Science News

Earliest evidence of habitual drug use found in teeth in Indonesia

Strange, rounded grooves in prehistoric teeth are thought to have been made by regularly sucking whole betel nuts to…

Heat spikes over Tibet may help explain severe Californian flooding

Unusually high temperatures over the mountainous region can kick-start a chain of events that ultimately leads to a…

Bursts of ‘pink noise’ during sleep seem to help clear waste from brain

The human brain flushes out waste products while we sleep and now it seems that certain sounds might enhance the process

Are anti-black holes possible, and how could we tell if we were looking at one?

One reader thinks the answer is yes, and gives ways we could spot them

Why do humans have a common sense of beauty for things like sunsets and do other animals share this appreciation?

Although one reader thinks it would be virtually impossible to tell if animals have a sense of beauty, they give their…

What changes will occur on Earth as the moon moves further away? part 3

A reader thinks outside the box on ways to mitigate against this slow-forming issue

Tom Gauld on an introduction to basic philosophical astronomy

Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon

Unexpected hints of dark matter should breathe life into particle physics

With little in the way of significant discoveries since 2012, there have been mutterings that particle physics is at a…

New Scientist recommends a fascinating deep dive into the real Vikings

The stories we tell about the Vikings often say more about us than them.

Why don’t we sneeze when we are asleep? part 2

It turns out some of our readers do sneeze in their sleeps – but only in certain circumstances

Why don’t dogs look up when a low-flying plane passes overhead? part 3

Readers continue to share stories of how their own dogs respond to aircrafts

This week’s new questions

Why do people appear younger and better-looking in a mirror than in a photograph? Are humans the only animals that cry?

Google's AI genome system evaluates every possible one-base change

Most one-base changes to the human genome do nothing, but a few are significant.

NASA’s next major telescope might see alien oceans and rainbows

The upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory should be able to spot the glint of water on habitable planets, and maybe more

We Accidentally Built a Synthetic Cell Factory

b.next, founded to improve interoperability in synthetic cell research, unexpectedly became a manufacturer of…

Lost quantum traces could reveal dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider

Particle collisions are inherently quantum, but much of that character is lost when we turn them into classical data.

Denisovan tools from cave in China shows how mysterious humans lived

A site in China is just the third to give us an insight into the way the enigmatic Denisovans lived.

Investing in Mothers? The Long-Run Impact of a Universal Child Care

A study examining Quebec's universal child care program finds that subsidized child care has lasting positive effects on…

The Ancient Greek Water Clock That Kept the Most Accurate Time for 1,800 Years

In the third century BC, Greek inventor Ctesibius created an automatic water clock that maintained more accurate…

Liesegang Rings

Liesegang rings are geometric patterns that form in gels through chemical reactions, following a mathematical spacing…

Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time

Teenagers' reading scores have hit their worst levels this century, declining from 501 to 466 on the OECD's 2025…

Sam Altman's statement on the Navier-Stokes dispute

Trying

The article explores why scientists lack motivation to solve problems they intellectually know exist, even when they…

The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem

OpenAI used an unreleased AI model to solve the Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the seven…

Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance

A Harvard study led by researcher Matthew K.

Common painkiller use in early pregnancy linked to smaller ovaries and testes

Taking the painkiller paracetamol (acetaminophen) during pregnancy has been linked to smaller ovaries and testes in baby…

A Topological Picture Book, Rendered

This interactive visualization renders topological surfaces like the torus using hand-hatched line drawing techniques…

Tao: Open math problems being non-renewably mined by AI

I don't have access to the full article content needed to provide an accurate summary.

The universal language of space is... Star Trek? Mais oui.

"Science fiction imagines the future. We build it."