Feedback is alarmed by a study that explored how funny people think they are, and discovered certain traits in those who rate themselves the most humorous

A photo essay from Tommy Trenchard explores efforts to protect the fragile ecosystems of oases in Chad

With its origins in a creepy image posted on 4chan, Backrooms is an unusually potent big-screen experiment in fear and perception, says Davide Abbatescianni

Researchers suggesting that the keto diet could treat mental health conditions find themselves uncomfortably aligned with people like vaccine-sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, but that is not a reason to reject the idea

Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves

Researchers diving 7 kilometres deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science

The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's rings

Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties

A near miss with a Waymo while cycling through London hasn't changed my optimistic stance on driverless cars, but we can't ever let our guard down, says Matthew Sparkes

Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. Despite their limitations, these remotely controlled robots could be the deciding factor in many conflicts

Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals

A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals

Bleaching has devastated reefs around the world, raising fears of an irreversible shift. Yet new interventions have revealed that corals can be remarkably resilient if we can give them enough help to recover

Drill cores at the impact site of the Chicxulub asteroid show evidence that, alongside widespread destruction, the collision created a vast underground ecosystem filled with hot water that sheltered microbial life

Brown dwarfs are somewhere between the size of a planet and a star, so how could we have potentially mistaken two of them for distant galaxies? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argues that solving this cosmic mix-up is particularly possible now, as galaxy research has never been stronger

Physics is considered a cold, hard science – but it will transform your life if you view it with a bit more subjectivity, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Anthropic has warned that recursive-self-improving AI could be on the horizon, but the truth is the company is more immediately concerned with marketing itself for a blockbuster initial public offering on the stock market, says Matthew Sparkes

The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Marshall examines how archaeologists are rethinking this critical part of our history

Lapses in memory are a normal part of ageing but can also be signs of dementia. Here’s how to distinguish between typical brain ageing and cognitive decline

A diverse range of bird species has been recorded at a solar park on rewetted peatland in Germany, suggesting that combining energy generation with habitat restoration could benefit biodiversity, the climate and the economy

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned tech firms, including Apple and Google, that they must voluntarily implement tools to stop children sharing explicit images, but experts warn this is easier said than done

Each decade the world is losing over 7 per cent of its freshwater storage capacity to sediment build-up, according to an analysis of over half a million reservoirs

One-third of people with anorexia nervosa don’t recover and treatment has remained stagnant for years. Now we’re beginning to understand how the condition takes over the mind

Endometriosis is usually thought of as a gynaecological condition, but a huge study shows it has links with cholesterol levels, inflammation and an altered microbiome

Mice seemed to reap some of the benefits of sleep by having their brain activity stimulated while they were awake, and the researchers plan to test the approach on people

A team in the US has reported promising results after using an improved form of CRISPR to gene-edit human embryos, but a major issue remains unsolved

Scientists warn that the Trump administration's push to dismantle a vital network of ocean-sensing instruments will stymie crucial weather and climate monitoring in the Pacific and Atlantic

The modern world depends on open-source software maintained by volunteers, but the added demands of checking and fixing AI-written submissions are causing some to burn out and quit

Mice that contain cells with an added rat chromosome have been created by scientists. The next step is to try this with frozen elephant tissue – and if that works, the team will try it with frozen mammoths

A seemingly simple set of rules kicks off a kind of mathematical magic trick, which has kept great minds busy since the 1930s. Columnist Jacob Aron explores the origins of the Collatz conjecture, why it is so addictive to mathematicians and whether AI could help us solve it once and for all

Parents report loving their partners less within the first year of having a child, but that doesn't mean the feeling is permanent or inevitable

A patch of ocean south-east of Greenland is the only place on Earth that is cooling, and it could be a sign that the warm water "conveyor belt" in the Atlantic is slowing down

Rachel Carson’s look at the dire effects of industrial and agricultural pollution birthed the modern environmental movement when it was first published – and remains as crucial a read today, finds Rowan Hooper

A glacier could have carried the giant sandstone at the centre of Stonehenge southwards from north-east Scotland, but this scenario appears unlikely

Global warming will amplify the impacts of El Niño events, and could also make them much stronger and more far-reaching

Actor Ben McKenzie explores the world of crypto in an entertaining documentary that doesn't shy away from calling out those who have promoted the currency

