Science

The Lyrid meteor shower will soon hit its peak. Here's how to spot it, including by using the New Scientist stargazing companion

It's vital that your conference attendees know the speakers' past credibility to judge their current credibility. All you have to do is be honest.

The post An Open Letter to Professor Katy Milkman: Don’t Censor John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya, and Emily Oster. Amplify Their Voices. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

In 1934, a Soviet physicist named Pavel Cherenkov shone gamma rays into a bottle of water and noticed a faint blue glow. So had others before him. They all shrugged and moved on. Cherenkov didn't. What he found — by refusing to dismiss something he didn't understand — turned into one of the most useful phenomena in modern physics.

It's obvious that Earth is a planet. It's obvious that the Sun is a star. But for substellar objects like brown dwarfs, it's not so clear. Researchers are using the JWST to find a stronger dividing line between star and planet that depends on how they formed.

A pair of dwarf galaxies in the giant Virgo Cluster show what can happen when these stellar cities interact. Scientists at the University of Michigan focused the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) onto the galaxies NGC 4486B and UCD736 and found each of them sporting "overmassive" black holes at or near their hearts. Those supermassive black holes comprise a large fraction of each galaxy's mass.

After achieving their record-breaking 10-day flight around the Moon, the crew of the Artemis II mission returned home on Friday, April 10th, 2026.

Patients are requesting that blood transfusions come from people who they know have not been vaccinated against covid-19, which can cause dangerous delays

Monkeys with around 300 electrodes implanted in their brain were able to steer avatars around different virtual environments

An imaginative and compelling book reveals how radio waves help us tune in to our universe – and even search for alien civilisations, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

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

Feedback discovers that a conspiracy theory has formed that various celebrities have been replaced by clones, and sees just a few small problems with the idea

A film about the quest for “ghost elephants” is as much about not knowing and asking the right questions as about exploration, finds Davide Abbatescianni

From huge geese to flying cars, these photographs from a new exhibition at the Rijksmuseum reveal how we have been manipulating images for over a century

Forty years after the world’s biggest nuclear disaster, the safety of Chernobyl hangs in the balance – though not because of the radiation risk

European researchers tested four-legged semi-autonomous rovers that carry only two instruments. These capable and agile robots could be part of the future exploration of Mars and the Moon. Their autonomy means they can do more with fewer instructions.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has finished the most detailed survey of the universe to date, and the resulting map will help researchers understand an apparent weakening of dark energy

A detailed analysis of the best-preserved Neanderthal infant skeleton ever found suggests that our ancient relatives grew much faster as young children

April flowers mean one thing to springtime sky-watchers: it’s time for the Lyrid meteor shower. The Lyrids are always a good bet, and always make the top ten list for annual meteor showers. And to top it off, 2026 is a favorable year for the Lyrids, with the waxing crescent Moon mostly out of the way.

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “rock2“, comes with a note that says this: “An oldie from 2006 today. Next week’s will also be a resurrection.” The artist must be on hols.

Is Mo right about the black silk and the meteorite?  Well, at least half right. The Kaaba is indeed covered with a cloth made of silk, but the meteorite is questionable. Here’s what Wikipedia says, along with a picture. (The stone is called Ajar al-Aswad.)

The Black Stone (Arabic: الحجر الأسود, romanized: al-Ḥajar al-Aswad) is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by most Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.

The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic Arabia. It is sometimes considered a baetyl. According to tradition, it was set intact into the Kaaba’s wall by Muhammad in 605, five years before his first revelation. Since then, it has been broken into fragments and is now encased in a silver frame on the side of the Kaaba. Its physical appearance is that of a fragmented, dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of pilgrims. It has often been described as a meteorite,  but it has never been analysed with modern techniques, so its scientific origins remain the subject of speculation.

Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as a part of the tawaf ritual during the Hajj and many try to stop to kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad.While the Black Stone is revered, theologians emphasize that it has no divine significance and that its importance is historical in nature.

Saudi Press Agency (SPA), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Large language model artificial intelligence applications (LLM AIs) seem poised to have a significant effect on the practice of medicine, both good and bad, which is why we are giving it as much attention as we are here. LLMs give impressive results when tested on medical knowledge, able to pass multiple-choice exams designed for general medical and specialty certification. In fact it […]

The post New Study on AI Clinical Decision-Making first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.