Some people find the scale of the universe existentially frightening, but here's why you should take it as a source of comfort

People don't realise just how bad our antibiotic resistance problem is, says Jeanne Marrazzo, the top infectious disease specialist in the US

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

More and more parents are choosing to only have one child. Here’s what the evidence says about how growing up without siblings affects their personality traits and well-being

Surrounding ourselves with greenery can do wonders for our physical and mental wellbeing. Kathy Willis reveals just what kinds of plants are best for our brains and bodies, and why

Many fear that voters are being manipulated by political campaigns that use Facebook ads, TikTok and YouTube videos, but research reveals a more surprising story

The latest research on caffeine reveals why coffee and decaf can be so good for your health, but energy drinks can be lethal

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

The controversies surrounding football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system highlight our troubled relationship with uncertainty – and point to potential solutions

Information contained within quantum objects gets scrambled when they interact. Physicists have now derived a speed limit for this process, challenging the idea that black holes are the fastest data scramblers

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity

It should be possible to combine several quantum states, each with almost no energy, to create a single quantum state containing unexpectedly energy-rich regions

Research has found the universe is remarkably similar in structure to the human brain. But does this mean the cosmos has a consciousness of its own?

A century ago, Albert Einstein suggested that the universe might contain ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves – but then he changed his mind

An experiment to test distant particles’ ability to correlate their behaviour is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that classical ideas about reality are incorrect

Physicists have demonstrated a bizarre cooling effect by setting up a detector to record the absence of photons in a laser experiment

In an experiment simulating what happens deep in the interiors of planets, scientists have found that liquid can be compressed into ice crystals – even at extremely high temperatures

The hunt for particles of dark matter has been stymied once again, with physicists placing constraints on this mysterious substance that are 5 times tighter than the previous best

The direction of cause and effect was brought into question for quantum objects more than a decade ago, but new calculations may offer a way to restore it

A recent atomic physics workshop was outside my dark matter comfort zone, but learning about science beyond my usual boundaries was invigorating, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

Droplets of fluid have been known to hover above a hot surface, but a new experiment suggests the same can happen to tiny jets of liquid too

Olivier Grunewald took this image of the Icelandic volcano's central crater filled with lava, forming a fiery lake of liquid rock

From a sea turtle and diver swimming in harmony in Malaysia to a red-eyed tree frog in its Costa Rican rainforest home, take a peek at some of the winning entries in one of the most prestigious photography competitions

The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia on 11 April sent plumes of volcanic ash many kilometres into the air and could affect flights

The Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii has begun erupting, spewing volcanic gas and ash across the island

From a photograph of algae choking an Indian river to a shocking depiction of the wearing away of the UK coast, these are some of the pictures in the running for the contest

An independent task force formed by NASA to look into unidentified anomalous phenomena found no evidence of alien craft, and suggests that if we want to find proof of visitors we need better data

Several enormous craters left by explosions have been spotted in Siberia over the past 15 years, and a new explanation links them to hot gas – and climate change

A proposal to define the Anthropocene, a geologic epoch defined by human activity, has been rejected – surprising even scientists who consulted the voting group

Photographer Diane Tuft has documented how global warming is affecting bodies of water around the world

This year could bring up to 25 named tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean due to a shift to La Niña conditions, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada and Mexico is already worsening air quality in the US, but some signs suggest clearer skies than last year

Taylor Roades's images of a river in north-west Alaska that has turned orange because of global warming have won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo competition

A documentary film about three young survivors of super-typhoon Odette, a tropical cyclone that hit the Philippines in 2021, wins the New Scientist Editors Award at Earth Photo 2024

See some of the top entries to this year's Mangrove Photography Awards, showing the beauty and fragility of these unique ecosystems

James Lovelock's hypothesis that our planet is a living entity is well known. Ferris Jabr's new book Becoming Earth takes it a step further

This claustrophobia-inducing image is taken from photographer Martin Broen's new book Light in the Underworld, a collection of shots from the Yucatán’s cenotes, or sinkholes

Computer simulations of how influenza A moves through human mucus found it is ideally configured to slide through the sticky stuff on its way to infecting cells

Antibiotics can reduce diversity in the gut microbiome, raising the risk of infections that cause diarrhoea - and the effects may last years

Scientists used AI to transform tourist photos into a 3D digital map of Antarctic penguin colonies – even as researchers debate whether to harness or discourage tourism in this remote region

I have a confession to make. After taking a handful of autonomous taxi rides, I have gone from a hater to a friend of robot cars in just a few weeks, says Annalee Newitz

Although the COP16 summit in Colombia ended with some important agreements, countries still aren’t moving fast enough to stem biodiversity loss

Before Mesopotamian people invented writing, they used cylinder seals to press patterns into wet clay – and some of the symbols used were carried over into proto-writing

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

When it comes to the survival of animals living in the wild, the characteristics of the group can matter as much as the traits of the individual, according to a study in marmots

Shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year contest, these images zoom in on animals in all their glory

In order to figure out how something came from nothing, we first need to explore the different types of nothing

Asian elephants at Berlin Zoo show impressive skill when using a hose as a tool, and even appear to sabotage each other by stopping the flow of water

Four-legged robot dogs learned to perform new tricks by practising in a virtual platform that mimics real-world obstacles – a possible shortcut for training robots faster and more accurately