Losing someone we love can affect us in many ways Vidar Nordli-Mathisen/Unsplash People who experience long periods of intense grief after the death of a loved one seem to have a higher risk of dying within the next decade than those who come to terms with their loss more easily. Numerous studies have linked bereavement…
US President Donald Trump displays a signed executive order at an AI summit on 23 July 2025 in Washington, DC Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images President Donald Trump wants to ensure the US government only gives federal contracts to artificial intelligence developers whose systems are “free from ideological bias”. But the new requirements could allow his administration…
Hotter seas can lead to more intense storms, such as Hurricane Milton in 2024 NOAA Extreme marine heat recorded since 2023 might herald the start of a regime shift in the world’s oceans that poses a grave threat to life on Earth, scientists have warned. Record-breaking marine heatwaves emerged in the North Atlantic and Pacific…
Processing tanks at a site in Kansas where waste is pumped into an underground salt cavern Vaulted Deep A start-up called Vaulted Deep has signed a deal with Microsoft to pump millions of tonnes of treated human excrement, manure and other organic waste deep underground as a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.…
Leafy seadragons rely on camouflage to avoid predation Alastair Pollock Photography/Getty Images One of the world’s most extraordinary fish could be in danger of extinction due to a massive bloom of toxic algae engulfing parts of the southern coast of Australia. Leafy seadragons (Phycodurus eques) are in the same group of fish that includes seahorses…
Mitochondria may have a function beyond providing energy CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The components of cells that provide them with energy may play an unexpected role in sleep. A study in fruit flies suggests that mitochondria in the brain help trigger sleep when they sense that the insects have been awake for too long – and…
The greatest robot of all time? The cooker on the moon, from A Grand Day Out Photo12/7e Art/Aardman Animations/Alamy We write a lot about robots here at New Scientist – the latest cutting-edge developments, the newest technology. Fancy reading about a golf robot? A laundry robot? A kickboxing robot? A space robot? We’ve got you…
Ines Papert in Kyrgystan, Ines Papert Most people would find a 1200-metre wall of ice on a mountain peak intimidating. But for decorated ice climber Ines Papert, scaling the peak of Kyzyl Asker – a remote mountain on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan – was a dream. It took three attempts before she and…
Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina and Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot (pictured below) follow a long tradition of female robots Maximum Film/Alamy This year’s Arthur C. Clarke award for the year’s best science fiction novel was awarded last month to Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot. Over the course of the novel, Annie, a sentient sex robot…
Matthias Oberholzer/Unsplash One of the not-funny ironies of the 21st century has been that everything we thought was social media is actually just mass media, except it’s terrible and broken. Luckily, journalists and creators are finally figuring out how to leave the old media models behind and enter the future. The term “mass media” became…