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Domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe in the past 2000 years, according to DNA evidence, while in China a different species of cat lived alongside people much earlier

Whether it is a cube of sugar or a chunk of a mineral, a mathematical analysis can identify how many fragments of each size any brittle object will break into

Quantum theory fails to explain how the reality we experience emerges from the world of particles. A new take on quantum cause and effect could bridge the gap

Scientists sounded the alarm on the dire consequences of continued inaction at a briefing in London, warning that we could be heading for "unprecedented societal and ecological collapse"

Hotter temperatures and a series of droughts in what is now Pakistan and India fragmented one of the world’s major early civilisations, providing a "warning shot" for today

Chytrid fungus is a scourge to global amphibian populations, but before it kills some frogs, it can produce symptoms that may help the infected animals find mates and spread the fungus further

We can't see dark matter directly, so studying it pushes the boundaries of our creativity as scientists. How exciting, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

It might sound like dystopian science fiction, but discovering how to reshape memories responsibly is helping us to heal the brain from within, says Steve Ramirez

Women's hidden extra work, positive tipping points and new thinking on autism – there's much to chew on in this year's best reads, says Liz Else

Daily steroid pills are often necessary for severe cases of asthma, but they raise the risk of several serious conditions. Now, scientists have shown that a monthly antibody injection can eliminate the need for the pills

Mapping of the main quarry on Easter Island where giant statues were carved has uncovered evidence that the monuments may not have been created under the direction of a single chief

There is a growing body of research on the physical benefits of going for a dip in chilly water, but now researchers are starting to find that cold-water swimming may also be reshaping our brains for the better in lasting ways

Captive giant pandas have been seen breaking off twigs and bamboo pieces to scratch hard-to-reach spots, using a crude opposable thumb that other bears don’t have

New tools that create ultra-precise maps of our tissues are transforming our ability to diagnose and cure once-fatal illnesses

Scientists have finally assigned foot bones found in 2009 to an ancient human species, and the move suggests that different types of hominins lived close by in harmony

Unexplained gamma ray radiation coming from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy could be produced by self-annihilating dark matter particles – but the idea requires further investigation

Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions

The laws of thermodynamics don't accurately account for the complex processes in living cells – do we need a new one to accurately measure the ways living systems are out of equilibrium?

Hoverflies, often mistaken for bees and wasps, pollinate three quarters of our crops. Now we’re discovering we can train them to be even more efficient

The cultivation of wheat, barley and maize, which are easily stored and taxed, seems to have led to the emergence of large societies, rather than agriculture generally

Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion

As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we’re seeing the opposite happen

There are widespread concerns that deep-sea mining for metals will damage fragile ecosystems. But if mining ever goes ahead, hydrogen plasma could shrink the carbon footprint of smelting the metal ores

Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago

The 194 countries still taking part in UN climate negotiations reaffirmed the Paris Agreement following the US withdrawal, even if they agreed on little else

Body fat, often reviled, is actually a vital organ that contributes to your health and well-being. It is time for us to stop vilifying fat and to start exploring how we can harness its power

From woolly mammoths to giant sloths, via some lesser-known ice-age beasts like 'killer koalas', the visuals in this documentary are simply astounding

Botanist James Wong is constantly asked if he plays music to his army of plants. Time to put this notion to the test...

Matter with “forbidden” symmetries was once thought to be confined to lab experiments, but is now being found in some of the world’s most extreme environments

Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe's album Liminal is being transmitted into space by Nobel laureate Robert Wilson. They give Chelsea Whyte the lowdown

The discovery that fat is a communicative organ with a role in everything from bone health to mood is forcing a rethink of how we view our bodies

The distant universe might be littered with supermassive stars between 1000 and 10,000 times the mass of the sun, which could solve a cosmic mystery about the origins of extremely large black holes

Spinning vortices of water trapped under the Thwaites glacier ice shelf account for 20 per cent of the ice melt. They’re expected to get worse as the world warms

Around 1000 markings on a slab of rock that was once a seafloor during the Cretaceous period may have been made by sea turtle flippers and swiftly buried by an earthquake

Conventional computing devices will play a crucial role in turning quantum computers into tools with real-world application

