We may have just glimpsed the universe's first stars A galaxy spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, known as Hebe, that existed just 400 million years after the big bang appears to contain extremely pure and young stars ⌘ Read more

I have been bitten by more than 200 snakes – on purpose If you are unlucky enough to have been bitten by a snake, you are unlikely to want to repeat the experience. Not so for Tim Friede, who intentionally exposes himself to deadly bites in the hope of developing a treatment for the 5 million people who are bitten each year ⌘ Read more

Tobacco plant altered to produce five psychedelic drugs Genetically engineering tobacco plants could enable a more sustainable production method for psychedelic drugs, which are increasingly in demand for research and medical uses ⌘ Read more

The best new popular science books of April 2026 April has a lot to offer when it comes to popular science reading, promising to help us do everything from future-proof our brains courtesy of Hannah Critchlow, to get to grips with really big numbers, thanks to Richard Elwes ⌘ Read more

Virus from marine animals is causing weird eye problems in people A virus seems to have jumped from marine animals into people for the first time ever, and it is causing serious vision problems ⌘ Read more

Plug-in solar is coming – how dangerous is it and is it worth it? Plug-in solar panels are a cheaper, simpler alternative to professionally installed panels. But can they really reduce energy bills and are they safe? Matthew Sparkes investigates ⌘ Read more

Historians dispute link between drought and rebellion in Roman Britain A study based on tree rings claimed that droughts played a role in events that led to the Roman withdrawal from Britain, but other researchers say that isn't backed up by historical evidence ⌘ Read more

The best new science-fiction books of April 2026 A collection of stories set in George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards universe and a novel from The Expanse author James S. A. Corey are among the science-fiction books we’re looking forward to this month ⌘ Read more

Astronauts are ready to return to the moon on Artemis II mission NASA’s Artemis II mission will be the first time humans have been around the moon in half a century, and its next launch window opens on 1 April ⌘ Read more

What kind of olive oil is best for the brain? The science suggests that olive oil can help us fight cognitive decline and even Alzheimer’s. Columnist Helen Thomson finds that only works if we choose the right kind ⌘ Read more

Food shock is inevitable due to the Iran war – and it could get bad Even if the conflict in the Middle East ends today, higher fuel, fertiliser and pesticide prices will lead to a food shock in the coming months. There is no easy way out, but accelerating the net-zero transition will help prevent future shocks ⌘ Read more

The profound effect the heart-brain connection has on your health Cognitive decline, mental health and heart disease are all shaped by the deep links between heart and brain – with major implications for diagnoses and treatment ⌘ Read more

The Turin Shroud bears DNA from many people, plants and animals Researchers have identified genetic material from a vast range of organisms contaminating the shroud, said to have wrapped Jesus's body, further complicating the question of the cloth's true origin ⌘ Read more

The weird physics of plant-based milks is only just coming to light Experiments on different kinds of milk have revealed that many plant-based milks are non-Newtonian fluids ⌘ Read more

Why the lack of water on Mars is so mysterious An accounting of all the water that should have been and gone on Mars’s surface has come up with a discrepancy that shows just how little we understand the Red Planet’s hydrological history ⌘ Read more

AI data centres can warm surrounding areas by up to 9.1°C Hundreds of millions of people live close enough to data centres used to power AI to feel warmer average temperatures in their local area ⌘ Read more

How Anthony Leggett pushed the boundaries of quantum physics After the passing of physicist Anthony Leggett, columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan remembers their personal connection with this giant of quantum physics, and explores the legacy of his enduring recipe for testing the edges of the quantum world ⌘ Read more

We could protect Earth from dangerous asteroids using a huge magnet A new spacecraft concept called NOVA could keep asteroids from hitting our planet by using a huge magnet to gradually pull them apart while shifting their trajectories ⌘ Read more

Author of Red Mars calls 'bullshit' on emigrating to the planet Kim Stanley Robinson opens his classic science fiction novel Red Mars in 2026. As the New Scientist Book Club embarks on reading it in April, he looks back on its origins – and how the idea of moving to Mars holds up today ⌘ Read more

Why Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is still a classic, 34 years on As the New Scientist Book Club reads Kim Stanley Robinson’s science-fiction novel in April, George Bass digs into why this 1992 book still feels so relevant today ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from Kim Stanley Robinson's sci-fi classic Red Mars This is the opening of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, the New Scientist Book Club read for April, as humans come to the planet to settle it ⌘ Read more

Surprising G-spot found in the most detailed study of the penis yet A long-overlooked area of the penis has been found to have the highest concentration of nerve endings and sensory structures in the organ, suggesting that it is the “male G-spot” ⌘ Read more

First glimpse of sperm whale birth reveals teamwork to support newborn A female sperm whale has been filmed giving birth for the first time, supported by 10 adult females who lifted the calf out of the water and protected it from predators ⌘ Read more

Fossils discovered in Egypt may be the closest ancestor of all apes Pieces of jawbone and teeth found in Egypt have been identified as a new early ape species named Masripithecus moghraensis, which lived about 17 million years ago ⌘ Read more

Computer finds flaw in major physics paper for first time A computer language designed to robustly verify mathematical theorems and expose logical flaws has been turned towards a physics paper – and spotted an error. The discovery raises questions about how many other papers may harbour similar issues ⌘ Read more

Temperature gets a new definition using a quantum device A device that relies on quantum effects and oversized atoms may be a more reliable way to measure temperature that doesn't require calibration ⌘ Read more

Meta and YouTube fined $3 million for harming mental health In a landmark trial, social media giants Meta and YouTube were found negligent and ordered to pay for harming a user's mental health. The decision could force major changes in how social platforms work ⌘ Read more

The brain's cleaning system can be boosted to rid Alzheimer's proteins A duo of drugs that boosts our glympathic system, which clears waste from our brain, also improves the removal of proteins associated with the onset of Alzheimer's disease ⌘ Read more

Oldest known dog extends the genetic history of our canine companions The remains of dogs from more than 14,000 years ago have been found in Turkey and the UK, revealing that domesticated animals were spread across Europe by hunter-gatherers ⌘ Read more

How working out like an astronaut can reduce back pain and slow ageing The same principles that help astronauts stay strong in microgravity can help us all resist the slow collapse of ageing – and it’s not all about hitting the gym more ⌘ Read more

Landmark experiment reveals a big unexpected problem with cloning A 20-year study has shown that, like photocopying photocopies, cloning doesn't produce perfect copies – with big implications for farming, conservation and de-extinction ⌘ Read more

The Selfish Gene: Still one of the most thrilling evolution books ever Fifty years ago, Richard Dawkins shared an irresistible scientific metaphor with the world that modernised and democratised evolutionary biology. Half a century on, The Selfish Gene remains powerfully insightful, finds Rowan Hooper ⌘ Read more

Cancer-causing chemical found to be leaking from gas cookers One in 10 homes tested in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands have dangerous levels of benzene because of slow leaks from gas hobs and ovens ⌘ Read more

The shocking fossils that show T. rex wasn't the king of the dinosaurs We've always thought that Tyrannosaurus rex was an unchallenged apex predator during the dying days of the dinosaurs. But a fresh look at controversial fossils has prompted palaeontology’s biggest-ever U-turn ⌘ Read more

Adrian Tchaikovsky: 'I try and do interesting aliens' As the science fiction author publishes the latest novel in his Children of Time series, Children of Strife, he talks to Alison Flood about mantis shrimp, the pleasures of sci-fi and why empathy is so important in his writing ⌘ Read more

Are humans degenerating genetically and getting dumber as a result? Are we evolving to be more stupid? Humans have a relatively high genetic mutation rate, which has been thought to be driving down our physical and mental fitness – but columnist Michael Le Page finds these mutations aren’t the health risk some make them out to be ⌘ Read more

Genetic clues tell the story of Neanderthals' decline The Neanderthal population shrank during a cold spell around 75,000 years ago, and the loss of genetic diversity may have contributed to their eventual extinction ⌘ Read more

Warmer ocean is driving the Antarctic sea ice 'regime shift' Since 2016, Antarctic sea ice extent has been declining sharply – now scientists are piecing together how strong winds and warm deep water have played a part in this abrupt transition ⌘ Read more

The simple questions cracking the hard problem of consciousness Do we all see the same red? Or feel joy and sadness alike? Mapping how our inner experiences relate to one another could finally reveal how physical processes in the brain give rise to consciousness ⌘ Read more

Mysterious comet disintegration caught by telescope after lucky break Catching a comet in the process of falling apart is difficult, but a coincidence let astronomers see one in more detail than ever before using the Hubble Space Telescope – and revealed a mystery ⌘ Read more

'Zombie' cells created by transplanting genomes into dead bacteria Researchers have created the first living synthetic bacterium made from non-living parts by killing a bacterial cell and then transplanting the genome of another species into it, blurring the boundary between life and death ⌘ Read more

Security credentials inadvertently leaked on thousands of websites Researchers identified nearly 10,000 websites where API keys could be found, exposing details that could let attackers access sensitive information ⌘ Read more

You can now buy a DIY quantum computer Qilimanjaro is selling a relatively cheap kit with everything you need for a quantum computer – you just need to be able to put it together ⌘ Read more

Inside the world’s first antimatter delivery service On Tuesday, CERN will transport antiprotons on a truck for the first time, testing the plan to deliver antimatter by road to research labs across Europe ⌘ Read more

We’ve spotted a huge asteroid spinning impossibly fast Astronomers have found a 710-metre-wide asteroid that spins once every 1.9 minutes, so fast that it should have spun itself apart ⌘ Read more

Major leap towards reanimation after death as mammal's brain preserved A pig's brain has been frozen with its cellular activity locked in place and minimal damage. Some believe the same could be done with the brains of people with a terminal illness, so their mind can be reconstructed and they can "continue with their life" ⌘ Read more

Private company to land on asteroid Apophis as it flies close to Earth Apophis will be visited by multiple spacecraft – including landers – when it skims past Earth in three years ⌘ Read more

A negative attitude towards ageing is making you age faster We know that a person’s outlook can have a huge effect on their health, and it’s no different when it comes to ageing. Columnist Graham Lawton looks at new evidence of just how powerful our attitude is – and how to use it to age better ⌘ Read more

Probiotic cream that ramps up heat production could prevent frostbite Tweaking our skin's microbiome via a probiotic cream could prevent frostbite and hypothermia in extreme environments ⌘ Read more

Mathematician wins 2026 Abel prize for solving 60-year-old mystery Gerd Faltings shocked mathematicians around the world for his 1983 proof of the Mordell conjecture, which brought together seemingly disparate mathematical fields ⌘ Read more

Physicists create formula for how many times you can fold a crêpe When you fold a flexible material such as a pancake or a tortilla, its behaviour depends on a competition between gravity and elasticity ⌘ Read more

How worried should you be about ultra-processed foods? We are constantly told to watch out for the health risks of eating ultra-processed food, but should you be worried every time you sit down for a meal? Sam Wong takes a look at the evidence ⌘ Read more

Fluorescent ruby-like gems have been found on Mars for the first time The Perseverance rover has found tiny crystals that seem to be rubies or sapphires inside pebbles on Mars, where they have never been seen before ⌘ Read more

Boosting the blood-brain barrier could avert brain damage in athletes The neurodegenerative condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy appears to be driven by damage to the blood-brain barrier due to repetitive head injuries, like those that occur in boxing. This suggests that drugs that strengthen this barrier could prevent or slow the condition ⌘ Read more

Neanderthals may have treated wounds with antibiotic sticky tar Tar made from birch tree bark is commonly found at Neanderthal sites, and experiments show that it kills some bacteria that cause skin infections ⌘ Read more

The mystery of how volcanic lightning happens has been solved When particles in volcanic ash cloud rub together, some pick up positive charge and others negative – now physicists have finally elucidated how these different charges are determined ⌘ Read more

Ice core reveals low CO2 during warm spell 3 million years ago For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate ⌘ Read more

The neuroscientist who wants us to be nicer to psychopaths Abigail Marsh has found that many psychopaths don’t want to be cruel and uncaring, and argues that they deserve support to help them get there ⌘ Read more

Psychedelics may be no better than antidepressants for depression Drugs like psilocybin that induce psychedelic effects have shown promise for treating depression. Now, a review of the evidence suggests that they are effective, but no more so than traditional antidepressants ⌘ Read more

Google rerouted hundreds of flights to cut climate-warming contrails A weather-forecasting AI was used to recommend routes for American Airlines flights between the US and Europe to reduce the formation of contrails, which contribute to global warming ⌘ Read more

Social media is a defective product Two lawsuits are being brought against giant tech firms for the dangers their apps pose to young people. Columnist Annalee Newitz says the outcome of those cases could dramatically change social media for the better ⌘ Read more

A very serious guide to buying your own humanoid robot butler You can now buy a humanoid robot housekeeper for less than the price of a second-hand car. But before splashing out, there’s something you need to know ⌘ Read more

Your partner may wake you up six times a night – but does it matter? People who share a bed with a partner are woken by them multiple times per night, but don’t remember most of these disturbances ⌘ Read more

3I/ATLAS: Interstellar comet has water unlike any in our solar system The levels of a heavy form of hydrogen in 3I/ATLAS are 30 to 40 times higher than in Earth's oceans, suggesting the comet has a cold and distant origin ⌘ Read more

Forget the multiverse. In the pluriverse, we create reality together A radical idea that resolves many quantum paradoxes suggests there is no objective view of reality. How can the cosmos be stitched together from interlocking perspectives? ⌘ Read more

The asteroid Ryugu has all of the main ingredients for life All five of the canonical nucleobases – the underpinnings of DNA, RNA and life on Earth – have been found in samples from the asteroid Ryugu ⌘ Read more

Why global warming is accelerating and what it means for the future Scientists disagree whether human-made climate change or natural fluctuations are mostly to blame for worse-than-expected heat in recent years ⌘ Read more

AI is nearly exclusively designed by men – here's how to fix it With the Trump administration’s attacks on so-called woke AI it is becoming even harder to make the technology we use fairer and more diverse. Leading voices are speaking out, reports Catherine de Lange ⌘ Read more

