Huge fall in inspections meant to prevent illegal use of English water

The number of onsite inspections at waterways in England has fallen sharply, with experts expressing concern about the rise of "office-based" checks | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

AI could diagnose sleep apnoea by watching you slumber at home

Diagnosing obstructive sleep apnoea generally requires an overnight hospital stay, but an AI model could spot signs of the condition while people sleep at home | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

This is the best place to build a moon base

By looking at the amount of sunlight and shade available, which are both important factors in supplying a lunar settlement with power and water, researchers have found the perfect location for a moon base | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Reflected Wi-Fi signals allow snoopers to read text through walls

Carefully measuring the Wi-Fi signals leaking out of a room can let you build up a detailed picture of what is inside – even to the extent of reading a sign made from 3D letters | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Renewable energy boom may help us limit warming this century to 1.5 ̊C

Record adoption of clean energy technologies over the past two years keeps targets to avoid global warming above 1.5 ̊C within reach, according to a report from the International Energy Agency | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Squeezing loofah sponges creates enough electricity to power LEDs

Sponges derived from luffa plants could act as tiny power sources for small devices, say researchers - but they may not supply enough energy to be practical | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

How to reach net zero five times faster

Outdated economic theories and a poor grasp of worst-case scenarios are behind our failure to curb carbon emissions, says climate policy expert Simon Sharpe – but it’s not too late to change tack | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

How scientists and politicians are leading climate action astray

Outdated economic theories and a poor grasp of worst-case scenarios are behind our failure to curb carbon emissions, says climate policy expert Simon Sharpe – but it’s not too late to change tack | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

How to reach net zero five time faster

Outdated economic theories and a poor grasp of worst-case scenarios are behind our failure to curb carbon emissions, says climate policy expert Simon Sharpe – but it’s not too late to change tack | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Covid-19 drug may be creating new variants with distinctive mutations

Covid-19 viruses with distinctive patterns of mutation are appearing in countries that use a drug called molnupiravir, however, none of these is a variant of concern | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Nearly all mammals will go extinct in 250 million years as Earth warms

If humans still exist millions of years from now, they will face inhospitably warm conditions on a supercontinent centred at the equator. Most land mammals won't be able to survive | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Potential new medicine can target proteins on cancer cell surfaces

A way of destroying specific proteins on the surface of cells could lead to new treatments for a wide range of conditions, particularly cancers | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Hopes fade for renewed contact with India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander

Mission engineers had hoped that the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover could survive the freezing lunar night, but the sun rose on their landing site on 22 September and there have been no signals from the craft | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

How geologic hydrogen went from fringe science to potential green fuel

Just a year ago, few people took seriously the idea that we could extract hydrogen from the ground as a clean energy source - but now the US Department of Energy is injecting $20 million into the concept | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Samples from asteroid Bennu brought back to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx

Precious samples from the asteroid Bennu have returned to Earth, where researchers hope to use them to learn more about the origins of the solar system | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

The best science fiction films about time travel, by a metaphysicist

From Back to the Future to Tenet and Interstellar, the joint director of the Centre for Time reveals her favourite time travel movies – both consistent and inconsistent (hello Marty McFly) | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Twisted lasers could let us send messages with gravitational waves

Ripples in space-time called gravitational waves are normally associated with massive objects like black holes, but we could make our own using lasers – and perhaps even use them to communicate | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Surgeons perform the second ever pig-to-human heart transplant

The heart of a genetically modified pig has been transplanted into a man with heart disease, the second such surgery of its kind | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Blood donors may pass on small risk of brain bleed to recipients

Receiving a blood transfusion from someone who later develops a brain haemorrhage may very slightly raise someone’s risk of developing a brain bleed, too | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Massive power line will send Canadian hydropower to New York

New York City has begun construction on a project to hook up its grid to hydroelectric power plants in Canada via a 546-kilometre-long transmission line | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Man who sees upside down provides clues on how we process faces

A man with a condition that has rotated his head backwards can identify upright and inverted faces with similar accuracy, suggesting that facial processing skills are based on experience and evolutionary factors | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Jellyfish can learn from experience even though they lack a brain

As one of the biologically simplest kinds of animal, we might have thought jellyfish can’t learn, but it turns out they can | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

No sign of Chandrayaan-3 as India searches for sleeping moon mission

The Vikram lander and Pragyan rover, which together make up India's Chandrayaan-3 moon mission, went to sleep two weeks ago to survive the freezing lunar night | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Armour-plated mollusc fluoresces brilliant red-pink

Chitons are unusual molluscs with a shell made up of plates, and they fluoresce a red-pink colour – perhaps to help the animals blend in against a background of red algae | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Mice grown with rat brains to help study cross-species organ donation

Creating mice with partial rat brains helps scientists better understand whether synthesising embryos from human and pig cells to grow organs such as kidneys could accidentally lead to pigs with human-like brains | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

