October 30, 2025 3 min read Hurricane Melissa Was So Strong That It Shook the Earth Hundreds of Miles Away Seismometers picked up the ferocious winds and waves of Hurricane Melissa, showing how the tools can be used to better understand storms today and those from the past By Robin George Andrews edited by Andrea…
Donald Trump made his announcement before meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in South Korea Andrew Harnik/Getty Images US President Donald Trump has said that the country will resume nuclear weapons testing after a decades-long ban. But researchers speaking to New Scientist say there is no scientific need for such tests and they would be…
October 30, 2025 3 min read Chimps Can Weigh Evidence and Update Their Beliefs Like Humans Do Are we the only rational thinkers? New research on our primate cousins suggests otherwise By Cody Cottier edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Chimpanzees show the capacity to revise their beliefs when presented with new evidence. Innocent Ampeire/Ngamba Island…
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as seen by the Gemini South telescope in Chile International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist; J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (Intl Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is, once again, doing something strange. This interloper from another star is currently concealed…
How Are Annual Flu Vaccines Made? Immunologist Zachary Rubin explains how the World Health Organization decides which strains of influenza end up in annual flu vaccines. By Zachary Rubin edited by Kelso Harper This video is part of “Innovations In: RSV,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from MSD, Sanofi…
Kidney stones are a common and painful complaint wildpixel/Getty Images A magnetic device may be able to remove kidney stones more efficiently than standard approaches, avoiding the need for repeated surgical procedures. Kidney stones occur when minerals in urine crystallise. They can be painful when they become lodged inside the kidneys or enter the ureters,…
A new Nanotyrannus fossil suggests the diminutive dino lived alongside T. rex in the late Cretaceous Period.
Everyone makes mistakes—and sometimes those mistakes can lead to surprising discoveries. In the early 1990s, while programming the computer game Doom, game developer John Carmack set the value of pi (π) by hand—and in true nerd fashion, he wrote the number down to the ninth decimal place from memory: 3.141592657. Do you notice anything strange…
Aplysia californica in the lab of neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin Nikolay Kukushkin One Hand ClappingNikolay Kukushkin Swift Press (UK);Prometheus Books (US) “If two hands come together and make a sound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Meditate on this Zen Buddhist koan (a paradox used to train Zen Buddhist monks) long enough, promises neuroscientist…
A Japanese flower lures in its pollinators with a morbid perfume — the scent of injured ants. The unusual scent belongs to Vincetoxicum nakaianum, a recently named species of Japanese dogsbane. Botanist Ko Mochizuki of the University of Tokyo discovered the plant’s grisly allure after noticing clouds of scavenging grass flies hovering around its unassuming…
