Science

President Donald Trump vowed that U.S. astronauts would plant the American flag on Mars during his next administration.

During his inaugural address on Monday, Trump insisted that going to Mars was part of the "manifest destiny" of the United States.

The decision by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to end its fact-checking program and otherwise reduce content moderation raises the question of what content on those social media platforms will look like going forward.

One worrisome possibility is that the change could open the floodgates to more climate misinformation on Meta’s apps, including misleading or out-of-context claims during disasters.

The U.S.’s return to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis program will not be a mere stroll in the park. Instead it will be a perilous journey to a lunar location representing one of the most extreme environments in the solar system.

For the Artemis program astronauts, walking on the Moon will require new ways of thinking, the latest technology and innovative approaches to improve boot and spacesuit design.

Public trust in scientists is vital. It can help us with personal decisions on matters like health and provide evidence-based policymaking to assist governments with crises such as the COVID pandemic or climate change.

In a survey of 71,922 people across 68 countries, our global team of 241 researchers has found most people have a relatively high trust in scientists.

Notably, people want scientists to take an active role in society and policymaking. Our results are published today in Nature Human Behaviour.

So what does this mean for us as a society, and for scientists and policymakers seeking to maintain and build trust? Here are the lessons we’ve learned.

Rumours of a ‘crisis’

According to reports and polls, most people trust science, and scientists are among the most trustworthy people in society. Yet there is an oft-repeated claim of a “crisis of trust” in science and scientists.

For instance, some research suggests media reporting about polls can act as a self-fulfilling prophecy or feedback loop – it can undermine scientific credibility by portraying a trust crisis.

Other research suggests media policy narratives influence public opinion through framing. For example, exposure to conservative media reporting on scientific controversies increases distrust in scientists, leading to greater climate change denial.

Our research goes beyond the Western world and covers many understudied countries in the Global South. We tested whether there is in fact low trust in scientists, and whether levels of trust vary appreciably across countries.

A truly global survey

We conducted a crowd-sourced Many Labs project involving the same translated survey across 68 countries on all inhabited continents.

Data were collected between November 2022 and August 2023. Our samples were weighted according to national distributions of age, gender, education and country sample size. You can interact with global and country level data using this data dashboard.

Mars is home to perhaps the greatest mystery of the Solar System: the so-called Martian dichotomy, which has baffled scientists since it was discovered in the 1970s.

The southern highlands of Mars (which cover about two-thirds of the planet’s surface) rise as much as five or six kilometres higher than the northern lowlands. Nowhere else in the Solar System do we see such a large, sharp contrast at this scale.

by Bénédicte Rey

Our ancestor Homo erectus was able to survive punishingly hot and dry desert more than a million years ago, according to a new study that casts doubt on the idea that Homo sapiens were the first humans capable of living in such hostile terrain.

Apple pushed out a software update on Thursday which disabled news headlines and summaries generated using artificial intelligence that were lambasted for getting facts wrong.

The move by the tech titan comes as it enhances its latest lineup of devices with "Apple Intelligence" in a market keen for assurance that the iPhone maker is a contender in the AI race.

He may be a hard-liner on immigration, but Donald Trump Jr. appeared ecstatic about the possibility of aliens — from outer space, at least.

The president-elect's namesake has been fascinated with extraterrestrials for some time, and he welcomed some of the UFO/UAP experts onto his "Triggered" podcast this week.

Former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) admitted climate change was "real" at a confirmation hearing to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

During his first term, President-elect Trump made deregulation at the EPA a top agenda item and was expected to double down during his second term.

Spiders have always lived alongside humans, so it’s surprising how much we still don’t know about them. One long-standing mystery was related to how spiders detect smells. Now, our latest research has finally uncovered the secret.

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we demonstrated that male spiders use olfactory hairs called wall-pore sensilla on their legs as a “nose” to detect the sex pheromones released by female spiders.

Scientists have long puzzled over how pterosaurs became the first vertebrates to master flight. Some pterosaur species, such as the Quetzalcoatlus were the largest known animals to ever take to the skies, with wingspans of over ten meters (on par with military aircraft like the Spitfire). My team’s new study may help solve the evolutionary mystery, revealing how a vane on the tip of their tails may have helped these ancient animals fly more efficiently.

It took some time for active flight to evolve in the natural world. The first flying animals were insects similar to dragonflies, which flapped their wings over swampy forests of the Carboniferous period (over 300 million years ago). Around 100 million years later (in a period known as the Triassic), the first bony animals, vertebrates, took to the skies. These vertebrates were pterosaurs, which dominated the skies of the Mesozoic era some 251-66 million years ago, swooping over the heads of dinosaurs.

Presidents need science advice. From climate change and pandemics to the governance of AI and the country’s nuclear arsenal, science sits at the center of a range of foreign and domestic policy challenges that reach the president’s desk.

Thankfully for the president – and the nation – the Office of Science and Technology Policy, known as OSTP, is just across the White House South Lawn in the Executive Office of the President. Led by the president’s science adviser, OSTP serves as a one-stop shop for everything science and innovation inside the White House.