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Tree bark has a total surface area similar to all of the land area on Earth. It is home to a wide range of microbial species unknown to science, and they can either take up or emit gases that have a warming effect on the climate

A preliminary analysis suggests that industrially useful quantum computers designs come with a broad spectrum of energy footprints, including some larger than the most powerful existing supercomputers

The jawbones and vertebrae of a hominin that lived 773,000 years ago have been found in North Africa and could represent a common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans

Satellite photos show meltwater on the surface of iceberg A23a collecting in an unusual way, which may be a sign that the huge berg is about to break apart

We are going to be getting a lot of exciting new information about galaxies in 2026, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who can't wait to see what it can tell us

A man’s severe reaction to a tattoo, which made all his hair fall out and destroyed his sweat glands, has reignited concerns about the immune effects of some tattoo inks

The curse of having to remember easily hackable passwords may soon be over, as a new alternative is set to take over in 2026

There is a growing trend to see our relationship with nature as a spiritual thing. This is a mistake, argues Richard Smyth

From Fallout and Gen Z Star Trek to the classic Neuromancer, you will be glued to the TV this year, says TV columnist Bethan Ackerley

A comprehensive review confirms the benefits of exercise for treating depression, even if the exact reasons remain unclear

Drugs like Ozempic have transformed how we treat obesity, but a review of almost 40 studies shows it doesn't take long for people to regain weight if they come off them

A collection of arrow points excavated in South Africa has provided the oldest direct evidence of hunters deploying plant-based poisons on their weapons, a practice that has continued into modern times in some traditional cultures

Most planetary systems contain worlds larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, and the low-density planets around one young star should help us understand how such systems form

You might feel like the days and weeks are slipping by. Here is how one psychologist says you can shift your experience of time

A 1.78-million-year-old partial elephant skeleton found in Tanzania associated with stone tools may represent the oldest known evidence of butchery of the giant herbivores

AI models such as ChatGPT and Gemini fail to give adequate advice for 60 per cent of queries relating to women’s health in a test created by medical professionals

Immune cells are most commonly engineered to kill cancers, but now, scientists have shown the technique makes the gut lining of older mice resemble that of younger mice, raising hopes that the same approach could work in people

The earliest acoustic vibrations in the cosmos weren’t exactly sound – they travelled at half the speed of light and there was nobody around to hear them anyway. But Jim Baggott says from the first moments, the universe was singing

The benefits of sleep may be more universal than we thought. We know it helps clear waste from the brain in humans, and now it seems that even creatures without brains like ours get similar benefits

An ambitious form of climate modelling aims to pin the blame for disasters – from floods to heatwaves – on specific companies. Is this the tool we need to effectively prosecute the world’s biggest carbon emitters?

For nearly three decades, the International Space Station has been the only destination in low Earth orbit, but that will change this year. Could it be the start of a thriving economy in space?

Modelling suggests both carbon taxes and green subsidies will be necessary to decarbonise the US economy, but the inconsistent policies of successive presidents are the "worst case" scenario

The BepiColombo mission has been on its way to Mercury since 2018 and will finally start orbiting the planet and taking X-ray images in the second half of 2026

The Prudhoe ice dome disappeared during a warm period 7000 years ago. Global warming could cause similar temperatures by 2100, showing the Greenland ice sheet’s vulnerability

For years, we've thought of autism as lying on a spectrum, but emerging evidence suggests that it comes in several distinct types. The implications for how we support autistic people could be profound

A galaxy cluster in the early universe is 10 times hotter than it ought to be, which may reshape how we think these enormous structures formed

A study of 160 European famines between 1500 and 1800 shows that El Niño weather events led to the onset of some famines and extended the duration of others

A host of new science books are due to hit shelves in January, by authors including Claudia Hammond, Deborah Cohen and Daisy Fancourt

The US government is approving the drug leucovorin to address rising rates of autism, despite limited evidence that it works. This year, results from the largest trial yet should give more insight into its potential

An analysis of several experiments aimed at detecting the mysterious neutrino has identified a hint of a crack in the standard model of particle physics

Researchers at Google have used their Willow quantum computer to demonstrate that "quantum contextuality" may be a crucial ingredient for its computational prowess

Reflect Orbital plans to launch thousands of reflective mirrors to produce "sunlight on demand", but researchers are sceptical about whether the reflected light will be enough to generate electricity

Big hitter Peter F. Hamilton has a new sci-fi novel out this month – and Booker winner George Saunders ventures into speculative fiction with his latest book, Vigil