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

The discovery that a toxin made by bacteria found in dirty water might help trigger ulcerative colitis could lead to new treatments for this form of IBD

A newly discovered cluster of objects called the “inner kernel” of the Kuiper belt could teach us about the early history of the solar system – including the movement of Neptune

Mary Roach's new book Replaceable You explores what we do when bits of our bodies break down or need switching out. It makes for a brilliant read – just beware the gory details, warns Carissa Wong

Astronauts strapped moss spores to the outside of the International Space Station for nine months - and most of them survived the challenging experience

Scientists have observed mice helping each other when they encounter difficulties during birth, prompting a rethink of caregiving among rodents and other animals 

In the latest in our imagined history of inventions yet to come, Future Chronicles columnist Rowan Hooper reveals how an ingenious way to avoid being swamped by AI content was invented in the late 2020s

Orforglipron, a GLP-1 drug taken as a pill, achieved positive results in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes, although it seems less effective than injectable drugs

Sport utility vehicles and other larger cars are becoming more and more common, and this is dangerous for our health in many ways. But we have ways to counter "carspreading", says Anthony Laverty

An experiment 180 years ago first demonstrated a connection between light and electromagnetism – but the link is deeper than we thought

The health impacts of men losing their Y chromosome from their cells are increasingly coming to light, with the loss playing a complicated role in the most common form of lung cancer

Feedback is delighted to discover that two academics have taken a scholarly interest in dad jokes, but is unsurprised by their key finding: the people who most enjoy dad jokes are dads

Attempts to describe quantum physics are rarely enjoyable, but Paul Davies' zeal in Quantum 2.0 sometimes steers too close to hype, finds Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

When engineers struggled to make 3D printer nozzles narrow enough for their needs, they turned to nature and found the proboscis of a female mosquito had exactly the properties they needed

The depths of the Arctic Ocean have warmed more than scientists expected. New research has placed the blame on warmer water from Greenland

Google’s latest model reportedly beats its rivals in several benchmark tests, but issues with reliability mean concerns remain over a possible AI bubble

To make quantum computers more efficient and reliable, some of their basic components must be constantly reused – several quantum computer designs can now do just that

Rather than being a recent cultural development, kissing may have been practised by other early humans like Neanderthals and our ape ancestors

A comprehensive UN report has found that cities and towns are home to 81 per cent of the world’s population, much more than previously thought

Ancient rock art was meant to be heard as well as seen and now acoustic archaeologists are bringing the sounds of prehistoric rituals to life

AlphaEvolve, an AI system created by Google DeepMind, is helping mathematicians do research at a scale that was previously impossible - even if it does occasionally "cheat" to find a solution

Physics has a reputation for being dominated by men, especially a century ago, as quantum physics was just being invented – but there have been so many women who helped shaped the field since its inception

Facing its worst drought in decades, Iran is attempting to stimulate rain by spreading seeding agents in clouds, but the technique is likely to have modest benefits at best

A major settlement in Central Asia called Semiyarka dating back to 1600 BC had houses, a big central building and even an industrial zone for producing copper and bronze

A 12,000-year-old clay sculpture found in Israel depicts a goose on the back of a woman, and archaeologists suggest it may be a depiction of an animistic mythological scene

Neanderthals were thought to have structures inside their noses that helped them deal with the cold, but analysis of an exceptionally preserved specimen contradicts that

Some ants kill the queens of another species and take over their colonies, but we now know at least one species gets workers to do the dirty work for them through a kind of chemical subterfuge

Greenland’s melt is expected to slow the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, but research suggests a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet could in some cases prevent it from shutting down

Medical research has long sought to gloss over the hormonal and chromosomal complications typical of female biology. But embracing this complexity could benefit everyone

Do you need to fairly allocate players to teams, or sort out a pot of badly brewed coffee? Katie Steckles has a mathematical solution

Being born with two X chromosomes brings a host of health benefits, and recognising this could lead to personalised medical treatments for men and women

When an asteroid threatens Earth, astronomers use a rating called the Torino scale to communicate the risk. Richard Binzel, who invented the scale, tells New Scientist about his 50-year career in planetary defence

