News news, articles, and features | New Scientist

Just a few hundred thousand years after an asteroid wiped out most dinosaurs, large alligators were thriving in North America

Mathematicians now have a formidable tool for breaking open challenging problems, but working out how best to use it isn't going to be easy

Ecosystems like wetlands emit more carbon as temperatures rise. By 2100, such feedback loops will increase warming by 20 to 30 per cent more than anticipated

An influx of immune cells into the uterus may be what initiates childbirth. These grab on to muscle cells via tiny tubes and send across mitochondria to provide energy for contractions

A group of astronomers proposes that a series of events in a distant galaxy formed both a black hole and a pulsar, but other experts say the conclusion is premature

A dinosaur, possibly a young Tyrannosaurus rex, excreted a bird 66 million years ago, and one of its feathers is exquisitely preserved in the fossilised dropping

Since OpenAI announced its solution to one of the prestigious Millennium Prize Problems, mathematicians have been urgently trying to unpick what it means

If the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere declines, the Southern Ocean is likely to begin emitting more carbon than it absorbs, prolonging global warming

Famous and challenging problems in mathematics are falling to AI at a rapid pace. Where does this leave mathematicians and what will the field look like in coming years?

Global warming and a record El Niño have pushed Earth’s temperature more than 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, and further heat is on the way

The human brain flushes out waste products while we sleep and now it seems that certain sounds might enhance the process

Unusually high temperatures over the mountainous region can kick-start a chain of events that ultimately leads to a severe deluge on the US West Coast, scientists say

Strange, rounded grooves in prehistoric teeth are thought to have been made by regularly sucking whole betel nuts to extract a pain-relieving compound. This marks the earliest known example of probable substance addiction

AI firms are making new mathematical discoveries at a rapid pace, but not sticking around to help unpick the new proofs. That is not the way to advance our understanding, says mathematician Terence Tao

The upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory should be able to spot the glint of water on habitable planets, and maybe more

8 September should have been an exciting day of celebration for mathematicians worldwide. Instead, it became a confusing, salacious and intriguing drama. Why was the solution to one of the world's toughest mathematical problems embroiled in controversy?

Taking the painkiller paracetamol (acetaminophen) during pregnancy has been linked to smaller ovaries and testes in baby girls and boys, but that doesn't mean it directly caused them or affects fertility

One of the trickiest problems in mathematics has now fallen to AI after just days of work. The groundbreaking result was announced amid rumour after similar, but less complete work, also created with AI, was announced just hours before

Some have claimed cultivating seaweed could remove hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2. But as warming waters kill off kelp, we need to refocus on preserving what we have, a study argues

Bursts of electrical stimulation to a nerve in the face seem to improve signalling between neurons and people's performance on a memory test