GLP-1 agonists have already had an outsized influence on society, and with pill versions and more advanced formulations on the horizon, that looks set to continue

Stunning and shocking images from upcoming exhibition Water Pantanal Fire show how this tropical wetland has been hit by wildfires

The science behind why stroking your seedlings actually works. If you’re worried about your seedlings getting long and leggy, try a bit of home thigmomorphogenesis, advises James Wong

Navigating the night sky can have a positive effect on our well-being. This will be the year I learn the constellations, resolves Michael Brooks

Did Sahelanthropus, which lived 7 million years ago, walk on two legs like a modern human? It's complicated

After the New START treaty expires in February, there will be no cap on the number of US and Russian nuclear weapons - but some are sceptical about whether the deal actually made the world safer

Astronomers were puzzled by a black hole around 50 million times the mass of the sun with no stars, spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope – now simulations suggest it could be a primordial black hole, something we have never seen before

Chess960 involves shuffling the pieces at the back of the board, and an analysis suggests doing so can increase the complexity of the game to favour white, black or neither player

The price of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy put them out of reach for most people with obesity, but new arrivals and expiring patents should change that this year

The New Scientist Book Club has just finished our December read, Iain M. Banks's sci-fi novel The Player of Games - and most of us were fans of this big-thinking Culture tale

The author of the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, on how she created her startling protagonist

In this extract from the award-winning science fiction novel Annie Bot, the January read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to Sierra Greer's protagonist, a sex robot called Annie

A woman's body has been found to consist of varying proportions of male and female cells because of an extremely rare form of chimerism

Clear out your shelves for a bumper new crop of books by authors including Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit and Xand Van Tulleken, says culture editor Alison Flood

On the horizon for this year are Ann Leckie's latest, Neil Jordan's debut and more from Adrian Tchaikovsky. Exciting times, says our sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson

Researchers have confirmed the mass of a free-floating planet thanks to a lucky convergence of ground- and space-based telescopes

Flocean, a Norwegian company, is set to open the world’s first commercial-scale subsea desalination plant, an approach that could cut the cost and energy used to make seawater drinkable

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will be launching the Martian Moons eXploration mission next year, which should finally tell us how Mars acquired the moons Phobos and Deimos

In the latest in our imagined history of inventions yet to come, Future Chronicles columnist Rowan Hooper reveals how by the 2030s, botanists had worked out how to grow hybridised superplants to help feed the world

Drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have transformed how we treat obesity, but more effective treatments could be down the road

Olivia Remes, a mental health researcher at the University of Cambridge, says these are the three things everyone should do this New Year to cultivate a more positive mindset

Eleven companies are working towards an ambitious goal as part of the US Department of Energy's plan to fast-track the development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies

Understanding the chemical properties of a molecule is an inherently quantum problem, making quantum computers a good tool for the job – and we may start seeing this take off in 2026

The warm and fuzzy emotion of kama muta underlies vital feel-good experiences like social connection and feeling part of something bigger. But are you getting enough of it?

In 2026, the European Union will start charging a carbon-emissions-based tax on imported goods such as steel, cement and fertilisers – and countries including the UK are likely to follow

Astronomers have found a system of three supermassive black holes, all actively feeding, that appear to be combining into a single system – a rare event that will help elucidate the physics of complex mergers

Two later-stage trials investigating LSD for treating anxiety are due to conclude in 2026, which could lead to the drug being approved for the common mental health condition

An explorer and a glaciologist are kite-skiing across Antarctica with a ground-penetrating radar to gather data that will help understand the past and future of the ice sheet

In 1892, astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard thought he saw a bright star near Venus, but then it vanished. We may now know why

Cacio e pepe pasta and boiled eggs were the subjects of meticulous studies aiming to help cooks achieve perfection, but the reimagined recipes weren't always well-received

A soldier returned from the Sahara desert in 1916 with a wild story about a meteorite that dwarfed all others. Over 100 years of hunting yielded nothing – but now twin brothers think they have solved the puzzle

With a storage capacity of 36 petabytes, a DNA-based cassette tape can hold every song every recorded, and it could be on the market within five years

Some of the world's most advanced robots showed off their skills at tech shows and sporting events, doing everything from cooking shrimp to running half marathons

A photon was apparently detected in two places at once in a twist on the classic double-slit experiment, but many physicists didn't accept the results

An analysis of ongoing trials suggests that mRNA cancer vaccines have the potential to deliver health benefits worth $75 billion each year in the US alone