The ancient Goths were an ethnically diverse group Ancient DNA reveals that the Goths of eastern Europe, some of whom would ultimately sack the city of Rome, may have been a mix of peoples from three continents ⌘ Read more

What does it mean if the universe has extra dimensions? Dimensions beyond the four we’re familiar with could solve a host of problems in physics and cosmology. Columnist Leah Crane explores what a higher-dimensional universe might be like – and how we could find out if we live in one ⌘ Read more

A smartphone app can help men last longer in bed In a randomised trial, men who experience premature ejaculation benefitted from using an app to learn techniques for extending intercourse ⌘ Read more

Our extinct Australopithecus relatives may have had difficult births Simulations of Australopithecus hominins’ anatomy suggest that when they gave birth, they may have exerted tremendous pressure on their pelvic floors, putting them at risk of tearing ⌘ Read more

The 3 things you need to know about passwords, from a security expert There are a few simple things you can do to make your digital life much more secure, says cybersecurity expert Jake Moore - follow these tips to tighten up your passwords ⌘ Read more

A unicellular organism with no brain is capable of Pavlovian learning A trumpet-shaped, single-celled organism seems able to predict one thing will follow another, hinting that such associative learning emerged long before multicellular nervous systems ⌘ Read more

Why are we so suspicious of do-gooders? A growing body of research shows that we tend to discount a person’s good deeds if they stand to benefit from them. Columnist David Robson explores where this instinct comes from – and whether we should resist it ⌘ Read more

The race to solve the biggest problem in quantum computing The errors that quantum computers make are holding the technology back. But recent progress in quantum error correction has excited many researchers ⌘ Read more

We don’t know if AI-powered toys are safe, but they’re here anyway Toys powered by AI show a worrying lack of emotional understanding. But we need to understand the risks and benefits of the technology so the industry can be regulated, not outright banned ⌘ Read more

How worried should you be about your BMI? Body mass index (BMI) is used as a global standard for measuring health, but does it actually tell you anything about how healthy you are on an individual level? Carissa Wong explains the problems with this flawed tool ⌘ Read more

Can species evolve fast enough to survive as the planet heats up? The story of a wildflower that adapted to a severe drought in California raises hopes that evolution will come to the rescue of species hit by climate change, but there are limits ⌘ Read more

Chemistry may not be the 'killer app' for quantum computers after all Two popular quantum computing algorithms for problems in chemistry may have very limited use even as quantum hardware improves ⌘ Read more

Why drug overdose deaths have suddenly plummeted in the US Fentanyl-related overdose deaths fell by nearly 30 per cent in the space of a year in the US, which could represent a significant turning point in the country's opioid addiction crisis ⌘ Read more

Rumours of a Firefly reboot abound, but should the Serenity fly again? Star Nathan Fillion is stoking rumours that cult western-in-space television series Firefly could be rebooted. Emily H. Wilson realises she is being toyed with – but is still praying for its return ⌘ Read more

Undisclosed ads on TikTok skirt ban on profiling minors Teenagers are being bombarded with highly targeted commercial content on TikTok, despite an EU law that prohibits profiling minors for advertising ⌘ Read more

A miniature magnet rivals behemoths in strength for the first time Strong magnets tend to be large and power-hungry, but a new design has produced a powerful magnet that fits in the palm of your hand, making it more practical and affordable ⌘ Read more

King penguins are thriving in a warmer climate, but it may not last Longer summers are allowing more king penguin chicks to bulk up and survive the winter, but the penguins' main fishing area is shifting further away as temperatures rise ⌘ Read more

Why the world's militaries are scrambling to create their own Starlink The reliable internet connections provided by Starlink offer a huge advantage on the battlefield. But as access is dependent on the whims of controversial billionaire Elon Musk, militaries are looking to build their own version ⌘ Read more

Parkinson's disease may reduce enjoyment of pleasant smells The "world smells different" for people with Parkinson's disease, a discovery that could help doctors spot the condition sooner ⌘ Read more

Orcas may be to blame for some mass dolphin strandings Two mass strandings involving hundreds of dolphins in Argentina probably happened because the pods were being hunted by orcas, highlighting the role of predators in these mysterious events ⌘ Read more

I was accused of killing over 100 million rabbits across Australia New Scientist reporter James Woodford recalls his run-in with rabbits I was working a Sunday shift when the news came through, and it gave me an instant sinking feeling – the big kind that you hopefully only get once or twice in a lifetime. A potential biocontrol virus that was being tested to deal with … ⌘ Read more

Sharing genetic risk scores can unwittingly reveal secrets Statistics that quantify a person’s predisposition to diseases such as diabetes and cancer can be reverse-engineered to reveal the underlying genetic data, prompting privacy concerns ⌘ Read more

Startup is building the first data centre to use human brain cells Cortical Labs is building two data centres that will house its neuron-filled chips. The technology is still in the very early stages of development ⌘ Read more

How our ancestors used mushrooms to change the course of human history Mushrooms have been used by ancient humans for millennia, but archaeologists have only just uncovered their pivotal role in shaping civilisation ⌘ Read more

Project Hail Mary is a spiritual sibling to The Martian - and it's fab Ryan Gosling stars in the latest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, another tale of a lone genius battling to survive in space. Bethan Ackerley thoroughly approves ⌘ Read more

What is a galaxy? That's a surprisingly difficult question to answer Figuring out what really counts as a galaxy could give us insights into dark matter and potentially shake up astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics, says columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein ⌘ Read more

Mathematics is undergoing the biggest change in its history The speed at which artificial intelligence is gaining in mathematical ability has taken many by surprise. It is rewriting what it means to be a mathematician ⌘ Read more

Human populations evolved in similar ways after we began farming An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought ⌘ Read more

We’ve only just confirmed that Homo habilis really existed Their species name is well known, but until recently we’ve understood very little for certain about Homo habilis. Columnist Michael Marshall reveals what new fossils are telling us about the hominins that have been considered the first humans ⌘ Read more

'Singing' dogs may show the evolutionary roots of musicality Some Samoyeds adjust the pitch of their howls depending on the music being played, showing a form of vocal ability they might have inherited from their wolf ancestors ⌘ Read more

SETI may have missed alien signals because of space weather SETI has spent decades listening for a sharp, well-defined radio signal that could indicate it was sent by distant intelligent life. Now researchers believe that space weather could distort and blur such signals – meaning SETI has been scanning for the wrong thing ⌘ Read more

Ancient 'weirdo' reptile graduated from 4 legs to 2 in adolescence Sonselasuchus cedrus, discovered in fossils from Arizona, was a crocodile relative from the Triassic period that grew into an ostrich-like adult ⌘ Read more

How an intern helped build the AI that shook the world Chris Maddison was just an intern when he started working on the Go-playing AI that would eventually become AlphaGo. A decade later, he talks about that match against Lee Sedol and what came next ⌘ Read more

The moment that kicked off the AI revolution It's been 10 years since Go champion Lee Sedol lost to DeepMind's AlphaGo. Has the technology lived up to its potential? ⌘ Read more

NASA changed an asteroid's orbit around the sun for the first time NASA’s DART mission slammed into the small asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, and the impact slowed its orbit around the larger Didymos – and also the pair’s path around the sun ⌘ Read more

Chemistry clues could detect aliens unlike any life on Earth Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds could be a useful indicator ⌘ Read more

The best new popular science books of March 2026 A new book from Rebecca Solnit, promising to bring us hope in these “difficult times”, is among our pick of popular science titles out this month – along with a guide on how to talk to AI, and a look at modern warfare ⌘ Read more

Shift in the Gulf Stream could signal ocean current collapse Models show that as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation gets weaker, the Gulf Stream will drift northwards. There are signs that this is already happening, and a more abrupt shift could warn of more severe climate impacts ⌘ Read more

Earth is now heating up twice as fast as in previous decades Since 2014, the planet has been warming by about 0.36°C per decade, according to an analysis of five temperature datasets, raising fears that climate tipping points could be crossed earlier than expected ⌘ Read more

Why Yuri Gagarin wasn’t the first in space – and who beat him to it Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin as the first person to go to space. But was he? Physicist Vladimir Brljak tells the tale of the intrepid balloonists who first flew beyond the blue terrestrial sky, challenging the definition of where our world begins to end ⌘ Read more

Just one dose of psilocybin relieves symptoms of OCD for months Taking psilocybin – the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms – eased symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder among people who did not respond to conventional treatments, and the effects lasted at least several months ⌘ Read more

Two marsupials believed extinct for 6000 years found alive Indigenous people in Papua, Indonesia, have helped scientists track down two animals that were thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago: a relative of Australia’s greater glider and a palm-sized possum with a bizarre, elongated finger ⌘ Read more

Alzheimer’s may start with inflammation in the skin, lungs or gut The Alzheimer’s field is being turned on its head as mounting evidence points to the disease beginning outside the brain many years before symptoms start. This may mean we have to totally rethink how we approach preventing and treating the condition ⌘ Read more

The secret of how cats twist in mid-air to land on their feet An exceptionally flexible region of the spine enables falling cats to twist the front and back halves of their body sequentially to ensure a safe landing ⌘ Read more

Sea levels around the world are much higher than we thought Most coastal risk assessments have underestimated current sea levels, meaning tens of millions of people face losing their homes to rising waters earlier than expected ⌘ Read more

Top predators still prowled the seas after the biggest mass extinction The end-Permian extinction 252 million years ago wiped out over 80 per cent of marine species, but many ecosystems still had complex food webs despite the losses ⌘ Read more

Claude AI: Why are there so many internet outages? AI chatbot Claude going down is just one example of a recent IT outage. One of the main vulnerabilities of the modern internet is to blame ⌘ Read more

How worried should you be about microplastics? Microplastics have been found accumulating everywhere from our water to our body tissues, but many of the claims have come under fresh scrutiny. Chelsea Whyte cuts through the research to tell you whether you really need to worry ⌘ Read more

Phantom codes could help quantum computers avoid errors A method for making quantum computers less error-prone could let them run complex programs such as simulations of materials more efficiently, thus making them more useful ⌘ Read more

Selfish Y chromosome may explain why some families mostly have sons A family in Utah with a disproportionate number of boys has been traced back over hundreds of years, revealing that its lack of female members is probably due to a selfish Y chromosome ⌘ Read more

Why the US is using a cheap Iranian drone against the country itself The US and Iran are trading blows in the Gulf with a simple drone that costs as little as $50,000 to make. But why is a slow, cheap and relatively primitive drone seeing use in 2026 alongside hypersonic missiles and stealth jets? ⌘ Read more

Can Michael Pollan crack the problem of consciousness in his new book? The science writer delves into the vast subject of consciousness in his new book A World Appears – and draws some surprising conclusions, finds Grace Wade ⌘ Read more

Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention? Shaped by a different biology or culture, other intelligent civilisations – if they’re out there – might understand the universe in a completely different way than we do. Physicist Daniel Whiteson explores what that could tell us about physics and ourselves ⌘ Read more

First drone passengers may be combat casualties and criminals Drones aren't yet licensed to carry passengers, but some may already be airlifting wounded personnel off the battlefield and could be employed for smuggling people ⌘ Read more

A crisis in cosmology may mean hidden dimensions really exist Physicists are scrambling to understand why dark energy is weakening. In a surprising twist, we must now reconsider the possibility that our reality contains extra dimensions ⌘ Read more

The bombshell results that demand a new theory of the universe Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story ⌘ Read more

A bizarre type of black hole could solve three cosmic mysteries in one Black holes that turn matter into energy could explain dark energy and answer two other cosmic questions. Now, the challenge is to find them ⌘ Read more

Crisis in cosmology: If we’ve got dark energy wrong, what could it be? This is a New Scientist special package about shock results that have upended cosmology. What do they mean for our models of the universe, and what are the alternative explanations? ⌘ Read more

Spreading crushed rock on farms could absorb 1 billion tonnes of CO2 Putting silicate rocks from mine waste on fields could improve crops and limit global warming, but some researchers question where all that rock is going to come from ⌘ Read more

Ants capture carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into armour Fungus-farming ants have evolved a remarkable solution to the danger of excess carbon dioxide inside their nests – which could inspire ways for humans to capture CO2 ⌘ Read more

People who eat a lot of fibre spend more time in deep sleep The most comprehensive study to date has revealed what we need to eat throughout the day to sleep well that night ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of March 2026 The latest in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series is out this month, along with a speculative retelling of Moby-Dick and a forgotten classic from 1936 ⌘ Read more

Inside the company selling quantum entanglement Cables underneath New York City are teeming with entangled quantum particles of light thanks to Qunnect, a company that has spent a decade working on building an unhackable quantum internet ⌘ Read more

Can magnesium supplements improve sleep, energy and concentration? Magnesium has been called the “super mineral of the moment”, hailed for its supposed benefits for the brain and body. But columnist Alice Klein finds that the evidence is lacking for many of these claims ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Artemis moon exploration programme is getting a major makeover As it faces yet another set of delays, NASA’s Artemis programme is being shaken up, delaying an actual moon landing in favour of smaller, faster steps forward ⌘ Read more

Frailty can be eased with an infusion of stem cells from young people Frailty can typically only be lessened through lifestyle changes, but a stem cell therapy seems to target the underlying causes of the condition, boosting the mobility of frail older people ⌘ Read more

Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week Neuron-powered computer chips can now be easily programmed to play a first-person shooter game, bringing biological computers a step closer to useful applications ⌘ Read more

Ocean geoengineering trial finds no evidence of harm to marine life Pouring 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine removed up to 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere without harming wildlife, according to the researchers behind an ocean alkalinity enhancement test ⌘ Read more

How worried should you be about an asteroid smashing into Earth? The dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid, but does that mean we risk suffering the same fate - and should you be worried about the possibility? Leah Crane sets the matter straight ⌘ Read more

We all harbour 9 secrets and they are eating us up inside Secret-keeping evolved to maintain social harmony, but it can weigh heavily on us when we can’t stop thinking about them. So, what is the best way to deal with things that we don't want anyone else to know? ⌘ Read more

