When you look at an object, it takes just 108 to 116 milliseconds for your brain to decide if it is food ⌘ Read more
When you look at an object, it takes just 108 to 116 milliseconds for your brain to decide if it is food ⌘ Read more
Join us on an exhilarating tour of the Milky Way’s most spectacular sights – from a monstrous black hole and a river of dark matter to a diamond planet, primordial stars and a cosmic hall of mirrors ⌘ Read more
An apparent resurgence of bedbugs has incited panic in France, but there is no scientific evidence of any increase in infestation rates this year ⌘ Read more
Taking a higher-than-recommended dose of vitamin D every day may reduce the risk of being hospitalised due to any cause, according to a relatively short, small study ⌘ Read more
People who drove by themselves before they turned 18 are better at navigating than those who first drove solo at an older age ⌘ Read more
Climate scientist and author Michael Mann explains why it’s not too late to prevent the worst impacts of climate change ⌘ Read more
A computer science student has discovered the first decipherable word in unopened scrolls from Herculaneum, an ancient Roman town buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius ⌘ Read more
Pollutants from wildfire smoke can remain inside homes for weeks, but vacuuming, mopping and dusting result in lower levels of volatile compounds in the air ⌘ Read more
Numbers of invasive Chinese mitten crabs are believed to be growing in the UK, causing damage to river beds and competing with native wildlife ⌘ Read more
As part of its ongoing conflict with Hamas, Israel has issued a warning for 1.1 million people to leave northern Gaza. The United Nations says such a rapid mass evacuation is impossible without "devastating humanitarian consequences" ⌘ Read more
Ukraine is using drones equipped with artificial intelligence that can identify and attack targets without any human control, in the first battlefield use of autonomous weapons or "killer robots" ⌘ Read more
Atomic shapes are so simple that they can't be broken down any further. Mathematicians are trying to build a "periodic table" of these shapes, and they hope artificial intelligence can help ⌘ Read more
When Lessons in Chemistry, the story of a woman scientist frustrated by the times she lives in, finally finds its stride, it is a reminder that things can come together with patience ⌘ Read more
A child’s jawbone found in Ethiopia is one of the earliest fossils identified as Homo erectus, and shows ancient hominins settled in high-altitude areas ⌘ Read more
The tool, which charts the distribution of over a hundred different brain areas in genetic and cellular detail, may shed more light on neurological and mental health conditions ⌘ Read more
A prototype transistor built from molybdenum disulphide and carbon nanotubes rather than silicon could allow power-hungry AIs to run on smartwatches without rapidly draining the battery ⌘ Read more
Taking less blood for intensive care tests reduces the risk of transfusions, which can cause allergic reactions or infections ⌘ Read more
Lunar dust can be melted with a laser to make a strong, glassy material – and a similar effect could be achieved by focusing sunlight with a lens ⌘ Read more
Fossilised remains of extinct big cats called cave lions display evidence of butchery, showing that Neanderthals had the skills to take on top predators ⌘ Read more
An analysis of patent records suggests there is growing commercial interest in products derived from rhinos and other threatened wildlife ⌘ Read more
Over 3 billion kilograms of valuable electronics inside children’s toys are thrown away each year, and very few people are aware of this hidden e-waste ⌘ Read more
The asteroid Bennu was sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission, which returned to Earth last month. Researchers have already begun studying the samples, and say they contain key ingredients of life ⌘ Read more
Earth’s iron-rich inner core may owe some of its surprising softness to the motion of atoms, suggest experiments with iron at high temperature and pressure coupled to AI simulations ⌘ Read more
A star behaving strangely was the first clue that astronomers were witnessing two Neptune-sized planets smashing into each other, creating a doughnut that may one day birth a new planet and moons ⌘ Read more
An analysis has found that Bordeaux wines made in years with wet winters and hot, dry summers – which are becoming more common as a result of climate change – are judged more highly by wine critics ⌘ Read more
Scars of collisions with other universes could show up in radiation from the big bang. A new experiment aims to mimic these collisions and help us look for them ⌘ Read more
Levels of the psychoactive compound THC have been steadily rising in marijuana since the 1970s, due largely to growers selecting for more potent strains ⌘ Read more
A profile of “crypto king” Sam Bankman-Fried has been rushed out as his fraud trial starts in the US. Does its author Michael Lewis get to grips with his subject? ⌘ Read more
Poor river management means that London is number nine in the list of global cities most likely to run out of drinking water, campaigner Feargal Sharkey said at New Scientist Live ⌘ Read more
Queen Thyra, the mother of King Harald Bluetooth, was commemorated on four runestones in different parts of Denmark – suggesting she was a powerful figure ⌘ Read more
Frog mating can be a competitive and sometimes deadly affair as many males compete for females – but females have some tricks to avoid unwanted attention ⌘ Read more
Orcas hunting a seal, duelling Nubian ibexes and a stunning horseshoe crab appear in winning images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition ⌘ Read more
The Dogger Bank offshore wind farm is located off England’s north-east coast and has begun generating power following installation of the first turbine at the site ⌘ Read more
