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Voters change their opinions after interacting with an AI chatbot – but, encouragingly, it seems that AIs rely on facts to influence people

The AI industry consumes vast amounts of energy, fresh water and investor cash. Now it also needs memory chips - the same ones used in laptops, smartphones and games consoles

Climate data and historical accounts suggest that crop failures in the 1340s prompted Italian officials to import grain from eastern Europe, and this may have carried in the plague bacterium

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

Pet owners' increasing tendency to see their animals as children rather than dogs or cats can have dire consequences. Owners, and veterinarians, should be wary, warns Eddie Clutton

What were the year's top sci-fi shows? Andor and Severance are still up there, but our TV columnist Bethan Ackerley also has some unexpected tips to share

Feedback is entertained by the commotion at the International Association for Cryptologic Research's recent elections, where results could not be decrypted after an "honest but unfortunate human mistake"

Nearly three decades since the remarkable cloning of Dolly the sheep, it has all gone quiet on the human cloning front. Michael Le Page wonders what's happening behind the scenes

Camera traps in an area of the Leuser rainforest patrolled by NGOs spotted 17 tigers in 2023 and 18 Sumatran tigers in 2024, while surveys elsewhere on the island averaged seven

Duelling prairie chickens, a snake-mimicking moth and a once-a-year sunrise at the South Pole feature in the best images from the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025

By blocking a molecule that pushes the immune system into overdrive, a vaccine protects mice from life-threatening anaphylaxis

We know that pets influence our microbiome, but scientists have now found that having a dog seems to change this ecosystem in a way that could boost our well-being

The covid-19 pandemic opened the door to once-controversial human challenge trials. Now, volunteers are willingly catching norovirus and influenza to reveal how our immune systems really fight back

More than half a million satellites are planned to launch by the end of the 2030s, and simulations suggest they will have a severe impact on space-based astronomy

Conventionally, the moon is thought to have formed during one big impact, but a three-impact model might make more sense

The famous double-slit experiment brings into question the very nature of matter. Its cousin, the quantum eraser experiment, makes us question the very existence of time – and how much we can manipulate it

Today, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula are inhospitable – but 100,000 years ago, the area was full of animals and ancient humans

Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time

Is there any science to viral relationship tests like the bird test, the orange peel theory and the moon phase test? Emily Impett, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Toronto, has the answers

We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar

Russia's only launch site capable of sending humans to orbit has suffered serious damage that may take two years to fix. Will NASA keep supporting the ISS without Russian involvement, or is this the end for the space station?

Over the past 250 million years, periods when coral reef growth has peaked have coincided with big rises in sea temperatures

Tumour growth is reduced by exercise due to a shift in the body’s metabolism that means muscle cells outcompete cancer cells in the race to get sugar to grow

A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free

Vets have developed a training protocol to help cats benefit from water-based rehabilitation therapies, in spite of their natural aversion to water

We have long struggled to determine how the first living organisms on Earth came together. Now, surprising evidence hints that poorly understood prions may have been the vital missing ingredient

From drowned worlds to virtual utopias via deep space, wild ideas abound in Emily H. Wilson's picks for her favourite sci-fi reads of the year

From a new collection of shorter fiction by Brandon Sanderson to Simon Stålenhag’s new work, via a Stranger Things novel, December’s new sci-fi features some compelling and intriguing offerings

Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked

The final COP30 agreement fails to even mention fossil fuels. Countries wanting to tackle climate change must not wait for the next meeting to take action

A chaotic schedule over the holiday season often derails Grace Wade’s workout routine. But this year she has a plan…

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

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

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 have long tried to uncover the perilous journey humans took to reach the ancient land mass that now makes up Australia. Now, a genetic study has edged us closer to understanding how and when they achieved this

Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia

Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame

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

Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being  a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017

Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment

New Scientist Book Club members share their thoughts on our November read, Grace Chan's Every Version of You

The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Iain M. Banks's classic sci-fi novel The Player of Games. In this extract, we meet protagonist Gurgeh for the first time

The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her

See some of the winning entries for this year's Oceania Photo Contest, including Miesa Grobbelaar's shot of a whale, which took the top prize

Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real

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

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

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

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?

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