The wriggly, copper-fanged marine worms could help advance the future of soft robotics, researchers say

Scientists say plant’s resilience suggests it could help with oxygen generation or soil formation on space missions

Matt Damon grew potatoes for survival in The Martian, but researchers say mosses could one day help turn the dust and rocks of other planets into fertile soil.

Physcomitrella patens, or spreading earthmoss, is already known as a pioneering species – albeit for being an early plant on the scene in areas of barren mud. Now researchers have found that spores of the moss can survive for at least nine months stuck to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and still reproduce once back on Earth.

The story has sparked debates about cryogenics and fidelity. But it also tells us something deeper about our responses to loss

One of the last remaining fun things about the internet is getting to pass judgment on the goings-on in households that you would never hear about otherwise. On Reddit, for instance, there is a whole thriving sub for just this purpose called Am I the Asshole?, where people describe conflicts from their lives and ask strangers to adjudicate on them.

This week, a story on the BBC threw up a particularly juicy piece of other people’s business that has been sparking debates on Chinese social media. It starts in 2017, when Gui Junmin decided to cryogenically freeze his wife, Zhan Wenlian, after she died of lung cancer. She was the first Chinese person to undergo this procedure, which was paid for by a science research institute in Jinan, east China, that agreed with Gui to preserve his wife’s body for 30 years. Reports suggest Zhan herself consented to the process before she passed away.

Imogen West-Knights is a writer and journalist

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The interstellar visitor, known as 3I/Atlas, will be seen just in this instance, never to come back again

Nasa released close-up pictures on Wednesday of the interstellar comet that’s making a quick one-and-done tour of the solar system.

Discovered over the summer, the comet known as 3I/Atlas is only the third confirmed object to visit our corner of the cosmos from another star. It zipped harmlessly past Mars last month.

Molecular profiles will give detailed snapshot of person’s physiology and predict diseases from diabetes to cancer and dementia

The world’s largest study into key substances in the bloodstream has paved the way for a swathe of pinprick tests that can detect early signs of disease more than a decade before symptoms appear, researchers say.

Work on the tests follows the completion of a project by UK Biobank to measure the levels of nearly 250 different proteins, sugars, fats and other compounds in blood collected from half a million volunteers.