the best science images of the year

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In April, a solar eclipse, pictured here behind the Washington Monument in Washington DC, dazzled people across North America. For scientists, the event was a chance to observe the Sun’s corona — its wispy outer atmosphere — like never before.

See more of the year’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team, and hear from each of our media editors on a photo that said something special to them in 2024.

Nature | Leisurely scroll

All people, other than those whose ancestry comes solely from sub-Saharan Africa, have some Neanderthal DNA. Now two studies suggest that it entered our genomes virtually overnight, much more recently than was thought. One study finds that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred in a roughly 7,000-year period starting around 50,500 years ago; the other finds that the mixing took place between 45,000 and 49,000 years ago. The results and other insights come in part from the oldest human genomes ever sequenced: a male Homo sapiens found near Ranis, Germany, and a female Homo sapiens whose remains were discovered in a cave at a site called Zlatý kůň in the Czech Republic.

Nature | 6 min read

Reference: Science paper & Nature paper

Children who have been harmed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza are paying a profound mental-health toll, finds a survey of 504 families with disabled, injured or unaccompanied children. Caregivers reported that their children suffer from severe fear, pessimism, anger, emotional withdrawal and other psychological effects. Ninety-six percent of the caregivers said that their children feel that death is imminent. Almost half reported that their children wish to die to escape their trauma. “This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” says Helen Pattinson, the chief executive of the charity of War Child UK.

The Guardian | 4 min read

Reference: Community Training Centre for Crisis Management report (supported by the charities Dutch Relief Alliance and War Child Alliance)

NASA’s Perseverance rover has completed an epic, months-long climb up and out of Jezero Crater on Mars. Now safely out of the crater, where it landed in 2021, the rover faces a 4-billion-year-old landscape. Researchers hope that rocks outside of the crater hold signs of whether Mars might have sustained life when it was warmer and wetter than today.

Nature | 5 min read

Nature’s 10

A fraud buster, a nuclear-clock maker and a virus hunter are just a few of the remarkable people chosen for this year’s Nature’s 10. The list, compiled by Nature’s editors, includes Kaitlin Kharas, a PhD student who helped to lead a campaign to get Canadian graduate students and postdocs their biggest pay rise in 20 years; and Muhammad Yunus, an economist and Nobel peace laureate who is now the interim leader of Bangladesh.

Nature | 10 profiles

Features & opinion

An engineer headed to Mars convinces a rival to celebrate her own achievements in Betsy Donnelly’s forty-third chance and strangers on a train journey prefer to pretend in Inhere, Outthere.

Nature | 6 min read & Nature | 7 min read

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a look at how economic inequality shaped the thinking of philosophers from Plato to Karl Marx and an exploration of the connectedness of the living world.

Nature | 3 min read

An mRNA-based therapy might someday reverse the underlying causes of pre-eclampsia — a complication that kills hundreds of thousands of mothers and babies every year. Investigation in mice into how mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines propagate in pregnant people led researchers to the discovery that the lipid nanoparticles used to deliver vaccines can be optimized to target the placenta. And, instead of vaccine, the system can deliver ‘vascular endothelial growth factor’ mRNA to promote healthy blood flow. “Pretty much instantaneously, proteins from your blood are kind-of attracted to the nanoparticle,” bioengineer and co-author Michael Mitchell tells the Nature Podcast. “Which exact protein is attracted to your nanoparticle dictates where the particles go.”

Nature Podcast | 29 min listen

Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Music, or use the RSS feed.

Infographic of the week

Aerosols — such as the smoke from wildfires — can interact with clouds and sunlight in ways that can warm or cool the atmosphere. The outcome is also influenced by the type of surface underneath, from open ocean to broken-up ice floes to solid sea-ice cover. This has made it fiendishly difficult to investigate Arctic aerosols and their climate impact. Now, researchers have built a model that takes into account satellite data to show that the aerosols from unprecedented wildfire seasons are amplifying warming in the Arctic. (Nature Climate Change News & Views | 6 min read)

Reference: Nature Climate Change paper

In today’s pension-seeking puzzle, Leif Penguinson is rockpooling on Philip’s Strand, a beach in Cornwall, in the United Kingdom. Can you find the penguin?

The answer will be in Monday’s e-mail, all thanks to Briefing photo editor and penguin wrangler Tom Houghton.

This newsletter is always evolving — tell us what you think! Please send your feedback to [email protected].

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Jacob Smith

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