Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Subir Sarkar, Emeritus professor, University of Oxford

The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. But my colleagues and I have published a new study suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction.

Should we care about this? Well, today’s “standard cosmological model” – which describes the dynamics and structure of the entire cosmos – rests squarely on the assumption that it is isotropic (looks the same in all directions), and homogeneous when averaged on large scales.

But several so-called “tensions” – or disagreements in the data – pose challenges to this idea of a uniform universe.

We have just published a paper looking at one of the most significant of these tensions, called the cosmic dipole anomaly. We conclude that the cosmic dipole anomaly poses a serious challenge to the most widely accepted description of the universe, the standard cosmological model (also called the Lambda-CDM model).

So what is the cosmic dipole anomaly and why is it such a problem for attempts to give a detailed account of the cosmos?

Let’s start with the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is the relic radiation left over from the big bang. The CMB is uniform over the sky to within one part in a hundred thousand.

So cosmologists feel confident in modelling the universe using the “maximally symmetric” description of space-time in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This symmetric vision for the universe, where it looks the same everywhere and in all directions, is known as the “FLRW description”.

This vastly simplifies the solution of Einstein’s equations and is the basis for the Lambda-CDM model.

But there are several important anomalies, including a widely debated one called the Hubble tension. It is named after Edwin Hubble, who is credited with having discovered in 1929 that the universe is expanding.

The tension started to emerge from different datasets in the 2000s, mainly from the Hubble space telescope, and also recent data from the Gaia satellite. This tension is a cosmological disagreement, where measurements of the universe’s expansion rate from its early days don’t match up with measurements from the nearby (more recent) universe.

The cosmic dipole anomaly has received much less attention than the Hubble tension, but it is even more fundamental to our understanding of the cosmos. So what is it?

Having established that the cosmic microwave background is symmetric on large scales, variations in this relic radiation from the big bang have been found. One of the most significant is called the CMB dipole anisotropy. This is the largest temperature difference in the CMB, where one side of the sky is hotter and the opposite side cooler – by about one part in a thousand.

This variation in the CMB does not challenge the Lambda-CDM model of the universe. But we should find corresponding variations in other astronomical data.

In 1984, George Ellis and John Baldwin asked whether a similar variation, or “dipole anisotropy”, exists in the sky distribution of distant astronomical sources such as radio galaxies and quasars. The sources must be very distant because nearby sources could create a spurious “clustering dipole”.

If the “symmetrical universe” FLRW assumption is correct, then this variation in distant astronomical sources should be directly determined by the observed variation in the CMB. This is known as the Ellis-Baldwin test, after the astronomers.

Consistency between the variations in the CMB and in matter would support the standard Lambda-CDM model. Discord would directly challenge it, and indeed the FLRW description. Because it is a very precise test, the data catalogue required to perform it has become available only recently.

The outcome is that the universe fails the Ellis-Baldwin test. The variation in matter does not match that in the CMB. Since the possible sources of error are quite different for telescopes and satellites, and for different wavelengths in the spectrum, it is reassuring that the same result is obtained with terrestrial radio telescopes and satellites observing at mid-infrared wavelengths.

The cosmic dipole anomaly has thus established itself as a major challenge to the standard cosmological model, even if the astronomical community has chosen to largely ignore it.

This may be because there is no easy way to patch up this problem. It requires abandoning not just the Lambda-CDM model but the FLRW description itself, and going back to square one.

Yet an avalanche of data is expected from new satellites like Euclid and SPHEREx, and telescopes such as the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array. It is conceivable that we may soon receive bold new insights into how to construct a new cosmological model, harnessing recent advances in a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) called machine learning.

The impact would be truly huge on fundamental physics – and on our understanding of the universe.

Subir Sarkar receives funding from the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) councils.

– ref. The universe may be lopsided – new research – https://theconversation.com/the-universe-may-be-lopsided-new-research-265256

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Pegram, Associate Professor in Global Governance and Deputy Director of UCL Global Governance Institute, UCL

Global debate about how to navigate the climate crisis often centres on high-level pledges and whether national targets are being met. Yet focusing on these technical outcomes obscures a deeper problem that keeps climate action falling short.

