A small trial suggests a supplement containing dead bacteria could offer a cheaper alternative to weight-loss drugs such as semaglutide, but further evidence is needed

An out-of-control SpaceX rocket that crashed into the moon earlier this week did, in fact, leave an impact crater, according to images from a Korea AeroSpace Administration lunar orbiter that caught before-and-after photographs

Researchers are investigating whether artificially thickening ice blockages between Canada and Greenland could prevent huge amounts of sea ice from flowing south to melt

High temperatures and low water levels have forced several countries to shut down nuclear reactors just as citizens turn up their air conditioning, forcing energy prices to spike and raising the threat of blackouts

Even during a solar eclipse, it isn’t safe to look directly at the sun, but with a proper solar filter or a simple pinhole projector, you can still watch it disappear behind the moon

Carbon savings from driving EVs are so large that it makes sense to scrap a working petrol car to make the switch

An AI model from DeepMind can predict cyclones three days ahead with a level of accuracy that previous models can only hit a day later

The widespread belief that some foods benefit from a night in the fridge has been put to the test, and it seems to be true for some curries, but not lasagne

A study involving 12,000 adults in the US suggests that taking action to prevent dementia during your 50s can make a big difference later in life

Altering the gut microbiomes of people with peanut allergy using faeces donated from an allergy-free individual improved their peanut tolerance in a clinical trial

Could a "demon" break one of the most fundamental laws of physics? Maxwell's demon has puzzled physicists for more than 150 years

The laws of physics seemed to forbid a strange variety of black holes that could have zero temperature. Columnist Jacklin Kwan explores research that shows these strange behemoths can really exist – and how they could test the limits of thermodynamics

An out-of-control SpaceX rocket that crashed into the moon earlier this week did, in fact, leave an impact crater, according to images from a Korea AeroSpace Administration lunar orbiter that caught before-and-after photographs

Even during a solar eclipse, it isn’t safe to look directly at the sun, but with a proper solar filter or a simple pinhole projector, you can still watch it disappear behind the moon

Remarkable images of the sun show vortices on its surface that have never been seen before because they are so small

A rocket launched last year is thought to have smashed into the lunar surface this morning, creating the moon's newest crater

An AI model from DeepMind can predict cyclones three days ahead with a level of accuracy that previous models can only hit a day later

People appear to prefer short stories created by AI over those written by humans. They are also no better than chance at telling which is which

Jacob Tsimerman won a Fields medal last month – now he is leaving mathematics to work on AI safety

AI chatbots can describe reality in words, but don’t truly understand cause and effect in the real world. Now, a fresh kind of machine intelligence that does just that is emerging

A small trial suggests a supplement containing dead bacteria could offer a cheaper alternative to weight-loss drugs such as semaglutide, but further evidence is needed

A study involving 12,000 adults in the US suggests that taking action to prevent dementia during your 50s can make a big difference later in life

Altering the gut microbiomes of people with peanut allergy using faeces donated from an allergy-free individual improved their peanut tolerance in a clinical trial

Beef-liver supplements are said to be more effective at raising iron levels than standard tablets, but is it true? Columnist Alice Klein looks into the evidence behind the claims

A company has created dogs that do not have the main protein that provokes allergies, and hopes to get approval to start selling them

Every crime scene contains hidden microbial clues. Now, after decades of promise, researchers are establishing what those bacterial traces can reliably reveal – and whether the evidence will ever stand up in court

We already know wolves can make roads safer, and now it's been shown that the presence of cougars reduces deer collisions by 76 per cent

It has been assumed for decades that tick and flea treatments for pets pose no threat to wildlife or people, but there is growing evidence that we have got it wrong

Botanists have finally proved what Charles Darwin was unable to nail down – that a genus of plants known to catch insects also digests them, suggesting the extent of plant carnivory has been underestimated

Global warming may make it too hot for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to survive in parts of Africa, but could also shift the problem to less affected areas

