Chloramine is used as a disinfectant in drinking water systems from the US to Australia. Research now shows it breaks down into a compound that may have negative health impacts
Arthropods belong to an evolutionary branch – the ecdysozoa – that contains about half of all animal species, and the earliest fossil evidence of the group dates back 550 million years
Groups of wild chimpanzees with more complex tool-using behaviours tend to be genetically linked, providing evidence for cumulative culture in other apes
In the first hearing test of live baleen whales, the animals detected much higher frequency sounds than expected, forcing researchers to reconsider how these mammals respond to predators – and humans
Growing wood directly from stem cells could offer an alternative to cutting threatened hardwood trees, but it isn't clear if it has same properties as actual wood
A flying robot uses its bird-like tail to maintain stability in flight – a technique that could enable more aerodynamic aircraft designs that use less fuel
By 2050, 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban centres - that's just one reason why mayors will be essential to addressing the climate crisis, making vital adaptations to cities to make them more bearable in a warming...
When I moved back to York, UK, I was shocked by its garbage system, with limited recycling and no composting. But a bit of digging showed its brilliance, says Graham Lawton
In Adam Roberts's Lake of Darkness, two spaceships meet to study a black hole. Their research comes to an abrupt halt, however, when crew members start dying horribly, says Emily H. Wilson
Using GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling
A large planet has been spotted orbiting a dwarf star that is just 3 million years old, offering possible clues to how the worlds in our solar system came into being
IBM has bet big on a modular approach to building quantum computers, and now it has successfully linked two quantum chips together to operate as a single device, a key step towards that goal
Many restaurants in countries such as England and the US now print calories on their menus, but some researchers question whether this is really tackling their obesity problem
Analysis of millions of galaxies upholds Albert Einstein’s ideas about gravity and also offers tantalising new hints of how dark energy may have evolved
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. It aims to conduct the launch at 4pm Central Time (10pm UK). Here’s everything we know so far
The vast computational power of the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be used to support the US nuclear deterrent
Tiny, solid windows in the shells of heart cockles let in light for the photosynthetic algae inside them – and they could show us how to make better fibre-optic cables
The largest number of logical qubits has been linked through quantum entanglement, which is a key step towards quantum computers that can detect and correct errors
More than 20 million people have joined Bluesky, a social network that gives you fine-grained control over what you see and who you interact with. I think it is the future of social media, says Chris Stokel-Walker
Four southern giant hornets have been identified in northern Spain, leading to concerns that the species could harm native insects if it becomes widespread
Leading researchers warn that relying on "passive" carbon sinks such as forests to absorb ongoing carbon emissions will doom the world to continued warming
A study modelling the impact of melting ice suggests scientists have underestimated the risk that an important ocean current will shut down and cause climate chaos
Letting AI models communicate with each other in their internal mathematical language, rather than translating back and forth to English, could accelerate their task-solving abilities
Water levels in the Caspian Sea are set to fall dramatically as the climate gets hotter, posing a major threat to economic activity and ecosystems in the region
Two massive galaxies are bending light from the same distant quasar, creating a so-called Einstein zigzag lens that could help astronomers pin down how quickly the universe is expanding
It has been 50 years since archaeologists discovered Lucy, perhaps the most famous ancient hominin ever found. But the scientists who have studied her say that this fossil gave us a misleading image of the nature of her species
A classic study found that people can fail to notice a gorilla when they are focusing on something else, but new experiments suggest this "inattentional blindness" might not tell the whole story
Satellite images reveal that when conditions are right, the pollution from industrial hotspots can cause snow to fall downwind and punch holes in clouds
The Proba-3 mission consists of two spacecraft that will fly in close formation to study the sun, with the shadow of one creating an artificial solar eclipse from the perspective of the other
Readers give higher ratings to AI-generated poetry than the works of poets such as William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson – perhaps because they often have more straightforward themes and simpler structure