Daily briefing: Flawless deployment for James Webb Space Telescope

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Webb Space Telescope deploys flawlessly

After several tense days of unfurling and clicking its various parts into place, the biggest and most sophisticated space telescope ever launched is now complete. On 8 January, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope slowly swung the last 3 of its 18 hexagonal mirror segments into position, locking them together into one 6.5-metre-wide, gold-coated cosmic eye. The move capped an essentially flawless two weeks of engineering manoeuvres — the most complex astronomical deployments ever attempted in space — since the telescope’s Christmas Day launch. The US$10-billion observatory still faces many significant tasks, such as aligning its mirror segments and calibrating its 4 scientific instruments. But it has finished the most complex astronomical deployments ever attempted in space — without which it would have been inoperable.

Nature | 5 min read

Timing is key for some Omicron immunity

A laboratory study from Japan suggests that COVID-19 vaccination followed by a breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection months later offers greater protection against the Omicron variant than does vaccination with infection soon after. Vaccinated people who have had an infection are thought to gain strong immunity, at least for a time. The finding implies that countries that saw large numbers of non-Omicron infections in late 2021 have an advantage as 2022 rolls in with the new variant. The study has not yet been peer reviewed.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: medRxiv preprint

Ichthyosaur is one of UK’s ‘greatest finds’

The 10-metre-long skeleton of an ichthyosaur is the biggest of its kind ever found in the United Kingdom. “It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British palaeontological history,” says palaeontologist Dean Lomax. The marine reptile is something of a fossil favourite here in England, partly because it was first discovered by iconic palaeontologist Mary Anning in 1811, when she was only 12 years old.

The Guardian | 10 min read

Features & opinion

Why scientists become spies

US Navy nuclear engineer Jonathan Toebbe has been charged with selling information about nuclear submarines to what he allegedly thought was a foreign government — but was in reality an undercover FBI agent. The case prompts The New Yorker to look back at scientist–spies and what motivates them — such as physicist Klaus Fuchs, who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first nuclear weapons for the United States while sharing its discoveries with the Soviet Union.

The New Yorker | 10 min read

Twins who championed and confounded science

Twins Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff came to fame with a popular 1980s science television programme in France and eventually courted infamy because of their unusual plastic surgery and controversial PhD research. They died on 28 December and 3 January, aged 72, of COVID-19. Their doctoral degrees, in physics for Igor and in mathematics for Grichka, caused a kerfuffle in the field after some physicists posited that the Bogdanoff’s papers were so incomprehensible that they were effectively a hoax. The brothers maintained that their work was valid and sued several scientists and magazines for libel.

The New York Times | 8 min read

Read more: Theses spark twin dilemma for physicists (Nature | 4 min read, from 2002)

Infographic of the week

Brazil has the largest amount of fresh water in the world. About 20% of all global inland water flowing to the oceans is generated in Brazilian territory. Yet much of the nation now faces drought. Climate researchers Augusto Getirana, Renata Libonati and Marcio Cataldi explain the complex processes that have created the crisis and describe a plan for how the country can avoid the worst outcomes. (Nature | 10 min read)

See more of the week’s key infographics, selected by Nature’s news and art teams.