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NASA astronauts Christina Koch (L) and Jessica Meir posing for their official NASA portraits. Photograph: Josh Valcarcel EPA/NASA HANDOUT /JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

All-female spacewalk makes history at International Space Station

All-woman spacewalk cancelled in March due to one woman’s ill-fitting suit

Maths and poetry: Beauty is the link

Stamp featuring William Rowan Hamilton, an innovative mathematician and physicist of the highest order

Peter Lynch

For both mathematics and poetry, the ‘less is more’ principle often applies

Climate change: ‘It’s really hard to remain hopeful’

The carcass of a dead camel in Nayuu, northern Kenya. Pastoralist people are seeing their animals perish because of a lack of water and grazing due to the prolonged drought. Photograph: David O’Hare/Trócaire

Maria Delaney

The health impacts are already at crisis levels in the most vulnerable countries

Irish mathematician Hamilton celebrated in Broombridge artwork

RIA president Prof Peter Kennedy, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohue and artist Emma Ray at the unveiling of the Hamilton artwork. Photograph: Peter Gallagher/Twitter.

Kevin O'Sullivan

William Rowan Hamilton scratched his equation on north Dublin bridge in 1843

Nobel Prize for Physics awarded for cosmology and exoplanet breakthroughs

Prof Didier Queloz of Cambridge University at a press conference in London after he jointly won the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Wire

James Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz are jointly awarded the 2019 prize

Stamp featuring William Rowan Hamilton, an innovative mathematician and physicist of the highest order

Maths and poetry: Beauty is the link

Peter Lynch

For both mathematics and poetry, the ‘less is more’ principle often applies

Ireland hooker Rory Best. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images

How to perform well under pressure

William Reville

Having a positive attitude about yourself can help you to perform better under stress

The age group 18 to 22 is the loneliest sector of all. Photograph: iStock

Mental fragility and the traditional family

William Reville

A weakened sense of identity is contributing to a surge in loneliness and depression

A murmuration of starlings at dusk near Ballywilliam, Co Wexford. Photograph: Cyril Byrne

Emergence: Complex behaviour arising from simple roots

Peter Lynch

Life itself is the primary example of emergence, resulting from chemical processes at the atomic scale

Francis Crick and James Watson made the greatest biological discovery of the 20th century when they solved the structure of DNA. Photograph: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives/The New York Times

Story of life: Seven wonders of biological research

William Reville

From cells and DNA to cloning and biochemistry, here are life’s milestones

George Salmon: In 1833, aged just 14 years, he entered Trinity College, where he was to spend his entire career.

Remembering George Salmon, mathematician, theologian and provost of TCD

Peter Lynch

The outstanding mathematician switched his focus to higher matters and devoted his last 40 years to theology

An activist wears a mask of US President Donald Trump during a demonstration against the ending of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in front of the American Embassy at Pariser Platz in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Omer Messinger/EPA.

America’s nuclear shield may not be as secure as Trump says

William Reville

Recent articles highlight deficiencies in system used to protect against nuclear attack

Dr Muriel Bristol claimed she could determine by taste the order in which the constituents are poured in a cup of tea. File photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire

How a tea-tasting test led to a breakthrough in statistics

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: Null hypothesis used to examine ability to tell if milk or water added first

A French stamp honouring Évariste Galois.

The tragic, brief life of Évariste Galois

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: The mathematical genius was shot dead in a duel at the age of 20

A Royal Society portrait of George Gabriel Stokes, commissioned in 1891. Copyright the Royal Society

George Stokes: Sligo man who made profound contributions to science

Peter Lynch

The Navier-Stokes equations lies at the heart of every climate model still in use

Prof David McConnell’s accusation that I am attempting to “take science down a peg or two” is simply wrong and also unfair

Fallout after my science and religion column

William Reville

What I said was inaccurately portrayed and my intentions misinterpreted

Automatic chess-playing machines were crude and plodding, and easily beaten. Now they are unbeatable, even by a grand master thanks to clever algorithms. File photograph: Alan Betson

Algorithms: Recipes for success that transform the world

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: We exploit algorithms every day without even knowing it

Tommy Horkan (11) from Mount Merrion, Dublin, pictured enjoying the fun at Explorium, Ireland’s first sports and science centre. Photograph: Robbie Reynolds

Learning maths without even trying

Peter Lynch

At Explorium, Dublin’s marvellous sports and science centre, children can’t avoid learning – try as they might

A newborn baby girl named Danica Camacho, the Philippines’ symbolic “seven billionth baby” who was part of the United Nations’ seven billion global population projection, in Fabella Maternity Hospital Manila on October 31st, 2011. The UN had predicted the world’s population would reach seven billion on October 31st, 2011. Photograph: Reuters/Erik De Castro

Philosophers claim global warming makes having children immoral

William Reville

If we were to accept the argument and act ‘morally’, the world’s population would die out – as a solution to climate change, it seems a bit nuts

Isaac Newtown: ‘Naturalists were wrong to use the slave ships to collect their samples,’ writes William Reville.

