Nature: When the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice was filmed on the slopes of Mount Shinmoedake in 1967, the Japanese volcano had been dormant for eight years and hadn’t expelled lava for three centuries. As Nature‘s David Cyranoski reports, the volcano’s current eruptions of mud and steam have surprised volcanologists—even though the volcano and the range it belongs to were being monitored with seismometers, tiltmeters, magnetometers, thermal imagers, and other instruments. Now, Japanese authorities have increased their surveillance of the volcano. A major eruption is not out of the question.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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