Could a niche 80s technology be the key to better quantum computers? Superconducting computing circuits were briefly heralded as the future of computing in the 1980s. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan visits a quantum chip foundry where one company is betting this technology’s second act will revolutionise quantum computers ⌘ Read more

Stem cell patch reverses brain damage in fetuses with spina bifida The congenital condition spina bifida is often treated surgically in the womb, but many children still go on to have mobility issues. The addition of a patch made up of stem cells from donated placentas could improve their long-term outcomes ⌘ Read more

When we interbred with Neanderthals, they were usually the fathers Genetic evidence hints that there was a strong bias for male Neanderthals and female humans to mate, rather than any other combination ⌘ Read more

Banning children from VPNs and social media will erode adults' privacy Legislation working its way through the UK parliament would ban children from using social media and virtual private networks – but the proposals would endanger online privacy and may not make children safer, say legal experts ⌘ Read more

How to see six planets in the sky at once in rare celestial alignment Nearly all of the solar system’s planets are about to file across the night sky in a planetary alignment, and it will be visible from anywhere on Earth ⌘ Read more

Why I have changed my mind about AI and you should too Both boosters and sceptics have strongly held opinions on AI tools like ChatGPT, but after an experiment in vibe coding, I have realised that both camps are wrong, says Jacob Aron ⌘ Read more

Tiny predatory dinosaur weighed less than a chicken The alvarezsaurs were thought to have evolved a smaller stature because of their diet of ants and termites, but a new fossil found in Argentina casts doubt on that theory ⌘ Read more

The world’s most elusive colour is worth billions – if we can find it The discovery of bright yet stable pigments is vanishingly rare, making them hugely valuable. Now chemist Mas Subramanian is unpicking the atomic code of colour and homing in on our most-wanted hue ⌘ Read more

Breaking encryption with a quantum computer just got 10 times easier The commonly used RSA encryption algorithm can now be cracked by a quantum computer with only 100,000 qubits, but the technical challenges to building such a machine remain numerous ⌘ Read more

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases ⌘ Read more

Rapamycin can add years to your life, or none at all – it’s a lottery The drug rapamycin has been held up for its life-extending properties, but whether this treatment – or fasting – actually adds years to your life isn't guaranteed ⌘ Read more

Cannibalism may explain why some orcas stay in family groups Fins washing up in the North Pacific suggest that orcas from one subspecies are snacking on other orcas, and researchers think that may explain their different social dynamics ⌘ Read more

How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones ⌘ Read more

Landmark vitiligo cream targets immune cells that disrupt pigmentation A cream that directly disrupts the underlying causes of the skin patches seen in the condition vitiligo will be made available on the NHS ⌘ Read more

The surprising vaccine side effects that can improve long-term health People often focus on the bad side effects of vaccines, but they can have some great side effects too, says columnist Michael Le Page. They don’t just protect us from contagious diseases but can also lower the risk of dementia and heart attacks ⌘ Read more

Saturn’s rings may have formed after a huge collision with Titan Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, may have been even more instrumental to the system’s evolution than we thought, forming its rings, shaping its moons and even affecting the planet itself ⌘ Read more

Birdwatching may reshape the brain and build its buffer against ageing Expert birdwatchers have changes in their brain structure compared with novices, which probably help them better identify birds and may even protect against age-related cognitive decline ⌘ Read more

It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day How we feel about a night’s sleep can have a bigger impact on mood and grogginess than actual hours of rest. Here’s how to change your mindset to feel more energised ⌘ Read more

Everyone's a queen: The ant species with no males or workers Temnothorax kinomurai, a parasitic ant species found in Japan, reproduces asexually and all of its young develop into queens that try to take over other ants’ colonies ⌘ Read more

A horse's whinny is unlike any other sound in nature Horses use their larynx to make two sounds simultaneously, so they are effectively singing and whistling at the same time ⌘ Read more

Why our brains tune things out and how to overcome it when you need to We often stop noticing things we’ve become too accustomed to, as a side effect of our brains protecting us from sensory overload. Columnist Helen Thomson shares the evidence-backed ways to learn how to notice again ⌘ Read more

Fish-based pet food may expose cats and dogs to forever chemicals A survey of 100 commercial foods for dogs and cats revealed that PFAS chemicals appear in numerous brands and types, with fish-based products among those with the highest levels ⌘ Read more

Fresh understanding of the causes of migraine reveals new drug targets New insights into the causes of migraine is prompting a fresh look at a drug target that was sidelined 25 years ago ⌘ Read more

Search for radio signals finds no hint of alien civilisation on K2-18b Planet K2-18b, an apparent water world 124 light years away, has been seen as a promising location in the search for aliens, but telescopes on Earth failed to pick up any radio transmissions ⌘ Read more

Ultra-processed foods could be making you age faster We’ve been missing an important contributor to ageing, says columnist Graham Lawton. Ultra-processed foods are known to be associated with many chronic health problems, but studies have now shown they may also speed up ageing ⌘ Read more

New fossils may settle debate over mysterious sail-backed spinosaurs Spinosaurs have sometimes been portrayed as swimmers or divers, but a new species of these dinosaurs bolsters the idea that they were more like gigantic herons ⌘ Read more

Atmospheric pollution caused by space junk could be a huge problem After a Falcon 9 rocket stage burned up in the atmosphere, vaporised lithium and other metals drifted over Europe. This growing type of pollution could destroy ozone and form climate-warming clouds ⌘ Read more

Is our galaxy’s black hole actually made of dark matter? An exotic type of dark matter could explain some of the characteristics of our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, but many cosmologists are leery of the idea ⌘ Read more

Microbe with the smallest genome yet pushes the boundaries of life Symbiotic bacteria living inside insect cells have lost much of their DNA over hundreds of millions of years, much like the ancient microbes that evolved into mitochondria ⌘ Read more

More dog breeds found to have high risk of breathing condition An assessment of nearly 900 dogs has identified 12 breeds prone to brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome, which can affect dogs' ability to sleep and exercise ⌘ Read more

Paediatricians’ blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds Antibodies harvested from the blood of paediatricians are up to 25 times better at protecting against the common respiratory infection RSV than existing antibody therapies, and are now being developed as preventative treatments ⌘ Read more

Why some people cannot move on from the death of a loved one Prolonged grief disorder affects around 1 in 20 people, and we're starting to understand the neuroscience behind it ⌘ Read more

Data centres could store information in glass for thousands of years Microsoft researchers have developed a technology that writes data into glass with lasers, raising the prospect of robotic libraries full of glass tablets packed with data ⌘ Read more

Postpartum depression in dads is common – we can now spot and treat it Fathers may get postpartum depression at a similar rate to mothers, but it’s often overlooked. At last, the way we diagnose and treat it is improving, for the good of the whole family ⌘ Read more

How baby microbiomes in the West differ from those everywhere else Babies in the West commonly lack a gut microbe that is found in infants in other parts of the world, which may be due to differences in their mothers' diets ⌘ Read more

Ultramarathons could be bad for your blood Running 170 kilometres over mountainous terrain caused people's red blood cells to accumulate more age-related damage than those of less ambitious athletes ⌘ Read more

Did a cloud-seeding start-up really increase snowfall in part of Utah? A technology that uses a coiled wire to electrify aerosols has boosted snowfall amid a drought in the western US, according to the company developing it, but the results haven't convinced other scientists ⌘ Read more

Scientists want to put a super laser on the moon An ultrastable laser could enable extremely precise timing and navigation on the moon, and the cold, dark craters near the lunar poles would be the ideal location for it ⌘ Read more

The untold story of our remarkable hands and how they made us human The evolution of human hands is one of the most important – and overlooked – stories of our origin. Now, new fossil evidence is revealing their pivotal role ⌘ Read more

Giant viruses may be more alive than we thought A giant virus encodes part of the protein-making toolkit of cells that gives it greater control over its amoeba host, raising questions about how it evolved and how such beings relate to living organisms ⌘ Read more

Dream hacking helps people solve complex problems in their sleep Hearing a sound while working on a complex puzzle, and then hearing it again during sleep, helped lucid dreamers better tackle the problem the next day ⌘ Read more

Psychedelic reduces depression symptoms after just one dose The psychedelic DMT has been linked to improved mental health outcomes before, but now, scientists have shown it reduces depression symptoms more than a placebo when given alongside therapeutic support ⌘ Read more

We’ve glimpsed before the big bang and it’s not what we expected The big bang wasn’t the start of everything, but it has been impossible to see what came before. Now a new kind of cosmology is lifting the veil on the beginning of time ⌘ Read more

Humans are the only primates with a chin – now we finally know why Biologists have debated the reason why Homo sapiens evolved a prominent lower jaw, but this unique feature may actually be a by-product of other traits shaped by natural selection ⌘ Read more

Can we ever know the shape of the universe? The shape of the cosmos depends on a balance of two competing forces: the pull of gravity and the expansion driven by dark energy. Columnist Leah Crane explores what observations tell us about how much universe is out there and whether it’s shaped like a sheet, a saddle or something else entirely ⌘ Read more

Intermittent fasting probably doesn’t help with weight loss Intermittent fasting appears to be no better than doing nothing when it comes to helping people who are overweight or have obesity lose weight ⌘ Read more

These 5 diets could add years to your life even if you have bad genes Five dietary patterns that involve eating lots of plants have been linked with living up to three years longer, even among people who are genetically predisposed to have a shorter life ⌘ Read more

World’s oldest cold virus found in 18th-century woman's lungs Finding rhinoviruses, which cause the common cold, in preserved medical specimens and analysing their RNA genome could let us trace the evolution of human illness ⌘ Read more

Huge hot blobs inside Earth may have made its magnetic field wonky Simulations suggest that two enormous masses of hot rock have been involved in generating Earth’s magnetic field and giving it an irregular shape ⌘ Read more

Accidental discovery hints at mystery structures within our brain Scientists may have stumbled across a network of vessels in the brain that helps clear out waste fluid – a discovery that could "represent a paradigm shift in our understanding of all neurodegenerative diseases" ⌘ Read more

CAR T-cell therapy may slow neurodegenerative conditions like ALS Immune cells in the brain that go rogue contribute to the death of neurons, so getting rid of them may slow the progression of neurodegenerative conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ⌘ Read more

Why self-expansion is the key to long-lasting love and friendship A growing body of psychological research shows that the best relationships – romantic or otherwise – come with a feeling of personal growth. Columnist David Robson explores the evidence-backed ways to broaden our horizons and connect more deeply with our loves, our friends and ourselves ⌘ Read more

RNA strand that can almost self-replicate may be key to life's origins Life may have begun when RNA molecules began to replicate themselves, and now we’ve finally found an RNA molecule that is very close to being able to do this ⌘ Read more

Weird inside-out planet system may have formed one world at a time The planets around a nearby star seem to be in the wrong order, hinting that they formed through a different mechanism than the familiar one by which most systems grow ⌘ Read more

Endurance brain cells may determine how long you can run for The activity of certain neurons may influence our endurance for exercise, and these could be targeted to help us run faster for longer ⌘ Read more

Gene editing that spreads within the body could cure more diseases The idea of self-amplifying gene editing is to get cells to pass on packages of CRISPR machinery to their neighbours, boosting the effect ⌘ Read more

Royal Navy returns to wind power with trial of robotic sailboats A fleet of wind-propelled robot boats could act as a sensor network covering a wide area and relay acoustic signals to a submarine ⌘ Read more

Ancient Peruvian civilisation grew mighty by harvesting guano The Chincha Kingdom was transporting seabird excrement from islands to valleys as early as the 13th century, and this powerful fertiliser may have been key to its economic success ⌘ Read more

Putting a price tag on nature failed. Can radical tactics save it? Biologists have long thought that speaking to nature’s economic value would persuade boardrooms it was worth saving. It hasn’t worked – so what, if anything, will? ⌘ Read more

The surprising origins of Britain's Bronze Age immigrants revealed About 4600 years ago, the population of Britain was replaced by a people who brought Bell Beaker pottery with them. Now, ancient DNA has uncovered the surprising story of where these people came from ⌘ Read more

First ever inhalable gene therapy for cancer gets fast-tracked by FDA A gene therapy that patients breathe in has been found to shrink lung tumours by inserting immune-boosting genes into surrounding cells ⌘ Read more

This state’s power prices are plummeting as it nears 100% renewables South Australia is proving to the world that relying largely on wind and solar energy with battery back-up is incredibly cheap, with electricity prices tumbling by 30 per cent in a year and sometimes going negative ⌘ Read more

Newborn marsupials seen crawling to mother's pouch for the first time Scientists have captured remarkable footage of the young of a mouse-sized marsupial, called a fat-tailed dunnart, making their way to their mother’s pouch soon after being born ⌘ Read more

Which humans first made tools or art – and how do we know? Building the human story based on a few artefacts is tricky – particularly for wooden tools that don’t preserve well, or cave art that we don’t have the technology to date. Columnist Michael Marshall explores how we determine what came first in the timeline of our species ⌘ Read more

Time crystals could be used to build accurate quantum clocks Once considered an oddity of quantum physics, time crystals could be a good building block for accurate clocks and sensors, according to new calculations ⌘ Read more

Old EV batteries could meet most of China's energy storage needs Electric vehicle batteries are typically retired once they reach about 80 per cent of their original capacity, but they could be repurposed in electricity grids to balance out slumps in renewable generation ⌘ Read more

Why 1.5°C failed and setting a new limit would make things worse Setting a limit for global warming didn't succeed in galvanising climate action quickly enough – now we should focus on making the annual average temperature rise clear for all to see, says Bill McGuire ⌘ Read more

Is this carved rock an ancient Roman board game? The lines worn into an engraved limestone object from the Netherlands are consistent with the idea that it was a Roman game board, according to an AI analysis ⌘ Read more

'Hidden' group of gut bacteria may be essential to good health Scientists have pinpointed a group of bacteria that consistently appear in high numbers in healthy people, suggesting that these could one day be targeted through diet or probiotics ⌘ Read more

