Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
This question was posed as part of New Scientistās Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each otherās questions. Hereās what our readers had to say
This question was posed as part of New Scientistās Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each otherās questions. Hereās what our readers had to say
This question was posed as part of New Scientistās Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each otherās questions. Hereās what our readers had to say
This question was posed as part of New Scientistās Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each otherās questions. Hereās what our readers had to say
Is it faster to jog up stairs or take them two at a time? If the world we observe is just our brainās interpretation of the electro-chemical signals it receives from our eyes, what is the world actually like?
Josie Ford Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more A little catty Feedbackās felines are often nowhere to be seen. For hours at a time ā in the case of the more free-range cat, sometimes several days ā they vanish from sight. What might they be doing? Torturing the local small-animal population perhaps, or chasing fallen leaves around the yard, or visiting the local school to cause as much disruption to learning as possible, or perhaps just lazing in a warm spot to sleep. But who knows? One person who does know is Michelle Smit at Massey University in New Zealand, because she and her colleagues put collar-mounted accel...
Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon
This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles
Uncertainty about when or even if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a vital ocean current, might collapse has been an excuse to ignore the risk, but that actually makes it even more important that we act now
Scientists may have settled a decades-long debate about bat evolution, including controversial questions about when bats began to communicate and fly, a landmark study shows.The new research, published Wednesday (Sept. 23) in the journal Nature, is the biggest bat DNA and fossil study ever conducted. Researchers created new, top-quality genome assemblies for 41 bat species, which they analyzed together with 62 existing sequences, providing a record dataset of 103 bat genomes and 44 bat fossils."It is extraordinary," study co-author Emma Teeling, a professor of molecular evolution and mammalian phylogenetics at University College Dublin, told Live Science in an email; "after decades of resear...
Archaeologists excavating a Paris hospital's courtyard, a stone's throw from Notre-Dame, have discovered the first evidence of a Celtic fort that Julius Caesar tried to conquer in 52 B.C. The ancient walls show evidence of a violent fire, seemingly confirming the claim that the Celtic group who lived there, known as the Gauls, burned down their own town so that it wouldn't fall into Caesar's hands."The wall's architecture, with its large blocks and interlocking beam system, immediately led us to believe it was a wall of Gallic tradition," DorothĆ©e Chaoui-Derieux, chief curator of heritage at the Ćle-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in a translated statement. Traces of fire and fi...
For the first time, astronomers have detected radio signals coming directly from a planet outside our solar system, according to a new preprint study. Spoiler alert: It's not aliens. But astrophysicists are still very excited about this discovery. "Astronomers have been looking for radio signals from exoplanets for some time," Suzanne Aigrain, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "There have been tentative, indirect detections before, but this is the first truly convincing direct detection, and it hopefully paves the way for many more."Artificial radio signals are a key focus in the search for extraterrestri...