Unusual signals called quasi periodic eruptions appear to come from black holes, but we don't know what creates them. Now astronomers have seen the most powerful one of these signals ever, and have a new idea about their cause
Machine learning helped show how harnessing the weird effects of Einstein’s special relativity could enable a new kind of quantum computer – and it could also lead to new insights into the quantum realm
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider found evidence of an unprecedentedly heavy and exotic form of antimatter in the aftermath of a collision between extremely fast lead ions
The US and other nations are eager to exploit the Arctic’s mineral wealth, but despite the thawing of ice and permafrost, accessing buried treasure in the region remains extremely challenging
A daily pill developed by the US pharmaceutical company Lilly may become a convenient alternative to injectable drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. In phase III trials it significantly lowered blood sugar and body weight in people with type 2...
Common medications for keeping blood pressure down, including ACE inhibitors, diuretics and calcium channel blockers, also lower the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment
Mounting evidence suggests there might be two separate types of the world’s fastest-growing neurological condition. Can this fresh understanding lead to much-needed new treatments?
The Tara Polar Station, a $23 million research vessel with a crew of 12, will drift across the Arctic ice to enable better monitoring of a rapidly changing environment
A nearly complete skeleton found in a cave in France belonged to a group known as the Palaeolithic dogs and its skeleton suggests it had a confusing relationship with humans
Extremely low sea ice levels in the Arctic and Antarctica signal a "new normal" that may accelerate global warming and disrupt ocean currents, on top of the consequences for people and wildlife that rely on the ice
Whenever there’s even a slight chance that an exoplanet shows signs of biological activity, people understandably get excited – but it’s never been aliens, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, not this time or the next, says Chris Lintott
A quantum sensor using Earth's magnetic fields outperformed standard GPS backups in test flights. This technology could help commercial aircraft stay on course amid a rise in GPS jamming and spoofing attacks
Microbial communities feeding on geothermal methane seeps beneath the Antarctic ice sheet could resemble life-supporting environments on frozen worlds in our solar system and beyond
A network of Earth's best clocks will be synchronised with the most accurate one ever sent into space. But the device has a short shelf life: it will burn up in the atmosphere at the end of the decade as the ISS deorbits
The report of possible biosignatures on the exoplanet K2-18b is exciting, but we are a long way from establishing beyond doubt that there is life on such a distant world
New global rules will see a carbon levy applied to emissions from shipping for the first time, but analysts say the package falls short of what is needed
Two independent research teams have developed methods for hacking noisy quantum computers based on a row-hammer attack, a type of interference used to infiltrate traditional computers
Colossal Biosciences’s "de-extinction" news is just the latest in a slew of eyebrow-raising claims by privately funded researchers. Is the bar for belief lower when those making the claims have a lot of money, wonders Jonathan R. Goodman
The 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism may have been a kind of astronomical calculator, but researchers are unsure whether it would have worked without jamming
The idea of varying your lifestyle throughout your menstrual cycle to help relieve PMS or period pain seems intuitive, but the evidence reveals a nuanced picture, finds columnist Alexandra Thompson
On a faraway planet, James Webb Space Telescope has picked up signs of molecules that, on Earth, are produced only by living organisms – but researchers say we must interpret the results cautiously
It is harder for our bodies to absorb key nutrients from plant-based foods, so some vegans may be short on essential amino acids for healthy muscles and bones despite eating plenty of protein
Beginning around 3000 years ago, Tel Shiqmona in modern-day Israel was a major centre for the production of Tyrian purple, a valuable commodity produced from marine snails
A weakening of Earth’s magnetic field known as the Laschamps event would have increased the threat of solar radiation, perhaps requiring ancient humans to invent protective measures
Space agencies from the US, Europe and Japan are all making plans to visit the asteroid Apophis when it makes an extremely close flyby in 2029 to learn how to deflect others like it
General relativity is an astonishingly beautiful theory, and grappling with why it disagrees with quantum mechanics is a joy, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Feedback was pleased to come across journalist Taylor Lorenz's coining of the word "viralflation", as videos with hundreds of millions of hits proliferate across the internet
The idea that the rise of tech means today's young people are less intelligent than previous generations is rife – but wrong, says neuroscientist Dean Burnett
Exposing the origins of the improbable – and at times scary – plans of tech billionaires makes Adam Becker's More Everything Forever a disturbing but important book
Black Mirror's new season is a mixed bag, ranging from a sublimely plotted romp to one of the worst episodes to date. And it's still playing fast and loose with its sci-fi concepts, finds Bethan Ackerley
Why is saying no to other people so difficult – even when we really know we should? Sunita Sah's new book Defy has some novel ideas about the interpersonal forces holding us back
Researchers have used a fungus and bacteria to create rigid, living structures similar to bone and coral, which could one day be used as a self-repairing building material
Quantum effects like superposition and entanglement have long been seen in single particles, but physicists are on a quest to find out just how big an object can be before it loses its quantumness
There were hints that the world may be quantum long before the development of quantum mechanics in 1925 – could we have come up with this revolutionary theory hundreds or even thousands of years earlier?
As quantum computers mature, they will be transformational. But there are good reasons why we don’t yet know exactly which problems they will excel at – and that makes them all the more exciting