The Guardian

The marine scientists on the Ocean Exploration Trust’s research vessel, E/V Nautilus, find what is likely to be a variant of sea slug 5,000ft below the sea off Santa Barbara, California in a video published online on 25 July. The researchers have sent a sample of the purple orb to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology for DNA analysis

• Video courtesy of Ocean Exploration Trust. See the full video here

Researchers confirm that as yet unnamed whale sighted by Japanese fishermen was previously unknown to science

Scientists have confirmed that a mysterious, unnamed species of beaked whale roams the northern Pacific Ocean. Sightings of the creature, which has a bulbous head and a beak like a porpoise, had been reported by Japanese fishermen, who call them karasu or ravens, but it was previously unknown to science. It has yet to be given a formal scientific name.

“Clearly this species is very rare and reminds us how much we have to learn about the ocean and even some of its largest inhabitants,” said Phillip Morin, a research molecular biologist at the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). His team revealed the existence of the new species in a paper published in the journal Marine Mammal Science last week.

Visitors flock to the New York Botanical Garden on Friday to witness one of the world’s largest and smelliest flowers – Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower – bloom. The rare blooming began Thursday afternoon after more than 10 years of growth. The bloom at its peak only lasts about 24 to 36 hours

• E/V Nautilus team find likely sea slug 5,000ft below sea off Santa Barbara
• Analysis reveals foot and proboscis, making it ‘a gastropod of some kind’

More than 5,000ft below the surface of the ocean, in a canyon off the coast of southern California, the purple, globular creature appeared to glow under the submersible’s lights.

Related: Sea sponge the size of a minivan discovered in ocean depths off Hawaii

Thousands of people in Thorne and village of Moorends, near Doncaster, told not to use tap water while utility firm investigates

Thousands of people in a South Yorkshire town have been warned not to use tap water for drinking or cooking after high levels of bacteria were detected.

The former Labour leader Ed Miliband said he was concerned over the situation affecting 3,600 properties in parts of Thorne, near Doncaster, and the neighbouring village of Moorends, which is in his constituency.

Hay-on-Wye, Powys Market town enjoys a renaissance of home produce picked the day before with no chilled storage in sight

Joe at the market garden called 100% Hay is always smiley, but this market day morning he’s looking especially chirpy. The sun is shining, customers are queuing, and the full bounty of summer is weighing heavy on his stall.

Laid out beside his year-round staples – potatoes, garlic, onions and chard – are boxes of summer fruit: red and yellow raspberries, deep purple blackcurrants, blush-red strawberries. Out of adjacent boxes spill the season’s first tomatoes and courgettes.

Number of single-use bags handed out dropped to 500m in first six months since charge, compared with 7bn the previous year

The number of single-use plastic bags used by shoppers in England has plummeted by more than 85% after the introduction of a 5p charge last October, early figures suggest.

More than 7bn bags were handed out by seven main supermarkets in the year before the charge, but this figure plummeted to slightly more than 500m in the first six months after the charge was introduced, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said.

One of the world’s largest flowers, Amorphophallus titanum takes around a decade to bloom and promptly dies two days later in a foul-smelling crescendo

Visitors crowded the New York botanical garden in the Bronx and began to sniff. On a rainy Friday morning, they traveled en masse to witness one of the world’s largest and smelliest flowers – Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse flower. It’s the first time the flower, which takes around a decade to bloom and then dies after 24-36 hours, has appeared in the city since 1939.

“It smells like lettuce when you take it out of the bag,” a woman yelled from the crowd of onlookers in the Enid A Haupt conservatory. “It smells like the aquarium. Like the penguin enclosure,” another added. The odor came in waves as onlookers jostled for the best spot to take photos and selfies with the giant flower. Some left holding their noses.

Stork-billed kingfishers and baby rhinos are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

Ministers create presentation to show how idle land around nuclear disaster site can be used to produce renewable energy

The contaminated nuclear wasteland around Chernobyl could be turned into one of the world’s largest solar farms, producing nearly a third of the electricity that the stricken plant generated at its height 30 years ago, according to the Ukrainian government.