Vince Gilligan, the showrunner behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is back, this time using sci-fi to explore a deceptively rich premise about the pursuit of happiness and the notion of utopia, finds Bethan Ackerley

We admire grit and perseverance, but surprising research suggests that giving up on ambitions in the right way can actually improve our physical and mental health

Mice with the same genetic variant that contributes towards red hair in people were slower to recover from wounds than their black-haired counterparts

RNA from an exceptionally well preserved woolly mammoth gives us a window on gene activity in an animal that died nearly 40,000 years ago

A galaxy in a practically empty area of the universe seems to be impossibly forming stars, and new observations have only deepened the puzzle

From microscopes to geodes, New Scientist staff share their top Christmas present ideas in a gift guide unlike any you’ve seen before

Thousands of holes arranged in a snake-like pattern on Monte Sierpe in Peru could have been a monumental accounting device for trade and tax

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

These photographs of humanoid robots by Henrik Spohler are part of his project Tomorrow Is the Question

Christine Webb's provocative and moving book The Arrogant Ape explores our unjustifiable sense of superiority in the living world, laying out the evidence against it, says Elle Hunt

New technologies and academic funding cuts are upending the ways we learn today. Newly enrolled student Annalee Newitz finds some silver linings

There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesn’t have to be that way

The images hammered into the sides of a goblet found in Palestine give us an idea of what people living more than 4000 years ago imagined the creation of the cosmos looked like

To understand Adolf Hitler, we need to look at his personal life and the wider societal and historical context - analysing his DNA for a TV gimmick tells us nothing, says Michael Le Page

Sexual activity in young people is on the decline, but why? And what's more, should we be worried about what this means for society and the future of the human race?

A new study hammers home how the "survival of the nicest" view makes no sense when it comes to evolution, says Jonathan R. Goodman

Francis Crick's biography is full of surprises as author Matthew Cobb reveals the life and work of the co-discoverer of DNA's structure, finds Michael Le Page

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian apparently thinks the 1969 moon landing was fake. If Feedback comes up with an equally outlandish conspiracy theory, maybe we can also get a guided tour of NASA

Global emissions from fossil fuels are expected to hit another record high in 2025, but China’s carbon emissions appear to be reaching a peak

Lupus has been linked to the Epstein-Barr virus – which causes glandular fever, or mono – before, but we now have evidence of how it can bring about the autoimmune condition

Mild wounds healed faster if people took a spray containing the "love hormone" oxytocin and set aside time to praise their partner – but they cleared up even quicker if these individuals were also intimate with their other half

A coronal mass ejection from a distant star has been confirmed for the first time, raising questions about how such events could impact exoplanet habitability

IBM revealed two new quantum computers, called Loon and Nighthawk – the qubits they use are connected in newly intricate ways and may enable a way to run error-free computations

Previous attempts at building a chemical computer have been too simple, too rigid or too hard to scale, but an approach based on a network of reactions can perform multiple tasks without having to be reconfigured

When measuring yourself against your partner, which traits do you prefer to have compared with your significant other? A survey that forced people to choose has found that men and women have different preferences when it comes to being smarter, funnier or more attractive

All over the world people are ageing more rapidly and succumbing to diseases that typically affected the elderly. But there are ways to turn back the clock on your biological age

The Omo-Turkana basin in Africa is home to a treasure trove of ancient human fossils and tools that span 300,000 years – today it is still yielding new discoveries about our species

Hot flushes could be relieved by listening to recordings that induce hypnosis from home, rather than having to venture to a clinic

High-voltage copper plates can remove up to three-quarters of frost from a surface, while using much less energy than conventional heating

In February, the James Webb Space Telescope will briefly be able to observe asteroid 2024 YR4, which currently has a 4 per cent chance of hitting the moon in 2032. Depending on what it sees, the odds of collision could drastically increase

Brain activity from more than 1000 people shows a rapid transition from being awake to being asleep, rather than a slow transition between the two states

For over a decade, mathematicians have failed to agree whether a 500-page proof is actually correct. Now, translating the proof into a computer-readable form may finally settle the matter

Eight possible cave openings found on the Martian surface look to have once had ancient streams flowing into them, suggesting they are promising places to look for evidence of life