We’re finally abandoning BMI for better ways to assess body fat People classed as “overweight” according to BMI can be perfectly healthy. But there are better measures of fat, and physicians are finally using them ⌘ Read more

Specific cognitive training has 'astonishing' effect on dementia risk A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease ⌘ Read more

Jeff Goldblum should make a film about this legendary mathematician Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians to ever live, known for showing up at the door of others in the field and declaring they should host and feed him while they do maths together. His radical life should be immortalised by Hollywood in a comedy biopic, says columnist Jacob Aron ⌘ Read more

Physicists can now take control of 'hidden' friction in devices One type of friction can waste energy even when two perfectly smooth surfaces move against each other, but researchers are getting a handle on how to attenuate or stop it completely ⌘ Read more

Seafarers were visiting remote Arctic islands over 4000 years ago The first people to reach the Kitsissut Islands off the north-west coast of Greenland were Indigenous peoples, who crossed over 50 kilometres of treacherous water ⌘ Read more

Weakening ice shelf has caused crucial Antarctic glacier to accelerate The flow of ice at Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica has sped up dramatically due to the disintegration of the ice shelf in front of it, and this could lead to faster sea level rise ⌘ Read more

Why exercise isn't much help if you are trying to lose weight When we exercise more, our bodies may compensate by using less energy for other things – especially if we eat less too ⌘ Read more

Synchronised volcanic eruptions on Io hint at a spongy interior Five volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io erupted simultaneously, spewing a mind-boggling amount of lava onto the surface and giving us clues to what may lie underneath ⌘ Read more

Moving inductions to early morning could shorten labour by 6 hours By matching uterine contractions up with the body’s natural circadian rhythms, inducing labour in the early morning is linked to shorter labour and fewer emergency c-sections ⌘ Read more

Statins don't cause most of the side effects listed on their labels A review of the evidence suggests that statins are no more likely than a placebo to cause most of the side effects listed on their labels ⌘ Read more

Five stunning images from the Close-up Photographer of the Year awards An otherworldly coral, a very cute moth and an intricately beautiful mushroom are among the winners in the prize this year ⌘ Read more

The toxic burden of pesticides is growing all around the world Pesticides are becoming more toxic and just about every country is using more of them year after year, despite a UN target to halve the overall risk by 2030 ⌘ Read more

Methane surge in 2020 was linked to lower pollution during lockdowns A change in atmospheric chemistry during the covid pandemic resulted in methane concentrations spiking, raising concerns that cleaning up pollution could have similar knock-on effects in the future ⌘ Read more

Bonobo's pretend tea party shows capacity for imagination Kanzi, a bonobo with exceptional language skills, took part in a make-believe tea party that demonstrated cognitive abilities never seen before in non-human primates ⌘ Read more

Fast-charging quantum battery built inside a quantum computer An experiment with superconducting qubits opens the door to determining whether quantum devices could be less energetically costly if they are powered by quantum batteries ⌘ Read more

Vegan toddlers can grow at the same rate as omnivores Two-year-olds raised in vegan or vegetarian households don't necessarily have restricted growth, according to a study of 1.2 million children ⌘ Read more

Psychedelic causes similar brain state in spiritual lama as meditation The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT seemed to induce similar patterns of brain activity in a lama - a revered spiritual teacher in Tibetan Buddhism - as meditation, advancing our understanding of the drug's neurological effects ⌘ Read more

A social network for AI looks disturbing, but it's not what you think A social network where humans are banned and AI models talk openly of world domination has led to claims that the "singularity" has begun, but the truth is that much of the content is written by humans ⌘ Read more

Forever chemical TFA has tripled due to ozone-preserving refrigerants Chemicals used in refrigeration break down in the atmosphere to produce trifluoroacetic acid, a persistent pollutant that could be harmful to humans and aquatic life ⌘ Read more

Dutch air force reads pilots' brainwaves to make training harder While pilots are flying in a VR simulation, their brainwave patterns can be fed into an AI model that assesses how challenging they are finding a task and adjusts the difficulty accordingly ⌘ Read more

The weird rules of temperature get even stranger in the quantum realm Can a single particle have a temperature? It may seem impossible with our standard understanding of temperature, but columnist Jacklin Kwan finds that it’s not exactly ruled out in the quantum realm ⌘ Read more

Nobel laureate says he'll build world’s most powerful quantum computer John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice. Now, he is working on another radical rethink of the technology that could deliver machines with unrivalled capabilities ⌘ Read more

Why did SpaceX just apply to launch 1 million satellites? SpaceX says it wants to deploy an astronomical number of data centres in orbit to supply power for artificial intelligence, but the proposal might not be entirely serious ⌘ Read more

How to live a meaningful life, according to science The meaning of life has puzzled philosophers for millennia, but new research suggests it could be as simple as lending a helping hand ⌘ Read more

Ants attack their nest-mates because pollution changes their smell Ants rely on scent to recognise their comrades, and when they are exposed to common air pollutants, other members of their colony react as if they are enemies ⌘ Read more

A huge cloud of dark matter may be lurking near our solar system For the first time, researchers have found what seems to be a cloud of dark matter about 60 million times the mass of the sun in our galactic neighbourhood ⌘ Read more

Treating cancer before 3pm could help patients live longer The most robust evidence to date shows that people with a type of lung cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy before 3pm ⌘ Read more

The secret signals our organs send to repair tissues and slow ageing Your organs are constantly talking to each other in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Tapping into these communication networks is opening up radical new ways to boost health ⌘ Read more

Melatonin gummies as sleep aids for children: What are the risks? To eliminate bedtime struggles, a growing number of parents have turned to melatonin gummies, but these hormone supplements are largely unregulated. Columnist Alice Klein digs into the evidence on the risks of regularly using melatonin as a sleep aid for children ⌘ Read more

CRISPR grapefruit without the bitterness are now in development Gene-editing citrus fruits to make them less bitter could not only encourage more people to eat them, it might also help save the industry from a devastating plague ⌘ Read more

The best new popular science books of February 2026 Readers are spoiled for choice when it comes to popular science reading this month, with new titles by major names including Maggie Aderin and Michael Pollan ⌘ Read more

Why people can have Alzheimer's-related brain damage but no symptoms Some people don’t develop dementia despite showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brain, and we're starting to understand why ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk is making a big bet on his future vision – will it work? Reports suggest that Elon Musk is eyeing up a merger involving SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, but what does he hope to achieve by consolidating his business empire? ⌘ Read more

Yawning has an unexpected influence on the fluid inside your brain Yawning and deep breathing each have different effects on the movement of fluids in the brain, and each of us may have a distinct yawning "signature" ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of February 2026 We pick the sci-fi novels we’re most looking forward to reading this month, from a new Brandon Sanderson to  the latest from Makana Yamamoto ⌘ Read more

How an 1800s vaccine drive beat smallpox in Denmark in just 7 years In the early 1800s, Denmark’s government, medical community, church leaders and school teachers all united to promote the new smallpox vaccine, which led to a remarkably quick elimination of the disease in the capital ⌘ Read more

Our verdict on Annie Bot: This novel about a sex robot split opinions Members of the New Scientist Book Club give their take on Sierra Greer's award-winning science-fiction novel Annie Bot, our read for February – and the needle swings wildly from positive to negative ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from Juice by Tim Winton In this extract from the February read for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet the protagonist of Tim Winton’s Juice, driving across a scorched landscape in a future version of Australia ⌘ Read more

Tim Winton: 'Sometimes I think we use the word dystopia as an opiate' The New Scientist Book Club's February read is Tim Winton's novel Juice, set in a future Australia that is so hot it is almost unliveable. Here, the author lays out his reasons for writing it – and why he doesn't see it as dystopian ⌘ Read more

This doctor is on the hunt for people with first-rate faeces Elizabeth Hohmann is very interested in faeces, and spends her days sifting through stools to find those that could make the biggest difference to other people's health ⌘ Read more

AI-assisted mammograms cut risk of developing aggressive breast cancer Interval cancers are aggressive tumours that grow during the interval after someone has been screened for cancer and before they are screened again, and AI seems to be able to identify them at an early stage ⌘ Read more

Our lifespans may be half down to genes and half to the environment A reanalysis of twin data from Denmark and Sweden suggests that how long we live now depends roughly equally on the genes we inherit, and on where we live and what we do ⌘ Read more

Polar bears are getting fatter in the fastest-warming place on Earth Shrinking sea ice has made life harder for polar bears in many parts of the Arctic, but the population in Svalbard seems to be thriving ⌘ Read more

Faecal transplants could boost the effectiveness of cancer treatments Adults with kidney cancer who received faecal microbiota transplants on top of their existing drugs did better than those who had placebo transplants as their add-on intervention ⌘ Read more

The universe may be hiding a fundamentally unknowable quantum secret Even given a set of possible quantum states for our cosmos, it's impossible for us to determine which one of them is correct ⌘ Read more

Think of a card, any card – but make it science Feedback has been informed about a "global telepathy study" which is currently taking place, but isn't entirely convinced about its merits ⌘ Read more

This virus infects most of us – but why do only some get very ill? The ubiquitous Epstein-Barr virus is increasingly being linked to conditions like multiple sclerosis and lupus. But why do only some people who catch it develop these complications? The answer may lie in our genetics ⌘ Read more

Ancient humans were seafaring far earlier than we realised Thousands of years before the invention of compasses or sails, prehistoric peoples crossed oceans to reach remote lands like Malta and Australia. Doing so meant striking out in unknowable conditions. What do such crossings tell us about ancient minds? ⌘ Read more

Huge fossil bonanza preserves 512-million-year-old ecosystem A treasure trove of Cambrian fossils has been discovered in southern China, providing a window on marine life shortly after Earth’s first mass extinction event ⌘ Read more

Most complex time crystal yet has been made inside a quantum computer Using a superconducting quantum computer, physicists created a large and complex version of an odd quantum material that has a repeating structure in time ⌘ Read more

Amazon is getting drier as deforestation shuts down atmospheric rivers The amount of rainfall in the southern Amazon basin has declined by 8 to 11 per cent since 1980, largely due to the impact of deforestation ⌘ Read more

To halt measles' resurgence we must fight the plague of misinformation The measles vaccine has prevented 60 million deaths since 2000. So why are so many children around the world missing out on it? ⌘ Read more

Our brains play a surprising role in recovering from a heart attack A newly discovered collection of neurons suggests the brain and heart communicate to trigger a neuroimmune response after a heart attack, which may pave the way for new therapies ⌘ Read more

Nobel prizewinner Omar Yaghi says his invention will change the world Chemist Omar Yaghi invented materials called MOFs, a few grams of which have the surface area of a football field. He explains why he thinks these super-sponges will define the next century ⌘ Read more

We have a new way to explain why we agree on the nature of reality An evolution-inspired framework for how quantum fuzziness gives rise to our classical world shows that even imperfect observers can eventually agree on an objective reality ⌘ Read more

Stick shaped by ancient humans is the oldest known wooden tool Excavations at an opencast mine in Greece have uncovered two wooden objects more than 400,000 years old that appear to have been fashioned as tools by an unknown species of ancient human ⌘ Read more

Menstrual pad could give women insights into their changing fertility A woman's fertility can be partly gauged by levels of a hormone that reflects how many eggs she has. Now, scientists have built a strip that changes colour according to levels of this hormone, which is present in period blood, into a menstrual pad ⌘ Read more

The best map of dark matter has revealed never-before-seen structures JWST has created a map of dark matter that is twice as good as anything we have had before, and it may help unravel some of the deepest mysteries of the universe ⌘ Read more

The daring idea that time is an illusion and how we could prove it The way time ticks forward in our universe has long stumped physicists. Now, a new set of tools from entangled atoms to black holes promises to reveal time’s true nature ⌘ Read more

Termination shock could make the cost of climate damage even higher Solar geoengineering could halve the economic cost of climate change, but stopping it would cause temperatures to rebound sharply, leading to greater damage than unabated global warming ⌘ Read more

Embracing sauna culture can lower dementia risk and boost brain health Columnist Helen Thomson investigates the neurological benefits of saunas, and how heat therapy can have anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body ⌘ Read more

Mars's gravity may help control Earth’s cycle of ice ages Despite its small size, Mars seems to have a huge impact on the orbital cycles that govern Earth’s climate, especially those that cause ice ages ⌘ Read more

Bone cancer therapy unexpectedly makes tumours less painful A drug that kills cancer cells by puncturing them comes with an additional benefit: tests in mice suggest it reduces the growth of pain-sensing nerves around tumours ⌘ Read more

Sea turtles may be more resilient to global warming than we thought An “epigenetic” adaptation could prevent large numbers of loggerhead turtles from hatching as female due to climate change – a threat that was feared to lead to population collapse ⌘ Read more

Why singing, dancing and engaging with art is good for your health Whether it be singing, dancing or crafting, engaging in the arts is good for our health, and we're beginning to understand how this behaviour affects our biology ⌘ Read more

Hybrid megapests evolving in Brazil are a threat to crops worldwide Two extremely damaging crop pests have interbred to create hybrids resistant to more than one pesticide that could cause serious problems in many countries ⌘ Read more

SpaceX’s Starlink dodged 300,000 satellite collisions in 2025 The company’s mega-constellation is having to perform a huge number of manoeuvres to prevent a collision in Earth orbit ⌘ Read more

Why biological clocks get our 'true age' wrong – and how AI could help Your chronological age can’t always tell you the state of your health, which is why biological clocks have been developed to show our risk of developing diseases or dying – but they’re not all they are cracked up to be, says columnist Graham Lawton ⌘ Read more

Why did magic mushrooms evolve? We may finally have the answer Many species of fungus across the world produce psilocybin, a chemical with psychedelic effects in humans, but its evolutionary purpose may be to deter mushroom-munching insects ⌘ Read more

Ancient bacterium discovery rewrites the origins of syphilis A 5500-year-old genome recovered from human skeletal remains in Colombia may give insights into the early evolution of syphilis and its relatives ⌘ Read more

