New archaeological evidence shows that ancient humans ate each other surprisingly often - sometimes for compassionate reasons. The finds give us an opportunity to reassess our views on the practice | Continue reading
Maths tells us the best way to cover a surface with copies of a shape – even when it comes to jigsaw puzzles, says Katie Steckles | Continue reading
The Hugo Awards are the Oscars for sci-fi and fantasy fans, so any oddities in the voting data for 2023's ceremony in China are bound to be upsetting. But whatever the reality, Emily H. Wilson finds an unexpected upside | Continue reading
Taken in the Svalbard archipelago, Nima Sarikhani's image has scooped the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award | Continue reading
Disney+'s Arctic Ascent and A Real Bug's Life offer contrasting views of the real in a rock climber's passion for the environment and a guide to insects too faked-up for its own good | Continue reading
I travelled for days to remote Pitcairn in the Pacific, a shining example of ocean conservation. But so much more needs to be done to safeguard our seas, says Graham Lawton | Continue reading
Biologist Liat Yakir argues that the problems we have with sex, love and relationships stem, in part, from evolved instincts and strategies that are no longer helpful | Continue reading
Feedback investigates research into US voters (and their handedness) between 1964 and 2016, and discovers that conclusions of some sort have been drawn | Continue reading
The science of relationships doesn't support the idea that there are five love languages. Instead, it's better to think about love as akin to keeping a nutritionally balanced diet, say psychologists Emily Impett, Haeyoung Gideon Park and Amy Muise | Continue reading
Satellite data suggests 47 per cent of the Amazon will experience at least one environmental stressor in the next 25 years that will nudge the region towards a climate tipping point | Continue reading
Satellite data suggests 47 per cent of the Amazon will experience at least one environmental stressor in the next 25 years that will nudge the region towards a climate tipping point | Continue reading
Scientists have grown cow muscle cells inside grains of rice to create a new food product that could supply protein with a lower carbon footprint than beef | Continue reading
Altermagnets, theorised to exist but never before seen, have been measured for the first time and they could help us make new types of magnetic computers | Continue reading
Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead | Continue reading
Fossil evidence shows that humans have a very long history of eating each other. Now, archaeologists are discovering that the practice of cannibalism could be surprisingly compassionate | Continue reading
Microbes that rapidly convert CO2 to rock could lock away the greenhouse gas in deep underground storage sites, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs | Continue reading
Microbes that rapidly convert CO2 to rock could lock away the greenhouse gas in deep underground storage sites, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs | Continue reading
Chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas frequently toy with their peers by poking, tickling or stealing from them, perhaps showing behaviours that were prerequisites for human joking | Continue reading
Dream engineers are developing technologies that can help you sleep more soundly and use your nighttime hours to your advantage - but there could also be a dark side | Continue reading
If we are ever going to have a solar power station in space, we will need to be able to transmit power from orbit - a feat that has now been achieved | Continue reading
Some pet dogs retain their baby teeth, creating two rows that resemble the mouth of a shark. A new analysis shows that the condition is more prevalent in smaller breeds and obese dogs | Continue reading
Scientists have found that we generally remember where an object was located, but possibly not its other details, a discovery that could change how we view eyewitness testimonies | Continue reading
Male Brachycephalus pulex frogs are so small that two of them can sit side by side on a pinky nail | Continue reading
A phenomenon called the Fermi resonance, which affects how molecules vibrate, is responsible for a large part of carbon dioxide’s planet-warming effect | Continue reading
Two wayfinding apps use motion sensors and AI to help people who are blind navigate a building, without needing to hold their phone out in front of them and risk theft | Continue reading
US company Intuitive Machines is launching its Odysseus lander towards the moon's south pole. If all goes well, it will be the first private firm to put a spacecraft on the moon | Continue reading
A stone wall nearly a kilometre long found under the Baltic Sea may have been built by ancient hunters to channel deer into a confined space | Continue reading
Exposing mice to continuous loud noises changed the zinc levels in their inner ears, while a zinc-trapping compound helped prevent some of the damage | Continue reading
When black holes are born from collapsing stars, they emit a short-lived jet that may slow down the black hole’s rotation to nearly a standstill | Continue reading
String theory is widely considered beyond empirical investigation. But we could conceivably test it thanks to ancient particles called moduli, which might appear in astronomical observations, says theorist Joseph Conlon | Continue reading
As we increasingly live in cities, tiny apartments are likely to become the norm. A new exhibition has clever space-managing ideas – but also stark warnings about the health challenges ahead | Continue reading
The first ever UN report into the state of migratory species suggests animals from sharks to sea birds face a bleak future | Continue reading
A quantum experiment that could separate a particle’s properties from its mass has physicists arguing over how reality works in the quantum world | Continue reading
Infants aged just 4 months old who live in a home where two languages are spoken have distinct patterns of brain activation compared with infants living in monolingual environments | Continue reading
Moulds of an organ's delicate blood vessel network can be made with 3D-printed ice, helping to overcome the intricacies of growing transplant organs in a lab | Continue reading
The most detailed computer model run so far shows that melting ice sheets could cause the collapse of the major ocean current that warms Europe, but it's still unclear how likely this is to happen | Continue reading
Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea | Continue reading
By applying heat or cold in certain locations on the upper arm, an adapted prosthetic with sensors can give people with an amputation the sensation of temperature in their phantom limb | Continue reading
When spacecraft re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, friction heats them up and creates a plasma sheath that stops communications – but SpaceX thinks its Starlink satellites could solve the problem | Continue reading
To extract valuable metals from discarded computer motherboards, researchers have developed a gold-absorbing material made from old milk | Continue reading
Researchers have a new way to assess an AI model’s intelligence: drop it into a game of Minecraft, with no information about its surroundings, and see how well it plays | Continue reading
In 1905, Einstein discovered a paradox in the predicted behaviour of mirrors travelling at impossible speeds, but it may now have been resolved | Continue reading
The eROSITA X-ray telescope’s survey of the night sky has revealed extreme and violent processes in the universe, including inexplicably strange stars and erupting black holes | Continue reading
As a 15-kilometre crack formed ahead of the recent eruptions, magma flowed into it at the highest rate observed anywhere in the world | Continue reading
Insects may be finding it harder to locate flowers because the scent molecules released by the flowers smell different after they react with pollutants in the air | Continue reading
Companies are searching all over the world for deposits of geologic hydrogen that could be used as clean fuel, and a mine in Albania could give them clues about where to look | Continue reading
A new study has found an intriguing link between erectile dysfunction drugs and lower Alzheimer's risk, but they are not definitive | Continue reading
Inscribing a spiral in the centre of a contact lens seems to create optical vortices that interact so that the lens provides a clear image of objects at all distances | Continue reading