Protein is everywhere, but studies – mostly in non-human animals – suggest that limiting our intake could extend our lifespan

Surgery that aims to enhance the clearance of Alzheimer's-associated proteins from the brain has been banned in China, but only after thousands of people had the procedure

The total solar eclipse on 12 August will only be visible to a lucky few, but eclipses happen all over the world – here are the next ones to look out for, wherever you may be

To predict when we’ll have a truly useful quantum computer, we need to know precisely what one is. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan finds that’s harder to pin down than you might think

A tiny sensor that unfolds within the body could continuously monitor our heart activity and breathing after showing promise in rats

Three problems that are out of reach for conventional computers have been cracked by quantum computers and show how important the machines could become for scientific research

A treatment that turns off the bit of the immune system that goes haywire in Guillain-Barré syndrome may be the first targeted therapy approved for the autoimmune condition

The cosmological principle is the foundation of modern cosmology – but its usefulness doesn’t necessarily make it true, says columnist Leah Crane

A stunningly intact marine reptile named Austronaga minuta that lived around 245 million years ago may have looked like a miniature version of more famous later ocean predators, like plesiosaurs

Could our universe have more dimensions than the three of space and one of time that we experience?

Measures like bans on advertising junk food to children are essential for instilling healthy eating at a young age, but we shouldn't let adults off the hook when it comes to improving our diets

The strange world of plankton is revealed by Julian Cremona in these intricate images from his new book

The asteroid 44 Nysa was first spotted more than 150 years ago, but we are only now finally figuring out its weird shape and mysterious formation

NASA researcher Heidi Becker has photographed sublime sights around Jupiter that have never been seen before, from its ghostly rings to the dark sides of its moons. And she does it all with an instrument that wasn't even designed for photography

The remains of an orca-sized ichthyosaur include evidence of what it ate – before it too got eaten by an even bigger marine predator

A jaguar that has been dubbed Gaspar traversed 2100 kilometres of the Amazon, crossing farms and roads. But why he set off on this mission is unclear

Astronomers have caught a supermassive black hole straying far from the centre of its galaxy using light from a star being ripped apart

The Deep Space Network is our best way to communicate with spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit, and one of its three stations around the world is in the middle of a wildfire

Researchers have created a textile made from the parasitic fungus Cordyceps militaris, which is biodegradable and can be adapted for different purposes with various microbes

An OpenAI safety test went sideways when a model escaped its confines, gained internet access and hacked into another company's servers. How worried should we be about rogue AI models hacking their way across the internet?

China is the first country to enact substantial legislation on AI relationships in an effort to protect people from the worst aspects of digital companions

On a trip along the Silk Road, columnist Annalee Newitz discovers that ancient technology can offer us a framework for our own advances. The most important drivers of technology aren’t inventions or devices, it turns out, but the people making them

Neither matter nor force, paraparticles would be something else entirely. Fresh hints that they exist are raising hopes that they could explain reality at its deepest level

An open-source flight-control system found in consumer drones has been installed in Ukraine’s latest cruise missile, showing how cheap technology is making military hardware accessible to all

A mathematical analysis suggests that the notion of agency, which is a prerequisite for consciousness, cannot be purely quantum in nature

When considering what makes up a human body, a physicist drills down beyond the atomic level. Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein explores the not-exactly-real particles that allow the stuff we’re made of to hang together

The laws of physics that concern heat and work could gain a firmer mathematical footing thanks to “gauge theory”, which already helps us understand quantum fields

Ivette Fuentes is a professor of quantum mechanics who conducts experiments at the scales where quantum theory and general relativity interplay

Explaining the passage of time has been a gnarly problem in physics basically forever, but physicist and computer scientist Stephen Wolfram has a radical proposal for where it comes from. He discussed his ideas on time – and what they mean for free will – with reporter Leah Crane

Some 40 years ago, physicists noticed certain metals were conducting electricity in a bizarre way no one could explain. New answers to how and why this happens are forcing us to question how electricity flows