The brightest take on this week’s science

Immunologists have identified a case of skin cancer in an immunocompromised woman that would not have existed without the human papillomavirus (HPV)…

… one of the most common viruses in the world.

It’s the first study to show that HPV can hijack our skin cells to directly drive cancer growth.

• The woman’s body was still repairing DNA damage from UV radiation, but some important immune cells were not working as expected.

• When a stem cell transplant replaced her dysfunctional immune cells with healthy ones, the cancer was cleared.

The discovery could fundamentally change how scientists think about skin cancer in those who are immunocompromised.

Still worth putting on sunscreen though!

Read more.

• 🏅This week’s most read: Parkinson's link to gut bacteria hints at an unexpected, simple treatment

• 🧠 These symptoms could be early warning signs of MS, a decade before diagnosis

• 🐄 A disease that makes you allergic to meat and dairy is spreading around the world

• 👁️ New research confirms weight-loss drug link with sudden vision loss

An international team of archaeologists has discovered the earliest evidence of human activity in the Indonesian islands.

The tools are between 1 and 1.5 million years old, and they were found on the island of Sulawesi, north of where the ‘Hobbit’ used to live – an extinct early human of remarkably short stature.

The identity of the Sulawesi toolmakers remains a mystery…

… as does the question of how they made it to the island, across a deep ocean channel from Asia.

"It's highly unlikely these early hominins had the cognitive capacity (especially the ability for advanced planning) required to invent boats," archaeologist and co-lead of the expedition, Adam Brumm, told ScienceAlert.

"It is more likely that hominins got to Sulawesi by accident, most probably as a result of 'rafting' on natural vegetation mats.”

Archaeologists are now scouring Sulawesi for the bones of the long-lost seafarers. Perhaps they were related to the Hobbit?

Read more.

A) Tardigrade mouth
B) Snail shell
C) Moth feeding tube
D) Plant pores

Answer at the bottom.

Ancient teeth from the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods are helping scientists reconstruct the very air that dinosaurs once breathed.

"Even after up to 150 million years, isotopic traces of the oxygen molecules… that the dinosaur inhaled are still preserved in fossil tooth enamel and can tell us something about the ancient atmosphere composition,” explained paleontologist and geochemist Thomas Tütken.

The research team now plans to analyze the enamel of creatures more than 250 million years ago.

Talk about long in the tooth.

Read more.

In space, two solid sheets of bare metal can spontaneously fuse together – no blow torch required.

The late astronaut Ed Jones discovered this the hard way on the first American space walk in 1965. When trying to get back into the spacecraft, the metal door was strangely stuck...

Our friend Derek Muller at Veritasium has a great video explainer that makes the physics easy to digest – quite literally… he uses a candy bar and everything.

There’s beauty in a storm (as long as you aren’t in it).

Microscope answer: A moth feeding tube.

When a moth gets hungry, it cracks its ‘lips’, unrolls its straw-like feeding tube and sucks up nectar and other juicy treats. Sometimes the straw is called a moth ‘tongue’ because the tip is covered in taste buds. Its anatomical name is a proboscis.