A new retrospective of M.C. Escher’s work opens this week. Explore some of his most mind-bending, mathematically inspired works here

A new retrospective of the artist beloved by mathematicians opens this week. Get up close to the art with our interactive story

Giulia Enders made her name with Gut, an exploration of our intestines. Now, in the compelling follow-up Organ Speak, she’s listening to what our other organs are telling us

Feedback discovers Halupedia, an online encyclopedia that is 100 per cent generated by AI, offering such delights as the 19nd century and The Society for the Prevention of Unnecessary Tuesdays

Why do we have big brains? Or walk on two legs? Biological anthropologist and broadcaster Alice Roberts talks human exceptionalism, evolution and her new book Humans with Michael Marshall

Despite AI's dizzying improvements in mathematical ability, its successes show just how integral human mathematicians are to the scientific process

Mark Thomson has taken the reins at CERN just as particle physics confronts some of its deepest unknowns – and faces hard choices about what comes next

A circle running along the 27° east and 153° west meridians divides the globe into two halves with equal reflectivity – and this may have implications for solar geoengineering schemes

A UN report warns of the rapid growth in AI energy consumption, but suggests users can improve efficiency by making prompts more concise

A quantum computer made from extremely cold atoms can correct its own errors during long computations, an important prerequisite for becoming truly useful

Restricting carbohydrates may sound like an unlikely approach to treating anorexia, but following a ketogenic diet was linked to recovery in 3 in 4 people with the eating disorder in a small trial

Researchers studying a 5300-year-old mummified man have identified bacteria that lived in his gut when he was alive, as well as cold-tolerant fungi that colonised his body after death

Ages 40 to 65 see a period of turmoil in the brain that has previously been overlooked. But identifying problems during this time can protect your cognitive health for decades to come

Our understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum goes back to Isaac Newton, but astronomers are still finding new ways to employ it. Astrophysicist Emma Chapman explores how much these invisible waves can reveal to us about the cosmos – and whether they might show us that we’re not alone

The most exciting popular science reads this month explore everything from symbiosis to hormones, while Alice Roberts takes on an editor-in-chief role in her latest book

From dementia to heart attacks, hearing loss has been linked to a wide range of effects across the body, and the condition is on the rise. Fortunately, we're learning how best to safeguard this crucial sense and how we might be able to reverse the damage

Computer simulations have uncovered a new manganese compound that could exist deep in Earth’s mantle and may be connected to the process that gave our atmosphere oxygen

An exploration of how biological cooperation underpins all life - and why we’ve overlooked its power until now - makes thrilling reading, finds Penny Sarchet

People with advanced pancreatic cancer taking an experimental daily pill lived nearly twice as long as those receiving chemotherapy infusions

Turmeric is heralded for its anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties, but columnist Alice Klein finds that the evidence for this is shaky. Taking high doses of its curcumin extract in supplement form can be risky

Mathematicians are stunned at the progress AI is making in solving advanced problems, leaving some questioning whether there will still be room for humans

Alan Turing proposed a test for machine intelligence: could a computer convince a human it was human? We have begun conducting the same test on ourselves, writes Max Moser

Almost 50 more genes have been flagged as being linked to Alzheimer’s, along with changes in activity in crucial cells that disappear as dementia progresses

Two companies are aiming to preserve Arctic ice by pumping water onto the sheet and letting it freeze, but only one of the trials found that this delayed melting in the summer

There is plenty of intriguing sci-fi on offer this month, whether it’s solar-powered cities from Adrian Tchaikovsky or a strange future from M. John Harrison

Particles of light cannot be divided into smaller particles, but if you try to snip off the end of one, instead of shortening it multiplies

According to a mathematical model of how people weigh up different outcomes, the optimal strategy is to be ambitious, but not overly so

Quantum Backrooms is a horror game in which the player explores eerie rooms. The twist is that the rooms have been generated by a quantum computer

We're increasingly prioritising our own needs over those of the wider community, which may be causing us to love our partners less intensely

Bacteria created using mirror images of natural biomolecules would pose a grave threat to life on Earth, some researchers warn, but a new study suggests they would struggle to survive in the wild

A cancer-killing virus has stopped pancreatic tumours from growing and spreading in three people in an initial safety trial, raising hopes that it may help to beat the deadly condition

