Science

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Legal action could be used to stop Starlink ruining telescope images

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Stone Age replica raft almost ready to repeat epic prehistoric voyage

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Weird clumps of air that disrupt radio signals found on Mars

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A star exploded into a supernova but it weirdly isn’t very bright

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Ironbark: Did two spies really prevent all-out nuclear conflict?

Ironbark is one of 2020s anticipated movies. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the MI6 handler of a Russian spy who may have helped prevent nuclear war Technology 29 January 2020 By...

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Avenue 5: Hugh Laurie discovers how space tourism can go badly wrong

Space tourism has taken off in HBOs comedy Avenue 5, but the ship is off course, just like the jokes. Can the captain, Hugh Laurie, save the day? Humans...

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Unusual cyclones over past two years created Africas locust plague

By Michael Marshall Locusts swarming around vegetation north of Nairobi, KenyaTONY KARUMBA/Getty Huge swarms of locusts plaguing eastern Africa are the result of extreme weather events over the past...

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Economic impact of coronavirus outbreak likely to eclipse SARS crisis

By Adam Vaughan The effects of coronavirus are impacting the Shanghai Stock ExchangeYifan Ding/Getty The economic shockwaves of the Wuhan coronavirus look likely to eclipse the 2003 SARS crisis,...

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Ironbark: Did two spies really prevent the Cuban missile disaster?

February 2, 2020

Ironbark is one of 2020s anticipated movies. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the MI6 handler of a Russian spy who may have helped prevent nuclear war Humans 29 January 2020 By...

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A lazy cave salamander didn’t move from the same spot for 7 years

February 2, 2020

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By Michael Marshall Olm sweet olm: these cave-dwelling salamanders are the ultimate homebodiesBalzs Lerner & Gergely Balzs, Caudata Cave Research Group Some of us are homebodies, but olms take...

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How to Argue with a Racist smashes race myths that plague society

February 1, 2020

By Layal Liverpool How to Argue with a Racist: out on 6 FebruaryGuy Smallman/Getty I am black and mixed-race, but it remains unclear to me whether these are social...

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Unusual cyclones over the last 2 years created Africas locust plague

February 1, 2020

Science

Microplastic pollution reduces animal life at the bottom of lakes

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By Adam Vaughan Our waterways are being contaminated by plastic pollutionMichele D'Ottavio / Alamy Stock Photo Hotspots of microplastics can significantly reduce the number of certain animals vital to...

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Ancient well may be the world’s oldest wooden architectural structure

By Colin Barras This oak crate, one of the oldest wooden structures in the world, once lined a wellMichal Rybnek/Mendel University A handful of oak-lined water wells built by...

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The mysterious microbes shifting humanity’s place in the tree of life

Puzzling, slow-living microbes named after Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology, are helping solve one of evolution's biggest mysteries: the origin of complex life Life 29 January 2020 By...

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Why concerns of a teenage vaping epidemic may be overblown

By Clare Wilson US teens aren’t that in to vapingeldar nurkovic/Alamy How Juul hooked a generation on nicotine was a New York Times headline from 2018 on the new...

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Seminal fluid, not just sperm, can influence offspring’s survival

By Michael Marshall There’s more to semen than we thoughtkatoosha/Getty Baby fish grow up differently depending on the liquid their fathers sperm swam in. The finding shows that fathers...

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First cases of new coronavirus confirmed in the UK as disease spreads

By New Scientist staff and Press Association The first cases of the new coronavirus emerged in ChinaNurPhoto/Getty The first cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed in the...

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WHO declares coronavirus outbreak an international health emergency

By Jessica Hamzelou The WHO urged public health officials to prepare to identify and isolate people infected with the new coronavirusAnna Gowthorpe/PA Wire The new coronavirus represents a public...

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New coronavirus: How soon will a treatment be ready and will it work?

By Michael Le Page Pharmacy employees in Shanghai, China during the coronavirus outbreakCredit EDWIN REMSBERG, VW PICS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY So far, around a quarter of people infected...

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Genetically modified microbiome could protect honeybees from disease

By Gege Li Honeybees are under threatmauritius images GmbH/Alamy Bacteria from the microbiome of honeybees have been genetically modified to protect the insects against lethal infections, which could help...

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This tiny glass bead has been quantum chilled to near absolute zero

By Leah Crane The glass particle is just 150 nanometres wideKahan Dare, Lorenzo Magrini, Yuriy Coroli, University of Vienna A new method for manipulating the quantum state of particles...

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Two stars with an odd wobble are stretching space and time around them

By Leah Crane A pulsar with bright beams is doing a wobbly dance around a distant white dwarfGetty/MARK GARLICK A pair of distant stars have a weird wobble to...

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Figuring out what the Milky Way looks like is akin to a murder mystery

How can we get a picture of the whole Milky Way if we are inside it? Good sleuthing is needed to combine all the clues, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Space...

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Daylight saving time linked to an increase in traffic accidents

By Layal Liverpool The switch to daylight saving time leads to more deadly vehicle accidentsBraunS/Getty The risk of fatal car crashes goes up in the week after the shift...

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Neanderthals never lived in Africa, but their genes got there anyway

By Alison George Neanderthals and humans interbredGREGOIRE CIRADE / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY People of European and African ancestry have got more Neanderthal DNA in their genomes than previously thought....

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Vegetarians may have a lower risk of urinary tract infections

By Adam Vaughan A vegetarian diet may reduce gut exposure to the bacteria that commonly cause UTIsXsandra/Getty Eating a vegetarian diet has been linked with a lower risk of...

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What you experience may not exist. Inside the strange truth of reality

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What our senses allow us to experience may not reflect what actually exists. It may be a creation of our own consciousness, or a computer simulation designed by superintelligent...

