Countries are eager to use AI to automate some government processes, but this risks eroding citizens’ trust and feelings of democratic control – because AI mistakes can ruin their lives | Continue reading
The IceCube neutrino detector has allowed researchers to resolve a debate about what types of particles make up ultra-high-energy cosmic rays – but much remains unknown about these rare events | Continue reading
A drop in shipping emissions has caused a surge in warming at the Great Barrier Reef, fuelling calls for drastic actions such as marine cloud brightening to lower the risk of coral bleaching | Continue reading
Models suggest that meeting climate targets will be virtually impossible without steep emissions cuts paired with a huge expansion of carbon management technologies | Continue reading
Urban trees lining streets fare better in dry spells than those in parks – now it seems that leaky water pipes are the reason for their endurance | Continue reading
Mice experienced far fewer hay fever symptoms when a pollen-blocking antibody was applied within their nose | Continue reading
Sea-skimming crafts – which fly just above the water – were once considered Cold War relics of a failed Soviet experiment. Now, China and the US are resurrecting the technology as a possible Pacific conflict looms | Continue reading
Microglia replacement therapy helps treat people with a rare genetic condition called ALSP, suggesting the approach could also work for other neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s | Continue reading
Inhaled insulin is effective for controlling blood sugar levels in children with diabetes, providing them with a faster-acting, needle-free option to manage their condition | Continue reading
Observations from NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveal that Jupiter’s strong magnetic field and the unique properties of its plasma can produce a truly novel kind of extraterrestrial wave near its poles | Continue reading
Something strange happens to water as it moves through the stems of horsetail plants – and this unique process provides valuable clues for understanding past and present ecosystems | Continue reading
Astronomers tracking an interstellar object flying through the solar system think it comes from a star at least 8 billion years old, almost twice the age of our sun | Continue reading
An AI system trained on videos of operations successfully guided a robot to carry out gall bladder surgery on a dead pig, with minimal human assistance | Continue reading
Kat Zhou has won the Aquatic Life category in the 2025 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition, while a shot of a death-defying leap by a lemur took the top prize | Continue reading
The UK's health secretary has announced a 10-year plan to check newborns for a huge range of rare conditions. There are major medical and ethical issues with this, argues neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan | Continue reading
Feedback has been invited to an event next year in Shaoxing, China. It's an academic conference promising "revolutionary thinkers who are redefining human intimacy through cutting-edge robotics and AI" | Continue reading
Foundation's new series is full of new characters and dramatic potential. But instead of mining those rich seams, too many plotlines have become shallow and absurd. It's hard to see a good show go bad, says Bethan Ackerley | Continue reading
An example from the history of mathematics shows how views on the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence can quickly start to change | Continue reading
The population is set to plummet and we don't know how to stop it, warn Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in their new book, After the Spike | Continue reading
Language is evolving rapidly in a world of social media. Our millennial reviewer finds Adam Aleksic's Algospeak to be a much-needed helping hand | Continue reading
The awe-inspiring distances of the cosmos are hard to visualise, so how can we be certain we are measuring them correctly? Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explains | Continue reading
Previous estimates have suggested that more than half of people who stop taking antidepressants experience withdrawal symptoms, but now a review of the evidence suggests this isn't the case, at least for short-term use. | Continue reading
Humanity’s innate treachery is behind social ills ranging from inequality to abuse of power. Lessons from our ancestors can help defeat the enemy within | Continue reading
Exercise seems to help prevent cancer and reduce the growth of tumours, and that protective effect may be due to the way working out changes the gut microbiome | Continue reading
The oldest protein fragments ever recovered have been extracted from fossilised teeth found in Kenya's Rift Valley, revealing the remains belonged to the ancient ancestors of rhinoceroses and elephants | Continue reading
It’s easy to sneer at people who say they’ve fallen in love with ChatGPT. But we've been developing confusing feelings for bots for decades longer than you might think, writes Alex Wilkins. With so many people feeling lonely, can that be a good thing? | Continue reading
After a controversial project claiming to have resurrected the dire wolf, Colossal Biosciences has now announced plans to bring back nine species of the extinct moa bird | Continue reading
Maintaining good overall health is key to living a long life, but we may want to particularly focus on the state of our brain and immune system | Continue reading
We now have the ability to rapidly assess the impact of climate change after extreme weather events – a first of its kind analysis has shown that it nearly tripled the death toll from the most recent European heatwave | Continue reading
A cancer-killing virus could soon be approved for use after shrinking tumours in a third of people with late-stage melanoma | Continue reading
Interest in the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin skyrocketed during the covid-19 pandemic, but evidence for many of its supposed health claims are lacking | Continue reading
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” just signed by President Trump will slash support for clean energy, leaving the US far short of its Paris Agreement pledge | Continue reading
Ancient humans in Africa changed their behaviour in a major way 70,000 years ago, which could explain how their descendants managed to people the rest of the world | Continue reading
Putting aerosols in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight could prevent the shutdown of key ocean currents, but only if it is done soon, a computer model suggests | Continue reading
Ordering takeaway food, writing emails, reworking presentations: AI assistants are promoted as a way of outsourcing mundane tasks to free up your time for more interesting pursuits. So, what are they actually good for – and what are the risks? | Continue reading
The loss of snow cover in temperate forests is set to slow their growth and reduce their ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere, an overlooked consequence of climate change | Continue reading
Some numbers are so unimaginably large that they defy the bounds of modern mathematics, and now mathematicians are closing in on a number that may mark the edge of this bizarre abyss | Continue reading
Suddenly feeling old? Evidence now suggests that rather than a long, steady decline, we dramatically age around three specific times in our lives. Might it be possible to stay younger for longer? | Continue reading
Around seven asteroids or comets are thought to hit Saturn ever year, but we have never spotted one in the act. Now, it seems one astronomer may have caught the moment of impact and the hunt is on for other images to verify the discovery | Continue reading
Drugs and explosive chemicals are difficult to detect, but a device more sensitive than a dog’s nose can pick up their traces in seconds | Continue reading
Drugs and explosive chemicals are difficult to detect, but a device more sensitive than a dog’s nose can pick up their traces in seconds | Continue reading
Computers can help ensure that mathematical proofs are correct, but translating traditional maths into a machine-readable format is an arduous task. Now, the latest generation of artificial intelligence models is taking on the job, and could change the face of maths research | Continue reading
The skull of a 5-year-old girl who lived 140,000 years ago has similarities with modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, suggesting her parents might have belonged to different species | Continue reading
Some carbon dioxide absorbed by fig trees gets turned into calcium carbonate within the wood and the surrounding soil, ensuring that the carbon is kept out of the air for longer | Continue reading
A study of fossils from the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago shows that forests in many parts of the world were wiped out, disrupting the carbon cycle and ensuring that Earth remained hot for millions of years | Continue reading
The growth of domestic solar installations opens the possibility of hackers targeting their smart inverter devices as a way to cause widespread power-system failures | Continue reading
Not quite crystals and not quite a glass, quasicrystals are an oddity whose properties are not well understood – but now we know how they can remain stable | Continue reading
Working in tandem, a quantum computer and a supercomputer modelled the behaviour of several molecules, paving the way for useful applications in chemistry and pharmaceutical research | Continue reading