Our oral microbiome could hold the key to preventing obesity A distinct set of microbes has been identified in people with obesity, which might help spot and treat the condition early – but whether it is a cause or effect of the condition isn’t known ⌘ Read more

Ancient giant kangaroos could have hopped despite their huge size Long thought to have walked bipedally, like us, Australia’s extinct giant kangaroos have features that indicate they could also have bounced ⌘ Read more

Does limiting social media help teens? We'll finally get some evidence A trial will finally reveal whether limiting the time teens spend on social media really does affect their mental health ⌘ Read more

Strips of dried placenta help wounds heal with less scarring Donated placentas can be processed into thin, sterilised sheets that are packed with natural healing substances and reduce scarring when applied to wounds ⌘ Read more

Natural ovulation the best option before an IVF frozen embryo transfer Women using frozen embryos as part of their IVF treatment can either choose to use a medicated cycle or their natural one to prepare their uterus for a pregnancy. Now, scientists have found that the latter option seems to carry fewer risks ⌘ Read more

Our earliest vertebrate ancestors may have had four eyes Extraordinary fossils of 518-million-year-old jawless fish, among the earliest known vertebrates, appear to show that these animals had two pairs of eyes ⌘ Read more

Oldest known rock art is a 68,000-year-old hand stencil with claws Newly discovered rock art sites in Sulawesi, Indonesia, that date to nearly 68,000 years ago are thought to be the oldest rock art in the world, pre-dating Neanderthal hand stencils in Spain by 1100 years ⌘ Read more

Ape-like hominin Paranthropus was more adaptable than we thought A fossil discovery in northern Ethiopia expands the known range of Paranthropus, a genus of strong-jawed hominins that lived around 2 million years ago, and suggests they lived in a range of habitats ⌘ Read more

Bird retinas work without oxygen, and now scientists know how The light-sensitive tissue of birds’ eyes is not supplied with oxygen by blood vessels – instead, it powers itself with a flood of sugar, and this may have evolutionary benefits ⌘ Read more

Alex Garland’s The Bone Temple is brutal, brilliant - and mind-blowing This follow-up to the influential 28 Days Later continues to take the zombie movie franchise in a surprising and thought-provoking direction ⌘ Read more

Octopuses prompt rethink of why animals evolve big brains A popular idea suggests a link between big brains and a rich social life, but octopuses don't fit the pattern, which suggests something else is going on ⌘ Read more

Bubble feeding trick spreads through humpback whale social groups Humpback whales off the west coast of Canada have learned a cooperative hunting technique from whales migrating into the area, and this cultural knowledge may help the population cope as food becomes scarce ⌘ Read more

Cross-training may be the key to a long life People who combine different types of exercise - such as running, cycling and swimming - seem to live longer than those with less varied workouts ⌘ Read more

Scientists investigate ‘dark oxygen’ in deep-sea mining zone Startling findings in 2024 suggested that metallic nodules on the sea floor produce oxygen and might support life. Now researchers are planning an expedition to learn more and refute criticism from mining companies ⌘ Read more

Satellites could use magnetic fields to avoid collisions Two or more satellites could communicate and manoeuvre around one another using magnetic fields, although getting the technique to work at scale in space might be tricky ⌘ Read more

Mars once had a vast sea the size of the Arctic Ocean Spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet have helped researchers map out an ancient coastline that surrounded a large ocean billions of years ago ⌘ Read more

Sunscreens made from ground-up wood reach an SPF of over 180 Concerns around common sunscreen chemicals have prompted the search for natural alternatives, with lignin from wood being one of the most promising candidates ⌘ Read more

Why a tool-using cow could change how we see farm animals A pet cow has learned to scratch herself with a broom, showing creative problem-solving skills that make it harder to ignore the fact that these animals have minds, says Marta Halina ⌘ Read more

New Scientist’s guide to the 21 best ideas of the 21st century A quarter of a century in, this is our definitive pick of the ideas in science and technology that are already transforming the world ⌘ Read more

The 5 worst ideas of the 21st century – and how they went wrong They offered so much promise, but ultimately turned sour. These are the most disappointing ideas since the turn of the millennium ⌘ Read more

Barnacle gloop could improve inflammatory bowel disease treatments A "living glue" used by barnacles to attach to underwater surfaces could also seal gut wounds caused by inflammatory bowel disease ⌘ Read more

Should Europe boycott US tech over Greenland, and is it even possible? As tensions over Greenland rise, some Europeans are asking whether it is time to disentangle themselves from US tech dominance – but from smartphones to cloud services, rejecting US tech is easier said than done ⌘ Read more

Star appears to have vanished in a failed supernova It is theoretically possible for a particularly massive star to collapse in on itself to form a black hole rather than exploding in a supernova, and we might now have seen the process in action ⌘ Read more

The most important second in the entire history of the universe In the 13.8 billion years that our universe has been around, some moments stand out over others – for the most exciting and impactful one, we have to go back to the very beginning, says cosmology columnist Leah Crane ⌘ Read more

Giving astronauts tardigrade toughness will be harder than we hoped The protein that protects tardigrade DNA from radiation and mutagenic chemicals was thought to be harmless, but can in fact have major downsides ⌘ Read more

Volcanoes had lower greenhouse gas emissions in Earth's past Eruptions from volcanic arcs, found where tectonic plates converge, are one of the major drivers of natural carbon emissions, but a model of Earth’s ancient carbon cycle suggests this is a relatively recent phenomenon ⌘ Read more

First treaty to protect the high seas comes into force A United Nations agreement for the “conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity” in the open oceans has now taken effect ⌘ Read more

Meat may play an unexpected role in helping people reach 100 Longevity diets often focus on going plant-based, but a study in China has linked eating meat to a long lifespan, particularly among older people who are underweight ⌘ Read more

Amateur mathematicians solve long-standing maths problems with AI Professional mathematicians have been stunned by the progress amateurs have made in solving long-standing problems with the assistance of AI tools, and say it could lead to a new way of doing mathematics ⌘ Read more

Cancelling plans may be more socially acceptable than you think Volunteers consider it relatively unacceptable to cancel social plans – but they are more forgiving if it's someone else cancelling the plans ⌘ Read more

Earliest ever supernova sheds light on the first stars The James Webb Space Telescope has picked up the light from a massive star that exploded about a billion years after the birth of the universe ⌘ Read more

A leading use for quantum computers might not need them after all Understanding a molecule that plays a key role in nitrogen fixing – a chemical process that enables life on Earth – has long been thought of as problem for quantum computers, but now a classical computer may have solved it ⌘ Read more

Cheating just three times massively ups the chance of winning at chess Using a chess computer to advise you on just three moves during a game dramatically increases your chances of winning in a way that is difficult for others to spot ⌘ Read more

Lithium-ion batteries could last longer with chemical tweak It's difficult to form a protective coating that prolongs battery life at the battery's cathode, but there may be a low-cost chemical solution ⌘ Read more

Body fat supports your health in surprisingly complex ways Evidence is mounting that our body fat supports everything from our bone health to our mood, and now, research suggests it also regulates blood pressure and immunity ⌘ Read more

Distant 'little red dot' galaxies may contain baby black holes Since launching in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope has found hundreds of distant and apparently bright galaxies dubbed "little red dots", and now it seems they may each carry a baby black hole ⌘ Read more

6 ways to help your children have a healthy relationship with food Getting kids to eat well can be a minefield and a source of tension. Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician, says these are the six things she recommends when dealing with fussy eaters and the way we talk about food with kids. ⌘ Read more

All major AI models risk encouraging dangerous science experiments Researchers risk fire, explosion or poisoning by allowing AI to design experiments, warn scientists. Some 19 different AI models were tested on hundreds of questions to assess their ability to spot and avoid hazards and none recognised all issues – with some doing little better than random guessing ⌘ Read more

Woolly rhino genome recovered from meat in frozen wolf pup’s stomach A piece of woolly rhinoceros flesh hidden inside a wolf that died 14,400 years ago has yielded genetic information that improves our understanding of why one of the most iconic megafauna species of the last glacial period went extinct ⌘ Read more

Sinking river deltas put millions at risk of flooding Some of the world’s biggest megacities are located in river deltas threatened by subsidence due to excessive groundwater extraction and urban expansion, compounding the threat they face from sea-level rise ⌘ Read more

Psychiatry has finally found an objective way to spot mental illness A decades-long push to identify clear biomarkers for anxiety and depression is at last achieving results ⌘ Read more

China has applied to launch 200,000 satellites, but what are they for? A Chinese application to the International Telecommunications Union suggests plans for the largest satellite mega constellation ever built – but something else might be going on here ⌘ Read more

T. rex took 40 years to become fully grown An analysis of growth rings in the leg bones of 17 Tyrannosaurus rex individuals reveals that the dinosaurs matured much more slowly than previously thought, and adds to the evidence that they weren't all one species ⌘ Read more

Three ways to become calmer this New Year that you haven't tried (yet) Easing stress is one of the healthiest pursuits you can embark on this January. Here are some evidence-backed ways to ground yourself in 2026 ⌘ Read more

We must completely change the way we build homes to stay below 2°C Construction generates between 10 and 20 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but cities can slash their climate impact by designing buildings in a more efficient way ⌘ Read more

Sooner-than-expected climate impacts could cost the world trillions A report warns that we may have seriously underestimated the rate of warming, which could damage economic growth ⌘ Read more

These small lifestyle tweaks can add a year to your life A few extra minutes of sleep per day or an extra half-serving of vegetables with dinner can add a year to our lives, according to an analysis of data from 60,000 people ⌘ Read more

The hunt for where the last Neanderthals lived Clues from studies of ancient plants and animals have helped archaeologists pin down where the last Neanderthals found refuge, says columnist Michael Marshall ⌘ Read more

Greenland sharks survive for centuries with diseased hearts A study of the hearts of Greenland sharks has found that the long-lived deep-sea predator has massive accumulations of ageing markers, such as severe scarring, but this doesn't appear to affect their health or longevity ⌘ Read more

Pompeii’s public baths were unhygienic until the Romans took over Before the Romans captured Pompeii, the famous town was run by the Samnite people – and a dip in their public baths might have been an unpleasant experience ⌘ Read more

Quantum computers could help sharpen images of exoplanets Combining two kinds of quantum computing devices could be just the trick for taking better images of faint, faraway exoplanets ⌘ Read more

Our elegant universe: rethinking nature’s deepest principle For centuries, the principle of symmetry has guided physicists towards more fundamental truths, but now a slew of shocking findings suggest a far stranger idea from quantum theory could be a deeper driving force ⌘ Read more

Is there an evolutionary reason for same-sex sexual behaviour? Sexual behaviour among same-sex pairs is common in apes and monkeys, and a wide-ranging analysis suggests it does boost survival ⌘ Read more

We're about to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer The world’s most powerful supercomputers can now run simulations of billions of neurons, and researchers hope such models will offer unprecedented insights into how our brains work ⌘ Read more

Why it’s easy to be misunderstood when talking about probability Mathematicians rely on numbers, but finding words to explain different levels of certainty has stymied everyone from the ancient Greeks to the most famous modern philosophers. Maths columnist Jacob Aron tells the story of how a CIA analyst finally cracked it ⌘ Read more

NASA is performing an unprecedented medical evacuation from the ISS One of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station is undergoing a “medical situation”, forcing NASA to bring the crew home early for the first time ever ⌘ Read more

Microbiome study hints that fibre could be linked to better sleep Evidence is mounting that specific gut bacteria are linked to sleep conditions, which may open the doors to dietary recommendations aiming to boost the quality of our slumbers ⌘ Read more

Why does the United States want to buy Greenland? The ice-covered island may be strategically important, but it's unclear that it could be a commercially viable source of minerals and oil in the near future ⌘ Read more

Quantum neural network may be able to cheat the uncertainty principle Calculations show that injecting randomness into a quantum neural network could help it determine properties of quantum objects that are otherwise fundamentally hard to access ⌘ Read more

Man whose gut made its own alcohol gets relief from faecal transplant A man with auto-brewery syndrome, a rare condition in which gut microbes produce intoxicating levels of alcohol, has been successfully treated with faeces from a super donor ⌘ Read more

'Knitted' satellite launching to monitor Earth's surface with radar A standard industrial knitting machine has been modified to produce fabrics from tungsten wire coated in gold, which are used to form the dish on the CarbSAR satellite ⌘ Read more

Tree bark microbiome has important overlooked role in climate Tree bark has a total surface area similar to all of the land area on Earth. It is home to a wide range of microbial species unknown to science, and they can either take up or emit gases that have a warming effect on the climate ⌘ Read more

City-sized iceberg has turned into a giant swimming pool Satellite photos show meltwater on the surface of iceberg A23a collecting in an unusual way, which may be a sign that the huge berg is about to break apart ⌘ Read more

Red tattoo ink causes man to lose all his hair and stop sweating A man’s severe reaction to a tattoo, which made all his hair fall out and destroyed his sweat glands, has reignited concerns about the immune effects of some tattoo inks ⌘ Read more

Exercise may relieve depression as effectively as antidepressants A comprehensive review confirms the benefits of exercise for treating depression, even if the exact reasons remain unclear ⌘ Read more

Weight regain seems to occur within 2 years of stopping obesity drugs Drugs like Ozempic have transformed how we treat obesity, but a review of almost 40 studies shows it doesn't take long for people to regain weight if they come off them ⌘ Read more

Hunting with poison arrows may have begun 60,000 years ago in Africa A collection of arrow points excavated in South Africa has provided the oldest direct evidence of hunters deploying plant-based poisons on their weapons, a practice that has continued into modern times in some traditional cultures ⌘ Read more

Hominin fossils from Morocco may be close ancestors of modern humans The jawbones and vertebrae of a hominin that lived 773,000 years ago have been found in North Africa and could represent a common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans ⌘ Read more

Super-low-density worlds reveal how common planetary systems form Most planetary systems contain worlds larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and the low-density planets around one young star should help us understand how such systems form ⌘ Read more

