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 ...

The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December – Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games – to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer’s Annie ...

A long-standing effort to formally place the Anthropocene on the geologic timescale came to a surprising end this year. In March, a panel of academics rejected the proposal to define a new epoch by 12 ...

Google has unveiled an experimental artificial intelligence system that “uses advanced reasoning to help scientists synthesize vast amounts of literature, generate novel hypotheses, and suggest ...

Thames Water and Severn Trent Water are still use dowsing rods to detect leaks despite scientific studies showing that the method is ineffective. A 2017 investigation found that 10 out of 12 water ...

A bold plan to pump seawater over the frozen Arctic Ocean could offer humanity a final chance to save the region’s vanishing sea ice. Field trials conducted this year in the Canadian Arctic to thicken ...

Quantum computers once seemed like fanciful machines of the future. Now, a DIY kit means that anyone with enough money and engineering skills can have one of their own. Barcelona-based quantum ...

Vaccine misinformation, nurse and doctor shortages and crowded living arrangements may be behind soaring rates of diphtheria ...

If the human race disappeared overnight, how long would it be before all traces of our existence were erased? Readers weigh up our impact on Earth In the near future, a mystery virus wipes out the ...

Despite being the closest planet to the sun, Mercury has thick deposits of ice at its poles, and now we may understand the ...

Life on the International Space Station may feel distant, but columnist Graham Lawton finds that studying how astronauts ...

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