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This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions. Here’s what our readers had to say
This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions. Here’s what our readers had to say
Is it faster to jog up stairs or take them two at a time? If the world we observe is just our brain’s interpretation of the electro-chemical signals it receives from our eyes, what is the world actually like?
Josie Ford Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more A little catty Feedback’s felines are often nowhere to be seen. For hours at a time – in the case of the more free-range cat, sometimes several days – they vanish from sight. What might they be doing? Torturing the local small-animal population perhaps, or chasing fallen leaves around the yard, or visiting the local school to cause as much disruption to learning as possible, or perhaps just lazing in a warm spot to sleep. But who knows? One person who does know is Michelle Smit at Massey University in New Zealand, because she and her colleagues put collar-mounted accel...
Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon
This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles
Uncertainty about when or even if the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a vital ocean current, might collapse has been an excuse to ignore the risk, but that actually makes it even more important that we act now
Scientists may have settled a decades-long debate about bat evolution, including controversial questions about when bats began to communicate and fly, a landmark study shows.The new research, published Wednesday (Sept. 23) in the journal Nature, is the biggest bat DNA and fossil study ever conducted. Researchers created new, top-quality genome assemblies for 41 bat species, which they analyzed together with 62 existing sequences, providing a record dataset of 103 bat genomes and 44 bat fossils."It is extraordinary," study co-author Emma Teeling, a professor of molecular evolution and mammalian phylogenetics at University College Dublin, told Live Science in an email; "after decades of resear...
Archaeologists excavating a Paris hospital's courtyard, a stone's throw from Notre-Dame, have discovered the first evidence of a Celtic fort that Julius Caesar tried to conquer in 52 B.C. The ancient walls show evidence of a violent fire, seemingly confirming the claim that the Celtic group who lived there, known as the Gauls, burned down their own town so that it wouldn't fall into Caesar's hands."The wall's architecture, with its large blocks and interlocking beam system, immediately led us to believe it was a wall of Gallic tradition," Dorothée Chaoui-Derieux, chief curator of heritage at the Île-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in a translated statement. Traces of fire and fi...
For the first time, astronomers have detected radio signals coming directly from a planet outside our solar system, according to a new preprint study. Spoiler alert: It's not aliens. But astrophysicists are still very excited about this discovery. "Astronomers have been looking for radio signals from exoplanets for some time," Suzanne Aigrain, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "There have been tentative, indirect detections before, but this is the first truly convincing direct detection, and it hopefully paves the way for many more."Artificial radio signals are a key focus in the search for extraterrestri...
David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91, a computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, will serve as the next MIT Innovation Fellow during the 2026-27 academic year. Working with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Siegel will explore how artificial intelligence can accelerate scientific discovery at the Institute and beyond.“From the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing to the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence, David has been a superb thought partner for me and other Institute leaders on a range of very significant initiatives, so we're delighted to have him join us now as an MIT Innovation Fellow,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “Our community has long benefited from David's...
Scientists engineered roses that made both a blue pigment and a colorless helper molecule that brought out its shade.
The quadrupedal machine finished the course in a solid four hours, 19 minutes and 52 seconds—and on just one battery charge
Earth's continents are losing fresh water much faster than scientists thought, mostly because aquifer pumping in regions like northern India, southern Iran and parts of the U.S. is 45% more pronounced, on average, than previous estimates suggested, new research shows.The study used satellite data to map freshwater trends across the globe between 2002 and 2025. Thanks to a high-resolution rendering method, researchers revealed regional gains and reductions in terrestrial water storage that were 33% more marked, on average, than in previous studies. The amount of fresh water lost was much higher than the gains overall, highlighting the urgent need for better water management to stave off a glo...
Google DeepMind has revealed a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can predict the molecular impacts of tweaking any one of the billions of letters that make up our genetic code. On Sept. 8, Google's AI powerhouse announced a freely available database called AlphaGenome Atlas, which contains data on 9 billion possible changes to the human genetic code and estimates how these changes will affect different tissues and cellular processes. What's more, the tool spits out a simple score to help scientists quickly weigh the knock-on impacts of these changes. How a sequence of 3 billion or so letters of chemical code is packaged, delivered and read to create a human life is a major question ...
Scientists have conducted an unprecedented assessment of the seabed around the Isles of Scilly, revealing complex mosaics of sediment that support a wide range of habitat-building species. The research, led by the University of Plymouth, used a range of techniques to monitor sediments around the archipelago and explore the diversity of species living within them.
Switching to modern silicon solar cells could cut the cost of powering satellites by as much as 90% based on beginning-of-life (BOL) performance, according to a review led by the University of Surrey. The switch to silicon cells could also halve the weight of the solar cells needed on a spacecraft, freeing mass for fuel or instruments or cutting launch costs.
Both sides of Australian politics are saying the school curriculum needs to change.
A research team led by faculty at the Duke Quantum Center (DQC) has observed string-breaking dynamics related to particle-antiparticle formation on a quantum simulator, among the first such observations in quantum physics.
Unlike electric charge, as far as we know all mass is positive, and positive masses attract one another. Could negative mass exist, and if so, what would be the ramifications?
The arts, cultural and creative sectors can act as powerful catalysts for climate action, changing how people understand, engage with and act on climate change, new research from University College Cork (UCC) has found.
A major Swedish study of 3.7 million people has found that rare TORCH infections passed from a pregnant woman to the fetus are linked to much higher risks of autism and intellectual disability later in life. Children with a congenital TORCH infection were about three times more likely to be diagnosed with autism, more than seven times more likely to have an intellectual disability, and up to 30 times more likely to have severe to profound intellectual disability.
Overhearable speech (speech that may occur when caregivers are talking to each other in a child's presence) constitutes more than half of children's language exposure, but its role in language development remains underexplored. Researchers from the University of Chicago, The New School for Social Research and Princeton University examined when and how English-learning children growing up in the United States understand words they overheard from their parents' conversations at home.
Tiny plantlike organisms called phytoplankton that form the base of marine food webs topped by orcas, whales and sharks usually get eaten or slowly sink to the seafloor, carrying carbon as they go. Across most of the ocean, the descent from sunlit surface layers takes weeks. But in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea, scientists have found that a convergence of currents pushes phytoplankton from under the ice to the seafloor at four times the usual speed.