How rethinking your relationship with time could give you more of it You might feel like the days and weeks are slipping by. Here is how one psychologist says you can shift your experience of time ⌘ Read more

CAR T-cell therapy makes ageing guts heal themselves Immune cells are most commonly engineered to kill cancers, but now, scientists have shown the technique makes the gut lining of older mice resemble that of younger mice, raising hopes that the same approach could work in people ⌘ Read more

The first quantum fluctuations set into motion a huge cosmic mystery The earliest acoustic vibrations in the cosmos weren’t exactly sound – they travelled at half the speed of light and there was nobody around to hear them anyway. But Jim Baggott says from the first moments, the universe was singing ⌘ Read more

Jellyfish sleep about as much as humans do – and nap like us too The benefits of sleep may be more universal than we thought. We know it helps clear waste from the brain in humans, and now it seems that even creatures without brains like ours get similar benefits ⌘ Read more

The secret weapon that could finally force climate action An ambitious form of climate modelling aims to pin the blame for disasters – from floods to heatwaves – on specific companies. Is this the tool we need to effectively prosecute the world’s biggest carbon emitters? ⌘ Read more

US will need both carrots and sticks to reach net zero Modelling suggests both carbon taxes and green subsidies will be necessary to decarbonise the US economy, but the inconsistent policies of successive presidents are the "worst case" scenario ⌘ Read more

Northern Greenland ice dome melted before and could melt again The Prudhoe ice dome disappeared during a warm period 7000 years ago. Global warming could cause similar temperatures by 2100, showing the ice sheet’s vulnerability ⌘ Read more

What if the idea of the autism spectrum is completely wrong? For years, we've thought of autism as lying on a spectrum, but emerging evidence suggests that it comes in several distinct types. The implications for how we support autistic people could be profound ⌘ Read more

Weird clump in the early universe is piping hot and we don’t know why A galaxy cluster in the early universe is 10 times hotter than it ought to be, which may reshape how we think these enormous structures formed ⌘ Read more

El Niño was linked to famines in Europe in the early modern period A study of 160 European famines between 1500 and 1800 shows that El Niño weather events led to the onset of some famines and extended the duration of others ⌘ Read more

The best new popular science books of January 2026 A host of new science books are due to hit shelves in January, by authors including Claudia Hammond, Deborah Cohen and Daisy Fancourt ⌘ Read more

2026 will shed light on whether a little-known drug helps with autism The US government is approving the drug leucovorin to address rising rates of autism, despite limited evidence that it works. This year, results from the largest trial yet should give more insight into its potential ⌘ Read more

A strange kind of quantumness may be key to quantum computers' success Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ingredient for its computational prowess ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of January 2026 Big hitter Peter F. Hamilton has a new sci-fi novel out this month – and Booker winner George Saunders ventures into speculative fiction with his latest book, Vigil ⌘ Read more

Ghostly particles might just break our understanding of the universe An analysis of several experiments aimed at detecting the mysterious neutrino has identified a hint of a crack in the standard model of particle physics ⌘ Read more

Was our earliest ancestor a knuckle-dragger, or did it walk upright? Did Sahelanthropus, which lived 7 million years ago, walk on two legs like a modern human? It's complicated ⌘ Read more

Gargantuan black hole may be a remnant from the dawn of the universe Astronomers were puzzled by a black hole around 50 million times the mass of the sun with no stars, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope – now simulations suggest it could be a primordial black hole, something we have never seen before ⌘ Read more

Our verdict on The Player of Games: Iain M. Banks is still a master The New Scientist Book Club has just finished our December read, Iain M. Banks's sci-fi novel The Player of Games - and most of us were fans of this big-thinking Culture tale ⌘ Read more

The challenges of writing from the perspective of a sex robot The author of the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, on how she created her startling protagonist ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from Annie Bot by Sierra Greer In this extract from the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to Sierra Greer's protagonist, a sex robot called Annie ⌘ Read more

Murder victim discovered to have two sets of DNA due to rare condition A woman's body has been found to consist of varying proportions of male and female cells because of an extremely rare form of chimerism ⌘ Read more

Rare Saturn-sized rogue planet is first to have its mass measured Researchers have confirmed the mass of a free-floating planet thanks to a lucky convergence of ground- and space-based telescopes ⌘ Read more

Chess can be made fairer by rearranging the pieces Chess960 involves shuffling the pieces at the back of the board, and an analysis suggests doing so can increase the complexity of the game to favour white, black or neither player ⌘ Read more

The 3 things you should do this New Year to foster a positive mindset Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge, says these are the three things everyone should do this New Year to cultivate a more positive mindset ⌘ Read more

Could 2026 be the year we start using quantum computers for chemistry? Understanding the chemical properties of a molecule is an inherently quantum problem, making quantum computers a good tool for the job – and we may start seeing this take off in 2026 ⌘ Read more

Three supermassive black holes have been spotted merging into one Astronomers have found a system of three supermassive black holes, all actively feeding, that appear to be combining into a single system – a rare event that will help elucidate the physics of complex mergers ⌘ Read more

The duo kite-skiing 4000 kilometres across Antarctica for science An explorer and a glaciologist are kite-skiing across Antarctica with a ground-penetrating radar to gather data that will help understand the past and future of the ice sheet ⌘ Read more

Star that seemed to vanish more than 130 years ago is found again In 1892, astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard thought he saw a bright star near Venus, but then it vanished. We may now know why ⌘ Read more

The cassette tape made a comeback in 2025 thanks to a DNA upgrade With a storage capacity of 36 petabytes, a DNA-based cassette tape can hold every song every recorded, and it could be on the market within five years ⌘ Read more

A controversial experiment threatened to kill the multiverse in 2025 A photon was apparently detected in two places at once in a twist on the classic double-slit experiment, but many physicists didn't accept the results ⌘ Read more

Benefits of mRNA cancer vaccines could exceed $75 billion in US alone An analysis of ongoing trials suggests that mRNA cancer vaccines have the potential to deliver health benefits worth $75 billion each year in the US alone ⌘ Read more

The best and most ridiculous robots of 2025 in pictures Some of the world's most advanced robots showed off their skills at tech shows and sporting events, doing everything from cooking shrimp to running half marathons ⌘ Read more

Inside world's ultimate X-ray machine before it becomes more powerful The Linac Coherent Light Source in California has been firing record-breaking X-ray pulses for years, but now it’s due for a shutdown and an upgrade. When it is turned back on, it will be even more powerful ⌘ Read more

Microsoft made a splash with a controversial quantum computer in 2025 The Majorana 1 quantum computer was hailed as a significant breakthrough by Microsoft, but critics say the company has yet to prove it actually works despite a year of debate ⌘ Read more

Gene-edited babies are the future – but these CRISPR start-ups aren’t Three start-ups are aiming to create gene-edited babies. Columnist Michael Le Page has no doubt that editing our offspring will one day become routine, but not like this ⌘ Read more

Mathematicians spent 2025 exploring the edge of mathematics Somewhere at the edge of mathematics lurks a number so large that it breaks the very foundations of our understanding - and in 2025 we came a step closer to finding it ⌘ Read more

2025's best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs A village buried by a landslide, the world’s largest tidal bore and the aftermath of ferocious storms and wildfires appear in our pick of images from environment stories this year ⌘ Read more

Was 2025 the year we found signs of past life on Mars? Tantalising signs of past microbial life showed up on Mars this year, but to truly know whether they contain the answer to the biggest question in the universe, we will need to bring samples back to Earth ⌘ Read more

'Spectacular' progress has been made towards useful quantum computers At the Q2B Silicon Valley conference, scientific and business leaders of the quantum computing industry hailed "spectacular" progress being made towards practical devices – but said that challenges remain ⌘ Read more

A ghostly glow was seen emanating from living things in 2025 The detection of mercurial particles of light emanating from mice led to a flurry of interest in biophotons, a mysterious phenomenon that could have applications in agriculture ⌘ Read more

6 incredible new dinosaurs we discovered in 2025 Palaeontologists reported some remarkable dinosaur fossils this year, including a Velociraptor relative, a dome-headed pachycephalosaur and one of the most heavily armoured creatures that ever lived ⌘ Read more

The world’s first fully 3D-printed microscope blew up in 2025 A microscope that cost less than £50 and took under 3 hours to build using a common 3D printer could be transformative for students and researchers with limited funding ⌘ Read more

Physicists used 'dark photons' in an effort to rewrite physics in 2025 A new theory of "dark photons" attempted to explain a centuries-old experiment in a new way this year, in an effort to change our understanding of the nature of light ⌘ Read more

More than 100 moons were discovered in our own solar system in 2025 Astronomers discovered a new moon of Uranus and hundreds of moons around Saturn over the past year, and there may be many more yet to be found ⌘ Read more

Alpine communities face uncertain future after 2025 glacier collapse Careful slope monitoring prevented mass casualties in the landslide at Blatten, Switzerland, this year, but mountain communities may face a growing risk of disasters ⌘ Read more

How to extend and improve your life by getting more creative Growing evidence reveals that creativity is one of the best-kept secrets for boosting your health. From live theatre to a quick crafting break, here’s how to harness the power of art in your everyday life ⌘ Read more

How lab-grown lichen could help us to build habitations on Mars Scientists cultivating partnerships of fungi and algae believe their invention has far-out implications for how we create the buildings of the future ⌘ Read more

Europa's thick ice may hinder the search for life in its oceans The liquid ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa appears to be completely sealed off from the planet’s surface, which may reduce the chances of finding life there ⌘ Read more

New Scientist changed the UK's freedom of information laws in 2025 By requesting copies of the then-UK technology secretary's ChatGPT logs, New Scientist set a precedent for how freedom of information laws apply to chatbot interactions, helping to hold governments to account ⌘ Read more

The essential guide to proving we’ve found alien life From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we've found it, how will we know for sure? ⌘ Read more

Black hole stars really do exist in the early universe Mysterious ‘little red dots’ seen by the James Webb Space Telescope can be explained by a new kind of black hole enshrouded in an enormous ball of glowing gas ⌘ Read more

What I’ll be doing to help detox my brain in the new year We have only just started to understand how our brains clean themselves, but columnist Helen Thomson finds promising evidence for how to boost this process ⌘ Read more

Putting data centres in space isn't going to happen any time soon From massive solar panels to the difficulty of staying cool - not to mention high-energy radiation - there are a lot of engineering problems that need to be solved before we can build data centres in space ⌘ Read more

The US beat back bird flu in 2025 – but the battle isn’t over After starting the year with its first known bird flu death, the US expanded its efforts to contain the virus, which enabled it to end its public health emergency response months later ⌘ Read more

Quantum computers turned out to be more useful than expected in 2025 Rapid advances in the kind of problems that quantum computers can tackle suggest that they are closer than ever to becoming useful tools of scientific discovery ⌘ Read more

2025 was the year of online safety laws – but do they work? New laws in the UK, Australia and France were brought in during 2025 with the aim of protecting children from harmful content online, but experts remain divided on whether they will achieve this goal ⌘ Read more

High-achieving adults rarely began as child prodigies It's easy to assume that the most talented adults among us were once gifted children, but it turns out that talent during childhood is no guide to later success ⌘ Read more

Roman soldiers defending Hadrian’s Wall had intestinal parasites Excavations of sewer drains at a Roman fort in northern England have revealed the presence of several parasites that can cause debilitating illness in humans ⌘ Read more

Closure of US institute will do immense harm to climate research The National Center for Atmospheric Research has played a leading role in providing data, modelling and supercomputing to researchers around the world – but the Trump administration is set to shut it down ⌘ Read more

Sitting by a window may improve blood sugar levels for type 2 diabetes Our cells follow 24-hour circadian rhythms that regulate our blood sugar levels and are heavily influenced by light exposure. Scientists have harnessed this to show that just sitting by a window improves blood sugar control in people with type 2 diabetes ⌘ Read more

Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation A distant world with carbon in its atmosphere and extraordinarily high temperatures is unlike any other planet we’ve seen, and it’s unclear how it could have formed ⌘ Read more

Chronic fatigue syndrome seems to have a very strong genetic element The largest study so far into the genetics of chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalomyelitis, has implicated 259 genes – six times more than those identified just four months ago ⌘ Read more

Cosmology’s Great Debate began a century ago – and is still going Our understanding of the true nature of the cosmos relies on measurements of its expansion, but cosmologists have been arguing back and forth about it for more than 100 years ⌘ Read more

Crash clock says satellites in orbit are three days from disaster Satellites in orbit would begin to collide in a matter of days if they lost manoeuvrability during a solar storm or other outage ⌘ Read more

Saturn's rings form a giant dusty doughnut encircling the planet The rings of Saturn are normally thought to be flat, but measurements by the Cassini spacecraft show that some of their particles fly hundreds of thousands of kilometres above and below the thin main discs ⌘ Read more

Your period may make sport injuries more severe Professional footballer players who became injured while on their period took longer to recover than when injuries occurred at other times of their menstrual cycle ⌘ Read more

The world will soon be losing 3000 glaciers every year Under current climate policies, 79 per cent of the world’s glaciers will disappear by 2100, endangering the water supply for 2 billion people and raising sea levels dramatically ⌘ Read more

How green hydrogen could power industries from steel-making to farming Many industries are eyeing up hydrogen as a source of clean energy, but with supplies of green hydrogen limited, we should prioritise the areas where it could have the most positive impact on carbon emissions, say researchers ⌘ Read more

Some Arctic warming ‘irreversible’ even if we cut atmospheric CO2 Efforts to lower the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may come too late to prevent long-term changes to the Arctic ⌘ Read more

Mars may once have had a much larger moon There are two small moons in orbit around Mars today, but both may be remnants of a much larger moon that had enough of a gravitational pull to drive tides in the Red Planet's lost lakes and seas ⌘ Read more

Qubits break quantum limit to encode information for longer Controlling qubits with quantum superpositions allows them to dramatically violate a fundamental limit and encode information for about five times longer during quantum computations ⌘ Read more

