Vetenskapsnyheter

Feedback is alarmed by a study that explored how funny people think they are, and that discovered certain traits in those who rate themselves the most humorous

Researchers suggesting that the keto diet could treat mental health conditions find themselves uncomfortably aligned with people like vaccine-sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, but that is not a reason to reject the idea

A photo essay from Tommy Trenchard explores efforts to protect the fragile ecosystems of oases in Chad

Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves

Researchers diving 7 kilometres deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science

The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's rings

Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties

A near miss with a Waymo while cycling through London hasn't changed my optimistic stance on driverless cars, but we can't ever let our guard down, says Matthew Sparkes

Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. Despite their limitations, these remotely controlled robots could be the deciding factor in many conflicts

Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals

A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals

Bleaching has devastated reefs around the world, raising fears of an irreversible shift. Yet new interventions have revealed that corals can be remarkably resilient if we can give them enough help to recover

Drill cores at the impact site of the Chicxulub asteroid show evidence that, alongside widespread destruction, the collision created a vast underground ecosystem filled with hot water that sheltered microbial life

Brown dwarfs are somewhere between the size of a planet and a star, so how could we have potentially mistaken two of them for distant galaxies? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argues that solving this cosmic mix-up is particularly possible now, as galaxy research has never been stronger

Physics is considered a cold, hard science – but it will transform your life if you view it with a bit more subjectivity, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Anthropic has warned that recursive-self-improving AI could be on the horizon, but the truth is the company is more immediately concerned with marketing itself for a blockbuster initial public offering on the stock market, says Matthew Sparkes

The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Marshall examines how archaeologists are rethinking this critical part of our history

We’ve all been there. You walk upstairs only to find yourself wondering why you bothered. You blank on an acquaintance’s name, just as you’re introducing them. Or maybe, after a frantic search, you find your car keys in the fridge of all places. Such momentary lapses of memory can be disconcerting, but they are part and parcel of getting older, and very much to be expected. “Decline in what researchers call episodic memory – what happened, where and when – is a normal part of human cognitive ageing,” says Ulman Lindenberger , a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. “In most adults, decline becomes apparent in their 60s… and it affects all stages of memory, from the encoding of new events over consolidation to retention and recall.” Read more Unprecedented insight into memory champion's brain reveals his tricks Unprecedented insight into memory champion's brain reveals his tricks This is largely explained by structural and functional changes to the brain that begin in middle age and accelerate from there. In a 2025 paper analysing more than 3700 “cognitively healthy” adults, Lindenberger and his colleagues found age-related memory decline tracks closely with the deterioration of connections between brain regions , itself the result of the gradual degradation of the fatty coating that insulates neurons, and shrinkage of the hippocampus – a brain region crucial in forming new memories. This is nothing to worry about, says Lindenberger. “Learning and episodic memory are all about forming new, and remembering previously formed, associations – and the corresponding machinery of our brains becomes less reliable with advancing adult age.” What’s more, in many cases, everyday memory failures are actually just failures of attention: if your brain never properly encoded where you put your keys because you were distracted or stressed in the moment, there isn’t much in the way of memory to retrieve later. The…

A diverse range of bird species has been recorded at a solar park on rewetted peatland in Germany, suggesting that combining energy generation with habitat restoration could benefit biodiversity, the climate and the economy

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned tech firms, including Apple and Google, that they must voluntarily implement tools to stop children sharing explicit images, but experts warn this is easier said than done

Over half of the planet’s freshwater reservoirs will be “functionally dead” by 2060 due to sediment build-up, a study has predicted. Dams block silt, sand and gravel from flowing downstream, so over time this material accumulates in reservoirs, shrinking the space for water. The trapping of sediment can also compromise dam safety and have damaging impacts on downstream ecosystems. Read more Oceans are darkening all over the planet – what’s going on? Oceans are darkening all over the planet – what’s going on? Kai Liu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China, and his colleagues used satellite imagery, sedimentation data and machine learning to analyse the capacity of over 550,000 reservoirs globally. They found that the amount of water being lost annually to sedimentation is more than 36 cubic kilometres – comparable to the volume of China’s massive Three Gorges Reservoir. According to the researchers, a reservoir is considered “functionally dead” once it is over half full of sediment. Unmissable news about our planet, delivered straight to your inbox each month. Australia and Spain are projected to be the worst-affected countries. Nearly 85 per cent of Australian and three-quarters of Spanish reservoirs are predicted to pass their functional lifespans by 2060. In arid regions, nearly three-quarters of reservoirs may become functionally dead by 2060, compared with half of those in humid zones. In Namibia, over 99 per cent of dams are in danger, and along the Western Australian coast, the figure is nearly 96 per cent. Liu and his colleagues estimate that each decade the world is losing over 7 per cent of its freshwater storage capacity, meaning that water supplies to over 2 billion people are threatened, along with more than a quarter of global irrigated land. To address the problem, the team recommends strategies such as including upstream reforestation, land stabilisation and erosion control, which would reduce sediment flow into reservoirs. E…

