The Athena lander reached the moon – but seems to have fallen over

Intuitive Machines' Athena spacecraft has landed on the surface of the moon, but it seems to have fallen over and we do not yet know if it will be able to drill for ice | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 5 hours ago

Experts say US flights are safe now but flag warning signs to look for

Flying commercially in the US remains low risk despite a recent mid-air collision, near misses and job cuts at the Federal Aviation Administration. But aviation safety experts and former FAA employees identify warning signs that would stop them from flying in the future | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 5 hours ago

The US may start vaccinating chickens and cows against bird flu

The US Department of Agriculture announced it will allocate $100 million to develop vaccines and other therapies to help contain the spread of bird flu on poultry and dairy farms | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 hours ago

Birds' nests in Amsterdam are made up of plastic from 30 years ago

Coots' nests in Amsterdam are built using discarded plastic, providing a time capsule into the material's use over the past few decades | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 11 hours ago

Lasers can help detect radioactive materials from afar

In a record-breaking test, researchers remotely detected radioactive material by shooting it with infrared laser pulses and analysing how the light scattered | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 13 hours ago

Two huge black holes merged into one and went flying across the cosmos

A supermassive black hole that doesn't appear to be where we would expect seems to be travelling at more than a thousand kilometres per second – the result of a giant cosmic collision | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 14 hours ago

Do we all see red as the same colour? We finally have an answer

It is impossible for us to know exactly how another person's experience of the world compares to our own, but a new experiment is helping to reveal that colour is indeed a shared phenomenon | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 16 hours ago

Global sea ice levels just hit a new record low

Sea ice cover in both the Antarctic and Arctic remained far below average throughout February as global average temperatures linger near record highs | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 23 hours ago

Men taking antibiotics could cut rates of bacterial vaginosis in women

Bacterial vaginosis, which is caused by bacteria overgrowing in the vagina, can be hard to treat, with women often experiencing recurring symptoms. Now it seems that asking their male sexual partners to use antibiotic pills and cream could be key to tackling the condition | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Quantum disorder is dependent on who is looking for it

A new understanding of how an observer can change the disorder, or entropy, of a quantum object could help us probe how gravity interacts with the quantum realm | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Norovirus vaccine pill shows promise against 'winter vomiting' bug

Most people recover from norovirus, a highly contagious infection, within a few days but it can be particularly risky for some groups. Now a small trial of a pill designed to protect against the virus has shown promise in older people | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Health scares for a new generation must be tackled with solid science

A rise in cancers among younger people, particularly colorectal cancer, is prompting speculation on social media over the causes. Only slow, careful research can get to the truth | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Scientists want to poke me where, with a what?

Feedback discovers that breasts have been "largely ignored" when it comes to tactile acuity – but is relieved that researchers have acted to change this oversight | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

How Moore's law led us to a flawed vision of the future

Back in the 1960s, it seemed like better communications could solve all our problems. Don’t blame the technology for the failure of that dream, says Annalee Newitz | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

How neuroscience and bad studies have fuelled intensive parenting

Motherdom is the latest book to lay bare the shaky science pressuring parents to perfectly steer their children's development from birth. It's a welcome reality check, finds Penny Sarchet | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Light has been transformed into a 'supersolid' for the first time

Supersolids are strange materials that behave like both a solid and a fluid due to quantum effects – and now researchers have created an intriguing new type of supersolid from laser light | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Ancient humans used bone tools a million years earlier than we thought

Hominins may have learned how to make bone tools by adapting the techniques they mastered for stone ones | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

The critical computer systems still relying on decades-old code

Software used by banks and the space industry may still rely on archaic code. We went in search of the oldest code in use and asked, what happens when it glitches? | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

The solar system was once engulfed by a vast wave of gas and dust

The stars as seen from Earth would have looked dimmer 14 million years ago, as the solar system was in the middle of passing through clouds of dust and gas | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton win Turing award for AI training trick

The Turing award, often considered the Nobel prize of computing, has gone to two computer scientists for their work on reinforcement learning, a key technique in training artificial intelligence models | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 1 day ago

Chimps and bonobos relieve social tension by rubbing their genitals

When competition for food is high, both chimps and bonobos sometimes rub their genitals together to cope | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

DOGE eliminated the US government’s tech experts – what has been lost?

The Trump administration’s latest move to improve government efficiency has purged tech consultants that worked to improve government efficiency | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

The first water may have formed surprisingly soon after the big bang

Water is an essential part of life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere – and now it we know it may have formed not long after the start of the universe | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

The cosmic landscape of time that explains our universe's expansion

A strange new conception of how time warps across the universe does away with cosmology's most mysterious entity, dark energy | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

The secret of how Greenland sharks can live cancer-free for 400 years

We are starting to understand how Greenland sharks can live for centuries without commonly developing tumours | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

Why exactly is the quantum world so weird?

