Greenland’s melt is expected to slow the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, but research suggests a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet could in some cases prevent it from shutting down | Continue reading
Mice with the same genetic variant that contributes towards red hair in people were slower to recover from wounds than their black-haired counterparts | Continue reading
RNA from an exceptionally well preserved woolly mammoth gives us a window on gene activity in an animal that died nearly 40,000 years ago | Continue reading
A galaxy in a practically empty area of the universe seems to be impossibly forming stars, and new observations have only deepened the puzzle | Continue reading
From microscopes to geodes, New Scientist staff share their top Christmas present ideas in a gift guide unlike any you’ve seen before | Continue reading
Physics has a reputation for being dominated by men, especially a century ago, as quantum physics was just being invented – but there have been so many women who helped shaped the field since its inception | Continue reading
The images hammered into the sides of a goblet found in Palestine give us an idea of what people living more than 4000 years ago imagined the creation of the cosmos looked like | Continue reading
To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page | Continue reading
To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page | Continue reading
Sexual activity in young people is on the decline, but why? And what's more, should we be worried about what this means for society and the future of the human race? | Continue reading
Global emissions from fossil fuels are expected to hit another record high in 2025, but China’s carbon emissions appear to be reaching a peak | Continue reading
Lupus has been linked to the Epstein-Barr virus – which causes glandular fever, or mono – before, but we now have evidence of how it can bring about the autoimmune condition | Continue reading
The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week | Continue reading
New technologies and academic funding cuts are upending the ways we learn today. Newly enrolled student Annalee Newitz finds some silver linings | Continue reading
Francis Crick's biography is full of surprises as author Matthew Cobb reveals the life and work of the co-discoverer of DNA's structure, finds Michael Le Page | Continue reading
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian apparently thinks the 1969 moon landing was fake. If Feedback comes up with an equally outlandish conspiracy theory, maybe we can also get a guided tour of NASA | Continue reading
A new study hammers home how the "survival of the nicest" view makes no sense when it comes to evolution, says Jonathan R. Goodman | Continue reading
Do you need to fairly allocate players to teams, or sort out a pot of badly brewed coffee? Katie Steckles has a mathematical solution | Continue reading
Vince Gilligan, the showrunner behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is back, this time using sci-fi to explore a deceptively rich premise about the pursuit of happiness and the notion of utopia, finds Bethan Ackerley | Continue reading
Christine Webb's provocative and moving book The Arrogant Ape explores our unjustifiable sense of superiority in the living world, laying out the evidence against it, says Elle Hunt | Continue reading
These photographs of humanoid robots by Henrik Spohler are part of his project Tomorrow Is the Question | Continue reading
Mild wounds healed faster if people took a spray containing the "love hormone" oxytocin and set aside time to praise their partner – but they cleared up even quicker if these individuals were also intimate with their other half | Continue reading
A coronal mass ejection from a distant star has been confirmed for the first time, raising questions about how such events could impact exoplanet habitability | Continue reading
When an asteroid threatens Earth, astronomers use a rating called the Torino scale to communicate the risk. Richard Binzel, who invented the scale, tells New Scientist about his 50-year career in planetary defence | Continue reading
Previous attempts at building a chemical computer have been too simple, too rigid or too hard to scale, but an approach based on a network of reactions can perform multiple tasks without having to be reconfigured | Continue reading
When measuring yourself against your partner, which traits do you prefer to have compared with your significant other? A survey that forced people to choose has found that men and women have different preferences when it comes to being smarter, funnier or more attractive | Continue reading
IBM revealed two new quantum computers, called Loon and Nighthawk – the qubits they use are connected in newly intricate ways and may enable a way to run error-free computations | Continue reading
The Omo-Turkana basin in Africa is home to a treasure trove of ancient human fossils and tools that span 300,000 years – today it is still yielding new discoveries about our species | Continue reading
Hot flushes could be relieved by listening to recordings that induce hypnosis from home, rather than having to venture to a clinic | Continue reading
Being born with two X chromosomes brings a host of health benefits, and recognising this could lead to personalised medical treatments for men and women | Continue reading
High-voltage copper plates can remove up to three-quarters of frost from a surface, while using much less energy than conventional heating | Continue reading
In February, the James Webb Space Telescope will briefly be able to observe asteroid 2024 YR4, which currently has a 4 per cent chance of hitting the moon in 2032. Depending on what it sees, the odds of collision could drastically increase | Continue reading
For over a decade, mathematicians have failed to agree whether a 500-page proof is actually correct. Now, translating the proof into a computer-readable form may finally settle the matter | Continue reading
Eight possible cave openings found on the Martian surface look to have once had ancient streams flowing into them, suggesting they are promising places to look for evidence of life | Continue reading
We admire grit and perseverance, but surprising research suggests that giving up on ambitions in the right way can actually improve our physical and mental health | Continue reading
The damage of strokes caused by brain bleeds can be mitigated by removing dead blood cells. Scientists have now found a way of doing this non-invasively, with promising results in mice | Continue reading
Brain activity from more than 1000 people shows a rapid transition from being awake to being asleep, rather than a slow transition between the two states | Continue reading
There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesn’t have to be that way | Continue reading
The electic cars of the Formula E racing championship can accelerate faster than Formula 1 cars and their top speeds are catching up – but battery capacity would let them down in a head-to-head | Continue reading
Lake Turkana in Kenya, known as the cradle of humanity, has shrunk in recent millennia – and the loss of water has led to increased seismic activity, which could have impacted our ancient ancestors | Continue reading
Several large tech firms that are active in AI have set goals to hit net zero by 2030, but a new forecast of the energy and water required to run large data centres shows they’re unlikely to meet those targets | Continue reading
Thousands of holes arranged in a snake-like pattern on Monte Sierpe in Peru could have been a monumental accounting device for trade and tax | Continue reading
As one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, James Watson pioneered the field of genetics and left behind a complicated legacy | Continue reading
The buried ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus seems to be stable across extremely long periods of time, making it an even more promising place to hunt for life | Continue reading
The effort of reproducing may divert energy away from repairing DNA or fighting illness, which could drive ageing, but a new study suggests that is only the case when environmental conditions are tough | Continue reading
A dwarf galaxy 100 million light years away is being stripped of its crucial star-forming gas, and it seems that the cosmic web is siphoning off this gas as the galaxy passes through | Continue reading
The surface of comet 3I/ATLAS may have been so radically altered by cosmic rays that deducing its home star system would be impossible | Continue reading
Jacob, an 11-year-old lion, has defied expectations by surviving for years after losing a leg – now we know his success is down to an innovative hunting strategy | Continue reading