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Seismic surveys and sediment cores suggest that dozens of deep pockmarks on the sea floor were created when Arctic methane stores were disrupted by climate change after the last glacial maximum – and scientists warn it could happen again

Muscle stem cells, which are crucial for building new muscle, don’t work as well as we get older, but giving them an artificial boost could rejuvenate them

Scientists have uncovered a hidden mathematical secret inside the leaves of the Chinese money plant: a naturally occurring geometric pattern known as a Voronoi diagram, something typically associated with city planning, computer science, and network design. By mapping tiny pores and looping veins in the plant’s leaves, researchers discovered that the plant organizes itself using the same kind of elegant spatial logic humans use to solve complex distance problems — without ever “measuring” anything.

People need to know the past credibility of our medical leaders to accurately gauge their current credibility.

The post How Journalists Enable the COVID Amnesia Project first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Researchers in Japan traced a hidden medieval solar storm using ancient tree rings and centuries-old sky observations. The team linked reports of eerie red auroras with spikes of carbon-14 trapped in buried wood, revealing a powerful solar radiation event around 1200 CE. The findings suggest the Sun was far more active at the time, with unusually short solar cycles.

Earth is quietly collecting radioactive debris from an ancient stellar explosion as our Solar System drifts through a giant cloud of gas and dust between the stars. Scientists analyzing Antarctic ice up to 80,000 years old discovered traces of iron-60 — a rare isotope forged in supernova explosions — and found evidence that this “cosmic ash” has been lingering inside the Local Interstellar Cloud for ages. The discovery suggests the cloud surrounding our Solar System was shaped by a long-ago exploding star, offering researchers a new way to study our galactic neighborhood.

During the 1970s, pioneering experiments were conducted that are known today as Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). At the same time, NASA launched four spacecraft bound for interstellar space, each carrying "messages in a bottle" intended for extraterrestrial beings.

A newly discovered meteor stream may be the smoking gun of an asteroid slowly disintegrating under the Sun’s intense heat. Scientists say these fiery streaks across the night sky could reveal hidden near-Earth asteroids that telescopes struggle to detect.

The search for life elsewhere focuses on biosignatures. These are chemicals in atmospheres that can only be attributed to life. But despite the prowess of the JWST, finding slam-dunk proof of life on other worlds is a confounding exercise. New research suggests that rather than focus on individual chemicals, we should look for statistical patterns.

A Neanderthal tooth shows clear signs of human intervention to treat bacterial decay, showing that the earliest dentistry began at least 59,000 years ago

Winner of an environmental photography award, this shot of a sea turtle seen under ultraviolet light shows how forensic evidence is being used to help catch poachers and animal traffickers

A study of soils around the Arctic and boreal forests has found that some wildfires are releasing carbon stored over millennia, meaning higher CO2 emissions than assumed

Scientific disciplines often shy away from asking fundamental "what if" questions. But philosophy – if unencumbered by dogma or ideology – has much to offer evidence-based enquiry

Why did humans decide they weren't like other animals, or animals at all? Has this exceptionalism twisted us out of shape? Michael Bond's book Animate offers a page-turning account of where we are now

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Rowan Hooper met ecologist Suzanne Simard under an oak tree in Kew Gardens, London, to talk about her new book, criticism of her work, and getting a call from James Cameron's people

Extremely powerful quasars in the early Universe drove star-forming gas out of their galaxies. These Super-quasars are behind the JWST's puzzling early Universe observations.

Asteroid 2026JH2 has enough mass to wipe out a city and will zoom past Earth next week

After a career spent grappling with the neural underpinnings of autism, Uta Frith is unwavering in her controversial call to scrap our current view of the condition and start again

Six teeth roughly 400,000 years old have yielded some of the first ancient proteins thought to belong to Homo erectus, providing molecular clues to their relationships with other hominins