Hello Nature readers,
Today we hear that a telescope jeopardized by proposed US budget cuts could find a home in Europe, learn that some penguins take energy-efficient routes home and consider the retraction of the controversial ‘arsenic life’ paper.

Major telescope might have a new home

The Thirty Meter Telescope, a major international project long slated for construction in Hawaii, might be getting a new home. The Spanish government has pitched to bring the giant facility to La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands — and backed up the effort with a pledge to contribute €400 million. The move comes after US president Donald Trump’s administration announced plans to abandon further support for the telescope, which had been expecting funding from the US National Science Foundation.

Penguins choose energy-saving routes

Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) are masters of energy efficiency: instead of taking a straight-line route to their destination, they’ll ride curved currents that are headed roughly in that direction when possible. The currents can make their trips slightly longer, but that has an upside — it allows them more time to hunt for food. Researchers found that by using currents, the penguins consistently returned to within 300 metres of their homes. The findings suggest that the birds keep track of the changing tidal cycle and use it to their advantage.

AI’s problem-solving rivals top students

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by Google DeepMind and OpenAI have cracked a set of maths problems at the level of the world’s top high-school students, achieving a gold-medal score on questions from the International Mathematical Olympiad. DeepMind models have previously reached silver-medal level, but these tools required human experts to first translate the problems’ statements into something similar to a programming language, and then to translate the AI’s solutions back into English. The tool they used this year is “natural language, end to end”, says DeepMind computer scientist Thang Luong.

Futures: The last parliament

Representatives from the old and new world meet to discuss the end of the world in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Podcast: solid gold at 19,000 kelvin

Using a giant laser, researchers ‘superheated’ a thin strip of gold well beyond its melting point without it becoming a liquid. The team suggests that the speed at which they heated the gold allowed them to shoot past this limit, but there is scepticism about whether they actually achieved the level of heating they report. Luckily, it could be relatively easy to clear up any doubts. “This is something that we can exactly model in a computer, because it's such a well-defined problem,” says computational physicist Artur Tamm, who reviewed the paper.