your science briefing for 01.09.2025

Why some video games are good for your brain, a planet that looks like it doesn't fit in its solar system, a possible cure for bowel cancer, and more...

Regardless of what you’ve been told by corporate podcast bros, we aren’t supposed be spending our lives in a mind-numbing cycle of grinding and consuming. We want to explore. We want adventure. Our brain needs novelty, variety, and challenge, which is why open world games — the closest thing many of us have today to going on long expeditions into the unknown — may be good for our mental health… (Science Alert)

Everyone and their step-grandmother-in-law has been singing praises to the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Technically, they are correct. Science does say it’s more or less the best way we can eat. But why does it appear so effective? Researchers say it all comes down to the kind of bacteria it cultivates in our guts… (Tulane University)

Planets form out of the disks of dust and gas left over from the birth of their stars. So, you’d expect that the atmosphere of new planets would have similar compositions to that of the disk that created them, right? PDS 70b, a still forming exoplanet 370 light years away, is making us reconsider that assumption… (Universe Today)

A combination of highly targeted chemotherapy and a liver transplant, a protocol that was not too long ago considered on the extreme side and with uncertain payoff, looks to have cured a young English woman’s bowel cancer. This is promising news, as the UK is dealing with a sudden uptick in bowel cancer diagnoses among people who are under 50 years old, and shouldn’t be at risk yet… (Metro UK)

Human evolution is a long and complicated story. We know of at least 21 human-like species and four common ancestors that existed at some point in the last 3.8 million years. Now scientists are asking if we found yet another branch of the hominoid tree with the fossils of Homo juluensis… (BBC)