Science

There are several ways you can help scientists study this year’s eclipse Sirbouman/Alamy During the total solar eclipse on 12 August, scientists from around the world will have their eyes – and scientific instruments – on the sun. But even if you aren’t a scientist, you can help in their investigations, both during the eclipse

Pierre de Fermat was a 17th-century mathematician Lebrecht Music& Arts, YAY Media AS/Alamy In the lobby of a central London hotel, tourists are bracing themselves for a day of sightseeing in a heatwave. Meanwhile, staff are resetting the dining room after breakfast. And in a windowless meeting room, assembled academics are contemplating whether humans have

The economies of countries where many people work in farming will be hit the hardest Imago/Alamy Global warming-fuelled heat and drought is already hitting yields of maize, wheat and soybeans to the tune of $20 billion a year, a study has estimated. This could rise eightfold, to more than $160 billion by 2100, unless we slash

Satellite launches like this one in Russia are normally registered on a United Nations list – but not right now Photo by Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock A United Nations list of every object launched into space, conceived during the cold war as a way to avoid paranoia and conflict, has been unavailable for months due to an

How do you prove a proof? Sometimes, you don’t Lucidio Studio, Inc./Getty Images A mathematician opens her office door to find a small fire. Without panicking, she looks around the room and spots a fire extinguisher. “Ah, a solution exists!” she says, before closing the door and continuing on with her day. Simply knowing it

In some heavy atoms, like those of bismuth (pictured in crystalline form), electrons move at relativistic speeds savva_25/Shutterstock Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity can reshape chemical bonds within molecules, and researchers have just seen it happen for the first time. The theory of special relativity describes how moving at speeds close to the speed

Spriggina floundersi worms that bent to the right are preserved as fossils that bend to the left Scott Evans/AMNH A 555-million-year-old worm had a predilection for turning right, possibly indicating the oldest known example of handedness. Although these worms lacked limbs and so couldn’t be considered left- or right-handed in the way that we understand,

Particles in ships’ exhaust inadvertently cause cloud brightening, and a similar effect could be employed to engineer the climate NASA’s Earth Obervatory Short-term geoengineering to brighten clouds over the eastern Pacific Ocean could limit the damage caused by El Niño and save the global economy trillions of dollars, although there could be winners and losers

Polarised light micrograph of crystals of the chemical histamine ALFRED PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY In most of the body, histamine triggers an immune response, as people with hay fever know only too well. But in the brain, it seems to have a completely different role, with a small experiment demonstrating that boosting histamine levels improves the

Peter Shor is known for his internet-breaking algorithm Christopher Harting “So, he’s the Beyoncé of this event?” a young woman standing behind me says to a colleague. The three of us are standing, looking at the back of a crowd, whose members are all looking at a bearded man in an orange sweater. Getting a

Paramedics help a patient into an ambulance during a heatwave in Barcelona, Spain, in 2022 Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images A heatwave in May set monthly temperature records across Europe; a heatwave in June became the hottest ever observed in western Europe. Now, in July, yet another heatwave is developing. Just 50 years ago, the

Bumblebees appear to like the taste of sugar Dawn Monrose/Alamy Bees seem to show when they are pleased and like something, rather than just needing it, in one of the strongest signs yet that insects have subjective experiences. In recent decades, it has become clear that bees are capable of more complex behaviours than we

The skulls of Neanderthals (left) and Homo sapiens were larger than those of earlier hominins PASCAL GOETGHELUCK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Our unusually large brains are one of the defining features of our species. But there is no evidence that evolution strongly favoured big brains in the past 2 million years of human evolution, according to a

Time may be more wobbly than we thought mavrixpixels/Shutterstock The most vexing question in physics right now is how general relativity – the laws that govern gravity and space-time on large scales – meshes with quantum mechanics, the laws that govern very small scales. There are many potential solutions, none proven, and so far very

Female orangutans usually raise a single infant at a time ANDREY GUDKOV/Alamy Orangutan mothers seem to make trips into the territories of other mothers with similarly aged offspring so the youngsters can play together. Play is essential to how many animals learn, strengthening social and motor skills, and teaching crucial behaviour. Yet orangutans are a

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory NASA Goddard Space Flight Center One of NASA’s premier space telescopes is falling, and an audacious mission to rescue it has just begun. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is months from dropping back to Earth, but if the rescue works, it could continue watching the sky for years to come.

Submarine reliefs produced by a survey off the coast of Mayotte in 2019, showing the new underwater volcano Fani Maoré Campagne MAYOBS2 A rising underwater volcano off the coast of Madagascar has been spewing up chemical traces of material from a primordial magma ocean in the first 100 million years of Earth’s history. Scientists generally

Homo floresiensis was a small hominin that lived on the island of Flores LIONEL BRET/EURELIOS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The diminutive ancient humans nicknamed hobbits that lived on the Indonesian island of Flores until around 50,000 years ago had limited hunting skills, according to a study of animal bones found in their caves. Instead, researchers think they

A hunter in Tuktoyaktuk in Canada’s Northwest Territories uses decoy geese to lure birds Natalya Saprunova The realities of a changing global climate collide with years of tradition in Natalya Saprunova’s icy blue photograph, above, part of a series that won the New Scientist Editors Award in the Earth Photo 2026 competition. The image shows

The June heatwave is estimated to have killed more than 5000 people in France Laurent EMMANUEL / AFP via Getty Images Europe’s most extreme heatwave so far may have killed between 17,000 and 25,000 people, according to an early estimate based on past deaths from heat in the region. “These numbers are preliminary,” says Christopher