Tattooing may trigger localised damage to the immune system
There is relatively little information on the long-term health effects of tattooing, but a couple of recent studies suggest the art form might trigger prolonged inflammation ⌘ Read more

How Australian teens are planning to get around their social media ban
From legal challenges to lesser-known apps, the teenagers of Australia are already preparing to push back against a law that will see under 16s banned from social media ⌘ Read more

AI can influence voters’ minds. What does that mean for democracy?
Voters change their opinions after interacting with an AI chatbot – but, encouragingly, it seems that AIs rely on facts to influence people ⌘ Read more

Why is AI making computers and games consoles more expensive?
The AI industry consumes vast amounts of energy, fresh water and investor cash. Now it also needs memory chips - the same ones used in laptops, smartphones and games consoles ⌘ Read more

Volcano eruption may have led to the Black Death coming to Europe
Climate data and historical accounts suggest that crop failures in the 1340s prompted Italian officials to import grain from eastern Europe, and this may have carried in the plague bacterium ⌘ Read more

Could the super-rich be cloning themselves? And why would they?
Nearly three decades since the remarkable cloning of Dolly the sheep, it has all gone quiet on the human cloning front. Michael Le Page wonders what’s happening behind the scenes ⌘ Read more

Tigers seem to be bouncing back in remote Sumatran jungle
Camera traps in an area of the Leuser rainforest patrolled by NGOs spotted 17 tigers in 2023 and 18 Sumatran tigers in 2024, while surveys elsewhere on the island averaged seven ⌘ Read more

Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize
Duelling prairie chickens, a snake-mimicking moth and a once-a-year sunrise at the South Pole feature in the best images from the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025 ⌘ Read more

Experimental vaccine prevents dangerous allergic attack for a year
By blocking a molecule that pushes the immune system into overdrive, a vaccine protects mice from life-threatening anaphylaxis ⌘ Read more

Forming moon may have taken three big impacts early in Earth’s history
Conventionally, the moon is thought to have formed during one big impact, but a three-impact model might make more sense ⌘ Read more

Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert
Today, the deserts of the Arabian peninsula are inhospitable – but 100,000 years ago, the area was full of animals and ancient humans ⌘ Read more

Why quantum mechanics says the past isn’t real
The famous double-slit experiment brings into question the very nature of matter. Its cousin, the quantum eraser experiment, makes us question the very existence of time – and how much we can manipulate it ⌘ Read more

Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe
Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time ⌘ Read more

Asteroid Bennu carries all the ingredients for life as we know it
We knew from prior analyses that a distant asteroid sampled in 2020 carried all but one of the molecules needed to kick-start life, and researchers have just found the missing ingredient: sugar ⌘ Read more

What would Russia’s inability to launch crewed missions mean for ISS?
Russia’s only launch site capable of sending humans to orbit has suffered serious damage that may take two years to fix. Will NASA keep supporting the ISS without Russian involvement, or is this the end for the space station? ⌘ Read more

Coral reefs have fuelled severe global warming in Earth’s past
Over the past 250 million years, periods when coral reef growth has peaked have coincided with big rises in sea temperatures ⌘ Read more

We now have a greater understanding of how exercise slows cancer
Tumour growth is reduced by exercise due to a shift in the body’s metabolism that means muscle cells outcompete cancer cells in the race to get sugar to grow ⌘ Read more

A sinister, deadly brain protein could reveal the origins of all life
We have long struggled to determine how the first living organisms on Earth came together. Now, surprising evidence hints that poorly understood prions may have been the vital missing ingredient ⌘ Read more

Man unexpectedly cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free ⌘ Read more

The best new science fiction books of December 2025
From a new collection of shorter fiction by Brandon Sanderson to Simon Stålenhag’s new work, via a Stranger Things novel, December’s new sci-fi features some compelling and intriguing offerings ⌘ Read more

Was a little-known culture in Bronze Age Turkey a major power?
Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked ⌘ Read more

Why Google’s custom AI chips are shaking up the tech industry
Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia ⌘ Read more

Upheavals to the oral microbiome in pregnancy may be behind tooth loss
Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame ⌘ Read more

Africa’s forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb
Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being  a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017 ⌘ Read more

Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days, months or years
Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment ⌘ Read more

Our verdict on sci-fi novel Every Version of You: We (mostly) loved it
New Scientist Book Club members share their thoughts on our November read, Grace Chan’s Every Version of You ⌘ Read more