It took 125 years, but in 2025 a team of mathematicians discovered the solution to a long-puzzling problem about the equations that govern the behaviour of particles in a fluid

There is a state of relaxation that few of us spend much time in, but which comes with profound well-being benefits. With healthier ageing, reduced risk of disease and feeling more energised all on offer, here's how to get there

It has been claimed that because most of our DNA is active, it must be important, but now human-plant hybrid cells have been used to show this activity is mostly random noise

The Linac Coherent Light Source in California has been firing record-breaking X-ray pulses for years, but now it’s due for a shutdown and an upgrade. When it is turned back on, it will be even more powerful

The Majorana 1 quantum computer was hailed as a significant breakthrough by Microsoft, but critics say the company has yet to prove it actually works despite a year of debate

From our immune systems to our microbiomes, if you're planning to make health improvements in the new year, having an eye on the numbers can help set you up for success

Three start-ups are aiming to create gene-edited babies. Columnist Michael Le Page has no doubt that editing our offspring will one day become routine, but not like this

Mathematician Katie Steckles explains just why the proliferation of snowflake decorations this time of year is deeply annoying

From mudstones on Mars to strange gases in exoplanet atmospheres, tentative evidence for extraterrestrial life is starting to come thick and fast. But when we've found it, how will we know for sure?

The ideas presented in George Lakoff and Srini Narayanan's The Neural Mind are fascinating, but the writing is far less compelling

From vitamin C to your microbiome and mindset, the latest science of immunity is often counterintuitive. Here's how to give your system a fighting chance to overcome infection

Somewhere at the edge of mathematics lurks a number so large that it breaks the very foundations of our understanding - and in 2025 we came a step closer to finding it

A village buried by a landslide, the world’s largest tidal bore and the aftermath of ferocious storms and wildfires appear in our pick of images from environment stories this year

Tantalising signs of past microbial life showed up on Mars this year, but to truly know whether they contain the answer to the biggest question in the universe, we will need to bring samples back to Earth

At the Q2B Silicon Valley conference, scientific and business leaders of the quantum computing industry hailed "spectacular" progress being made towards practical devices – but said that challenges remain

The detection of mercurial particles of light emanating from mice led to a flurry of interest in biophotons, a mysterious phenomenon that could have applications in agriculture

Palaeontologists reported some remarkable dinosaur fossils this year, including a Velociraptor relative, a dome-headed pachycephalosaur and one of the most heavily armoured creatures that ever lived

Focusing on the futuristic tech that appears in sci-fi without paying attention to the actual point of the story is a big mistake, says Annalee Newitz

A microscope that cost less than £50 and took under 3 hours to build using a common 3D printer could be transformative for students and researchers with limited funding

The festive season is a period of social connection for many of us, but alone time can be equally enriching, says Thuy-vy Nguyen, principal investigator of the Solitude Lab

Feedback's eyebrows are raised at tech millionaire Bryan Johnson's latest exploits, which involve Grimes, music, and hallucinogenic mushrooms

With the human family tree now more like a hedge and twice as many known moons, Bill Bryson talks to the New Scientist podcast about refreshing his 2003 bestselling book on science

A new theory of "dark photons" attempted to explain a centuries-old experiment in a new way this year, in an effort to change our understanding of the nature of light

The first Denisovan skull, an ancient hunter’s toolkit and a Roman man’s brain that has turned to glass: here are our picks of the year’s most striking findings about prehistoric humans

Astronomers discovered a new moon of Uranus and hundreds of moons around Saturn over the past year, and there may be many more yet to be found

Careful slope monitoring prevented mass casualties in the landslide at Blatten, Switzerland, this year, but mountain communities may face a growing risk of disasters

Growing evidence reveals that creativity is one of the best-kept secrets for boosting your health. From live theatre to a quick crafting break, here’s how to harness the power of art in your everyday life

The year’s most memorable moments from astronomy and space exploration include a double-detonating supernova, a private moon landing and a stunning lunar eclipse

Scientists cultivating partnerships of fungi and algae believe their invention has far-out implications for how we create the buildings of the future

An experimental gene therapy seems to slow the progression of Huntington’s disease by about 75 per cent, and researchers are working to make its complicated delivery much more practical

Ejaculating within 48 hours of providing a sperm sample for IVF seems to lead to greater success rates than abstaining from ejaculation for longer

The liquid ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa appears to be completely sealed off from the planet’s surface, which may reduce the chances of finding life there