This problem is ecological myopia: treating climate change as one issue among many rather than as a sign of wider Earth system disruption. It narrows how we understand risk and allows politics, business and daily life to proceed as if planetary stability could still be taken for granted.

Set against the backdrop of a drying and burning Amazon, the UN climate summit in Brazil in November 2025 showed why this way of seeing no longer works.

Ecological myopia interprets climate change as a conventional environmental problem rather than as a planetary one. It assumes climate sits in a box labelled environment or sustainability while the rest of social and economic life sits in separate silos. But this is short sighted.

Political geoecology – an approach that sees politics as inseparable from the Earth’s ecological systems – offers one way to understand what this leaves out. The idea is that politics and ecology cannot be separated because modern societies are built into the Earth system through energy use, land change and industrial infrastructures. These connections shape climate risks and inequalities yet remain largely invisible.

In many people’s conversations, record heat or flooding are still described as odd weather rather than recognised as signs of a shifting climate that affects food prices and public health. Companies announce net-zero plans yet expand activities that embed new emissions.

Meanwhile, governments hand responsibility to environment ministries even though the main drivers sit in finance or security. We need to see much more clearly.

Read more:
To address the environmental polycrisis, the first step is to demand more honesty

The past ten years have been the hottest on record. The Amazon, host of this year’s UN climate summit, is experiencing droughts so severe that they disrupt river transport and rainfall patterns across the Americas. These developments are not isolated. They reflect mounting pressure on the Earth system.

Modern societies also forget that their prosperity rests on a simple physical process: burning things. Contemporary civilisation has been built around combustion, from coal and oil to natural gas that run homes and industries.

This has turned humanity into a planetary force of disruption, reshaping the atmosphere, the oceans and the ecosystems on which all life depends.

Yet ecological myopia makes it difficult for governments and institutions to respond with the urgency required. When climate is treated as a sector, action is funnelled into narrow channels such as emissions targets or carbon markets, while the deeper forces reshaping the planet continue largely unchecked. Land use, fossil-fuel infrastructure and global supply chains remain the structural drivers of destabilisation.

A planetary lens

A cure for ecological myopia requires using the planetary lens that political geoecology offers. It starts from a simple premise: Everything people depend on, including energy, water, food and health, is embedded in the Earth system.

Looking through this lens shifts priorities. Climate policy becomes inseparable from economic and social policy. Emissions targets are linked to land use and infrastructure, and what societies produce and build.

Indigenous and local knowledge systems are recognised as essential sources of resilience. Protecting ecosystems such as the Amazon is understood as protecting the processes that sustain rainfall and regional stability.

This perspective echoes ideas in research and policy circles on planetary governance, which is not simply global governance at a larger scale. It focuses on how societies can govern within ecological limits and in response to feedbacks – the knock-on effects the Earth system sends back as conditions change – rather than managing climate as an external problem.

For example, shrinking river flows that threaten hydropower or severe flooding that disrupts food production and transport show how Earth system changes spill across sectors, not just climate policy.

Seeing more clearly is the first step toward wiser action.

The central challenge is not only to cut emissions. It is to rethink how societies understand and organise their relationship with the living Earth and to overcome ecological myopia in media narratives, institutional design and economic choices.

The Amazon is often described as the lungs of the planet. It is also a mirror that shows how closely human life is bound into the wider Earth system and how vulnerable that system has become. Now, it’s time to use this mirror to tackle our ecological myopia.

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Prior to retirement Simon Dalby was funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Tom Pegram does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Ecological myopia: the blind spot holding back climate action – https://theconversation.com/ecological-myopia-the-blind-spot-holding-back-climate-action-270912

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matyas Liptovszky, Professor of Practice and Head of Division of Population Science, University of Nottingham

Great apes are humans’ closest relatives in the animal kingdom. As much as 98.8% of their DNA is shared, but while the number of humans living on the planet is increasing fast, other great apes are in decline. Five out of the seven species are now critically endangered.

The UN has estimated that about 22,000 great apes disappeared from their natural habitats between 2005 and 2011. Adults are mostly killed, their meat and body parts sold for bushmeat, traditional medicine or, in some cases, traditional ceremonies.

Babies and juvenile apes, on the other hand, command a much higher price alive. They are also easier to smuggle across borders. Seizures and confiscations of illegal animal trades are rare and often poorly documented.

