Table of contents

Historians have unearthed an essay written by former British prime minister Winston Churchill on the future of landing on the Moon, Mars and Venus, the difficulties of interstellar travel, and the likelihood of there being life outside the solar system.

After the exciting announcement that astronomers had discovered seven Earth-like exoplanets orbiting a nearby star, astronomers simply dubbed them TRAPPIST-1a to TRAPPIST-1h. So NASA took to Twitter to seek inspiration.

Physics collided with fashion at a Saint Laurent show in Paris last month.

A LEGO set featuring minifigures of five women who played a crucial role in the history of the US space effort will be made into an official product.

The largest known system of Earth-like exoplanets has been found orbiting a dwarf star in the Milky Way.

Researchers in the US have developed a potential new source of nuclear fuel by extracting uranium from seawater.

Scientists often struggle to emulate the natural world in a laboratory, including recreating intricate crystal structures such as "clathrates" – cage-like lattices made of polyhedral clusters and pores.

Many animals have evolved to have impressive visual skills, yet understanding how and what they see has always been a challenge for scientists.

It is well known that "superhydrophobic" materials strongly repel water through a combination of surface chemistry and microscale texture.

Immigration, funding and climate change are among the issues driving a wedge between the US scientific community and the new administration, as Peter Gwynne reports

US physicist Rush Holt, who spent 16 years as a Democrat in the US Congress and is now chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, talks to Matin Durrani about the prospects for science with Donald Trump as president

Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have completed a major upgrade to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) – one of four main detectors at the facility.

A survey of almost 10,000 undergraduates in New Zealand has found that women are more likely to choose to study life sciences after taking a first-year physics course rather than progressing further in the physical sciences.

The UK government has announced it will provide £105m for a new materials centre located at the University of Manchester.

UK research is already being harmed by "Brexit" – the country's impending exit from the European Union – according to a survey by Prospect, the trade union that represents scientists, engineers and technical specialists in the UK.

The solid-state physicist Mildred Dresselhaus has died at the age of 86.

Estonia is planning to become a member of the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva.

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) observatory, located in Losberg near Carnarvon in South Africa, has received $5.8m from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the US.

The Scottish physicist Ronald Drever, a key person behind the direct detection of gravitational waves, has died at the age of 85.

Women make up just 25% of researchers in the physical sciences, compared with 40% in health and life sciences, according to a new study published by Elsevier that examines gender trends across 27 research areas in 12 countries during the periods 1996–2000 and 2011–2015.

Thom Mason is to step down as director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on 1 July – exactly 10 years after taking the job.

Students taking science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in the US have a number of misconceptions about teaching that may be leading them to choose other careers, according to a study by the American Physical Society (APS).

Australia's most prominent non-governmental climate-change organization will shut in June due to a lack of funding.

The diversity of British physics is being threatened by Britain's departure from the EU

Get up to speed with our new series of free-to-read, short-form ebooks

With the UK set to leave the European Union, Brian Bowsher says it is vital that the country continues to attract the best researchers and work closely with other nations too

Synchrotrons can be used to study delicate historical artefacts, but what if it were your prized possession in the beamline? Robert P Crease finds out

In response to Stephen Ornes' feature "The return of supersolids" (February pp24–27), which reported on what could be the first observation of supersolids.

In response to Bruce Knuteson's Forum article "Figuring out a handshake" (February p17), in which he suggested that the replication crisis in science could be solved if scientists sold their research.

In response to the newly launched Physics World Discovery series of short-form e-books, and specifically to Complex Light by Jeff Secor, Robert Alfano and Solyman Ashrafi.

In response to the news article "Tiny radio is based on diamond defects" (February p5).

In response to Brian Clegg's feature article "Speaking a different language" (February pp34–37), in which he suggests that a good science communicator anticipates the kind of questions the audience will want to have answered.

In response to Peter Barham's feature "Penguin physics" (December 2016 pp24–27), in which he talks about being a polymer physicist and a penguin researcher.

Why certain liquids turn blue when cooled was a mystery that stumped scientists for more than a century. As Oliver Henrich and Davide Marenduzzo explain, solving the secret of the "blue fog" proved to be an intellectual tour de force – and one that could lead to new types of display devices

Jason Lotay explains how mathematicians studying special geometries are collaborating with physicists to explore M-theory, an 11-dimensional description of the world that unifies the various string theories

Ploughing your own furrow in fundamental physics is a lonely business, only fit for the most thick-skinned scientists, as Benjamin Skuse reports

Albert Einstein's persistent opposition to quantum mechanics is a familiar, if still somewhat surprising, fact to all physicists, as David Bodanis observes in his latest book Einstein's Greatest Mistake: the Life of a Flawed Genius.

Much as its name suggests, Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 focuses on the hunt for a ninth planet in our solar system, along with other possible "rogue" planets that astronomers now believe may abound in the galaxy.

In The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, author Dava Sobel tells the previously untold tale of the women who, from 1877, worked as human calculators to process astronomical data.

Scientist and author Carrie Nugent claims to be obsessed with asteroids, according to her new book Asteroid Hunters.

The Atmosphere: a Very Short Introduction, by atmospheric scientist Paul Palmer, does a good job of contextualizing the subject with advances in science.

For today's academics, balancing personal and professional demands can be a difficult, often futile task. Roel Snieder and Jen Schneider, authors of the recent book The Joy of Science, reveal the seven principles that scientists should adhere to if they want to be happy and successful

Z Aziza Baccouche is chief executive of Aziza Productions, a media company that specializes in producing science films.

Patricia Bassereau of the Institut Curie Research Centre in Paris, France, has won the Autumn–Winter 2016 Emmy Noether Distinction for Women in Physics.

After the recent UK referendum and US election, it's becoming clear that saying something appealing is much more important than being truthful.