Did early scientists owe a debt to the slave trade?

William Reville

Naturalists in need of samples took advantage of the routes taken by slave ships

A Roman abacus. But what did the Romans really do for mathematics?

What did the Romans ever do for maths? Very little

Peter Lynch

Despite advances in many areas, Romans were happy with mathematical rules-of-thumb

Embrace, a sculpture where a simple closed curve separates two regions. Photograph: Prof Robert Bosch of Oberlin College, Ohio

Where ‘simple curves’ become more complex than you think

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: The Jordan curve theorem shows an example of how intuition can lead us astray

The first-ever photograph of a black hole, taken using a global network of telescopes, conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope project. Photograph: Reuters

Is dark matter composed of black holes?

William Reville

The embarrassing gap in science’s understanding of the universe may soon be filled

Hurricane Frances displays the Coriolis effect which has a dominant influence on the global circulation of the atmosphere and oceans.

Rotation of Earth results in spin-off effects

Peter Lynch

Weather and ballistics among areas affected by Coriolis effect

Charles Darwin discovered natural selection.

How to recognise alien life

William Reville

Life on other planets may not be carbon- and water-based but the familiar principles of natural selection will almost certainly apply

‘Why do prominent scientists such as Richard Dawkins still campaign to replace religion with science?’ Photograph: Alan Betson

Science would be well advised to avoid picking fights with religion

William Reville

Promoting science to replace religion often has the opposite effect, and scientists would be well-advised to stop picking futile fights

Maryam Mirzakhani was awarded a Fields Medal for her mathematical research. She died from breast cancer at the age of 40 in 2017.

The rise and rise of women in maths

Peter Lynch

Once a field dominated by men, brilliant women mathematicians are finally getting the recognition they deserve

Plants are easily the dominant life form on Earth, constituting 80% of total biomass. Humanity barely registers in comparison. File photograph: Cyril Byrne

Plants are worthy of same compassion we show animals

William Reville

Incredibly versatile life forms that dominate the planet deserve greater respect

Kepler’s vanishing circles hidden in Hamilton’s Hodograph

Peter Lynch

Great Irish scientist William Rowan Hamilton devised the hodograph and used it in his analysis of the motions of the planets

Animals that pass the mirror test have large brains relative to body size and have higher levels of empathy and social awareness. You might wonder about ants passing the test, but the brains of some ant species constitutes 15 per cent of body mass

The mirror test of self-awareness

William Reville

Only a handful of species have been shown to possess the ability of visual self-recognition

Yitang Zhang: While working for University of New Hampshire as a lecturer, Zhang submitted an article to the Annals of Mathematics in 2013 which established the first finite bound on the least gap between consecutive primes that is attained infinitely often

Closing the gap between prime numbers

Peter Lynch

The Twin Prime Conjecture remains unproven. The quest to close the gap is ongoing

Phillips’s simulation of a developing unstable wave in the atmosphere. While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton he made the first computer simulation of the global climate

A pioneer of climate modelling – and maths

Peter Lynch

The work of Norman A Phillips had a galvanising effect on the meteorological community

The adult intestine hosts about 1.2kg of bacteria and many of these microbes are essential for good health. Graphic: Getty Images

Hyping the microbiome may have unpleasant side effects

William Reville

Data is piling up but a theory with which to interpret it remains to be developed

Joseph Fourier’s idea that the Earth’s atmosphere acts like an insulator is the first formulation of what we now call the greenhouse effect. File photograph: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

How Joseph Fourier discovered the greenhouse effect

Peter Lynch

That’s Maths: French physicist’s study of heat conduction led him to analyse why Earth was so warm

The new research is the work of a company called Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd, based in Ness Ziona, Israel. Photograph: VVG/Science Photo Library

Israeli cancer treatment could be something special

William Reville

Company’s efforts to address issues around cell mutations met with scepticism

Columnists

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson -

Newton Emerson: Brexit and the DUP’s bizarre aloofness towards its voters

Janan Ganesh

Janan Ganesh -

Donald Trump is reminding the West why it liked US leadership

David McWilliams

David McWilliams -

David McWilliams: If Cork can’t succeed economically, Ireland will regress

Pat Leahy - Political Editor

Prospect of Brexit deal boosts likelihood of November election

Citizen Science The Irish Times and citizen science researchers have teamed up. See the results here

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Features & Opinion

How long has the science of forecasting weather been around?

Weather predictions and folklore are probably as old as human society

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To save bees make some space for wildness and let them look after themselves

Robert Bunsen: The man who lit a fire under chemical science

German professor’s burner laid the basis for development of spectrum analysis

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