Part of the problem is great apes are very attractive. Ever since the first animals arrived at European zoos, these species have been popular with visitors. Some, like Barcelona zoo’s white gorilla Snowflake or Twycross zoo’s “PG Tips chimps”, even became celebrities.

Through the decades, great apes have remained an acquisition target for some zoos and animal attractions, sometimes by dodging the rules. The desire to keep “exotic” animals as pets also remains a key driver of the illegal global wildlife trade.

Social media has made the illegal trade in great apes much more efficient: sellers and buyers can use online platforms to exchange messages about prices and transport.

For years, conservation NGOs such as the Jane Goodall Institute, Traffic and the African Wildlife Foundation have been warning about the threat of extinction for great apes. Now a great ape enforcement taskforce – set up by member-nations of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) – is being established to try and tackle the escalating illegal trade.

The convention was formed 50 years ago to create rules for a legal trade in wildlife and to stem the decline in wild animal populations. Under Cites, commercial trade in great apes is effectively banned. But it has been long known that the complex, paper-based permit system can be avoided or ignored.

The illegal trade of live great apes is not a simple logistical exercise. These animals are agile, clever and strong, even when young. They need ongoing care and can make noises that may reveal them hidden away in cargo. But for years, these transactions have been made easier by weak law enforcement, lack of capacity of government departments, and widespread corruption. Falsifying and laundering documents to pretend these animals are traded legally is another route.

What are the problems?

So why are governments not doing more? First, the organisation meant to provide oversight and monitoring of wildlife trade – the Cites secretariat – is underfunded. While the legal global wildlife trade market is valued at US$220 billion (£164 billion) a year, the secretariat has an annual budget of about US$20 million. And like most international treaties, it is reliant on the collaboration of its 185 state members, with all the complexities of international politics.

State governments also don’t treat the illegal wildlife trade as high a priority as illegal drugs, weapons or human trafficking – despite the well-known connections between these. And many still operate an outdated permit system developed in the 1970s, instead of the proposed electronic version which would provide much better protection against fraudulent permits, faster and transparent reporting, and increased collaboration with customs officials.

Moving apes around

There are, however, legitimate reasons to transfer great apes internationally. Moving second-generation, captive-bred animals from one registered zoo to another would be a typical example. Getting an export permit showing the animal as captive-born is one of the easiest ways to transport great apes internationally.

But this can also be used as a loophole. In the late 2000s, some 150 chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas were reportedly exported from Guinea to China, although there is no known facility in Guinea breeding either species. In this case, high-level corruption was a key factor: in 2015, Ansoumane Doumbouya, then head of the Cites management authority in Guinea, was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison for selling fraudulent export permits. He was later pardoned by the president of Guinea.

In September 2025, Cites officials visited one of the largest private animal collections in the world. Vantara, India’s wildlife sanctuary turned mega-zoo, was hailed by some as an amazing story of love and care for wildlife. But the Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa, a national network of 30 South African organisations, has been increasingly concerned about the fast-paced imports of over 2,000 wild animal species from all over the world. Vantara now reportedly keeps close to 150,000 animals, more than any other well-known zoo.

In a recent investigation, the Indian Supreme Court absolved Vantara from any wrongdoing in relation to animal imports. But after this ruling, the Cites secretariat also visited the zoo. Its recent report raised significant concerns about several issues relating to animal transportation involving Vantara.

Vantara has claimed that Cites gave “a clean chit” to the facility, and that it had noted that all animal transfers to the facility were “fully legitimate and transparent, in accordance with Indian law”.

The Cites report said chimpanzees were imported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and also Middle Eastern countries (via the United Arab Emirates) as captive animals. As far as the author is aware, none of these countries are known to breed chimpanzees in zoos or other captive facilities.

Even more worryingly, a bonobo from Iraq, a mountain gorilla from Haiti, and a Tapanuli orangutan from Indonesia were also acquired. There are few recognised zoos globally which breed bonobos, and none breeding either mountain gorillas or Tapanuli orangutans. There is only a single male Tapanuli orangutan kept in an Indonesian zoo. Based on the Zoological Information Management System, the global zoo database, there is currently no mountain gorilla in zoos worldwide.

