Sci-fi loves to depict military AIs as malign killer minds or robots. But the truth is more subtle and more terrifying – and it's happening right now | Continue reading
We are starting to replace harmful BPA in plastic bottles and food containers, but alternative chemicals might be just as bad | Continue reading
The Pacific Ocean is likely to enter a La Niña state in the next few months, which could mean a more active Atlantic hurricane season next year | Continue reading
Mirror test suggests big-brained manta rays have what it takes to be self-aware, but not everyone is convinced by results or even the test itself | Continue reading
Adults in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere perform better in cognitive tests in early autumn, and dementia symptoms peak in winter and spring | Continue reading
Regular inkjet printers only work with watery liquids, but one that uses sound waves can print with almost anything as ink, from honey to metals to human cells | Continue reading
How you type could reveal early signs of Parkinson’s disease, including subtle tremors, before serious changes in the brain have occurred | Continue reading
When wood is stripped down to its grain and infused with gel, it becomes a strong yet flexible material that could be used in muscle implants and prosthetics | Continue reading
People who often find their mind wandering have a larger volume of grey matter in a part of the brain called the left superior parietal lobe | Continue reading
Gravitational waves that are flat instead of curved could form black holes when a pair of them crash together and tangle up space-time. Don't worry though, they probably won't | Continue reading
DeepMind's system trains on eye scan data taken from thousands of NHS patients and determines which should be seen sooner | Continue reading
Artificial intelligence is supposed to make life easier for us all – but it is also prone to amplify sexist and racist biases from the real world | Continue reading
A faraway star surrounded by a strange cloud of dust and gas had an explosive rebirth, spitting out debris and dimming by a factor of 10,000 in less than 50 years | Continue reading
A combination of AI and photography is helping wine makers keep their grapes free of disease, by spotting the grapes that are most resistant to rot | Continue reading
Satellite images taken on 20 July suggest North Korea may be dismantling two important features of its intercontinental ballistic missiles programme | Continue reading
Deadly heatwaves could continue for weeks, and possibly months, across much of the northern hemisphere, meteorologists predicted this week | Continue reading
A study of students found that those who have a brain parasite linked to outbursts of explosive rage are more likely to be majoring in business studies | Continue reading
For the first time, researchers have got evidence that dreams help soothe the impact of emotional events in our lives, acting like overnight therapy | Continue reading
The 100-million-year-old lizards in Burmese amber are some of the best preserved examples known, and are revealing secrets of their evolution | Continue reading
Britain is experiencing a prolonged “wind drought” that has slowed or halted the blades on turbines around the country | Continue reading
A drone learned to navigate unexpected obstacles for itself by being manually carried around a racetrack. It could be used for future delivery drones | Continue reading
A study has found that CRISPR can delete large chunks of DNA, suggesting it could cause cancer if used to treat diseases by editing many cells in the body | Continue reading
Our best theory of physical reality is exquisite – but inexplicable. A low, unexplained experimental noise could herald a revolution in the making | Continue reading
Scans reveal effects of the drug that correlate with ego dissolution, giving clues to how the brain creates a sense of self | Continue reading
Tightly-worn ties have been found to impair the brain’s blood supply, prompting one scientist to suggest that it’s time to abandon them altogether | Continue reading
Spiders can detect atmospheric electricity and use it to fly - and maybe drones of the future could fly the same way too | Continue reading
One group of capuchins uses stone tools, but neighbouring groups do not – suggesting primates - including us - might enter the Stone Age simply by chance | Continue reading
We are more likely to refer to professional men by their surname than women in the same jobs - making them sound more famous, eminent and worthy of awards | Continue reading
Cooking makes food more digestible and kills off bacteria, and every human society in the world does it. But where and when it started is hotly debated | Continue reading
Several conditions including anxiety, depression and anorexia all share a common set of genes, which could lead to better diagnoses | Continue reading
Most soldiers who die from potentially survival wounds suffer from uncontrolled bleeding. The US Army developed a bandage material that can seal wounds faster and more effectively | Continue reading
UK beer, fizzy drinks and meat producers have all warned of CO2 shortages disrupting supplies and have called on the government to act. So what's going on, and how bad is it? | Continue reading
NASA is designing and testing missions to deflect a potential asteroid from hitting Earth, and working with emergency responders to plan for a day when one does | Continue reading
President Trump has announced the creation of a Space Force, the first new US military branch since 1947, but it’s not yet clear what this new corps will do | Continue reading
A neural network has taught itself to ‘imagine’ a scene from different viewpoints, including how shadows move and textures vary, based on just a single image | Continue reading
A painting of Ravel's Boléro, by a woman who shared a brain condition with the composer, provides a scientific window into the creative mind | Continue reading
Ditching fossil fuels to go 100 per cent renewable is a dream within reach – thanks to new tech that keep things humming even when wind and sun aren’t there | Continue reading
For the last 6 months, the New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto in 2015 has been in hibernation, hurtling towards a distant rock – it has just woken up | Continue reading
Plasma is a state of matter, like liquid or gas, that is fatal to bacteria, so a new wearable plasma patch is being tested to dress wounds | Continue reading
Using the word detox to promote drinks such as tea as well as food and other products is essentially meaningless. Time to give it a rest, says Anthony Warner | Continue reading
If you have a large brain, certain regions are much bigger than expected and others are smaller – but we don’t know how this affects brain function yet | Continue reading
The asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago caused dramatic climate change, which could mean we are underestimating how much the planet will warm in the coming centuries | Continue reading
Sound waves are carried by vibrating particles, so how could the waves pass through a vacuum devoid of atoms? The key lies in special crystals | Continue reading
A rocket engine propelled by electromagnetic waves grabbed headlines, but new tests find the EM drive may actually be driven by Earth’s magnetic field | Continue reading
Data from millions of Facebook users, including their answers to intimate questionnaires, was left exposed online for anyone to access, a New Scientist investigation has found | Continue reading
A shoestring experiment in the Australian outback has seen the signal of the very first stars – and a weird effect astronomers are struggling to explain | Continue reading
Doctors are warning that some people should change the way they recharge their brain implants, after a lightning strike shut down a woman’s stimulation device | Continue reading