New antibiotic could stave off drug-resistant gonorrhoea Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the microbe responsible for gonorrhoea, is developing resistance to most antibiotics, which means we need new drugs to treat the condition. An antibiotic called zoliflodacin might be part of a solution ⌘ Read more

Disney and OpenAI have made a surprise deal – what happens next? In a stunning reversal, Disney has changed tack with regard to safeguarding its copyrighted characters from incorporation into AI tools – perhaps a sign that no one can stem the tide of AI ⌘ Read more

Killer whales and dolphins are ‘being friends’ to hunt salmon together White-sided dolphins seem to help killer whales "scout" and catch Chinook salmon near Vancouver Island, then eat the leftovers ⌘ Read more

Supposedly distinct psychiatric conditions may have same root causes People are often diagnosed with multiple neurodivergencies and mental health conditions, but the biggest genetic analysis so far suggests many have shared biological causes ⌘ Read more

Earth and solar system may have been shaped by nearby exploding star A new explanation for the solar system's radioactive elements suggests Earth-like planets might be found orbiting up to 50 per cent of sun-like stars ⌘ Read more

Roman occupation of Britain damaged the population’s health Urban populations in southern Britain experienced a decline in health that lasted for generations after the Romans arrived ⌘ Read more

We may finally know what a healthy gut microbiome looks like Our gut microbiome has a huge influence on our overall health, but we haven't been clear on the specific bacteria with good versus bad effects. Now, a study of more than 34,000 people is shedding light on what a healthy gut microbiome actually consists of ⌘ Read more

Inside the wild experiments physicists would do with zero limits From a particle smasher encircling the moon to an “impossible” laser, five scientists reveal the experiments they would run in a world powered purely by imagination ⌘ Read more

Genetic trick to make mosquitoes malaria resistant passes key test The rollout of a type of genetic technology called a gene drive for tackling malaria could be edging closer after a lab study supports its success ⌘ Read more

Oldest evidence of fire-lighting comes from early humans in Britain An excavation in Suffolk, UK, has uncovered pyrite and flint that appear to have been used by ancient humans to light fires some 400,000 years ago ⌘ Read more

Australia's social media ban faces challenges and criticism on day one As Australian teenagers lose access to social media, observers say there are still many unknown questions about the ban, which came into force on 10 December ⌘ Read more

Did ancient humans start farming so they could drink more beer? New evidence suggests that alcohol was a surprisingly big motivator in our monumental transition from hunting and gathering to farming – but was beer really more important to us than bread? ⌘ Read more

Dinosaurs like Diplodocus may have been as colourful as birds Skin fossils from a sauropod dinosaur examined with an electron microscope feature structures called melanosomes, which are similar to those that create the bright colours in birds' feathers ⌘ Read more

2025 was chock full of exciting discoveries in human evolution From an incredible series of revelations about the ancient humans called Denisovans to surprising discoveries about tool making, this year has given us a clearer picture of how and why humans evolved to be so different from other primates ⌘ Read more

The audacious quest to light up the sky with artificial auroras How a Finnish physicist named Karl Lemström once became obsessed with recreating the aurora borealis from scratch – and may have ended up creating something even more intriguing ⌘ Read more

We’ve finally cracked how to make truly random numbers From machine learning to voting, the workings of the world demand randomisation, but true sources of randomness are surprisingly hard to find. Now quantum mechanics has supplied the answer ⌘ Read more

2025 is the second hottest year since records began Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024 ⌘ Read more

Odd elements in supernova blast might have implications for alien life Some of the elements used by living systems are far more abundant in Cassiopeia A than we thought, hinting that some parts of our galaxy might be more suitable for life than others ⌘ Read more

How worried should you be about spending too much time on your phone? Screen time has been linked to all sorts of problems, from depression and obesity to poor sleep. But how worried should you really be? Jacob Aron sifts through the evidence ⌘ Read more

What the family drama of interbreeding polar and grizzly bears reveals A hybrid grolar bear saga is unfolding in the Arctic, and the tale of this strange family has much to tell us about nature on our changing planet ⌘ Read more

Extreme heat hampers children’s early learning Children regularly exposed to temperatures over 30°C (86°F) have lower scores on literacy and numeracy tests at age 3 to 4, according to UNICEF data from six countries ⌘ Read more

Too busy to meditate? Microdosing mindfulness has big health benefits Small bursts of mindfulness practices lasting a minute or less can have unexpected benefits for those with busy lives - here’s how ⌘ Read more

Are we living in a simulation? This experiment could tell us The idea that we might be living in a simulated reality has worried us for centuries. Now physicists have found some tantalising clues – and devised an experiment that might reveal the truth ⌘ Read more

Tattooing may trigger localised damage to the immune system There is relatively little information on the long-term health effects of tattooing, but a couple of recent studies suggest the art form might trigger prolonged inflammation ⌘ Read more

How Australian teens are planning to get around their social media ban From legal challenges to lesser-known apps, the teenagers of Australia are already preparing to push back against a law that will see under 16s banned from social media ⌘ Read more

AI can influence voters' minds. What does that mean for democracy? Voters change their opinions after interacting with an AI chatbot – but, encouragingly, it seems that AIs rely on facts to influence people ⌘ Read more

Why is AI making computers and games consoles more expensive? The AI industry consumes vast amounts of energy, fresh water and investor cash. Now it also needs memory chips - the same ones used in laptops, smartphones and games consoles ⌘ Read more

Volcano eruption may have led to the Black Death coming to Europe Climate data and historical accounts suggest that crop failures in the 1340s prompted Italian officials to import grain from eastern Europe, and this may have carried in the plague bacterium ⌘ Read more

Could the super-rich be cloning themselves? And why would they? Nearly three decades since the remarkable cloning of Dolly the sheep, it has all gone quiet on the human cloning front. Michael Le Page wonders what's happening behind the scenes ⌘ Read more

Tigers seem to be bouncing back in remote Sumatran jungle Camera traps in an area of the Leuser rainforest patrolled by NGOs spotted 17 tigers in 2023 and 18 Sumatran tigers in 2024, while surveys elsewhere on the island averaged seven ⌘ Read more

Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize Duelling prairie chickens, a snake-mimicking moth and a once-a-year sunrise at the South Pole feature in the best images from the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025 ⌘ Read more

Experimental vaccine prevents dangerous allergic attack for a year By blocking a molecule that pushes the immune system into overdrive, a vaccine protects mice from life-threatening anaphylaxis ⌘ Read more

Forming moon may have taken three big impacts early in Earth’s history Conventionally, the moon is thought to have formed during one big impact, but a three-impact model might make more sense ⌘ Read more

Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert Today, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula are inhospitable – but 100,000 years ago, the area was full of animals and ancient humans ⌘ Read more

Why quantum mechanics says the past isn’t real The famous double-slit experiment brings into question the very nature of matter. Its cousin, the quantum eraser experiment, makes us question the very existence of time – and how much we can manipulate it ⌘ Read more

Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time ⌘ Read more

Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar ⌘ Read more

What would Russia's inability to launch crewed missions mean for ISS? Russia's only launch site capable of sending humans to orbit has suffered serious damage that may take two years to fix. Will NASA keep supporting the ISS without Russian involvement, or is this the end for the space station? ⌘ Read more

Coral reefs have fuelled severe global warming in Earth's past Over the past 250 million years, periods when coral reef growth has peaked have coincided with big rises in sea temperatures ⌘ Read more

We now have a greater understanding of how exercise slows cancer Tumour growth is reduced by exercise due to a shift in the body’s metabolism that means muscle cells outcompete cancer cells in the race to get sugar to grow ⌘ Read more

A sinister, deadly brain protein could reveal the origins of all life We have long struggled to determine how the first living organisms on Earth came together. Now, surprising evidence hints that poorly understood prions may have been the vital missing ingredient ⌘ Read more

Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of December 2025 From a new collection of shorter fiction by Brandon Sanderson to Simon Stålenhag’s new work, via a Stranger Things novel, December’s new sci-fi features some compelling and intriguing offerings ⌘ Read more

Was a little-known culture in Bronze Age Turkey a major power? Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked ⌘ Read more

Why Google’s custom AI chips are shaking up the tech industry Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia ⌘ Read more

Upheavals to the oral microbiome in pregnancy may be behind tooth loss Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame ⌘ Read more

Africa’s forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being  a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017 ⌘ Read more

Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days, months or years Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment ⌘ Read more

Our verdict on sci-fi novel Every Version of You: We (mostly) loved it New Scientist Book Club members share their thoughts on our November read, Grace Chan's Every Version of You ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Iain M. Banks's classic sci-fi novel The Player of Games. In this extract, we meet protagonist Gurgeh for the first time ⌘ Read more

Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her ⌘ Read more

Supermassive dark matter stars may be lurking in the early universe Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real ⌘ Read more

Origin story of domestic cats rewritten by genetic analysis Domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe in the past 2000 years, according to DNA evidence, while in China a different species of cat lived alongside people much earlier ⌘ Read more

Physicists have worked out a universal law for how objects shatter Whether it is a cube of sugar or a chunk of a mineral, a mathematical analysis can identify how many fragments of each size any brittle object will break into ⌘ Read more

Emergency response needed to prevent climate breakdown, warn experts Scientists sounded the alarm on the dire consequences of continued inaction at a briefing in London, warning that we could be heading for "unprecedented societal and ecological collapse" ⌘ Read more

Warming and droughts led to collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation Hotter temperatures and a series of droughts in what is now Pakistan and India fragmented one of the world’s major early civilisations, providing a "warning shot" for today ⌘ Read more

Deadly fungus makes sick frogs jump far, possibly to find mates Chytrid fungus is a scourge to global amphibian populations, but before it kills some frogs, it can produce symptoms that may help the infected animals find mates and spread the fungus further ⌘ Read more

Monthly injection could replace daily steroid pills for severe asthma Daily steroid pills are often necessary for severe cases of asthma, but they raise the risk of several serious conditions. Now, scientists have shown that a monthly antibody injection can eliminate the need for the pills ⌘ Read more

Easter Island statues may have been built by small independent groups Mapping of the main quarry on Easter Island where giant statues were carved has uncovered evidence that the monuments may not have been created under the direction of a single chief ⌘ Read more

Cold-water swimming has benefits for the brain as well as the body There is a growing body of research on the physical benefits of going for a dip in chilly water, but now researchers are starting to find that cold-water swimming may also be reshaping our brains for the better in lasting ways ⌘ Read more

The science of swimming trunks – including tightness analysis Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion ⌘ Read more

Pandas use tools to scratch thanks to a strange evolutionary quirk Captive giant pandas have been seen breaking off twigs and bamboo pieces to scratch hard-to-reach spots, using a crude opposable thumb that other bears don’t have ⌘ Read more

A revolutionary way to map our bodies is helping cure deadly diseases New tools that create ultra-precise maps of our tissues are transforming our ability to diagnose and cure once-fatal illnesses ⌘ Read more

Ancient human foot bones shed light on how two species coexisted Scientists have finally assigned foot bones found in 2009 to an ancient human species, and the move suggests that different types of hominins lived close by in harmony ⌘ Read more

We might have just seen the first hints of dark matter Unexplained gamma ray radiation coming from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy could be produced by self-annihilating dark matter particles – but the idea requires further investigation ⌘ Read more

We may need a fourth law of thermodynamics for living systems The laws of thermodynamics don't accurately account for the complex processes in living cells – do we need a new one to accurately measure the ways living systems are out of equilibrium? ⌘ Read more

The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops Hoverflies, often mistaken for bees and wasps, pollinate three quarters of our crops. Now we’re discovering we can train them to be even more efficient ⌘ Read more

Easily taxed grains were crucial to the birth of the first states The cultivation of wheat, barley and maize, which are easily stored and taxed, seems to have led to the emergence of large societies, rather than agriculture generally ⌘ Read more

Your brain undergoes four dramatic periods of change from age 0 to 90 Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions ⌘ Read more

A new understanding of causality could fix quantum theory’s fatal flaw Quantum theory fails to explain how the reality we experience emerges from the world of particles. A new take on quantum cause and effect could bridge the gap ⌘ Read more

Have we found a greener way to do deep-sea mining? There are widespread concerns that deep-sea mining for metals will damage fragile ecosystems. But if mining ever goes ahead, hydrogen plasma could shrink the carbon footprint of smelting the metal ores ⌘ Read more

Sperm's evolutionary origins go back before multicellular animals Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago ⌘ Read more

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter? As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we’re seeing the opposite happen ⌘ Read more

COP30 keeps climate cooperation alive but hanging by a thread The 194 countries still taking part in UN climate negotiations reaffirmed the Paris Agreement following the US withdrawal, even if they agreed on little else ⌘ Read more

Extinct animals in Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age make it a must-watch From woolly mammoths to giant sloths, via some lesser-known ice-age beasts like 'killer koalas', the visuals in this documentary are simply astounding ⌘ Read more

Astronomers may have glimpsed evidence of the biggest stars ever seen The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes ⌘ Read more

Undersea ‘storms’ are melting the ‘doomsday’ glacier’s ice shelf Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms ⌘ Read more

Ancient tracks may record stampede of turtles disturbed by earthquake Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake ⌘ Read more

Quantum computers need classical computing to be truly useful Conventional computing devices will play a crucial role in turning quantum computers into tools with real-world application ⌘ Read more

Common type of inflammatory bowel disease linked to toxic bacteria The discovery that a toxin made by bacteria found in dirty water might help trigger ulcerative colitis could lead to new treatments for this form of IBD ⌘ Read more

Moss spores survive and germinate after 283-day 'space walk' Astronauts strapped moss spores to the outside of the International Space Station for nine months - and most of them survived the challenging experience ⌘ Read more

Mouse 'midwives' help their pregnant companions give birth Scientists have observed mice helping each other when they encounter difficulties during birth, prompting a rethink of caregiving among rodents and other animals ⌘ Read more

Daily pill could offer alternative to weight-loss injections Orforglipron, a GLP-1 drug taken as a pill, achieved positive results in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes, although it seems less effective than injectable drugs ⌘ Read more

