Science

Once upon a time, a strong, attractive hero lost one or both of his parents. He then overcame a series of obstacles and faced off against a monster that had terrorised his community. The hero vanquished the monster and was celebrated. If this story sounds familiar, that’s because it is the road travelled by Superman,

Fire and rescue services douse fires after a collision between an oil tanker and a cargo ship carrying sodium cyanide Getty Images Europe Scientists fear a major collision between a cargo ship and a fuel tanker in the UK’s North Sea could cause a huge leak of toxic chemicals into delicate marine habitats, with potentially

An experiment tests how holes from tree-killing beetles affect carbon emissions when wood burns Shudong Zhang et al. 2025 Beetle attacks on dead wood could boost the amount of carbon released during wildfires. “The beetles do make a difference,” says Hans Cornelissen at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Researchers already knew that, by killing

A whole lot of mating garter snakes seeer/Imazins/Getty Images Birds do it, a few bees get to do it – but how did sexual reproduction evolve in the first place? An evolutionary model suggests that it could have started as a way for two cells to pool their resources when favourable environments turn harsh. “The

A map of the sky assembled using data from the Gaia space telescope, with the centre of the Milky Way in the middle of the image ESA/Gaia/DPAC Astronomers have had a rare glimpse into the heart of the Milky Way thanks to an errant star expelled from the galactic centre. At the middle of our

Just one extra year of schooling could make all the difference to your cognitive health SolStock/Getty Images In 1972, the UK government raised the minimum school-leaver’s age from 15 to 16, with the goal of giving more students intellectual skills for modern occupations. Now, as these teens pass though their sixties, another benefit may be

A destructive tornado near Minden, Iowa in April 2024 Jonah Lange/Getty Images Widespread firings and staffing changes at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) could make the country’s weather forecasts less reliable, according to multiple researchers and the American Meteorological Society. “The consequences to the American people will be large and wide-ranging, including

Stand Up for Science rally in Washington Square Park in New York City on 7 March James Dinneen Thousands of people in cities across the US protested the Trump administration’s cuts to scientific funding on 7 March. In New York City, more than a thousand people gathered in Washington Square Park, chanting, “Fund science not

Like all medicines, Ozempic is not without side effects myskin/Shutterstock Ozempic, Wegovy and similar drugs are, without a doubt, revolutionising medicine. They have transformed our ability to manage obesity and type 2 diabetes, but have actually shown potential for a wide range of conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, addiction and depression. Yet, as our understanding

The IM-2 mission in low lunar orbit Intuitive Machines Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander has made it to the moon, but it seems to have fallen over. The lander is still working, but it is not yet clear which parts of its mission it will still be able to accomplish. The spacecraft launched onboard a SpaceX

A coot’s nest filled with plastic rubbish in Amsterdam AUKE-FLORIAN HIEMSTRA Covid-19 face masks, a chocolate wrapper from 1994 and a 30-year-old polystyrene burger box – the nests of Amsterdam’s Eurasian coots chart changes to consumer society through plastic waste. Usually, Eurasian coots (Fulica atra) build their waterside nests from scratch each year using natural,

Sea ice on the Arctic Ocean Shutterstock / Kevin Xu There was less sea ice covering the oceans in February of this year than at any other point on record, according to satellite measurements from the European Union’s climate service Copernicus. “One of the consequences of a warmer world is melting sea ice, and the

Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library “Careless pork costs lives”, wrote The Sun newspaper, a British tabloid, in a headline about the bowel cancer risks associated with eating bacon sandwiches. That scaremongering story was published almost a decade ago, but spurious claims about lifestyle choices and cancer – especially bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer –

Male chimpanzees sometimes make sexual contact in stressful times Jake Brooker/ Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust Some chimpanzees seem to use sexual behaviour like genital rubbing to manage stressful situations, which shows they aren’t as different from hypersexual bonobos – our other closest living ape relatives – or, indeed, people as we thought. Jake Brooker at

Water was born as the result of exploding stars pixelparticle/Getty Images The first water molecules may have formed just 100 million to 200 million years after the big bang – before even the first galaxies – kicking off a process that led to life on Earth… and possibly elsewhere. Shortly after the big bang, most

DARPA envisions growing structures hundreds of metres long Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo The US military is brainstorming ways to build large structures in space, from telescope antennas to elevator tethers. By growing these objects in microgravity using biological organisms, they hope to avoid the costly and painstaking process of launching components from

Shortly after my 54th birthday, I received a package. The enclosed instructions told me that next time I emptied my bowels, I should scrape a bit of the stool into a small sample bottle, seal it in a pre-paid envelope and drop it into the post. I did the deed and, a few weeks later,

How do time and space relate to computation? We have a new answer Xuanyu Han/Getty Images An astonishing discovery about the relationship between the amount of memory a computation requires and how long it takes has wowed computer scientists – although it isn’t clear if there are any practical applications. “It kind of shakes my

Capuchins can use stone tools to access food Roland Seitre/NaturePL Critically endangered golden-bellied capuchins (Sapajus xanthosternos) are more widespread than researchers previously thought, and stone tools might be the secret to their success. Although golden-bellied capuchins are usually found in the humid Atlantic Forest of eastern Brazil, Waldney Martins at the State University of Montes

GPT-4.5 is OpenAI’s latest chatbot model CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images OpenAI has unveiled its latest AI model, GPT-4.5, but the firm’s boss says it is running out of hardware to power it. If ever-larger AI can no longer be run at scale, then are we looking at the end of the technology’s rapid progress,