We may be starting to get a grasp on what kick-started life on Earth – and it could help us search for it on other planets | Continue reading
A newly discovered mechanism could explain the shock finding last year that oxygen is produced by metallic nodules on the seafloor – and it might be happening on other planets, too | Continue reading
Can one single mathematical framework describe the motion of a fluid and the individual particles within it? This question, first asked in 1900, now has a solution that could help us understand the complex behaviour of the atmosphere and ocean. | Continue reading
A failed launch left a batch of Starlink satellites in the wrong orbit last year, and it appears that a fragment of one fell to Earth and hit a farm in Canada. Thankfully, no one was injured | Continue reading
New Scientist's revelation that a UK minister is asking ChatGPT for advice raises the question of what role these new AI tools should play in government – and whether we should really think of them as intelligent | Continue reading
It can be difficult to recall exactly when a specific event happened, and now it seems our memory can be tricked into pushing occurrences back in time, making us think they happened earlier than in reality | Continue reading
In a survey of AI researchers, most say current AI models are unlikely to lead to artificial general intelligence with human-level capabilities, even as companies invest billions of dollars in this goal | Continue reading
These brilliant images show how researchers in Switzerland are using weather-modification techniques to understand how ice crystals form in clouds, an important and poorly understood factor in climate and weather models | Continue reading
An analysis of changes to global ecosystems has revealed that almost nowhere is untouched by the influence of humanity, with more than 50 per cent of the planet's land mass experiencing "novel" conditions | Continue reading
Building the full value of pi has been a project thousands of years in the making, but just how much of this infinite number do we actually need, asks our maths columnist Jacob Aron | Continue reading
Shifting your focus could help you overcome the trickery of optical illusions | Continue reading
The health problems associated with ultra-processed foods may be explained by the way the products encourage overeating. Adding more protein to the foods might help people limit their intake – but it isn’t a complete solution | Continue reading
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says it is discontinuing its regular update calls due to staffing problems, but its researchers may also fear political retaliation for discussing climate change | Continue reading
A study of the fossilised fur of six mammals from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods has found they were all greyish-brown in colour, which would have helped them hide from dinosaurs | Continue reading
The 2023 breach of the Kakhovka dam drained a huge reservoir and exposed a vast area of toxic sediment, creating a debate about how best to rebuild after the Russia-Ukraine war | Continue reading
Potential cuts of up to 50 per cent of NASA's science budget could mean cancelling missions including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager probes | Continue reading
Bones dating back 25,000 years suggest that humans lived in extremely icy conditions in Tibet, which were previously thought to be uninhabitable | Continue reading
New Scientist has used freedom of information laws to obtain the ChatGPT records of Peter Kyle, the UK's technology secretary, in what is believed to be a world-first use of such legislation | Continue reading
A mission to survey the results of a deliberate crash between an asteroid and a NASA spacecraft has taken stunning images of Mars and its moon Deimos | Continue reading
To reduce the growing risk of intense wildfires, California is cutting and burning the areas that fuel them – but these efforts may be moving too slowly | Continue reading
NASA’s Perseverance rover found large crystals of quartz with a high purity on Mars, which probably had to have formed in the presence of hot water | Continue reading
Hydrocortisone and testosterone are just two of 13 drugs and supplements that could lessen the impact of genes that accelerate brain ageing | Continue reading
The odds are stacked against an all-female robotics team in Rule Breakers, a fantastic film about teaching girls in Afghanistan | Continue reading
For a long time objective measurement of subjective experience was considered impossible, but it is finally becoming a reality, promising a boost for health care and much more | Continue reading
Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions yet to come – this time how, by the mid-21st century, many people were opting for a "nose job" that would supercharge their sense of smell. Rowan Hooper is our guide. | Continue reading
Few people could write so genially, even humorously, about our existential crisis. Henry Gee can, in his excellent new book The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire | Continue reading
Feedback would like to bring to readers' attention the retraction of five psychology articles by Nicolas Guéguen, including a "field study" into "bust size and hitchhiking" | Continue reading
Cosmic Titans, a new exhibition at the University of Nottingham, UK, is a powerful collaboration of artists and quantum physicists that sets out to make the intangible tangible | Continue reading
In his Atomic series, artist James Stanford showcases "the spectacle and the horror" of growing up near a nuclear bomb testing site | Continue reading
Whether social media sites police their platforms using humans or algorithms, content moderation isn't keeping users safe, says Jess Brough | Continue reading
Noughts and crosses, or tic-tac-toe, is a simple game – but twist the rules and you can really spice it up, says Peter Rowlett | Continue reading
Bone fragments from a cave in northern Spain suggest there were multiple hominin species living in western Europe around a million years ago | Continue reading
Scientists have struggled to explain why global temperatures have shot up in recent years, but ocean cloud cover has now emerged as a crucial piece of the puzzle | Continue reading
Sheets of bismuth, gallium, indium, tin and lead can now be made just a few atoms thick by crushing them at a high temperature and pressure between two sapphires | Continue reading
As a step towards a useful and ultra-secure quantum internet, researchers have created an operating system that coordinates connected quantum computers, no matter what hardware they use | Continue reading
Radical new insights from the science of interoception – how the body senses its internal state – explain the real reasons we feel tired all the time, and how to re-energise | Continue reading
Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a type of dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease, in 2007 – but an analysis of his Discworld books suggests there were signs of the condition a decade earlier | Continue reading
D-Wave's claim that its quantum computers can solve problems that would take hundreds of years on classical machines have been undermined by two separate research groups showing that even an ordinary laptop can perform similar calculations | Continue reading
Palaeontologists have discovered 66 three-toed dinosaur footprints in a slab of rock that has been on display for 20 years at a school in Queensland | Continue reading
Saturn has dozens of new moons, bringing it to a total of 274. All of the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres wide, but at what point is a rock too small to be a moon? | Continue reading
Saturn has dozens of new moons, bringing it to a total of 274. All of the new moons are between 2 and 4 kilometres wide, but at what point is a rock too small to be a moon? | Continue reading
Analysis of samples brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu reveal that it has a bizarre chemical make-up and is unusually magnetic | Continue reading
Farming arose on multiple continents among populations with radically different cultures and environments and with no means of communicating with each other – how did it crop up independently at about the same time? | Continue reading
Linguists, psychologists and experts in cultural evolution are discovering why we tell stories, how ancient the oldest ones are and why some tales run and run | Continue reading
A patch of old oak trees in the UK is helping scientists to predict how the world’s forests will respond to higher levels of carbon dioxide, a crucial question for our future climate | Continue reading
A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu is spreading south along the Antarctic Peninsula and could devastate populations of penguins and other seabirds | Continue reading
Men who had given blood more than 100 times in their life were more likely to have blood cells carrying certain beneficial mutations, suggesting that donating blood promotes the growth of these cells | Continue reading
A cargo ship carrying sodium cyanide collided with a tanker transporting jet fuel – scientists are warning of potentially severe environmental impacts | Continue reading