New Scientist's most popular story of the year was about the discovery that sperm break Isaac Newton's third law of motion | Continue reading
After analysing the way half a million snowflakes fell during mountain storms in Utah, researchers found surprising similarities | Continue reading
After taking control of Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk hired a new CEO to replace himself, all while continuing to transform the social media platform into X | Continue reading
An AI-powered test that claimed to be “clinical grade” listens for signs of stress in people’s voices. But it provides inconsistent results when tested on the same person twice, according to a study | Continue reading
A fiery volcanic eruption, a flower preserved in amber and a ‘superbloom’ of wildflowers feature in New Scientist’s selection of stunning nature images from the past year | Continue reading
Quantum computers could become more useful now researchers at Google have designed an algorithm that can translate complex physical problems into the language of quantum physics | Continue reading
Bonobos and chimps in zoos remember individuals they lived with more than 20 years ago, showing a long-term social memory comparable to that of humans | Continue reading
Jupiter’s moon Io is so volcanically active that any impact craters are rapidly covered up, but an amateur astronomer may have finally spotted the first one ever seen there | Continue reading
Rings, moons, storms and a bright polar cap can be seen in this breathtaking new image of Uranus from the James Webb Space Telescope | Continue reading
In the final episode of our three-part podcast series, Christie Taylor peers into efforts to grow cannabis compounds in labs and explores the problems with pot’s environmental footprint | Continue reading
The finding suggests that weight loss and diabetes injections such Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound, may have wider medical benefits than first thought | Continue reading
A model trained on 6 million people’s health, employment and financial records can predict death more accurately than tools used by the insurance industry | Continue reading
We have always suspected that fish can make enormous energy savings by swimming in groups, and now we have the proof | Continue reading
From the relationship between cannabis and creativity to the effects of cannabis on teenage brains, here are 9 important questions about marijuana answered | Continue reading
When springtime comes to Uranus's moons, the increased sunlight may cause ices on the surface to turn into gases, which would create tenuous temporary atmospheres | Continue reading
According to a long-standing idea, life exists at the edge of chaos, meaning it is sensitive enough to respond to small environmental changes. But an analysis of processes that occur inside cells challenges the idea | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope has found three objects about a thousand light years away that may be the least massive brown dwarf stars ever seen – though it is unclear how they formed | Continue reading
The first footage from inside a centrifuge has uncovered unexpected swirls and vortices inside shower gel and other fluids | Continue reading
Crushing carbon and nitrogen under immense pressure and heat creates the second-hardest known material after diamond | Continue reading
Running your own AI locally by splitting it across multiple devices offers more privacy than using online services | Continue reading
AI chatbots and an obesity treatment swept the world, temperature records tumbled and India landed on the moon in a year of astonishing science news | Continue reading
When the sun was young, it may have stolen a planet from another nearby star – meaning an exoplanet could be waiting on the outer edges of the solar system for us to discover | Continue reading
A robotic assistant can learn to do household jobs like opening cupboards, pulling out chairs or taking a towel off a rail after a bit of training using a stick with an iPhone on it | Continue reading
The AI company DeepMind claims it has developed a way to harness the creativity of chatbots to solve mathematical problems while filtering out mistakes | Continue reading
Hydrogen cyanide, ethane and traces of methanol are present in the water spewing from Enceladus's ocean – all of which could be building blocks of life | Continue reading
Maze-like bones in the noses of Arctic seals turn out to be an adaptation for keeping warm in chilly conditions | Continue reading
Fagilde’s trapdoor spider seemingly vanished after it was first described in 1931, but now scientists have finally spotted it again in northern Portugal | Continue reading
Pressure sensors on a prosthetic foot that send electrical pulses to the spinal cord help improve walking stability – and they also reduce phantom limb pain by an average of 70 per cent | Continue reading
Potentially dangerous battery damage that would normally be hidden from sight could be revealed quickly and at low cost using ultrasound waves | Continue reading
Extra limbs could provide a productivity boost to people working in a range of jobs, and experiments show that people are capable of controlling them intuitively | Continue reading
Lottie and the River is a moving vision of the future from astrophysicist turned award-winning science fiction author Alastair Reynolds | Continue reading
Feedback ponders the shocking new science that reveals "the possibility of weight gain among young adults during vacation periods" | Continue reading
This was the year when the worlds of cryptocurrency and AI were both hit by drama, says Annalee Newitz | Continue reading
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein looks back over the past 12 months, and reveals some more details about the books she's currently working on | Continue reading
The past 12 months featured constant alarming news on the environment coupled to a political class still not heeding the warnings from scientists. But there have been highs amid the lows, says Graham Lawton | Continue reading
Photographer Morup Namgail set out to capture an image no-one had ever taken before, in the hope of drawing attention to the plight of the landscape and wildlife in his remote home region in Ladakh, India | Continue reading
Some things just go together, like red wine and cheese, lager and a spicy curry – and Christmas and mulled wine, says Sam Wong | Continue reading
The decisions we made this year about AI and climate change could determine the fate of billions of people. In 2024, almost half the world’s population could be voting with these issues in mind | Continue reading
From ChatGPT to Gemini, this year was dominated by large language models and other AIs becoming everyday tools used by millions of people | Continue reading
The success of semaglutide mimic drugs in helping people lose weight saw demand rocket in 2023, with manufacturers struggling to keep up - something that almost never happens | Continue reading
On 5 May, the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus was no longer classified as a "public health emergency of international concern", its highest alert level, but the virus is still evolving | Continue reading
The promise of a material that could revolutionise the way we use electricity captured imaginations on social media, which also helped researchers quickly determine that LK-99 wasn't what it seemed | Continue reading
After decades of searching, mathematicians discovered a single shape that can cover a surface without forming repeating patterns, launching a small industry of "aperiodic monotile" merchandise | Continue reading
Most people with cancer are over 50, but the past few decades have seen a rise in diagnoses for younger people. This year, the US National Cancer Institute and Cancer Research UK made finding out why one of their top priorities | Continue reading
This year saw an extraordinary number of awe-inspiring images of objects in space, thanks in part to the James Webb Space Telescope. Here are the ones that dazzled us most and why they are important | Continue reading
One of the year’s most unexpected controversies exploded after a US fighter jet shot down a Chinese balloon that drifted across North America – it also sparked fears over other unidentified flying objects | Continue reading
An agreement reached at the COP28 climate summit mentions transitioning away from fossil fuels, but contains weak points that could limit our ability to keep the world from warming beyond 1.5°C | Continue reading
In mice, neurons activated by stress cause the animals to wake up far more often during sleep – if the process is similar in humans, it could lead to new ways of improving sleep quality | Continue reading