This week’s biggest stories

The Babylonians weren’t just eye-catching gardeners, they were also ace mathematicians, it seems. Dating from 1,000 years before Pythagoras expounded his theorem, a Babylonian clay tablet is a trigonometric table more accurate than any today, say researchers. This was my favourite story of the week, as although it contains my personal downfall, maths, it also includes some interesting inside gen on Indiana Jones. Less directly useful to pyramid building, but nevertheless interesting, a new bone analysis has unpicked the life cycle of the long-extinct dodo. Scientists also think they can explain how the horse became the only living animal with a single toe. What they’re still arguing about, however, is whether or not sugar is as addictive as cocaine. It’s a pretty heated debate, which is why it might be a good plan to step back and wonder at the universe instead. You can start with this new view of Antares. The red supergiant is 550 light years from Earth and remarkably, astronomers have managed to capture images of it - the best images, in fact, ever taken of any star’s surface and atmosphere apart from the sun. If that isn’t exciting enough, how about some space sparkle? In a bling-tastic move, scientists have recreated the diamond rain of Neptune and Uranus using, er, polystyrene. And lasers. All very Blue Peter, I’m sure but it doesn’t quite beat this recycling excitement: astronaut urine, faeces and breath could be used to produce food supplements and plastics for 3D printing, freeing up space on long journeys, say researchers. Puts my half-hearted compost bin use to shame.

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Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network

A reconstruction of the flower of the predicted ancestor of all flowering plants. Photograph: Herve Sauquet & Jurg Schonenberg/PA

We now know what the ‘first flower’ looked like – but when did it bloom? | Lost Worlds Revisited

The fossil record for flowering plants, which make up the vast majority of plant species today, has been a hot topic since Darwin’s day. He famously described their rapid diversification as an ‘abominable mystery’, although he was less vexed by their origins than by how such rapid rates of evolution could be reconciled with his gradualistic model of natural selection. We now have much more fossil evidence to help us reconstruct the early story of the angiosperms, but the broad pattern which Darwin recognised still holds: there are lots of angiosperms from around 130m years ago (in the Early Cretaceous) onwards, and little evidence for them much before that.

Newly discovered particles, and what’s in them | Life and Physics



The new particle at LHCb has passed a much higher statistical threshold than last year’s unconfirmed hints of a new particle, and seems to be here to stay. The animation here shows how the signal developed in the data over time as the LHCb experiment recorded and analysed more data. The peak indicating the presence of the new particle, call a Ξ cc ++ (pronounced Ksi c c plus plus) is pretty convincing by eye, an impression confirmed by solid statistical analysis. So why isn’t there (even) more excitement about this particle? There are good reasons, and they are worth looking into.

Solar eclipse science: how the motions of the heavens affect events on Earth | The H word

There are also those who claim less direct impacts, drawing on the long tradition of eclipses as signs and portents. Just as the astrologer William Lilly claimed that the solar eclipse of 11 August 1645 signalled the end of the House of Stuart, in 2017 Newsweek reported that some astrologers believe the eclipse indicates “some kind of downfall, some kind of ruin, some kind of difficulty” for Trump personally, or the US more generally. However, without needing to go near the claims of astrology, history shows us that solar eclipses have had their impact on the actions, purses, thoughts and knowledge of humans all over the world.

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Science Weekly podcast



We examine what being human in the age of artificial intelligence looks like. Photograph: Carsten Koall/AFP/Getty Images

This week, Ian Sample speaks with Prof Max Tegmark about the advance of AI, the future of life on Earth, and what happens if and when a “superintelligence” arrives



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Eye on science – this week’s top images

Everyone can enjoy an eclipse. But even this dog is smart enough to wear protective specs, Mr President.

Obviously we’ve got a killer gallery of eclipse pics - I would be failing in my duty to you if I didn’t highlight it. But I’m going to give you this stunning bonus gallery of some of the Royal Photographic Society’s shortlisted entries for their International Images for Science competition. You absolutely deserve it for making it to the end of the week. Enjoy!