The Mexican hypothesis debunked: How marijuana really came to the US

The idea that marijuana use was introduced and spread across the US by immigrants from Mexico is widely accepted, but the evidence actually supporting this is dubious | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Five of sci-fi's best corporate villains, according to author John Scalzi

John Scalzi's new novel Starter Villain sees his hero inherit a villainous empire. Here, the science fiction author picks his favourite sci-fi baddies with a corporate leaning | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

From Lex Luthor to Syndrome, five of sci-fi's best corporate villains

John Scalzi's new novel Starter Villain sees his hero inherit a villainous empire. Here, the science fiction author picks his favourite sci-fi baddies with a corporate leaning | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Turtles that move in herds reveal the complex social lives of reptiles

The hicatee turtles of Belize appear to move around in groups even when they aren't feeding, providing evidence of social complexity in reptiles | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

OSIRIS-REx is about to fling samples of the asteroid Bennu at Earth

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is about to hurtle past Earth, and if all goes well it will drop its samples from the asteroid Bennu in the Utah desert on 24 September | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

We can only predict star motion in the Milky Way’s heart for 462 years

Chaos in the interactions between stars near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole makes it impossible to predict their trajectories after about 462 years, much shorter than expected | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Europa’s underground ocean seems to have the carbon necessary for life

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have shown carbon dioxide on the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa – that’s a good sign for the habitability of its buried seas | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Fish adapted to the deep sea 80 million years earlier than we thought

A set of unusual “trace” fossils in Italy reveal that fish were swimming in the deep ocean about 130 million years ago – much earlier than we had thought | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

The strange plant that just might be the worst smell on the planet

Corpse flowers rarely bloom but if one does when you’re nearby you’ll know about it. Though many botanical gardens have their own corpse flowers, the plant's mysteries still abound | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Last chance to see comet Nishimura before it vanishes for 400 years

The comet Nishimura is heading away from the sun and on to the outer reaches of the solar system, so you'll need to be quick if you want to catch a glimpse | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Exquisite spider fossils from Australia offer clues to their evolution

A large brush-footed trapdoor spider and a small jumping spider from the Miocene Epoch between 11 and 16 million years ago show how different arachnids responded to rapidly changing climate | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal asteroid may reveal how Earth formed

The Psyche mission is scheduled to begin its journey to an asteroid of the same name on 5 October – it could help us understand Earth’s core and how our planet formed | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Net zero delay won't help when UK is already behind on climate targets

Cutting carbon emissions means replacing the heating systems in homes, transforming transport and greening steel production. All of these will take time, but the UK prime minister has instead chosen to delay the transition | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

New Scientist Live: What we are most looking forward to seeing in 2023

Here’s what members of the New Scientist editorial team are keenest to catch at the world’s greatest festival of ideas and discovery, which runs from 7 to 9 October | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Eris and Makemake might be hiding unexpected oceans of liquid water

Dwarf planets aren’t expected to carry liquid water, but hints of surprising geological activity spotted with JWST indicate that some of them might have buried oceans | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Young seabird couples get 'divorced' with little immediate benefit

Thick-billed murres normally mate for life, but young couples are more likely to break up, despite seeing no benefit to mating success the next year | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Human noise pollution drives monkeys to rely on communication by scent

Tamarins living near cities in the Amazon Rainforest use odour to communicate nearly twice as often as usual when noise pollution spikes from nearby freeways or town centres | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

'Dark earth' made by Amazon farmers stores carbon for centuries

Nutrient-rich soil known as “dark earth” has been cultivated by Indigenous farmers in the Amazon for centuries, leaving behind a large and still uncounted store of carbon | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Corkscrew-shaped microbot could use sound to spiral through human body

Microscopic helical robot travels through narrow tubes when exposed to sound, and could eventually be used to deliver drugs inside of the body by spiralling through its vasculature. | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Suppressing worrying thoughts may improve our mental health

Rather than recalling and focusing on fearful thoughts, it might sometimes be useful to avoid these imaginings to boost our well-being and avoid symptoms of mental health conditions like depression or PTSD | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Prehistoric people in Spain may have made tools from human bones

The Cueva de los Marmoles cave in Granada, Spain, was used as a prehistoric human burial site. Researchers have found that nearly a third of the bones that remain were altered by tools, possibly to make bowls, cups or spatulas | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

Starfield review: Too much AI-generated content makes for a dull game

Bethesda's new galaxy-sprawling game Starfield gives you 1000 planets to explore. But with many of these worlds generated by algorithm, it can all feel a bit predictable, finds Jacob Aron | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago

To improve mental health, we must do more than just raise awareness

We are talking about mental health more than ever before – but if we are serious about improving it, we need more evidence about which interventions really help | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 year ago