Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Today we’re mainly going to focus on one major story from last week: Hurricane Melissa. Here to tell us more about this historic storm is Scientific American senior editor Andrea Thompson. Andrea, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for coming…
Artist’s impression of Population III stars as they would have appeared a 100 million years after the big bang NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/Spaceengine/M. Zamani We may have finally seen the first generation of stars. Astronomers have been looking for these primordial behemoths, called Population III stars, for decades. Now they have found what may be the…
November 2, 2025 2 min read First-Ever Footage Shows Killer Whales Attacking Great White Shark Nursery An orca pod has been spotted for the first time repeatedly targeting and flipping young great white sharks onto their backs to paralyze and dismember them By Ashley Balzer Vigil edited by Andrea Thompson An orca swims next to…
Orcas push a juvenile great white shark up to the surface in a clever hunting manoeuvre Marco Villegas Orcas in the Gulf of California have been hunting juvenile great white sharks using a clever tactic: flipping them upside down to render them immobile. The discovery suggests there may be a previously unrecognised group of orcas…
November 1, 2025 5 min read Can AI Music Ever Feel Human? It’s Not Just about the Sound A personal experiment with the artificial intelligence music platform Suno’s latest model echoes a new preprint study. Most listeners can’t tell AI music from the real thing, but emotional resonance still demands a human story By Deni…
Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Speaking our truth The experienced science journalist soon learns to skim over certain sections of scientific papers: specifically, the sentences stating that the research represents “a significant…
Horror fans have been painted with the same broad and bloody brush for decades: labelled as cold, unfeeling thrill-seekers who delight in others’ suffering. Film critics have described the fans and creators of films like Friday the 13th and Saw as “very sick people“. Even among academics, the prevailing explanation for why some people love…
Does your phone seem less functional than it once was? It may be due to enshittification HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images EnshittificationCory Doctorow (MCD Books) “Enshittification” is one of those rare new words that so perfectly sums up a prevailing but innominate concept that it feels like it has existed forever, like “shrinkflation” or “greenwash”…
“At first, Ishiguro’s English boarding school setting seems so familiar…” This year is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Kazuo Ishiguro’s renowned novel Never Let Me Go and I have finally got round to reading it. I can hardly believe that such a haunting story has been sitting on my shelf all that time,…
Heatwaves, flooding, storms and droughts driven by climate change are making life more difficult for people around the world. Societies will need to adapt to these changes, but governments, businesses and individuals won’t be able to afford to protect everywhere, nor will many people want to live with high levels of risk. As I argue…