Even if you’ve never bought any cryptocurrency, like columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, your money may be affected by bitcoin’s fate – which is uncertain, as quantum computing advances are threatening to make the encryption protecting it useless

Dive into the opening of The Selfish Gene's first chapter 'Why are people?', the New Scientist Book Club’s read for June to mark 50 years since the popular science classic was first published

Until recently, the Pamir mountains in central Asia have bucked the global melting trend, but in 2025, the region’s glaciers experienced a massive loss of ice due to extreme heat

After an AI from OpenAI found a trick to solve an 80-year-old conjecture from Paul Erdős, mathematicians have borrowed the same technique to solve another important problem

AI start-ups with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding are hiring mathematicians and building AI systems that they hope will not only solve mathematics, but also build more intelligent AI

The cost of CAR T-cell therapy means that the highly effective cancer treatment is unavailable in many parts of the world. But a new way of making these cells could dramatically drive down the cost

Helen Phillips, winner of the Climate Fiction prize for her novel Hum, on if stories can make a difference, her anxieties and writing about the climate

Massive amounts of dust swirl around active nuclei at the centres of galaxies, and these discs could give rise to vast numbers of rocky planets, some even the size of stars

From Kenya's Tree of Life to a Svalbard glacier, these stunning photos are taken from a new book by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, whose The Earth From Above was a smash hit 25 years ago

The New Scientist Book Club read Silvia Park's near-future sci-fi novel Luminous in May, and had lots of good things to say (along with a few complaints)

Inspired by Shannon Vallor's book The AI Mirror, this compelling piece looks at how we are being affected by our deepening interactions with tech

Watson's death last month prompted sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson to read his acclaimed 1973 debut and find out what she'd been missing. She found it fascinating – but reflective of its time

The ideas of survival of the fittest and winning at all costs are closely entwinned with Darwinism, but they shouldn’t be. A rethink from a more communal perspective is in order

Feedback has been flooded with answers (both correct and inspired) after wondering if there is a word for something that is an exemplar of the thing it describes.

From clearing people convicted of murder to identifying a monarch's remains, Michael Le Page is fascinated by The Secrets of Our DNA, an insider's must-read book

Embryo organoids made from stem cells are enabling scientists to recreate early pregnancy in the lab, unlocking treatments for infertility, miscarriage and pre-eclampsia

Among people of high socioeconomic status, love for nature corresponds with a bigger environmental footprint – and there's an obvious reason why

Three missions slated to launch this year will begin to search the lunar surface for a suitable base location

Researchers have designed a quantum version of a pendulum clock. It could shed light on timekeeping in the quantum realm

Gold is chemically inert and so doesn't tarnish, but exactly why had been a mystery

We've been looking at nature the wrong way, argues Rowan Hooper. If we stop focusing on the individual, we get a whole new picture of how life on Earth – and elsewhere – may have begun

Critical safety equipment in many train systems is vulnerable to disruption by space weather, which could lead to fatal accidents

Residues on medical equipment reveal that physicians in China over 600 years ago used aconitine, a highly toxic plant chemical, to alleviate pain during surgical procedures

Men who do not produce sperm can’t be helped by existing fertility treatments, but a start-up is now claiming it can grow their sperm in the lab. Columnist Michael Le Page suspects this technique will have to be combined with gene editing if it is to help many men

Airstrikes on Tehran earlier this year emitted a plume containing almost 30,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide that reached Asian countries

A rewrite of quantum mechanics that includes the force of gravity could finally achieve one of physicists’ biggest goals and reveal the ultimate fuzziness of time

There is currently no good way for astronauts in space to do laundry, but researchers may have finally come up with one: a bright purple jet of microbe-killing plasma

In the age of AI, instant answers to our questions are readily available. But columnist Helen Thomson finds that continuing to encourage those delicious flashes of insight that come from your own thoughts may be beneficial both for your everyday life and your long-term brain health

Despite being the closest planet to the sun, Mercury has thick deposits of ice at its poles, and now we may understand the events that formed them over just one Mercurian day

Tests with rodents suggest an mRNA vaccine in development offers protection against three strains of Ebola virus, including the one behind the current crisis

We all feel emotions like anger and disgust from time to time, but they seem to cause stronger bodily sensations when they're politically induced

Vaccine misinformation, nurse and doctor shortages and crowded living arrangements may be behind soaring rates of diphtheria in remote Indigenous communities in Australia