The world’s most powerful rocket launched from Texas and reached an altitude of more than 230 kilometres, travelling further and faster than ever before. But it appears to have either self-destructed or burned up on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere | Continue reading
A trial suggests that giving older dogs a supplement makes them cognitively sharper, but some scientists stress that pet owners should lower their expectations | Continue reading
The debris from the formation of a relatively small crater on Mars created billions of additional craters, which could help us learn about Martian geology | Continue reading
Wooden tablets containing a language of glyphs called Rongorongo may be evidence that the people of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, created their own writing system without the influence of European language | Continue reading
A nasal spray containing an anti-inflammatory molecule reduces the symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis in animals, although the treatment might come with risks in people | Continue reading
All major skiing regions worldwide are predicted to see a severe drop in snow days by the end of the century, with Australian resorts the worst affected | Continue reading
A four-legged robot can handle real-world obstacles that require scrambling up and down or leaping sizeable gaps. AI training lets it adapt to new terrain it hasn’t seen before | Continue reading
Are memories ever really true or false? Is social media disrupting how we remember? Does memory shape creativity? Find out in an essential new guide to memory by leading researcher Charan Ranganath | Continue reading
Disinformation is far older than humans. Lessons from evolutionary biology can help defend against it today, says Jonathan R. Goodman | Continue reading
As a new law is introduced in England, requiring developers to create 10 per cent more wildlife habitat than they destroy when developing a site, does it really work to destroy nature in one place, but preserve it elsewhere, asks Graham Lawton | Continue reading
Feedback discovers an overdue investigation into whether pneumatic robots are tastier when they are moving or when they are still | Continue reading
The largest ever dataset of its kind suggests methane is leaking from US oil and gas fields at a much higher rate than previously thought, implying the environmental damage caused by the greenhouse gas is greater too | Continue reading
Fat droplets accumulating in brain immune cells could be behind the biggest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease | Continue reading
Thanks to globalisation, severe heatwaves in one part of the world can cause financial losses in another. Annual losses could reach as much as $25 trillion by 2060 if we don't curb emissions, dwarfing any previous financial crisis | Continue reading
From solar power stations in space to stabilising melting glaciers, some researchers are proposing extremely ambitious and risky projects to fight climate change. Could they work? | Continue reading
The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that will require TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or risk a nationwide ban | Continue reading
There is more lurking below the surface of Arrakis than sandworms. Dune author Frank Herbert had a keen interest in fungi, and so should we, says Corrado Nai | Continue reading
The seafloor of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was thought to provide energy and nutrients to its ocean, but it turns out that may not be possible | Continue reading
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is gearing up for the third launch of its massive Starship rocket on 14 March, following two failed missions. What will the company be hoping for and what can we expect? | Continue reading
Most physicists believe that only a quantum theory of gravity can fully explain mysteries of the universe like dark matter, but now an idea called "post-quantum gravity" is demonstrating an alternative approach | Continue reading
A ‘gene drive’ that spreads through plant populations could be used to wipe out pests such as superweeds, or to help save species by making them resistant to heat or disease | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope has found an unusual galaxy in the early universe with a black hole almost half the mass of the galaxy itself, raising questions about how it formed | Continue reading
Populations of moths living in urban places may have evolved smaller wings to limit how much bright city lights disrupt their lives | Continue reading
Since their introduction in the 1800s, giant sequoia trees in the UK have grown up to 55 metres tall and capture 85 kilograms of carbon a year on average | Continue reading
The US House of Representatives is voting on a bill that would require TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or risk a nationwide ban | Continue reading
The computers that secure cryptocurrencies like bitcoin consume large amounts of power, pushing up electricity prices and potentially contributing to climate change. Now, the US government wants to tackle the problem | Continue reading
Researchers simulated the wind damage from seven historical hurricanes to identify just a few key electrical lines that were crucial to protect the whole grid from cascading power failures | Continue reading
Most people are too risk-averse when it comes to life's biggest choices. Learning how to overcome the cognitive biases at play can help you make better decisions with fewer regrets | Continue reading
Some studies have claimed that plants emit sounds when stressed and might perceive the distress calls of other plants, but a review finds the evidence is lacking | Continue reading
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks orbits the sun every 71 years and is currently making its closest approach. Here's when and how you can see it - perhaps even during a solar eclipse | Continue reading
When the moon hides the sun in a total solar eclipse, some animals seem to think that it is briefly nighttime, while others pace anxiously or even gaze up at the sky | Continue reading
An analysis of deep-sea drill cores suggests that Mars may have enough gravitational influence to shift sediment within Earth's oceans on a 2.4-million-year cycle | Continue reading
A thought experiment in which all music is replaced with AI-generated "Taylor's Versions" should prompt us to find ways to protect data from AI corruption, warn researchers | Continue reading
The origins of Mars’s moons Phobos and Deimos have long been an enigma, but they may have been formed when a comet-like icy object slammed into the Red Planet | Continue reading
Antarctic sea ice cover remains far below average levels for the third year in a row, but researchers are uncertain whether this is a permanent shift driven by climate change or part of natural fluctuations | Continue reading
Newborns whose mothers speak two languages appear to have distinct brain responses to speech compared with those born to monolingual mothers, supporting the idea that language acquisition begins in the uterus | Continue reading
Lake sediments reveal the ancient history of Aboriginal people’s use of fire to manage the landscape, a tradition that has benefits for biodiversity | Continue reading
Bolstered by impressive clinical trials, some companies are offering ketamine therapy as an employee health benefit – but what risks are posed by the drug's newfound popularity? | Continue reading
Unlike most other animals, the cave-dwelling Mexican tetra doesn’t get a fatty liver when it is malnourished – and its secrets could lead to medical benefits for other species | Continue reading
Two fossil claws found on Seymour Island reveal that phorusrhacids, or terror birds, lived in Antarctica 50 million years ago and were probably the apex predator | Continue reading
Physical injuries, mental health issues and malnutrition are widespread in Gaza – and major health groups have no firm plans to address the impending crisis | Continue reading
Palestinians face a protracted health disaster as physical injuries, mental health issues and malnutrition are widespread in Gaza – and major health groups have no firm plans to address it | Continue reading
A remotely controlled robot with an inflatable foot that oozes mucus can crawl across surfaces like a snail, and could inspire soft medical robots that move through mucus-lined cavities in the human body | Continue reading
A memory device that temporarily saves quantum information could become an important addition to quantum networks because it would allow users to salvage information if it fails to transfer properly | Continue reading
Four years after being restored with steel frames, coral reefs in Indonesia damaged by blast fishing grow at the same rate as healthy reefs, but they have lower levels of species diversity | Continue reading
Researchers restored degraded lithium-ion batteries to nearly full capacity by injecting them with a chemical that creates more charged particles inside them | Continue reading
When answering questions posed in Chinese, French, German or Russian, large language models seem to process the queries in English, which could create cultural issues | Continue reading
South of New Orleans, a project to divert the Mississippi river could restore ecosystems destroyed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and build new land to protect against sea level rise | Continue reading