Read an extract from The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Iain M. Banks’s classic sci-fi novel The Player of Games. In this extract, we meet protagonist Gurgeh for the first time ⌘ Read more

Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder
The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her ⌘ Read more

Supermassive dark matter stars may be lurking in the early universe
Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real ⌘ Read more

Origin story of domestic cats rewritten by genetic analysis
Domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe in the past 2000 years, according to DNA evidence, while in China a different species of cat lived alongside people much earlier ⌘ Read more

Physicists have worked out a universal law for how objects shatter
Whether it is a cube of sugar or a chunk of a mineral, a mathematical analysis can identify how many fragments of each size any brittle object will break into ⌘ Read more

Emergency response needed to prevent climate breakdown, warn experts
Scientists sounded the alarm on the dire consequences of continued inaction at a briefing in London, warning that we could be heading for “unprecedented societal and ecological collapse” ⌘ Read more

Warming and droughts led to collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation
Hotter temperatures and a series of droughts in what is now Pakistan and India fragmented one of the world’s major early civilisations, providing a “warning shot” for today ⌘ Read more

Deadly fungus makes sick frogs jump far, possibly to find mates
Chytrid fungus is a scourge to global amphibian populations, but before it kills some frogs, it can produce symptoms that may help the infected animals find mates and spread the fungus further ⌘ Read more

Monthly injection could replace daily steroid pills for severe asthma
Daily steroid pills are often necessary for severe cases of asthma, but they raise the risk of several serious conditions. Now, scientists have shown that a monthly antibody injection can eliminate the need for the pills ⌘ Read more

Easter Island statues may have been built by small independent groups
Mapping of the main quarry on Easter Island where giant statues were carved has uncovered evidence that the monuments may not have been created under the direction of a single chief ⌘ Read more

Cold-water swimming has benefits for the brain as well as the body
There is a growing body of research on the physical benefits of going for a dip in chilly water, but now researchers are starting to find that cold-water swimming may also be reshaping our brains for the better in lasting ways ⌘ Read more

The science of swimming trunks – including tightness analysis
Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion ⌘ Read more

Pandas use tools to scratch thanks to a strange evolutionary quirk
Captive giant pandas have been seen breaking off twigs and bamboo pieces to scratch hard-to-reach spots, using a crude opposable thumb that other bears don’t have ⌘ Read more

A revolutionary way to map our bodies is helping cure deadly diseases
New tools that create ultra-precise maps of our tissues are transforming our ability to diagnose and cure once-fatal illnesses ⌘ Read more

Ancient human foot bones shed light on how two species coexisted
Scientists have finally assigned foot bones found in 2009 to an ancient human species, and the move suggests that different types of hominins lived close by in harmony ⌘ Read more

We might have just seen the first hints of dark matter
Unexplained gamma ray radiation coming from the edge of the Milky Way galaxy could be produced by self-annihilating dark matter particles – but the idea requires further investigation ⌘ Read more

We may need a fourth law of thermodynamics for living systems
The laws of thermodynamics don’t accurately account for the complex processes in living cells – do we need a new one to accurately measure the ways living systems are out of equilibrium? ⌘ Read more

The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops
Hoverflies, often mistaken for bees and wasps, pollinate three quarters of our crops. Now we’re discovering we can train them to be even more efficient ⌘ Read more

Easily taxed grains were crucial to the birth of the first states
The cultivation of wheat, barley and maize, which are easily stored and taxed, seems to have led to the emergence of large societies, rather than agriculture generally ⌘ Read more

Your brain undergoes four dramatic periods of change from age 0 to 90
Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions ⌘ Read more

A new understanding of causality could fix quantum theory’s fatal flaw
Quantum theory fails to explain how the reality we experience emerges from the world of particles. A new take on quantum cause and effect could bridge the gap ⌘ Read more

Have we found a greener way to do deep-sea mining?
There are widespread concerns that deep-sea mining for metals will damage fragile ecosystems. But if mining ever goes ahead, hydrogen plasma could shrink the carbon footprint of smelting the metal ores ⌘ Read more

Sperm’s evolutionary origins go back before multicellular animals
Analysis of the DNA and proteins of a range of animals has revealed that sperm’s molecular toolkit arose in our single-celled ancestors, perhaps more than a billion years ago ⌘ Read more

Why is climate action stalling, not ramping up as Earth gets hotter?
As the impact of global warming becomes more obvious, you might expect countries to step up climate action and preparation, but we’re seeing the opposite happen ⌘ Read more