The moon can be a scourge for astronomers, so the Dead Planets Society has figured out how to destroy it, with consequences both disastrous and visually stunning ⌘ Read more
Driving under the influence of cannabis increases the risk of traffic accidents, but despite plenty of research into cannabis use by drivers, there is no consensus on deciding who is too high to drive ⌘ Read more
Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process ⌘ Read more
Modifying a protein in chicken cells can help the birds resist infection by influenza viruses, but further testing is needed before this approach can be rolled out ⌘ Read more
The expanding use of large AI models demands huge numbers of powerful servers, which could end up consuming as much energy as whole countries ⌘ Read more
A fall in sea surface temperatures around 500 million years ago led to the evolution of aquatic life that could survive in newly hospitable environments ⌘ Read more
The strange drive to be remembered after death may result from a cognitive glitch, but it could help solve big problems from climate change to inequality ⌘ Read more
Psychological tests reveal that goalkeepers are much better than outfield players or non-footballers at segregating visual and auditory information ⌘ Read more
Microgreens are an increasingly popular hobby, and have gained a reputation as the superheroes of the nutrition world - are they actually good for you? ⌘ Read more
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, commander on the International Space Station, answers questions from students at New Scientist Live ahead of him doing his first spacewalk on Thursday ⌘ Read more
A snake kept in a museum in Zimbabwe since 1982 has been assigned to a new species, the Nyanga rinkhals, but biologists fear it may no longer exist in the wild ⌘ Read more
The Draconid meteor shower is happening between 6 and 10 October, peaking on 9 October, and you should be able to see it if you are in the northern hemisphere ⌘ Read more
With the recent launch of the Psyche mission and the return of samples from the asteroid Bennu, asteroids are all the rage – but if they're just big rocks floating in the void, why do scientists care so much about them? ⌘ Read more
A mammalian cell cannot crawl just anywhere – computer simulations based on experiments suggest that the chemicals the cells leach control the process ⌘ Read more
By comparing the rings of 140 trees buried in the bank of a French river, researchers estimate that the largest solar storm that we know of occurred 14,300 years ago ⌘ Read more
Placebos may minimise pain by decreasing activity in systems of the brain that regulate emotions, a discovery that could help us to harness the placebo effect to ease discomfort ⌘ Read more
Techniques developed to stop people believing conspiracy theories could be adapted to prevent terrorism ⌘ Read more
Autonomous farm machinery may enable farmers to scale up the benefits of plant interactions, according to research presented at New Scientist Live ⌘ Read more
Smaller groups of countries should be working together to coordinate on policies to reduce emissions, says former UK climate adviser Simon Sharpe at New Scientist Live ⌘ Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope is looking ever further back in the universe’s history and the unexpected behaviour it is spotting hints that the standard model of cosmology may need tweaking, astrophysicist Richard Ellis has revealed at New Scientist Live ⌘ Read more
Cosmologists in the 1960s thought they had the end of the universe worked out – then an unknown PhD student called Beatrice Hill Tinsley upended it all ⌘ Read more
Genetic analysis suggests that two subspecies of Atlantic puffin began interbreeding in Norway in the 20th century, perhaps as a result of warming in the Arctic ⌘ Read more
An annular solar eclipse, also known as a “ring of fire” eclipse because of the way the sun and moon line up, will be visible in the US, Central America and South America on 14 October ⌘ Read more
A study involving 16 million people in the US found that those prescribed so-called GLP-1-agonists had an increased risk of serious gastrointestinal conditions, including stomach paralysis ⌘ Read more
Flooding from rising tides has added at least 23 minutes to the total annual commuting time for people living in coastal communities of the US, adding up to millions of hours wasted each year ⌘ Read more
Archaeological surveys have uncovered earthworks built by pre-Columbian societies across the Amazon, suggesting the rainforest isn't as pristine as we once thought ⌘ Read more
The idea that overcoming addiction means abstaining from all psychoactive substances for good is outdated and misguided - particularly as we learn more about the potential therapeutic uses of cannabis, says Maia Szalavitz ⌘ Read more
The Draconid meteor shower is happening between 6 and 10 October, peaking on 9 October, and you should be able to see it if you are in the northern hemisphere ⌘ Read more
Male chicks have no value to farmers who raise egg-laying chicken breeds, meaning that billions are slaughtered straight after hatching. Now, techniques to sex embryos inside eggs aim to end this practice ⌘ Read more
The global average air temperature smashed the September average by half a degree Celsius, leading to predictions that 2023 will surpass 2016 as the hottest year ever recorded ⌘ Read more
Project Kuiper is Amazon's answer to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, and the first prototype spacecraft are due to launch on 6 October ⌘ Read more
This year could have been the beginning of the end for emissions from generating electricity, were it not for a drought that saw a fall in hydropower generation ⌘ Read more
Two of three genes that affect your likelihood of being vegetarianism are involved in fat metabolism, suggesting that they may affect people's ability to tolerate a diet without animal fats ⌘ Read more
Prehistoric people endured frigid and dry conditions in the highlands of central Spain during the coldest part of the last glacial period ⌘ Read more