More generally, Cites has called on member countries affected by the great ape trade – both as a source and destination – to implement additional measures to prevent any illegal transfers. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest conservation alliance, has also called for “international action to protect wild great apes in their natural habitats, with a focus on addressing poaching and illegal trade”.

Introducing a modern electronic permit system and carrying out more enforcement would be important first steps to tackling these crimes. Otherwise, these species that are so close to humans will disappear in front of our eyes.

Prof Matyas Liptovszky is a director of Wilder International, and in a voluntary capacity affiliated with the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

– ref. Great apes are humans’ closest relatives, but many are endangered by illegal trading. Here’s what needs to be done – https://theconversation.com/great-apes-are-humans-closest-relatives-but-many-are-endangered-by-illegal-trading-heres-what-needs-to-be-done-270333

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sally Christine Reynolds, Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University

Scientists have discovered the single largest dinosaur track site in the world in Carreras Pampa, Torotoro National Park, Bolivia. The tracks were made around 70 million years ago, in the late Cretaceous Period, by theropods – bipedal three-toed dinosaurs – with bird tracks also present in this ancient beach scene.

Over 16,600 footprints and swim traces cover the ancient trackway surface, all heading in the same direction. Swim traces form when floating or swimming animals briefly touch the bottom, often with just their toes making contact. The researchers suggest the traces were made parallel to an ancient shoreline, which preserves beautiful ripple marks.

Modern studies of animals at African water holes and lake margins suggest that herbivores tend to move perpendicular to a shore, moving quickly across the open areas close to a lake. In contrast, carnivores tend to travel parallel to the shore, since this gives them the best chance of intersecting prey.

There are no hard and fast rules here, just general principles, which may or may not apply in this case. Although it is likely that at least some of the traces were made by carnivorous dinosaurs.

Tricky identification

The research was announced in a Plos One paper, which documents 1,321 trackways plus 289 isolated tracks, totalling 16,600 theropod (three-toed) tracks.

They also record 280 “swim” trackways (1,378 swim tracks) and multiple tail traces, with some bird tracks occurring locally alongside the theropod tracks.

These traces can often resemble scratches and are different from the tracks the same animal might make on land. They tell a story of behaviour that is rich in detail.

The site preserves at least a dozen distinct track morphologies (shapes or forms), implying multiple kinds of animals, but the study doesn’t translate those into a specific number of species.

Identifying the species of the trackmakers is difficult for two reasons. First, a single animal can make footprints with different shapes and forms depending on the motion of the foot and the consistency of the underlying ground.

Second, fossil bones are not always found at footprint sites, because the conditions needed for fossil bones to be retained are often different from those needed to preserve footprints.

This makes it harder to identify specific groups or species of dinosaur. The researchers overcome this in the paper by defining “morphotypes”, or put another way, recurring footprints of different types, or forms.

When looking at a track site like this, the number of tracks – and there are lots at this site – does not necessarily equate to the number of animals. One animal moving back and forth across a surface can make lots of tracks. Equally, lots of animals moving once across a surface can leave the same number of tracks.

The find is significant because it captures a range of behaviour from a variety of species. This provides researchers with a window into ancient behaviour, like whether these dinosaurs moved in groups and, potentially, how they foraged and travelled along the stretch of beach.

For example, there is evidence of individual dinosaurs moving in the same direction, which can be due to dinosaurs moving in social groups, performing tasks such as hunting or migrating. However, this phenomenon can also arise because of other factors, such as geographical barriers.

Importantly, the study of the footprints allows researchers to document species that would have occurred together in the landscape during the short time interval when the tracks were forming. This makes the site an archive of an ancient ecosystem, rather than just a single species. Further analysis to yield fascinating insights into the daily lives of the creatures passing along this stretch of shore.

The longest prehistoric trackway made by people, in White Sands National Park (New Mexico), helped us appreciate that one trackmaker on a single journey can make a variety of different types of track based on what they were doing. There could be parallels here with the dinosaur trackway in Bolivia.

Something to ponder as you next walk on a well-trodden beach.

Sally Christine Reynolds does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Over 16,000 dinosaur tracks discovered at a site in Bolivia – https://theconversation.com/over-16-000-dinosaur-tracks-discovered-at-a-site-in-bolivia-271636