In a presentation sent to major banks and seen by the Guardian, 6,000 hectares of “idle” land in Chernobyl’s 1,000 square km exclusion zone, which is considered too dangerous for people to live in or farm, could be turned to solar, biogas and heat and power generation.

Langley Bush, Cambridgeshire A bronze age grave, Roman shrine, gibbet mound, parish marker, gypsy haunt - centuries of decisions and deaths right here

Odd, the durable significance of some places. You can understand a mountain or cliff or sprawling forest – places that awe the eye on the ground, horizon or map. More enigmatic are the little places. Slid away, unremarkable but exquisite in appearance or legacy, for reasons frequently forgotten but strangely lingering.

This one, historically, a bronze age grave, then Roman shrine, then outdoor court, place of execution, parish marker, gypsy haunt, poet’s muse. Today, the name of a road and the title of a plaque. This is Langley Bush, lost in a field near Peterborough.

This footage from the Antarctic summer of 2007-08 shows how Australian scientists endure extreme conditions to drill ice cores from Antarctica’s Law Dome area. Law Dome is a spot in eastern Antarctica where scientists have been drilling to gather historic climate datat. New research using Law Dome ice cores suggests the world might be able to burn less fossil fuels than previously thought

Analysis of bubbles trapped in ancient Antarctic ice suggests that as the planet heats up, plants and soils will add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere

“When the earth burps, Law Dome records it,” says Australian climate scientist Dr David Etheridge.

Law Dome is a special spot in eastern Antarctica where scientists have been drilling down into the continent’s long-frozen surface to pull out cores of ice.

An Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, was the first to achieve it but just recently nuclear fission’s popularity has been decreasing

It began in 1789 when a German chemist named Martin Klaproth discovered uranium but it was not until 1934 that nuclear fission was first achieved following a series of experiments by Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist.

Related: Hinkley Point C to go ahead after EDF board approves project

Nuclear reactor project has seen several developments since being announced in 2005

• EDF board approves Hinkley Point C project
  

UK energy policy review launched by Tony Blair

Huge, expensive and difficult to build, Hinkley is a throwback to the last century, just as the world is embracing the smart energy systems of the future

The new nuclear reactors now given the go-ahead at Hinkley Point have failed every test bar the one that finally mattered - political expediency.

The plant, to be paid for by UK energy customers, could cost them £37bn and is a leading contender for the most expensive object ever built on the face of the Earth. A former Conservative energy secretary calls it “one of the worst deals ever” for Britain.

Businesses and education providers on the Somerset coast see opportunities but residents remain concerned over safety and waste

The EDF Energy visitor centre at the Angel Place shopping centre in Bridgwater was doing brisk business.

A group of pensioners waited for a coach to take them for a tour of Hinkley Point B nuclear power station 10 miles away on the Somerset coast while children played with displays explaining how electricity is created. Teenagers dropped in to jump on to a static bike and power up their mobile phones.

Official figures show low-carbon sources accounted for almost half of national electricity supply last year - outstripping coal for the first time

Almost half the UK’s electricity came from clean energy sources such as wind and nuclear power last year, official figures have revealed.

Renewables accounted for a quarter of the country’s power supplies in 2015, outstripping coal power for the first time, the data published by the government revealed.

UK government would need to increase funding to match common agricultural policy levels, Holyrood committee hears

Scottish farmers face losing hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidy after Brexit unless the UK government increases funding for Holyrood, a Scottish parliament committee has been told.

A senior economist and the National Farmers Union Scotland (NFUS) said the EU referendum vote raised significant doubts over the future of £452m in common agriculture programme spending in Scotland, because of the current Treasury deal to fund Holyrood.

The hi-tech illuminated costumes worn by media artist Kasia Molga reveal changes in urban air pollution and bring together art and science

Heads turn when media artist Kasia Molga and her performers walk the streets of Manchester. When they near buses belching diesel fumes, their futuristic capes and masks turn a bright red. Near a park they go green. Depending on the traffic pollution levels in the northern industrial city, their clothing pulses, flashes and changes colour from purple through to white.

Molga calls herself a “human sensor”. She has linked with atmospheric scientists at King’s College London to develop clothing that reacts to the minute particles (PM2.5s) emitted mainly by diesel engines.