

For around 12,000 years, the Earth has been in the Holocene epoch, a warmer period following a glacial period. During this epoch, however, there have been around 22 abrupt cold phases, each lasting up to several centuries and leading to the expansion of glaciers.

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Could quantum physics help us find Earth 2.0?

Quantum Physics Could Help Us Find Earth 2.0
Artist's impression of exoplanet K2-18b. Credit: Hubble, M. Kornmesser

When astronomers talk about directly imaging an exoplanet orbiting a faraway star, the analogy they most commonly use is trying to spot a firefly next to a massive searchlight. An Earth-like exoplanet is incredibly dim—usually between 100 million and 10 billion times fainter than its host star.

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Is district cooling the solution we need for extreme heat in cities? | New Scientist

A state-backed district cooling network in Dubai supplies more than 1700 buildings

Christopher Pike/Bloomberg via Getty Images

More than 77 million people in Europe enjoy district heating, where hot water is piped from a central plant to homes and buildings. The US has hundreds of these networks, mostly in multi-building campuses like universities, airports and business districts.

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