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Pill with tiny needle for painless injections passes first human trial

By Michael Le Page More trials of the RaniPill delivering nine different drugs are plannedRANI THERAPEUTICS A pill that could replace conventional injections has passed its first tests in...

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Use the science of curing to turn salmon into gravlax at home

Salt curing preserves salmon while allowing great flavours to develop. Find out the secrets of this age-old technique of preservation and make gravlax at home Humans 29 January 2020...

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The Lighthouse: How extreme isolation transforms the body and mind

By Gege Li Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star in The LighthouseUniversal What happens to the mind when youre confined to a life of solitude? Robert Eggers offers his...

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Climate forecast says we may break the record for warmest year by 2025

By Adam Vaughan Temperatures soared during a heat wave in Paris in 2019Edward Berthelot/Getty The world’s new record for hottest year may be set before 2025, according to the...

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Cyborg jellyfish that swim at triple speed could help protect oceans

By Jason Arunn Murugesu An artist’s impression of the cyborg jellyfishRebecca Konte/Caltech Cyborg jellyfish could help in the fight against climate change by monitoring the state of the ocean....

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Soft finger-like robots can sweat to cool down just like humans

By Donna Lu Each 3D-printed finger has an internal channel to let sweat flowMishra et al., Sci Robot. 5, eaaz3918 (2020) Robots are becoming more human-like every day: now...

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The best picture ever taken of the sun reveals its bizarre surface

By Leah Crane A close-up of the sun reveals big bubbles of plasma on its surfaceNSO/AURA/NSF This is the best picture weve ever taken of the surface of...

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The seabed is sinking under the weight of water from melting ice caps

By Michael Marshall Melting water streams off icebergs near GreenlandPaul Souders/Getty The seabed is sinking by about 0.1 millimetres a year due to the weight of the water from...

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New coronavirus looks set to cause a pandemic how do we control it?

By Debora MacKenzie The new coronavirus, as imaged by an electron microscopeZhu et al/NEJM 2020, Massachusetts Medical Society The new coronavirus may be about to go global. Speaking at...

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Getting Brexit finished: Six huge science issues the UK must resolve

The UK is finally set to leave the European Union, but big questions on science, health and the environment remain Environment 29 January 2020 By Adam Vaughan The UK...

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BoJack Horseman shows just how unreliable memories can be

By Eleanor Cummins The final BoJack Horseman episodes will be released this weekNetflix It is easy to forget that BoJack Horseman, an adult cartoon about a horse in Hollywood...

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AI is being used to select embryos for women undergoing IVF

By Donna Lu An AI is choosing human embryosMehau Kulyk/Science Photo Library Artificial intelligence is being used in IVF to select embryos with the highest chance of resulting in...

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Human genes have been added to pigs to create skin for transplants

By Michael Le Page Pigs could be an alternative supply of suitable organs for transplantWorawut Saewong/EyeEm/Getty The race to create pigs with organs that are suitable for transplanting into...

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What is actuality? Why we still don’t understand the world’s true nature

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Its the ultimate scientific quest to understand everything that there is. But the closer we get, the further away it seems. Can we ever get to grips with the...

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Male moths genetically modified to kill females released in the wild

By Michael Le Page Diamond-back moths are major crop pests around the worldIan Redding/Alamy Genetically modified male diamondback moths designed to wipe out pest populations have been released in...

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Problems in social science are being used to discredit climate science

By Michael Marshall Science’s reproducibility crisis may be used against climate change researchGetty A conference in California nextweek says it aims to make scientific studies more reliable, but critics...

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Animal DNA is full of viral invaders and now we’ve caught them at it

By Michael Le Page Retroviruses can turn their RNA into DNAKEITH CHAMBERS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Some mice have sequences in their genome from a virus that infected their fathers. We...

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UK government approves Huawei 5G deal despite security fears

By Adam Vaughan Huawei is the world’s biggest telecomms firmGetty/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS The UK government has decided to allow technology from Chinese company Huawei to be used in the countrys...

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Here’s the secret to the ultimate thrill ride according to science

From roller coasters to spine-tingling virtual reality, Brendan Walker's work is all about enhancing the enjoyment of an experience. But the perfect thrill does not come from adrenaline alone,...

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People have built a glacier in the desert using a huge tower of ice

By Jason Arunn Murugesu THE Himalayan desert of Ladakh is home to this majestic tower of ice, known as an ice stupa, after the domed Buddhist buildings. It is...

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Solar Orbiter will give us our best views of the suns top and bottom

By Leah Crane An artist’s impression of the Solar Orbiter spacecraftESA/ATG medialab The Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft that will reveal new secrets of the sun, is scheduled to launch...

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Albatrosses strapped with sensors help spy on illegal fishing boats

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By Adam Vaughan A wandering albatross coasting over the seaImage courtesy of Alexandre Corbeau Birdscarrying radar sensors have been used to spy on fishing boats, revealing a quarter of...

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Harsh peer reviewer comments disproportionately affect minorities

By Jason Arunn Murugesu Excessively scathing, mean or critical comments received through peer review may have more of an effect on women and ethnic minority researchers. An anonymous survey...

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Dinosaur tracks seem to show giant sauropods wading on two front legs

By Colin Barras Sauropod footprints found in a limestone quarry in TexasHeritage Museum of the Texas Hill Country Sauropod dinosaurs were so immense they needed four strong, pillar-like legs...

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Can an N95 face mask protect you from catching the new coronavirus?

By Jessica Hamzelou A man wears a mask near Wuhan, ChinaStringer/Getty Face masks are reportedly selling out in cities across Asia as concerns over the spread of a deadly...

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A skull suggests humans have been getting piercings for 12,000 years