Science News

The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis (full text available to subscribers)

Space miners would need sturdy gear to work on KOI 1843.03, a dense planet slightly smaller than Earth with the shortest known year

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses powerful magnets to realign a body's atoms, which creates a magnetic field that a scanner uses to create a detailed image of the body.

Residues from 6000-year-old pots found in the Baltic show they were used to cook meat and fish that was seasoned with a peppery, mustard-like spice

Daya Bay neutrino experiment releases precision measurement of subatomic shape shifting and new result on differences among neutrino masses - The international Daya Bay Collaboration has announced new results about the t...

The US Air Force is funding work to let drones tag suspects or cars with a spray that gives them a distinct spectral signature, making them easy to track

The Air Force's drone program is too unmanned for its own good. While the vast majority of U.S. Air Force pilots still control their aircraft from inside the cockpit, about 8.5 percent are drone pilots who operate their ...

This week on the Physics Central podcast I talk with John Gardner, a retired physicist and founder of the company ViewPlus. When Gardner was 48, an operation left him completely blind. While he managed to continue on wit...

We are constantly being bombarded with health advice, but not all of it is based on rigorous evidence. New Scientist debunks six common myths

Monitoring the rising polarisation between supporters of different parties on Twitter could tell us when violence is about to erupt

Seizing and destroying hard drives is an odd response to investigations into government snooping

The amount a star flickers has been tied to its size, thanks to data mined from the now crippled Kepler space telescope

All the latest on newscientist.com: turning cause and effect on their heads, an ocean in hiding, the first humans to conquer the Atacama desert, and more

Researchers from the University of Rochester have pursued an increasingly common hypothesis that copper consumption may play a role in triggering Alzheimer's disease. In findings published August 19 in the Proceedings of...

The unique dynamics of developing wind energy in Nebraska may benefit wildlife, habitats, and developers throughout the country.

Getting the most out of the United Arab Emirates' Shams 1 solar panels Because of its cloudless skies and favorable latitude, the Rub' al-Khali desert in the United Arab Emirates is a good home for the world's largest op...

In 2005, a bat at least 40 years old was captured in Siberia. Its genes may help explain why the species can live about 10 times longer than it should

Babies who are born with ambiguous genitalia will be referred to as "sex indeterminate" rather than being assigned a gender at birth

The heart of the Atacama desert is the driest place on Earth, but small bands of intrepid migrants began living there over 12,000 years ago

The early milestones in a snail's life are captured in minute detail, revealing that its pace of development before hatching is inherited from its parent

Birds will take off farther away from an approaching car on a faster road than on a slower road - regardless of the speed of the car - suggesting they have a fundamental understanding that roads carry different speed lim...

A quantum effect named after an ancient Greek puzzle has been observed in diamond, paving the way for the use of diamond crystals in quantum computer chips. [More] --