Thirteen years ago, I was on the brink of death. My nearly year-long battle with anorexia nervosa had reached a tipping point: tests showed my heart could give out at any moment, and I was rushed to the emergency room. But I didn’t care. I only wanted to go home and celebrate my 15 th birthday with the two chocolate-covered strawberries I had allotted in my self-imposed calorie restrictions. It wasn’t that I wanted to die. The fear of eating more and gaining weight simply felt more immediate than the reality of my heart failing. That paradox – continuing to starve yourself despite the consequences – is why anorexia nervosa remains one of the deadliest and most challenging mental health conditions to treat. Roughly a third of those affected don’t recover , even with treatment. Read more Chronic inflammation messes with your mind. Here's how to calm it Chronic inflammation messes with your mind. Here's how to calm it “We could do much, much better. That is clear,” says Ulrike Schmidt at King’s College London. She is part of a growing group of researchers who, in recent years, have turned to the brain for answers, and these efforts are finally bearing fruit. A wave of studies now suggests that anorexia nervosa alters circuits governing reward, habit and emotion – changes that may explain why eating can become so aversive, even for people who want to recover. The latest on what’s new in science and why it matters each day. While it is still early days, these insights are already reshaping how we think about anorexia and inspiring potential new therapies, from brain stimulation to experimental medications, that could one day shift treatment outcomes. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterised by severe calorie restriction and an intense fear of gaining weight, typically leading to dangerously low body weight. Estimates suggest it affects up to 4 per cent of women and 0.3 per cent of men during their lifetime, though some studies indicate incidences …

A huge study into the biology of endometriosis has revealed new mechanisms by which it may cause its severe and wide-ranging effects on health , paving the way for improved treatments. The work, which included data from more than a million women, is also the first to identify specific genes linked to endometriosis in people of African ancestry, a group that has historically been under-represented in research on the condition. “We were able to pinpoint around 300 genes that are going to be really exciting for the field to focus on,” says Shefali Setia-Verma at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more A deeper understanding of endometriosis is suggesting new treatments A deeper understanding of endometriosis is suggesting new treatments Endometriosis is a chronic, often debilitating condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body, forming lesions. It affects around 10 per cent of women of reproductive age and can cause fatigue, severe pain and fertility problems. It has also been linked with cardiovascular disease, but the biological mechanisms behind this association have remained unclear. To investigate, Setia-Verma and her colleagues took a “multi-omics” approach, combining analyses of genes, proteins, the microbiome and endometriosis symptoms to build a holistic view of the condition. They analysed data from 14 global biobanks, which together hold information about more than a million women. Their initial analyses identified 58 areas of the genome associated with endometriosis, 27 of which were previously unrecognised. A deeper analysis pinpointed 314 genes linked to its development. Importantly, the study uncovered three genetic regions associated with endometriosis that were detected only by analysing the genomes of people with African ancestry. Your science-backed guide to the easy habits that will help you sleep well, stress less, eat smarter and age better. Many of the genes most strongly linked to endomet…

It may one day be possible to reap some of the benefits of sleep without ever closing our eyes. Stimulating specific brain activity in awake mice led to some of the same effects as deep sleep, including a boost in memory. “It should be possible, at least in theory and to some extent, to replicate these results in our species,” says Vladyslav Vyazovskiy at the University of Oxford, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It would be fascinating to explore whether artificially inducing [this activity] during waking [hours] in humans can result in a subjective feeling of being more refreshed and rested afterwards.” Read more It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day It’s your perception of sleep that’s making you feel tired all day Sleep is thought to be an essential way for the brain to carry out most of its maintenance work. This includes synaptic homeostasis, the process whereby the brain declutters the thousands of new neural connections made during the day – storing important ones and weakening or cutting away ones that aren’t as necessary. During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep – the deep sleep state that makes up around 80 per cent of sleep in adults – the brain’s cortex repeatedly fires signals at the exact same time and then shuts those neurons off, in a pattern called slow-wave sleep activity. “This has been linked to synaptic homeostasis, and may be a key mechanism underlying sleep’s restorative functions,” says Chiara Cirelli at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cirelli and her colleagues wondered if a small part of the cortex could be nudged into entering this deep sleep state while an individual is still awake. Some animals do this naturally, such as dolphins, ducks and fur seals, in which one half of the brain enters NREM sleep while the other remains alert and vigilant for predators. Your science-backed guide to the easy habits that will help you sleep well, stress less, eat smarter and age better. To see if a si…