Hello Nature readers,
Today we enjoy the month’s most stunning science images, hear about a ‘data apocalypse’ at US public-health agencies and tunnel into the mysterious heart of quantum theory.

The month’s best science images

Photographer Jānis Paļulis got the best of both worlds as he captured the aurora and the Milky Way in the skies over Bauska, Latvia. The shot was one of 25 highlighted entries in the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition.

See more of the month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

The sweet, soft taste of deliciousness

Any parent can tell you that texture is a key factor in whether food is deemed ‘good’ or ‘gross’. But it is a little-explored aspect of how we assess a meal’s deliciousness. Now researchers have discovered that certain neurons in the brains of maggots can sense both taste and texture — a rare case of a ‘multimodal’ neuron, which suggests animal senses might be more complex than we think.

Underground mosquito is no Londoner

A genetic analysis of the mosquito variety Culex pipiens molestus suggests that the species originated thousands of years ago in the Middle East. These mozzies made a name for themselves by biting people sheltering from German air raids in the tunnels of the London Underground during the Second World War, and scientists once thought the species evolved in the subway. The new results hint that they first adapted to human environments above ground in what is now Egypt, over the course of more than 1,000 years, potentially in conjunction with the rise of agricultural civilizations.

‘It’s like a data apocalypse’

On Friday, several US government public-health datasets — including from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — became unavailable online as agencies moved to comply with wide-ranging executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, which ban work related to topics including diversity, equity and inclusion. “It’s like a data apocalypse,” virologist Angela Rasmussen told Science. Some material is back online, but there is much uncertainty.

Meanwhile, leading scientists who spoke to STAT urged the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and their high-profile membership to defend US science and healthcare from attacks, especially given the risk of retaliation faced by early-career researchers in the current heightened political climate. “We want to work in a positive way with the people who are coming into power, but I for one am not going to stand by silently,” said Nobel-prizewinning scientist Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health. “There are higher values at stake.”

What we still don’t know about quantum theory

Quantum physics works wonderfully, writes physicist and author Sean Carroll — but physicists don’t know why. “Or at least, if some of us think we know why, most others don’t agree.” On the centenary of quantum theory, Carroll delves into the counter-intuitive reality in which the act of observation influences what is observed — and few can agree on what that means.

‘Archaeology’s closest thing to a household name’

Colin Renfrew, who helped to transform archaeology as a scientific discipline, died last November, aged 87. In the 1960s, researchers discovered that tree rings from bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) — which are among the oldest living things on Earth — could be used to redate artefacts in Europe. Prompted by these developments, Renfrew helped develop a fresh understanding of how European and Near Eastern civilizations developed, alongside new models for how societies change. “Renfrew’s ideas were decades ahead of available computational modelling power,” writes his colleague, archaeologist Cyprian Broodbank.

The ‘most prolific planet hunter so far’

Jason Steffen’s Hidden in the Heavens offers “a fabulous insight into the myriad components that went into NASA’s first dedicated planet-finding mission”, writes astrophysicist Elizabeth Tasker in her review. The book tells the story of the Kepler Space Telescope, which was designed to find exoplanets — planets outside our solar system. From its conception in the 1970s, before a single exoplanet had been discovered, to its deactivation in 2018, “the Kepler mission has changed what we know about planets and about our place in the Universe”, Tasker writes.