A drug called tirzepatide and sold under the name Zepbound has been approved in the US and the UK for use as a weight-loss medication | Continue reading
Between November 2022 and October 2023, global average temperatures rose to 1.32°C above the preindustrial average – and 2024 could be even hotter | Continue reading
We’ve long struggled to explain why sea spray contains so many tiny water droplets – now, experiments suggest the droplets may be created underwater when bubbles collide and merge | Continue reading
The prediction stems from a project to translate tests currently used in research into aids for routine diagnosis in hospitals | Continue reading
A drug called tirzepatide and sold under the name Zepbound has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use as a weight-loss medication | Continue reading
The secret to a perfect, golden loaf (or tasty brew) is an enzyme in malt. And making your own is easy – it just takes some barley grains, water and a bit of patience, says Sam Wong | Continue reading
Cosmologists have come to see the early universe as a whole series of transformations, or phase transitions, opening the door to intriguing possibilities for what really happened during the big bang | Continue reading
This science fiction novel shows that its author, Naomi Alderman, is well up to the tough job of satirising end-stage capitalism – and swerving an obvious ending, says Sally Adee | Continue reading
Ben Mezrich's story of how the SpaceX billionaire got tangled up in Twitter may end up a hit as a movie – but not as a book | Continue reading
Photographer Olivier Grunewald is documenting the work of researchers studying the origins of life in the inhospitable waters of the Salar de Atacama | Continue reading
Explaining the structure and evolution of stars may seem as esoteric as can be, but there are many applications for this knowledge in our day-to-day lives, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | Continue reading
Early school start times can be harmful to the health of teenagers. But delaying the morning bell isn’t a panacea, says Kenneth Miller | Continue reading
Hein de Haas’s decades-long study of global migration should leave you rethinking what you thought you knew about this most divisive subject | Continue reading
We can now synthesise THC, CBD and other cannabinoids in bioreactors – these could be used to make new therapeutic compounds with a lower environmental cost | Continue reading
The most distant Milky Way-like galaxy ever seen – a barred spiral galaxy – has been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope and it is more than 11 billion years old | Continue reading
Solvation is the complicated process through which a dissolved substance like salt interacts with a solvent like water – and we are closer to understanding how it unfolds at the atomic level | Continue reading
A team aiming to produce the first complex cell with an entirely synthetic genome has created a strain of yeast with half of its chromosomes designed from scratch | Continue reading
Chronic pain can outlast inflammation, the usual driver of pain in the body – a study in mice suggests a vitamin supplement could help relieve it | Continue reading
Climate models suggest that deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia will cause feedback loops that contribute to longer El Niño and La Niña events, bringing more extreme impacts around the world | Continue reading
The enduring mystery of dark matter has led some physicists to propose that it was forged in a distinct moment of cosmic creation, potentially transforming our view of the early universe | Continue reading
Nature has retracted the scientific paper that claimed earlier this year that the wonder material known as “red matter” was the world’s first room-temperature superconductor | Continue reading
Medically assisted dying was behind more than 4 per cent of Canada's deaths last year, but uptake is lower in other parts of the world that allow such fatalities | Continue reading
From the Great Red Spot to the extreme jet stream, Jupiter’s weather is intense, but that's nothing compared to the extraordinary storms and winds on other gas giants in the universe | Continue reading
A few minutes a day of intense physical activity, which can come from everyday chores, is linked with a lower rate of heart attacks, particularly in female non-exercisers | Continue reading
Venus will vanish behind the moon for about an hour in the morning of 9 November in Europe, western Russia and some of northern Africa – here’s how to watch it happen | Continue reading
Venus will vanish behind the moon for about an hour in the morning of 9 November in Europe, western Russia and some of northern Africa – here’s how to watch it happen | Continue reading
When NASA’s Lucy spacecraft flew past the asteroid Dinkinesh, it found an unexpected satellite – but further images revealed that it’s actually two rocks tenuously connected together | Continue reading
Over the past 40 years, rising humidity means the atmospheric conditions that trigger severe storms are now more likely to occur – but there might not necessarily be more tornadoes as a result | Continue reading
Orcas have been damaging or sinking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar for the past few years and we don’t know why | Continue reading
We can now synthesise THC, CBD and other cannabinoids in bioreactors – these could be used to make new therapeutic compounds with a lower environmental cost | Continue reading
An oral medicine called anastrozole has been approved by the UK's drug regulatory agency for reducing the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women at moderate-to-high risk of the condition | Continue reading
Low-calorie sweeteners such as aspartame have become common in all our diets. With concerns over their health impacts, should you turn to new plant-based alternatives to get your sweet hit? | Continue reading
Rats emit a high-pitched squeak when around another rat, seemingly just to express a positive emotion | Continue reading
The asteroid belt is messy and sometimes a threat to our solar system’s planets, so on this episode of Dead Planets Society it’s time to tidy it up into a single asteroid world | Continue reading
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope has released five of its first science images, including an iconic nebula and glistening galaxies | Continue reading
Measurements of sound waves passing through the sun seem to confirm that it isn’t as big as we thought and we don’t fully understand its interior | Continue reading
A group of small, simple robots can make a collective decision by exchanging infrared light signals in a process inspired by how bees decide where to build their nests | Continue reading
An old idea to use ocean heat to generate clean electricity has long failed to gain traction, but the technology – known as ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) – is seeing a resurgence of interest from islands dependent on fossil fuels | Continue reading
Unlike most other animal groups that left the sea behind, crabs have done it many times throughout their evolutionary history – and some crab lineages have even reversed course back to the ocean | Continue reading
A strong El Niño in the Pacific Ocean is coinciding with a similarly strong climate pattern in the Indian Ocean, suggesting South-East Asia and Australia will soon experience heat, drought and wildfires | Continue reading
A man with Parkinson's disease who fell up to six times a day can now walk several kilometres without falling due to a device that electrically stimulates his spinal cord | Continue reading
The antiquity, stability and weird chemistry of oases have made them cradles of evolution, yet humanity's need for water is putting these unique habitats in peril | Continue reading
The shape of a badminton shuttlecock and the way it spins may give left-handed people an advantage for some shots | Continue reading
DNA vaccines would be much easier to store than mRNA alternatives and should be as effective as conventional vaccines that contain live viruses | Continue reading
Not smoking, exercising regularly and keeping your cholesterol in check could make your biological age younger than your chronological age | Continue reading
Taking advantage of a quantum phenomenon called indefinite causal order could make quantum batteries charge more efficiently | Continue reading
A skull found in China shows signs of healing after part of it was removed 2700 years ago, suggesting that a man survived at least eight weeks after surgery to relieve pressure in his head | Continue reading
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the largest lake in South America, has been captured in detail by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission | Continue reading