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In Brussels on Wednesday, EU leaders signed a provisional agreement to ban 10 major single-use plastic products and mandate cleanup of other items. Although the agreement won’t be formally confirmed by member states until a vote (expected in the spring), it’s still big news. What did they ban? “The design of plastic products should always take into account the reusability and recyclability of the product,” reads the EU press release associated with the decision....

You wouldn’t think a house mouse would be any trouble on an island in the middle of the ocean, and you might be right in that assumption. But you also wouldn’t have expected the mouse to evolve so quickly as to have grown to two to three times its usual size and to have developed a taste for bird chicks. That’s exactly what has happened on Gough Island—the same absence of predators that has allowed sea birds to thrive unharmed has allowed the giant mouse population to balloon to nearly three quarters of a million....

This universe in a teacup was built by a team at Lancaster University in England. Their study, reported in the January issue of the journal Nature Physics, probed the theory of cosmological inflation. This theory posits that just after the big bang, the universe suddenly grew very rapidly for a split second and then, just as suddenly, slowed down. This faster-than-light expansion is supposed to explain all sorts of things about the universe today, such as why it seems to be more or less the same in every direction, and how large objects, such as clusters of galaxies, coalesced out of the cosmos....

“For several years, there had been hints that the inner Milky Way halo, close to the sun, included stars that originated in an external galaxy,” says Gallart. “But it was only after the second data release of the Gaia mission that this merger event could be confirmed in more detail.” Gallart and her team began their investigation with a modest goal—determining the ages of about 600,000 stars found in the Milky Way....

Now, five years later, their gamble appears to have paid off. Not only did New Horizons achieve a next-to flawless flyby of Arrokoth, the most distant object ever visited, but buried in its gigabytes of data—which have been trickling back to Earth ever since the New Year’s Day 2019 rendezvous—lies empirical evidence that strikes against a classic theory of how planets form. The New Horizons team published their latest analysis of the ancient body and how it came to be in a trio of papers appearing in Science last week....

Researchers at MIT have recently tested a new concept for a ‘hovering rover,’ a spacecraft that instead of relying on a traditional wheels-on-the-ground approach, will use the moon’s natural electric field to levitate over its surface. Because celestial bodies like the moon and other asteroids lack atmospheres, they’re unable to deflect solar wind, and thus are able to build up electric fields through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma....

What we’re expecting This is typically where Google announces its new smartphones, and the next Pixel has already leaked out quick prolifically around the internet. We’re also expecting to get some more details about the next version of Android, which will almost certainly put an emphasis on privacy and security in an age where every tech company’s privacy practices are under constant—and justified—scrutiny. At last year’s conference, we got our first look at the Duplex AI tech that can make and take appointments and restaurant reservations....

As Brookings noted between Scottish toasts and more than a few drinks, the distinctive flavors and textures of scotch whiskies result from three chemical reactions. The initial smoking of the grain with peat fires creates the smoky and sea salt taste distinctive of certain scotches by infusing the barley with large carbon rings called phenols. Those are released from the burning peat; then differently shaped copper kettles determine the texture of the whiskey by regulating how much of the whiskey reacts with the copper during distillation....

This article was originally published in the Winter 2018 Danger issue of Popular Science.

A desire to minimize carbon emissions motivated Thunberg’s unorthodox transportation choice, but economically-minded aliens wishing to conserve energy might make similar sacrifices, according to not-yet-peer reviewed research published on the website arxiv last week. Rather than attempting to cross the unimaginably vast gulfs between stars using gas-guzzling rockets or antimatter drives, extremely advanced civilizations could harness the energy from some of nature’s most violent outbursts—such as dying stars and ravenous black holes—and sail on the bursts of light and particles they emit just as Thunberg sailed on the transatlantic winds....

Whether or not you’ve resolved to get into shape, Muscle Month is here to teach you a thing or two about stretching, contracting, lifting, tearing, gaining, and so much more. Lifting weights can often seem reserved for the fittest among us, those muscle-laden guys and gals pumping iron and getting swole on a daily basis. But the truth is, muscles aren’t just for impressing potential romantic interests—they’re how you get through every single day....

The World Health Organization (WHO) seemed to claim earlier this week that asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 weren’t major spreaders of the virus, before walking back their statements a day later. Many people were understandably confused and frustrated about the apparent flip-flopping, but the truth is, as ever, a bit more complicated. “They were trying to quibble about a point,” says Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease researcher at the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital....

This week’s episode features special guest Josh Gondelman, writer and co-Executive Producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. Be sure to check out his podcast Make My Day if you don’t already listen! FACT: This dog went ‘extinct’ once we stopped needing it to help us cook our meat By Rachel Feltman Yes, a dog was once genetically engineered to serve as a kitchen appliance. Back when open fires were our best way of cooking things, the spit was invaluable....

“These threats interacting together pushes the lake into unknown territory, for which we can only speculate on the outcome,” said George Swann, a researcher at the University of Nottingham’s school of geography and co-author of a recent study in the journal PLOS ONE that examines the risks climate change poses to the lake. Climate change has been causing the lake’s water temperatures to rise, reducing ice cover, a trend researchers expect to continue....

Typically, swim monitors reside on your wrist. An Apple Watch will track your performance, as will other wearables, like a Garmin watch. But a new gadget from a Vancouver, Canada company called Form does it differently: with a head-up display right in your goggles. Slip them on, and simple yellow, pixelated text appears in front of one of your eyes, superimposed over the scene before you. Whether you’re underwater or turning your head for a breath of air, the information floats there....

When those babies hatch into larvae, they’ll carry the bacteria with them for the rest of their lives, and females will pass them along to their own eggs. But Lagria beetles go through metamorphosis: They’ll disappear into a pupa, and emerge with an entirely new body. So how do they hold onto their bacterial partners during the transformation? According to a study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, two species of Lagria larvae have developed “pockets” on their backs, which store bacteria through the ravages of metamorphosis....

In analyzing this bizarre animal’s hardy chompers, scientists found that its stylus (the long, hollow structure that connects the teeth to the soft membrane below) actually contains tiny particles of santabarbaraite, a rare iron-based mineral that until now had only been found in actual rocks. Santabarbaraite is what gives these mollusks their bite—it makes the root of their teeth light but remarkably strong, and among the hardest materials ever found in nature....

But to do that, they must first locate these elusive cosmological gems. To date, about 62 percent of meteorites recovered on Earth have been discovered in Antarctica. Previous meteorite expeditions to the world’s coldest and iciest continent have relied on pure luck and the past experiences of seasoned space rock hunters. Striking meteorite gold is also hard won; most trips are typically hindered by the sheer amount of labor it takes to unearth a find....

“In terms of animals that it might look most similar to today, you could think of horseshoe crabs,” says Joseph Moysiuk, a Royal Ontario Museum paleontologist who is the first author of a paper describing the Cambroraster for the first time. Like the horseshoe crab, the animal had a “huge head shield in the front, relatively small body,” he said. Also like the horseshoe crab, Moysiuk and his colleagues believe the Cambroraster spent a lot of time in the mud, where it must have been a strange sight....

That includes the tournament’s quarterfinals, semifinals, and title game (in total, seven games). While the company won’t disclose the number of users who will don the Samsung Gear VR headset to witness Butler’s Roosevelt Jones’ unique push shots, NextVR is banking that fans will have a strong appetite for VR-enhanced live events — it has signed a five-year deal in February with Fox Sports, which owns the rights to premier athletic events like the World Series, the Daytona 500, and the 2017 Super Bowl....