Ancient stone goods found across France may have been made by skilled craftspeople in what is now Paris, who traded along vast networks | Continue reading
Large language models can be used to scam humans, but AI is also susceptible to being scammed – and some models are more gullible than others | Continue reading
The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted | Continue reading
The Sverris saga describes how castle invaders “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”, in what may have been an early act of biological warfare - and now researchers believe they have found the skeleton of the man in question | Continue reading
Weaving tales of magical fruit and vegetables into your children's stories may encourage them to eat healthy snacks | Continue reading
The recent surge in warming led to fears that climate change may be accelerating beyond model projections, but a fall in how much heat Earth is gaining makes this less likely | Continue reading
A lithium-ion battery made from three droplets of hydrogel is the smallest soft battery of its kind – and it could be used in biocompatible and biodegradable implants | Continue reading
Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas | Continue reading
Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day | Continue reading
In the western US, the average maximum growth rate of fires has more than doubled over the past two decades | Continue reading
A new battery design that uses only water, clay and graphene could source material on Mars and be more sustainable and accessible than traditional batteries | Continue reading
Zapping the skin with electricity could stop bacteria that live there harmlessly from entering the body and causing blood poisoning | Continue reading
Despite talk of a green recovery, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise as the world emerged from coronavirus lockdowns | Continue reading
Adding blade-like sails to tankers could reduce their annual fuel consumption by up to 30 per cent, slashing the climate impact of the shipping industry | Continue reading
Marie Curie redefined the role of women in science by training a generation of “lab daughters” to have stellar careers, shows Dava Sobel's detailed and intimate new biography, The Elements of Marie Curie | Continue reading
A man and young girl drive across a scorched Australian outback in Juice, an extraordinary new sci-fi novel where nothing is what it first seems, says Emily H. Wilson | Continue reading
For nervous newbie gardeners, starting out with a single plant in a small pot is pitched as an easy win by the horticultural industry. James Wong explains why it isn't | Continue reading
What happens if AI is trained to write choral music by feeding it a specially created vocal dataset? Moving new exhibition The Call tackles some thorny questions about AI and creativity – and stirs the soul with music | Continue reading
When award-winning author Will Eaves couldn't write his next novel, he discovered that a different approach to creativity offered some answers | Continue reading
Feedback was feeling left out after failing to see the recent aurora borealis, but was delighted to find Meta providing an AI-generated version. Definitely absolutely just as good as the real thing | Continue reading
Greening our cities is a good thing, but it has to be done with an eye to the unfolding climate crisis of our times | Continue reading
Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible | Continue reading
Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer | Continue reading
The systems we use to produce food have many problems, from horrifying waste to their dependence on fossil fuels. Vaclav Smil explains how to fix them | Continue reading
A nearby star that exploded 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system | Continue reading
Everything you need to know about Rwanda's outbreak of Marburg virus, which has been described as one of the deadliest human pathogens | Continue reading
In a wetland on the south coast of England, archaeologists dug up one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain, which is around 3500 years old | Continue reading
Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots | Continue reading
A climate-cooling La Niña pattern was expected to develop in the Pacific Ocean months ago, but forecasters now say it won't appear until November | Continue reading
A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives | Continue reading
A neuroscientist underwent dozens of brain scans over three months to better understand the neurological effects of hormonal contraceptives | Continue reading
A type of mathematical problem that was previously impossible to solve can now be successfully analysed with artificial intelligence | Continue reading
New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers | Continue reading
Animals that hibernate need a way to keep their blood flowing as their body temperature drops, and it seems that the mechanical properties of red blood cells may be key | Continue reading
The world’s most powerful rocket launched from Texas and reached an altitude of more than 230 kilometres, travelling further and faster than ever before. But it appears to have either self-destructed or burned up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere | Continue reading
A trial suggests that giving older dogs a supplement makes them cognitively sharper, but some scientists stress that pet owners should lower their expectations | Continue reading
The debris from the formation of a relatively small crater on Mars created billions of additional craters, which could help us learn about Martian geology | Continue reading
Wooden tablets containing a language of glyphs called Rongorongo may be evidence that the people of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, created their own writing system without the influence of European language | Continue reading
A nasal spray containing an anti-inflammatory molecule reduces the symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis in animals, although the treatment might come with risks in people | Continue reading
All major skiing regions worldwide are predicted to see a severe drop in snow days by the end of the century, with Australian resorts the worst affected | Continue reading
A four-legged robot can handle real-world obstacles that require scrambling up and down or leaping sizeable gaps. AI training lets it adapt to new terrain it hasn’t seen before | Continue reading
As a new law is introduced in England, requiring developers to create 10 per cent more wildlife habitat than they destroy when developing a site, does it really work to destroy nature in one place, but preserve it elsewhere, asks Graham Lawton | Continue reading
Feedback discovers an overdue investigation into whether pneumatic robots are tastier when they are moving or when they are still | Continue reading
Disinformation is far older than humans. Lessons from evolutionary biology can help defend against it today, says Jonathan R. Goodman | Continue reading
Are memories ever really true or false? Is social media disrupting how we remember? Does memory shape creativity? Find out in an essential new guide to memory by leading researcher Charan Ranganath | Continue reading
The largest ever dataset of its kind suggests methane is leaking from US oil and gas fields at a much higher rate than previously thought, implying the environmental damage caused by the greenhouse gas is greater too | Continue reading
Fat droplets accumulating in brain immune cells could be behind the biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease | Continue reading