Common hippos can't move their mouths side to side to grind their food, while pgymy hippos can only partly do this motion ⌘ Read more
Today’s test of the US national alert system on mobile phones is intended to offer opportunities to learn and prepare for emergencies, but tests in the past have sparked conspiracy theories ⌘ Read more
Researchers built tiny robots that can switch between two different kinds of flight, one involving unusually fast wing-flapping, to better understand insect evolution ⌘ Read more
China is both the world’s biggest carbon emitter and the largest producer of clean energy tech. Its choices in navigating this paradoxical role may determine the future of the entire planet ⌘ Read more
Bertrand Bonello’s latest movie, The Beast, invites viewers to grapple with what dependency on technology is doing to us – and asks if AI could even kill off our humanity ⌘ Read more
The tiny crystals, only a few nanometres in size, have applications in computing, lasers and microscopy ⌘ Read more
The arrival of the eucalyptus snout beetle threatens the country’s eucalyptus trees – but they themselves are an invasive threat to local species ⌘ Read more
In a study of more than 220,000 people, 12 genetic variants were strongly associated with hip pain, a discovery that could improve treatments ⌘ Read more
Brown bears in Katmai National Park can eat up to 160,000 calories a day to prepare for winter, but how do they know it's feasting time? ⌘ Read more
While research on marijuana has surged in the last 20 years, our understanding of the drug is decades behind that of other substances, like tobacco and alcohol ⌘ Read more
Artificial intelligence has generated recognisable images of things like shoes and T-shirts on a small quantum computer. They aren’t great, but the method could scale up to more powerful machines ⌘ Read more
The low-pitched sound of purring is unusual for an animal with short vocal folds, but cats have other structures in their larynx that enable their contented rumbling ⌘ Read more
A sophisticated algorithm enables a robotic hand to rotate Rubik’s cubes and other objects in three axes, with potential applications on automated manufacturing lines ⌘ Read more
The microbes living on and in you can change your mood, your mind and your health - challenging our ideas about human nature ⌘ Read more
A second vaccine against the mosquito-borne disease should be available from next year, adding to the first that was launched in 2019 ⌘ Read more
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier figured out how to generate attosecond pulses of light, which last a billionth of a billionth of a second and can be used to make movies of electrons - a find that has won them the 2023 Nobel prize in physics ⌘ Read more
For a few days each month, as the full moon sweeps through the stretched-out tail of Earth’s magnetic field, high-energy electrons seem to be helping form water molecules on the lunar surface ⌘ Read more
We know less about the strength of the strong force than of any of the other fundamental forces of nature, but researchers at CERN have now made the most precise measurement of it ever ⌘ Read more
Breeding beetles belonging to dozens of species are attracted to the piles of food waste left behind by raiding army ants ⌘ Read more
Some of the components in quantum computers must be reset between operations, slowing down calculations, but tiny refrigerators could speed things up ⌘ Read more
Particles that are too small to be assembled into materials with conventional methods can be bound together with DNA molecules – the result is clumps of unusually strong and stiff material ⌘ Read more
The cell signalling network in our bodies that helps cannabis get us high is also vital to many other aspects of our health, from sleep to inflammation. Now we’re finally starting to understand why – and what that means for devising new treatments ⌘ Read more
Audio recordings reveal that the African dwarf crocodile moos like a cow – and listening out for its calls could help biologists track the species in the wild ⌘ Read more
Three comets named Hartley, Encke and Tsuchinshan will pass by the sun in the next few months and be visible from Earth. Here’s how you can spot them ⌘ Read more
KSP’s chairman Shapol M says he is nervous but confident ahead of the launch.
"The rocket is going together nicely, but we need to be careful with everything. We'll hopefully put in the engines soon. The best thing about Mojave is that the weather is almost always good, but we're trying to launch early in the m ... ⌘ Read more
A kind of computer memory made from the semiconductor scandium aluminium nitride withstands extreme heat in tests, making it potentially useful for space missions ⌘ Read more
Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, once put his mind to the subject of predicting colourful lizard scales – and we now know he was successful ⌘ Read more
A slew of telehealth startups in the US market themselves as convenient ways to access healthcare, but many are unregulated, raising concerns about patient privacy and unnecessary drug prescriptions ⌘ Read more
Three genes are turned off to make carrots produce high levels of alpha and beta-carotene, which make them a rich source of vitamin A and give them their orange hue ⌘ Read more
Dropping raisins, nuts or other small objects in a fizzy liquid makes them dance up and down for hours because they keep gaining and losing bubbles ⌘ Read more
Several companies are beginning to scale up production of jet fuel made from captured carbon dioxide and green hydrogen, but decarbonising global aviation this way would require huge amounts of clean energy ⌘ Read more
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have found that the most distant galaxies are being “watered down” with pristine gas from their surroundings far more than nearby ones ⌘ Read more
Australia’s greater broad-nosed bat was believed to mostly eat beetles and other insects, but hairs found in its droppings suggest it also feasts on other bats ⌘ Read more