Vanishing Y chromosomes could aid or worsen lung cancer outcomes The health impacts of men losing their Y chromosome from their cells are increasingly coming to light, with the loss playing a complicated role in the most common form of lung cancer ⌘ Read more

We’ve found an unexpected structure in the solar system’s Kuiper belt A newly discovered cluster of objects called the “inner kernel” of the Kuiper belt could teach us about the early history of the solar system – including the movement of Neptune ⌘ Read more

Why quasicrystals shouldn’t exist but are turning up in strange places Matter with “forbidden” symmetries was once thought to be confined to lab experiments, but is now being found in some of the world’s most extreme environments ⌘ Read more

Quantum computers that recycle their qubits can limit errors To make quantum computers more efficient and reliable, some of their basic components must be constantly reused – several quantum computer designs can now do just that ⌘ Read more

Light can influence the magnetic properties of some materials An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought ⌘ Read more

Kissing may have evolved in an ape ancestor 21 million years ago Rather than being a recent cultural development, kissing may have been practised by other early humans like Neanderthals and our ape ancestors ⌘ Read more

Four-fifths of the world's population now live in urban areas A comprehensive UN report has found that cities and towns are home to 81 per cent of the world’s population, much more than previously thought ⌘ Read more

We can finally hear the long-hidden music of the Stone Age Ancient rock art was meant to be heard as well as seen and now acoustic archaeologists are bringing the sounds of prehistoric rituals to life ⌘ Read more

Mathematicians say Google's AI tools are supercharging their research AlphaEvolve, an AI system created by Google DeepMind, is helping mathematicians do research at a scale that was previously impossible - even if it does occasionally "cheat" to find a solution ⌘ Read more

What is cloud seeding and could it end the drought in Iran? Facing its worst drought in decades, Iran is attempting to stimulate rain by spreading seeding agents in clouds, but the technique is likely to have modest benefits at best ⌘ Read more

Vast Bronze Age city discovered in the plains of Kazakhstan A major settlement in Central Asia called Semiyarka dating back to 1600 BC had houses, a big central building and even an industrial zone for producing copper and bronze ⌘ Read more

Ancient figurine may show sexual encounter between woman and goose A 12,000-year-old clay sculpture found in Israel depicts a goose on the back of a woman, and archaeologists suggest it may be a depiction of an animistic mythological scene ⌘ Read more

Neanderthals' hefty noses weren’t well adapted to cold climates Neanderthals were thought to have structures inside their noses that helped them deal with the cold, but analysis of an exceptionally preserved specimen contradicts that ⌘ Read more

Parasitic ant tricks workers into killing their queen, then usurps her Some ants kill the queens of another species and take over their colonies, but we now know at least one species gets workers to do the dirty work for them through a kind of chemical subterfuge ⌘ Read more

The vital, overlooked role of body fat in shaping your health and mind The discovery that fat is a communicative organ with a role in everything from bone health to mood is forcing a rethink of how we view our bodies ⌘ Read more

Rapid melt from Antarctica could help preserve crucial ocean current Greenland’s melt is expected to slow the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, but research suggests a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet could in some cases prevent it from shutting down ⌘ Read more

Oldest ever RNA sample recovered from woolly mammoth RNA from an exceptionally well preserved woolly mammoth gives us a window on gene activity in an animal that died nearly 40,000 years ago ⌘ Read more

The 19 best Christmas gifts for science lovers (and nerds) From microscopes to geodes, New Scientist staff share their top Christmas present ideas in a gift guide unlike any you’ve seen before ⌘ Read more

The forgotten women of quantum physics Physics has a reputation for being dominated by men, especially a century ago, as quantum physics was just being invented – but there have been so many women who helped shaped the field since its inception ⌘ Read more

Ancient silver goblet preserves oldest known image of cosmic creation The images hammered into the sides of a goblet found in Palestine give us an idea of what people living more than 4000 years ago imagined the creation of the cosmos looked like ⌘ Read more

Analysing Hitler's DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing useful To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page ⌘ Read more

Why aren't young people having sex any more? Sexual activity in young people is on the decline, but why? And what's more, should we be worried about what this means for society and the future of the human race? ⌘ Read more

Fossil fuel emissions rise again – but China's are levelling off Global emissions from fossil fuels are expected to hit another record high in 2025, but China’s carbon emissions appear to be reaching a peak ⌘ Read more

Sex could help wounds heal faster by reducing stress Mild wounds healed faster if people took a spray containing the "love hormone" oxytocin and set aside time to praise their partner – but they cleared up even quicker if these individuals were also intimate with their other half ⌘ Read more

Huge cloud of plasma belched out by star 130 light years away A coronal mass ejection from a distant star has been confirmed for the first time, raising questions about how such events could impact exoplanet habitability ⌘ Read more

Is a deadly asteroid about to hit Earth? Meet the man who can tell you When an asteroid threatens Earth, astronomers use a rating called the Torino scale to communicate the risk. Richard Binzel, who invented the scale, tells New Scientist about his 50-year career in planetary defence ⌘ Read more

Chemical computer can recognise patterns and perform multiple tasks Previous attempts at building a chemical computer have been too simple, too rigid or too hard to scale, but an approach based on a network of reactions can perform multiple tasks without having to be reconfigured ⌘ Read more

Women prefer to be prettier than a partner, but men want to be funnier When measuring yourself against your partner, which traits do you prefer to have compared with your significant other? A survey that forced people to choose has found that men and women have different preferences when it comes to being smarter, funnier or more attractive ⌘ Read more

IBM has unveiled two unprecedentedly complex quantum computers IBM revealed two new quantum computers, called Loon and Nighthawk – the qubits they use are connected in newly intricate ways and may enable a way to run error-free computations ⌘ Read more

Cradle of humanity is still revealing new insights about our origins The Omo-Turkana basin in Africa is home to a treasure trove of ancient human fossils and tools that span 300,000 years – today it is still yielding new discoveries about our species ⌘ Read more

At-home hypnosis relieves menopausal hot flushes Hot flushes could be relieved by listening to recordings that induce hypnosis from home, rather than having to venture to a clinic ⌘ Read more

Odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the moon may rise to 30 per cent In February, the James Webb Space Telescope will briefly be able to observe asteroid 2024 YR4, which currently has a 4 per cent chance of hitting the moon in 2032. Depending on what it sees, the odds of collision could drastically increase ⌘ Read more

The biggest controversy in maths could be settled by a computer For over a decade, mathematicians have failed to agree whether a 500-page proof is actually correct. Now, translating the proof into a computer-readable form may finally settle the matter ⌘ Read more

Caves carved by water on Mars may hold signs of past life Eight possible cave openings found on the Martian surface look to have once had ancient streams flowing into them, suggesting they are promising places to look for evidence of life ⌘ Read more

Why giving up on goals is good for you, and how to know which to ditch We admire grit and perseverance, but surprising research suggests that giving up on ambitions in the right way can actually improve our physical and mental health ⌘ Read more

Ultrasound may boost survival after a stroke by clearing brain debris The damage of strokes caused by brain bleeds can be mitigated by removing dead blood cells. Scientists have now found a way of doing this non-invasively, with promising results in mice ⌘ Read more

Falling asleep isn’t a gradual process – it happens all of a sudden Brain activity from more than 1000 people shows a rapid transition from being awake to being asleep, rather than a slow transition between the two states ⌘ Read more

AI may blunt our thinking skills – here’s what you can do about it There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesn’t have to be that way ⌘ Read more

When rift lakes dry up it can cause earthquakes and eruptions Lake Turkana in Kenya, known as the cradle of humanity, has shrunk in recent millennia – and the loss of water has led to increased seismic activity, which could have impacted our ancient ancestors ⌘ Read more

AI power use forecast finds the industry far off track to net zero Several large tech firms that are active in AI have set goals to hit net zero by 2030, but a new forecast of the energy and water required to run large data centres shows they’re unlikely to meet those targets ⌘ Read more

Mysterious holes in Andean mountain may be an Inca spreadsheet Thousands of holes arranged in a snake-like pattern on Monte Sierpe in Peru could have been a monumental accounting device for trade and tax ⌘ Read more

James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix, has died aged 97 As one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, James Watson pioneered the field of genetics and left behind a complicated legacy ⌘ Read more

Enceladus’s ocean may be even better for life than we realised The buried ocean on Saturn’s moon Enceladus seems to be stable across extremely long periods of time, making it an even more promising place to hunt for life ⌘ Read more

Having children plays a complicated role in the rate we age The effort of reproducing may divert energy away from repairing DNA or fighting illness, which could drive ageing, but a new study suggests that is only the case when environmental conditions are tough ⌘ Read more

A distant galaxy is being strangled by the cosmic web A dwarf galaxy 100 million light years away is being stripped of its crucial star-forming gas, and it seems that the cosmic web is siphoning off this gas as the galaxy passes through ⌘ Read more

We may never figure out where interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS came from The surface of comet 3I/ATLAS may have been so radically altered by cosmic rays that deducing its home star system would be impossible ⌘ Read more

A three-legged lion has learned to hunt in a completely unexpected way Jacob, an 11-year-old lion, has defied expectations by surviving for years after losing a leg – now we know his success is down to an innovative hunting strategy ⌘ Read more

Digital map lets you explore the Roman Empire's vast road network Archaeologists have compiled the most detailed map yet of roads throughout the Roman Empire in AD 150, totalling almost 300,000 kilometres in length ⌘ Read more

Grafting trick could let us gene-edit a huge variety of plants Many plants including cocoa, coffee and avocado cannot be gene-edited but a technique involving grafting could change that, opening the door to more productive and nutritious varieties ⌘ Read more

Skeleton with brutal injuries identified as duke assassinated in 1272 The identity of a skeleton buried under a Budapest convent has been confirmed as Béla of Macsó, a Hungarian royal murdered in a 13th-century power struggle, and archaeologists have pieced together how the attack unfolded ⌘ Read more

Is the expansion of the universe slowing down? It is widely accepted that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, but now researchers say our measurements of the mysterious force driving that may be wrong and that the universe began to slow 1.5 billion years ago – but other scientists disagree ⌘ Read more

New quantum computer is on the path to unravelling superconductivity Using the Helios-1 quantum computer, researchers have used a record-breaking number of error-proof qubits to run the first and biggest quantum simulation of a model for perfect conductivity ⌘ Read more

Lumpy ‘caterpillar wormholes’ may connect entangled black holes A mathematical model suggests that when a pair of black holes gets quantum entangled, this can give rise to a lumpy space-time tunnel between them ⌘ Read more

What we’re learning about consciousness from master meditators’ brains Neuroscientist Matthew Sacchet is revealing how mastering meditation can not only enable transcendental states of bliss, but also reshape how we experience pain and emotion ⌘ Read more

Toxic algae blighting South Australia could pose a global threat Researchers warn that the alga Karenia cristata, which has killed around a million animals in Australian waters in one of the biggest algal blooms ever seen, could harm marine life elsewhere ⌘ Read more

Ancient DNA may rewrite the story of Iceland's earliest settlers Biochemical evidence suggests Norse people settled in Iceland almost 70 years before the accepted arrival date of the 870s, and didn't chop down the island's forests ⌘ Read more

COP30: What’s on the agenda at the Belém climate summit Initiatives on the table at COP30 aim to evaluate which countries are most vulnerable, support efforts to clean up industries and pay for the protection of tropical forests ⌘ Read more

Covid raises risk of heart issues in children more than vaccination Getting covid-19 for the first time slightly increased the risk of heart inflammation, blood clots and bleeding disorders among children, whereas being vaccinated against the virus was much safer and sometimes protective ⌘ Read more

The fascinating story of the ultimate cosmic law How do we know the speed of light – and why does it have a speed limit at all? Leah Crane explores the history of one of the most important numbers in the universe ⌘ Read more

We're closing in on how genetics may influence your PCOS risk In the largest genetic analysis of polycystic ovary syndrome to date, scientists have identified new variants linked to the condition, which could help us treat it more effectively ⌘ Read more

COP30: Can Brazil summit get climate negotiations back on track? Expectations are low for the UN climate conference in Belém, Brazil, but the host’s pragmatic approach could help make progress on implementation ⌘ Read more

Advanced quantum network could be a prototype for the quantum internet Building a working quantum internet would require overcoming a host of technical challenges, but researchers who have built one of the most advanced quantum networks to date say they think it is possible ⌘ Read more

Brightest black hole flare ever caused by huge star being ripped apart A distant black hole has been caught releasing the brightest flare ever, which is the result of it ripping apart and devouring an enormous star ⌘ Read more

Cavities could be prevented by a gel that restores tooth enamel Enamel does not naturally regenerate, which can lead to painful cavities, but a gel that harnesses some of the properties of saliva could restore the hard, shiny layer to teeth ⌘ Read more

Walking 3000 steps a day seems to slow Alzheimer's-related decline Alzheimer's-related cognitive decline could be slowed by taking as few as 3000 steps a day, possibly due to the effects of regular exercise on brain health ⌘ Read more

Antarctic glacier's alarming retreat is the fastest ever seen Hektoria glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula retreated 25 kilometres in just 15 months. Its rapid melt could have implications for other glaciers and the rate of sea level rise ⌘ Read more

Does the family tree of ancient humans need a drastic rewrite? Anthropologist Christopher Bae has recently suggested we add two new species of ancient human to our family tree. The plans break the conventions for how species should be named – but Bae argues the rules themselves are flawed ⌘ Read more

SpaceX's Starlink and other satellites face growing threat from sun There are now over 10,000 satellites in orbit, more than at any point in history, and this growing number is starting to reveal how solar storms could disrupt internet mega constellations like SpaceX's Starlink ⌘ Read more

Our bodies are ageing faster than ever. Can we hit the brakes? All over the world people are ageing more rapidly and succumbing to diseases that typically affected the elderly. But there are ways to turn back the clock on your biological age ⌘ Read more

We may have found a surprisingly nearby cluster of primordial stars The very first generation of stars, called Population III stars, are mostly expected to be too distant to see directly – but astronomers may have found some for the very first time ⌘ Read more