Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin as the first person to go to space. But was he? Physicist Vladimir Brljak tells the tale of the intrepid balloonists who first flew beyond the blue terrestrial sky, challen ...

Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds ...

Models show that as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation gets weaker, the Gulf Stream will drift northwards. There are signs that this is already happening, and a more abrupt shift could wa ...

NASA’s DART mission slammed into the small asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, and the impact slowed its orbit around the larger Didymos – and also the pair’s path around the sun ...

Since 2014, the planet has been warming by about 0.36°C per decade, according to an analysis of five temperature datasets, raising fears that climate tipping points could be crossed earlier than expec ...

A new book from Rebecca Solnit, promising to bring us hope in these “difficult times”, is among our pick of popular science titles out this month – along with a guide on how to talk to AI, and a look ...

What do a 20th-century physicist, an 18th-century statistician and an ancient Greek philosopher have in common? They all knew how to extrapolate with incredible accuracy. Columnist Jacob Aron explains ...

The Alzheimer’s field is being turned on its head as mounting evidence points to the disease beginning outside the brain many ...

Taking psilocybin – the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms – eased symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder among ...

Microplastics have been found accumulating everywhere from our water to our body tissues, but many of the claims have come ...

Shaped by a different biology or culture, other intelligent civilisations – if they’re out there – might understand the ...

The US and Iran are trading blows in the Gulf with a simple drone that costs as little as $50,000 to make. But why is a slow, ...