World News Feed

From back pain to cancer, how the interstitium could transform medicine

For centuries, we’ve ignored the interstitium, but research is now revealing that this body-wide network of fluid is instrumental to our health and points the …

Plastic bottles can be turned into edible, vanilla-flavour cookies

Hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic pollution are created each year. One option may be to turn the pollution into food, but critics voice …

‘Off the charts’ El Niño is already the strongest since records began

Renowned climate scientist James Hansen says the developing super El Niño has already "blown past" previous events with months to go before it peaks

Greenland meltwater is intensifying European heatwaves

The cooling of the North Atlantic is creating waviness in the jet stream and high-pressure ridging over Europe, a study finds

Burns improve more rapidly after treatment with fish skin

Severe burns are often treated with synthetic products ahead of skin graft surgery, but there is evidence that a product made from minimally processed cod …

Super El Niño could lead to mega CO2 emissions from fires in …

Intense fires are already burning in Indonesia, and there could be much worse to come as the Super El Niño ramps up

How long could we possibly live? A new estimate is mind-boggling

Biogerontologists are exploring the upper limit for human life. A recent study has it verging on two centuries – but columnist Graham Lawton finds reason …

Strange gamma-ray signal could be most direct evidence of dark matter yet

Researchers spotted an unusual gamma-ray signal in three galaxy clusters, which may be a telltale sign of dark matter – or some even more exotic …

Will personalised mRNA vaccines transform cancer treatments?

A personalised mRNA cancer vaccine has produced positive results in a final-stage trial involving skin cancer, raising hopes that this approach could work against many …

Two emerging tick viruses that can be deadly are spreading in the …

Heartland virus and Bourbon virus, which are transmitted by lone star ticks, have killed at least seven people in the US

Depression doesn’t shrink the brain like we thought it did

For the past decade, depression has been linked to a shrunken hippocampus, which has a vital role in memory. But a large study using up-to-date …

NASA calls off rescue effort to save doomed telescope

The Swift observatory will now re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a few months, after a mission to boost it higher failed

AI firms are watermarking generated text – here’s why it won’t work

AI companies have begun embedding watermarks in the output of their models to improve transparency and help crack down on misinformation, disinformation and cheating on …

Suggesting that ADHD is a myth is pseudoscientific and dangerous

ADHD is a real condition that can have serious consequences if undiagnosed. An ill-informed documentary that suggests it is a modern, social construct could cause …

Are flies following a strategy when they keep hitting windows? Part 4

Answers continue to pour in as New Scientist readers ponder this question, with one reader widening it out to consider dragonflies, and another focusing on …

This week’s new questions

Why do humans have a common sense of beauty for things like sunsets, and do other animals share this appreciation? And why can’t we cool …

Don’t be an archaeologist in a movie if you want to survive

Tom Gauld on popularity in the lab

Tom Gauld's weekly cartoonTom Gauld's weekly cartoon

Twisteddoodles on distribution graphs (with added cats)

This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles

Stunning image of a polar bear with an outsized snack wins major …

Roie Galitz's breathtaking shot is one of the winners of the 2026 World Press Photo Contest, praised for its unusual perspective and scale

This sci-fi novel is a riveting tale of an oppressive galactic empire

A rich widow, a disillusioned cop and a dim hypersled driver are caught in the machinations of the oppressive party ruling the Decurion Empire in …

It is finally time to talk about the impact of fluctuating hormones

For decades, women have felt the need to hide the impact of changes in their hormones, while scientists have excluded women from research to avoid …

The wild, gripping story of the psychedelic secreted by desert toads

Kimon de Greef's The Ego Trip chronicles the rise of a potent psychedelic drug, from the toads that secrete it to the man who claimed …

Newly discovered immune hubs in our skull may keep our brain healthy

We may have clusters of immune cells at the back of our skull that help ward off conditions like brain cancer