When Hurricane Larry struck Newfoundland in 2021, large amounts of microplastic fell from the sky, probably because the storm travelled over an ocean garbage patch | Continue reading
When a baseball is tilted and spinning just right, its raised, hand-stitched seams skew the process by which its wake is created and radically shift its trajectory in the air | Continue reading
One of four newly described species of "stalked puffball" fungi from Hungary’s Pannonian steppe erupts out of the sand like the iconic Shai-Hulud | Continue reading
From Wall-E to Short Circuit via I, Robot, these are the best films out there about AI, says Alan Turing Institute ethics fellow Mhairi Aitken | Continue reading
Uganda announced a plan at COP28 to use oil revenues to fund a rapid expansion of clean energy across the east African country | Continue reading
A species of hedgehog that hadn't been scientifically identified before has been discovered in two eastern Chinese provinces | Continue reading
Two solar farms in Minnesota saw big increases in bees and other insects after a variety of native grasses and wildlfowers were planted among the panels | Continue reading
Chromosomal abnormalities were thought to cause around half of miscarriages, but a new genetic analysis technique puts the figure at nearer two-thirds for early miscarriages, with the remaining third probably also due to factors that are out of our control | Continue reading
A quantum computer built by QuEra contains the largest ever number of "logical quantum bits", which can be used for error-free calculations | Continue reading
Most robots lack a flexible spine, so researchers created a 3D-printed mouse with the ability to bend its back and found that it could move faster | Continue reading
Tiny machines made from strands of DNA can build copies of themselves, leading to exponential replication. Similar devices could one day be used to create drugs inside the body | Continue reading
The US Space Force is launching its mysterious X-37B space plane on 10 December atop a Falcon Heavy rocket for what will probably be its highest and longest flight yet | Continue reading
Research into the acoustics of Svalbard's glaciers and caves is at the heart of Orkney composer Erland Cooper's latest works | Continue reading
It has been over 100 years since the US began protecting its places of antiquity, such as Colorado's ancient cliff dwellings, from development, but they remain vulnerable to politics, says archaeologist Rachel Morgan | Continue reading
Feedback ponders that old philosophical question, what is reality, after discovering that Toyota has built an electric car with a fake transmission | Continue reading
I have been revisiting the Unruh effect, a beautiful, strange concept that describes quantum field theory in curved-space time, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | Continue reading
From Ashnikko to Hannah Diamond, our resident experts Bethan Ackerley and Tim Boddy round up the best music albums of 2023 - if science is your thing | Continue reading
A new exhibition in Paris showcases the diversity of tropical forests and their plants and animals through a series of majestic light installations | Continue reading
What would you do to combat climate change if you were a world superpower? That's just one of the challenges set by 2023's best board games, from Daybreak to Sky Team, writes Jacob Aron | Continue reading
When the leaves start falling, we can spend hours removing them from our lawns. But leaving them where they are is often better for the grass, says James Wong | Continue reading
As the health consequences of vaping emerge from the fog, governments across the world are regulating e-cigarettes in different ways – and it won’t take long to see which works best | Continue reading
Much of the world pledged to triple renewable energy this decade – except some of the biggest emitters – and ambitious climate mitigation goals have been set without clear funding | Continue reading
Coffee aficionados often add a drop of water to their beans before grinding – now scientists have shown that this leads to less mess and a more flavourful espresso | Continue reading
The Gemini artificial intelligence comes in a variety of sizes, with Google saying its mid-range version will be incorporated into its Bard chatbot and available to the public from today | Continue reading
A painkilling nasal spray was better at relieving people's discomfort when it caused a mild burning sensation, possibly due to the placebo effect | Continue reading
As more of us take up vaping and concerns rise about the long-term effects, we now have enough data to get a grip on the health impact – and how it compares to smoking | Continue reading
Talking with your hands may help you stress the correct parts of words as you learn a new language | Continue reading
The Australian Space Agency is working on plans for its first moon rover, which will fly on an Artemis mission later this decade – and it has already chosen a name | Continue reading
Governments should be aiming to trigger technological, economic and social tipping points that accelerate climate action, according to a major report | Continue reading
Spinning locusts in a centrifuge to mimic hypergravity seems to cause their exoskeletons to adapt, giving them stiffer legs – but too much gravity and they simply died | Continue reading
We are getting close to triggering irreversible changes that will have catastrophic effects worldwide, according to a major report on tipping points in Earth’s systems | Continue reading
A scientific analysis of history reveals that societies are becoming more resilient to collapse – and shows how to successfully navigate crises, says complexity scientist Peter Turchin | Continue reading
A single dose of a novel antibody medication can bind to fentanyl and prevent the opioid from triggering potentially life-threatening symptoms, research in monkeys suggests | Continue reading
Senolytic drugs can clear away worn and damaged “zombie” immune cells that are resistant to dying, which may help treat multiple sclerosis, according to research in mice | Continue reading
The past year gave us thrilling missions to Jupiter and the moon, stunning images that captured the universe like it’s never been seen before, and a few tanatalising cosmic mysteries | Continue reading
A machine-learning algorithm was able to tell which estate 80 Bordeaux red wines came from with 100 per cent accuracy by assessing their chemical signatures | Continue reading
In areas of the sea affected by bottom trawling, marine life is more abundant in and around shipwrecks, suggesting they should be considered important conservation sites | Continue reading
Despite urgent calls to slash fossil fuel use to meet climate targets, the Global Carbon Budget report shows that 2023 emissions will be about 1.1 per cent higher than last year | Continue reading
A female megamouth shark was found in the Philippines with one pup alongside her and six fetuses inside her body | Continue reading
A device that was implanted into the brains of people with traumatic brain injuries substantially improved their cognitive function a year later, a small study suggests | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence may never reach its full potential without a body to interact with the physical world. Roboticist Josh Bongard says that the push for “embodied AI” is suggesting a rethink of what it means to design intelligent robots | Continue reading
To hold and cool computer servers, China has installed a 1300-tonne watertight cabin on the shallow seafloor – it is the first of 100 planned for an underwater data centre | Continue reading
Gene variants that have an unusally large effect on some people's heights have been discovered by analysing the genomes of more than 300,000 individuals | Continue reading
IBM has revealed two quantum computers. One is the second largest ever made and the other produces fewer errors than any quantum computer the company has built so far | Continue reading
Vaccinations could be made less painful by treating skin with a vaccine-laden liquid and using ultrasound to push it into the body | Continue reading
The newfound Giant Coma Stream of stars stretches nearly 1.7 million light years across the cosmos, and it could have holes blasted through it by clumps of dark matter | Continue reading
Carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of climate change, but countries convening at COP28 are expected to make agreements to reduce methane and other often overlooked greenhouse gases | Continue reading
There may be several reasons why cannabis encourages people to eat, including the fact that the psychoactive compound in the drug affects the neurons that control hunger | Continue reading