We can describe the quantum realm using straightforward mathematics – but once we try to translate these ideas into the real world, things get weird. Our quantum columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan explains why | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

Can genetically engineered 'woolly' mice help bring back the mammoth?

Colossal Biosciences has altered several genes in mice to make them look more mammoth-like, but the company is far from its goal of fully resurrecting woolly mammoths by 2028 | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

Fungus offers a new way to cut down on methane in cow burps

Soil fungi can make a compound that disrupts how cow stomachs produce the potent greenhouse gas methane | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

Cryptography trick could make AI algorithms more efficient

Encryption would normally be expected to slow down computation, but applying the tools of cryptography to "trick" an algorithm can actually make it work faster | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 2 days ago

US military wants to grow giant biological structures in space

DARPA scientists are exploring ways to grow massive biological objects, such as telescope antennas or huge nets to snag debris, in space | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

The alarming rise of colorectal cancer diagnoses in people under 50

Colorectal cancers will soon be the number one cause of cancer death among people under 50. Could changes in lifestyle and environment be to blame? | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

The best new science fiction books of March 2025

John Scalzi, Silvia Park and Ai Jang all have new books out this month. Whether it’s time travel or a moon made of cheese that takes your fancy, there’s some sci-fi here for you | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

Ancient ancestor of the plague discovered in Bronze Age sheep

The DNA of Yersinia pestis bacteria has been found in a Bronze Age sheep, offering a clue to how the plague may have spread through prehistoric farming communities | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

Does milk and other dairy really reduce the risk of colorectal cancer?

Consuming dairy is increasingly being linked to a lower risk of colorectal cancer, but the true relationship between the two is hard to untangle | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

Blue Ghost spacecraft makes second-ever commercial landing on the moon

The second-ever commercial landing on the moon comes amid a flurry of lunar exploration activity that will see around a dozen missions this year alone | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 3 days ago

US scientists rebuild climate risk map deleted from government site

When the US Federal Emergency Management Agency removed a map of future climate hazards from its website, researchers built their own version | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Electronic tongue could let you taste cake in virtual reality

Virtual reality could get more realistic thanks to scientists inventing an artificial tongue that can taste flavours, such as sourness and umami | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Is OpenAI hitting a wall with huge and expensive GPT-4.5 model?

Some researchers think OpenAI's giant and expensive latest model is a sign that tech companies cannot keep making progress by continually scaling up | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Dancers float like jellyfish in the abyss in new Wayne McGregor show

Choreographer Wayne McGregor’s extraordinary new show, Deepstaria, is inspired by the marine life of the deep ocean | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Stone tools help monkeys thrive in hostile habitats

Golden-bellied capuchins are usually found in humid forests, but some populations appear to have adapted to life in drier habitats with the help of stone tools | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Shock discovery tears up the rules of time and space inside a computer

Time and memory space are the two main constraints on what we can compute, and understanding their relationship is a key part of computational complexity research | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

NASA set to launch SPHEREx space telescope to scan entire sky

NASA's newest space telescope will scan the entire sky in a range of near-infrared wavelengths to help astronomers better understand the evolution of the universe and search for promising spots for extraterrestrial life | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

Read an extract from Michel Nieva’s science fiction novel Dengue Boy

In this passage from Dengue Boy, the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, we get an insight into life for Michel Nieva’s mosquito protagonist – and the drowned future world she inhabits | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

New Scientist Book Club: Why I chose a mosquito as my hero

Michel Nieva, the author of the latest read for the New Scientist Book Club, Dengue Boy, on his story of a drowned, pandemic-struck future Earth – and his unusual protagonist | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 6 days ago

We now know how much global warming has delayed the next ice age

Changes in Earth’s orbit drive long-term glacial cycles, but a new forecast suggests this ancient pattern is being disrupted for tens of thousands of years due to human-induced global warming | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 7 days ago

We now know how much global warming has delayed the next glacial cycle

Changes in Earth’s orbit drive long-term glacial cycles, but a new forecast suggests this ancient pattern is being disrupted for tens of thousands of years due to human-induced global warming | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 7 days ago

We now know how much emissions have delayed the next glacial period

Changes in Earth’s orbit drive long-term glacial cycles, but a new forecast suggests this ancient pattern is being disrupted for tens of thousands of years due to human-induced global warming | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 7 days ago

Why the world’s longevity hotspots may not be all they seem

Blue Zones, places home to an unusual number of centenarians, are looked to for their secrets to living healthier lives – but are they even real? | Continue reading


@newscientist.com | 7 days ago