The hope is that we will have a coronavirus vaccine in 12-18 months, but for that to happen we may have to rely on untested techniques - and that comes with its own risks.

The mysterious Liangzhu civilisation was a neolithic "Venice of the East", rivalling ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia with its engineering marvels

We love to hate wasps, but they pollinate flowers, kill off pests and their venom might even help us treat cancer

The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know – but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making

Your immune system ages too, weakening as you get older and making you more susceptible to infections. Fortunately, we are discovering plenty of things you can do to turn back the clock and stay healthy

Always forgetting birthdays? Terrible at staying in touch? New tech promises to turn you into the best buddy ever. We put it to the test

Forget the simple out-of-Africa idea of how humans evolved. A huge array of fossils and genome studies has completely rewritten the story of how we came into being.

To fight the new coronavirus, researchers are investigating more than 60 drugs, including remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine and brand new ones. Here’s a breakdown of progress so far

Strange particles observed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down

Fever is a pain, quite literally, but new evidence hints at its purpose. Here’s what you need to know

Move over Martians, Earth has already been invaded by little green aliens, but how did parakeets become one of the most successful invasive species ever?

Most molecules exist in mirror-image forms, and yet life prefers one over the other. How this bias began and why it persisted is one of the most baffling questions in biology – but now we have an answer

Building muscle reduces the risk of cancer and stroke, boosts brainpower, burns through calories and more – it might even be better for you than cardio

An alligator carcass dropped in the deep ocean reveals the bizarre ecosystems of the seabed - including zombie worms that fed on prehistoric reptiles

From social isolation to working on the front line, the mental health challenges of the pandemic are wide reaching. We ask experts how to protect ourselves

Whether you are at home alone or juggling work and family, those working in mental health share their advice on how to cope with the covid-19 pandemic

Dingoes have been persecuted in Australia for centuries for killing livestock, but protecting them could benefit the environment and aid recovery from the devastating fires

Are shark attacks and ice cream sales linked? Do drugs work? Being able to distinguish cause and effect is crucial. Now we have the maths to do it reliably

The question of how the brain gives rise to subjective experience is the hardest of all. Mathematicians think they can help, but their first attempts have thrown up some eye-popping conclusions

For years, the oldest turtle fossils we could find had fully formed shells. Now, more primitive fossils are revealing the strange tale of how turtle shells evolved

Four coronaviruses cause around a quarter of all common colds, but each was probably deadly when it first made the leap to humans. We can learn a lot from what happened next

To figure out what makes some people more vulnerable to severe cases of covid-19, we need to rethink what we know about infection

Human behaviour is key to the spread of coronavirus, so government scientists are trying to control our decisions. Does it work, and what happens when they get it wrong?

Four decades ago, we introduced a standard way of encoding digital sound. Its first ever upgrade could lead to new genres of music and ways of experiencing sound

The UK’s exit from the EU has had a mixed effect on scientists’ assessment of their international mobility and future job market prospects, according to the 2020 STEM Survey

Climate models show that as the world warms, tropical cyclones will travel more slowly, dumping more rain in one place and making high-speed winds batter buildings for longer

Rocks from a 3.2-billion-year-old formation in Australia show changes in the direction of their magnetism over time that suggest plate tectonics started earlier than we thought

Satellites have revealed the fracking heartland of the US is leaking methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, at a record-breaking rate.

A cheap, lightweight smartphone-heated device can test for DNA in blood, urine and other samples in a fraction of the time it takes to test in a lab

We need to scale up testing efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, and looking for signs of virus RNA in our sewage could provide a shortcut

Dingoes have been persecuted in Australia for centuries for killing livestock, but protecting them could benefit the environment and aid recovery from the devastating fires

A long-standing hypothesis suggests the BCG vaccine also serves to generally enhance the immune system, meaning it could protect against covid-19, and trials are under way to find out

The coronavirus pandemic is making life feel slower than ever, but observing timescales across the universe can bring us some comfort, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

A brain-computer interface has helped a man with a severe spinal cord injury move and feel using a hand again, letting him carefully lift light objects such as a paper cup

AI can check satellite images of the ocean and distinguish between floating materials such as seaweed or plastics, which could help clean-up efforts

A bunch of asteroids near Jupiter and Neptune with orbits perpendicular to the plane of the solar system may have come here from a different star system

While an alarming 9 per cent of insects on land are being lost each decade, the state of the world’s insects is much more nuanced than warnings of an insect apocalypse

Are shark attacks and ice cream sales linked? Do drugs work? Being able to distinguish cause and effect is crucial. Now we have the maths to do it reliably

Many people are turning to virtual therapy and mental health apps to cope with the stress of the coronavirus pandemic, but they may not be as helpful as talking face to face

We need to be very cautious about preliminary studies estimating how many people have already been infected by the coronavirus

Bamboo is a renewable material that when microwaved becomes stronger by weight than steel or concrete – which could make it ideal for constructing buildings, cars and planes

Some dogs and cats may be passing gut microbes to their owners that withstand last-resort antibiotics, which can be needed to fight off pneumonia from a coronavirus infection

Black paint usually absorbs heat, but a new two-layer polymer paint reflects infrared light and keeps objects 16°C cooler, which could help make buildings more energy efficient

Extraterrestrial oceans are an obvious place to search for alien life, but getting there and having a look won't be easy, says NASA's Kevin Hand in his book Alien Oceans

Srinivisa Ramanujan’s ideas seemed to come from a parallel universe and mathematicians are still getting to grips with them today, say Ken Ono and Robert Schneider

A podcast called Science Diction looks at the stories behind scientific terms and phrases. Each episode is short and nicely put together, says David Silverberg

Covid-19 contact tracers are part healthcare worker, part detective and part call centre operative. But what is the job really like? New Scientist spoke to one in Ireland to find out

Half a million people taking part in the UK Biobank, which gathers genetic information for researchers to study, won't be told if they turn out to be genetically vulnerable to the coronavirus

A 3D printed grate can be used to make a smart window that blocks heat from sunlight out in the summer while letting it through in the winter, conserving energy

The membership of the UK's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has so far been kept secret, but a list of names will soon be published, the UK's chief scientific adviser has said