From a new Adrian Tchaikovsky novel to pandemic echoes in Haruki Murakami's The City and its Uncertain Walls (fingers crossed we get an English translation), there is loads of excellent science fiction reading ahead next year, says Sally Adee | Continue reading
This spectacular selection of images is taken from the winners of the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition, run by Capture the Atlas | Continue reading
Tech giants are gearing up for a series of potentially bitter legal battles over claims they used copyrighted material in training the latest generation of artificial intelligence | Continue reading
A massive telescope in Chile is set to begin operations in 2024, and once it is up and running the pictures will be extraordinary | Continue reading
Premature lambs continued developing when placed in a sac-like artificial uterus. Off the back of this, US officials are hinting that the first in-human trial could soon be underway | Continue reading
Fallout, 3 Body Problem and the final series of Andor should air in 2024, alongside BBC nature documentaries and gritty TV dramas like Toxic Town, says Bethan Ackerley | Continue reading
Making ambitious goals for the year ahead can set you up for disappointment, so try embracing the concept of kaizen instead, says David Robson | Continue reading
Jupiter's moon Europa is thought to be one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth, thanks to its subsurface ocean, and in 2024 NASA is launching a mission to take a close look | Continue reading
The elements that conspired to make 2023 so unusually warm are likely to push the dial even further in 2024, with meteorologists already warning about extreme heat | Continue reading
While 2024 will see more of 2023’s defining features, from record-breaking temperatures to advances in artificial intelligence, the year could also usher in a new space age and even a whole new epoch | Continue reading
More than 10 missions are heading to the moon in 2024, with orbiters, landers, rovers and even crewed spacecraft making the trip and paving the way for future exploration | Continue reading
A group of Silicon Valley investors wants to see a brand new community for 50,000 people rise out of the dirt north of San Francisco. It's really not a good idea, says Annalee Newitz | Continue reading
There are untold legions of viruses, fungi and bacteria living in your mouth. It now seems we can stave off conditions from Alzheimer's disease to cancer by keeping them in a healthy balance | Continue reading
When choosing the perfectly sized table to do your jigsaw puzzle on, work out the area of the completed puzzle and multiply it by 1.73 | Continue reading
A global agreement at the COP28 climate summit promised to begin "transitioning away" from fossil fuels, but will we see this start to happen in 2024? | Continue reading
Puzzling ancient galaxies and oddly shaped clusters suggest we have glimpsed cosmic strings travelling at the speed of light – and with them clues to a deeper theory of reality | Continue reading
A study modelling the impact of a major hurricane in New England suggests carbon-offsetting schemes are greatly underestimating the risks posed by storms | Continue reading
A system that detects forces and interprets which stimuli have the potential to cause harm could imbue robots with a sense akin to pain | Continue reading
Recently approved in the US, the weight-loss drug Zepbound will reach more people in 2024, with research suggesting its effects trump those of the much talked-about Wegovy and Ozempic | Continue reading
Scientific bodies are due to make an official decision in the coming year about whether to declare a new geochronological unit precipitated by the impact of humans on Earth | Continue reading
Climate change and biodiversity loss may seem like insurmountable problems, but data scientist Hannah Ritchie is cautiously optimistic we can solve them | Continue reading
A study involving more than 450 people found that a mixture of prebiotics and probiotics alleviated some symptoms of long covid when taken daily for six months | Continue reading
A pair of mathematicians studied the UK National Lottery and figured out a combination of 27 tickets that guarantees you will always win, but they tell New Scientist they don't bother to play | Continue reading
Long-tailed macaques on the island of Koh Ped appear to have learned a new way to forage when the pandemic put a stop to feeding by tourists | Continue reading
Perucetus colossus lived 39 million years ago and weighed in at between 85 and 340 tonnes, meaning it was probably larger than even blue whales. The discovery has inspired both fan art and music | Continue reading
Physicists have proposed that a mirror universe alongside our own might explain dark matter – and we might be able to see traces of its stars | Continue reading
A mathematical game governed by simple rules throws up patterns of seemingly infinite complexity – and now a question that has puzzled hobbyists for decades has a solution | Continue reading
A drilling project in the Taklamakan desert is aiming to reach more than 11,000 metres below Earth’s surface as China explores the deep earth for resources | Continue reading
This year, robots could be seen making drinks in cafes, performing at Paris Fashion Week and even joining screenwriters on the Hollywood picket line | Continue reading
Over the next several years, many regions of the US and Canada may struggle to ensure a reliable electricity supply amidst soaring energy demand from the tech industry and electrification of buildings and vehicles | Continue reading
Swallowing a pill fitted with a vibrating motor resulted in pigs eating less, suggesting a possible new approach for treating obesity | Continue reading
The first study to capture brainwaves from reindeer shows that they take small naps throughout the day while chewing | Continue reading
Non-fungible tokens promised to revolutionise the concept of ownership using the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, but the market seems to have all but collapsed | Continue reading
The stratosphere seems to be full of aluminium particles and other metals that come from spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere, and those particles could mess up polar clouds | Continue reading
A worldwide collaboration among meteorology services is trying to fill in the huge gaps in weather observations in countries vulnerable to climate change | Continue reading
The US approved lecanemab to slow cognitive decline among people with early Alzheimer's, but not everyone is convinced the drug has that big of an impact – not to mention concerns over its safety and practicality | Continue reading
An artificial fibre that mimics polar bear fur has been made into a sweater that is said to be as warm as down feather but without its thickness, but not everyone is convinced by the researchers' claims | Continue reading
Cheddar cheese's distinct but often subtle flavour comes down to interactions between different bacteria, which cheese-makers could utilise to create a specific taste | Continue reading
The record for long-distance laser messaging has been broken with a high-resolution video of Taters the cat chasing a red laser dot – it was transmitted over 31 million kilometres | Continue reading
Our favourite wildlife shots of the year feature an inquisitive hyena pup, a colourful sea slug and a fruit bat being swabbed for science | Continue reading
Sharp metal propellers can harm wildlife, so an alternative made using ferrofluid could be a better approach, if it can be tweaked to work at higher speeds | Continue reading
Adolescents’ brains underwent accelerated ageing during the covid-19 pandemic, and the effect was more pronounced in girls than in boys | Continue reading
An extension of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which places limits on how precisely you can measure the properties of quantum objects, has found that it really isn't possible to cheat the laws of quantum physics | Continue reading
Getting outside to garden or walk in a park is good for your body – it’s exercise and you can get some vitamin D from the sun – but it’s also important for your self-esteem and mood | Continue reading
Two relatively recent dietary trends – veganism and concerns about highly processed foods – may be in conflict with each other | Continue reading
The chemical reactions in cells appear to shape an embryo's development, possibly overriding the effect of genes | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence helped screen millions of chemical compounds to find a class of antibiotics capable of killing two different types of drug-resistant bacteria | Continue reading
A single, extremely cold atom could play the role of two slits in the classic double-slit experiment from quantum physics, something that was previously thought to be impossible | Continue reading