Science

The ability to admit ignorance could be a sign of truly intelligent AI, and a new quiz of unsolved or perhaps even unsolvable questions aims to put this idea to the test View Source Here

A Red Cross worker spraying chlorine-based disinfectant in Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 2024 MOISE KASEREKA/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Mpox surged in parts of East, West and Central Africa in 2024, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it a public health emergency of international concern in August. This was just over

Drill rig in Nebraska run by Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC, which established its first hydrogen borehole in 2019 Viacheslav Zgonnik For the past few years, companies and prospectors around the world have been hunting for underground reserves of natural hydrogen, spurred by estimates that Earth contains trillions of tonnes of the gas. If found, this

Exercise has many health benefits Jane Williams/Alamy Getting a good night’s sleep and other healthy habits could slow the biological ageing of your brain, potentially protecting against conditions like dementia. These habits, known as the Life’s Essential 8 checklist, were originally intended to help people boost their cardiovascular health. They include getting the equivalent of

The US Navy’s Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Hampton MC2 Chase Stephens/U.S. Navy/Alamy The US Navy has a long wish list of applications for quantum computers, ranging from basic science – understanding corrosion, a fleet’s constant enemy – to more intriguing uses like war game simulations. Although quantum computers have rapidly improved in recent

It isn’t entirely clear why bowel cancer is on the rise among adults under 50 STEVE GSCHMEISSNER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Rates of bowel cancer in younger adults have increased in countries around the world, though the trend appears to be most common in high-income nations. Previous studies have shown that bowel, or colorectal, cancer rates have

A severe storm brought on by La Niña in Queensland, Australia Genevieve Vallee / Alamy Stock Photo The average global surface temperature during 2025 will be between 1.29°C and 1.53°C – and most likely 1.41°C – above the pre-industrial average, according to a forecast by the Met Office, the UK’s national weather and climate service.

Jared Isaacman partially exited a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft in September SpaceX Private companies reached several milestones in space this year, including the first private lunar lander touchdown and the first civilian spacewalk, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX played a key role in many of these missions. The first big event for the sector this year

Servers fill a data centre in Texas Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images As data centres consume even more energy to serve the intensive computing needs of artificial intelligence, they increase the emissions of air pollutants. This could already be impacting public health, and by 2030, it could contribute to an estimated

Google says its new quantum chip is its most powerful yet Google Quantum AI Google has unveiled a new quantum computer and is once more claiming to have pulled ahead in the race to show that these exotic machines can beat even the world’s best conventional supercomputers – so does that mean useful quantum computers

In the 1970s, in a grave in a Bronze Age cemetery in Shahr-i Sokhta, Iran, an incredible object was unearthed next to a human skull: the oldest complete board game ever discovered. Around 4500 years old, it consists of a board with 20 circular spaces created from the coils of a carved snake, four dice

The prototype of an IBM optics module for connecting chips with fibre optics Ryan Lavine for IBM An optical fibre technology can help chips communicate with each other at the speed of light, enabling them to transmit 80 times as much information as they could using traditional electrical connections. That could significantly speed up the

A highly infectious strain of bird flu has been circulating worldwide since 2020 ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images The H5N1 bird flu virus that has spread worldwide is already better at infecting people than earlier strains. What’s more, a single mutation could allow it to infect the cells lining our noses and throats, making it

A destructive storm in Spain in 2022 produced large hailstones up to 12 centimetres in diameter Tomeu Rigo Ribas A scanner at a dentist’s office has produced the first high-resolution 3D images of the internal structure of large hailstones. Such detailed views could help researchers better forecast which storms will generate these destructive pieces of

Scientists swab the cloaca of a wild leopard shark at North Stradbroke Island off Brisbane, Australia, in order to examine its recent diet MVErdman A team of scientists, conservationists and vets will soon set out to achieve a world first in conservation by collecting semen from sharks in the wild. From 7 to 14 December,

A drunken forest in Alaska, where trees are tilting or collapsing to the ground due to permafrost melt Global Warming Images/Shutterstock Melting permafrost in Arctic forests may cause trees to tilt to the side in ways that slow their growth, reducing the amount of carbon these “drunken forests” store. The northern hemisphere’s boreal forest is

AI found a new way to entangle particles of light luchschenF/Shutterstock Quantum entanglement just got easier, thanks to artificial intelligence. Researchers discovered a new procedure for creating quantum links between particles, and it could be used for building quantum communication networks in the future. This new method came as a surprise. Mario Krenn at the

Infinity is more complex than you might think Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images A new kind of infinity appears to break the rules of how extremely large numbers behave, and could redraw the way the mathematical universe is ordered. It may come as a surprise, but mathematicians have long known that there is more than one kind

Tencent is one of China’s largest technology companies Cynthia Lee/Alamy Chinese tech giant Tencent doesn’t seem to be affected by US export bans of computer chips that are crucial to the development of artificial intelligence systems – but even if such bans were more stringent, they may not be able to slow the country’s AI

This brain implant contains tens of thousands of lab-engineered neurons Science Corporation An experimental brain implant containing tens of thousands of living neurons can form cell connections with the brains of mice. Such a device could eventually enable sophisticated control over millions of neurons on the level of individual cells – but without relying on