The US Department of Homeland Security is trialling chemical sensors that detect the first whiff of smoke in the air and alert fire crews while a potential blaze is still smouldering

Animals that hibernate need a way to keep their blood flowing as their body temperature drops, and it seems that the mechanical properties of red blood cells may be key

The largest prime number is now 16 million digits longer than the previous record found in 2018, thanks to an amateur hunter and his large collection of high-power graphics cards

A type of mathematical problem that was previously impossible to solve can now be successfully analysed with artificial intelligence

A climate-cooling La Niña pattern was expected to develop in the Pacific Ocean months ago, but forecasters now say it won't appear until November

In a wetland on the south coast of England, archaeologists dug up one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain, which is around 3500 years old

Everything you need to know about Rwanda's outbreak of Marburg virus, which has been described as one of the deadliest human pathogens

Adding blade-like sails to tankers could reduce their annual fuel consumption by up to 30 per cent, slashing the climate impact of the shipping industry

A nearby star that exploded some 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system

Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer

Researchers have managed to encode enormous amounts of information, including images, into DNA at a rate hundreds of times faster than was previously possible

A researcher who underwent dozens of brain scans discovered that the volume of her cerebral cortex was 1 per cent lower when she took hormonal contraceptives

A new supercapacitor design that uses only water, clay and graphene could source material on Mars and be more sustainable and accessible than traditional batteries

Despite talk of a green recovery, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise as the world emerged from coronavirus lockdowns

Zapping the skin with electricity could stop bacteria that live there harmlessly from entering the body and causing blood poisoning

In the western US, the average maximum growth rate of fires has more than doubled over the past two decades

Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

A lithium-ion battery made from three droplets of hydrogel is the smallest soft battery of its kind – and it could be used in biocompatible and biodegradable implants

Weaving tales of magical fruit and vegetables into your children's stories may encourage them to eat healthy snacks

The Sverris saga describes how castle invaders “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”, in what may have been an early act of biological warfare - and now researchers believe they have found the skeleton of the man in question

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Large language models can be used to scam humans, but AI is also susceptible to being scammed – and some models are more gullible than others

Ancient stone goods found across France may have been made by skilled craftspeople in what is now Paris, who traded along vast networks

The recent surge in warming led to fears that climate change may be accelerating beyond model projections, but a fall in how much heat Earth is gaining makes this less likely

Single-celled organisms called archaea can become multicellular when compressed, highlighting the role of physical forces in evolution

In a small study, women experienced more empathy for strangers who were experiencing pain after an eight-week meditation training programme

In 2022, countries pledged to halt biodiversity loss by protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030, but progress has been too slow thus far

Computer simulations of how influenza A moves through human mucus found it is ideally configured to slide through the sticky stuff on its way to infecting cells

China's carbon emissions may have peaked in 2023, as figures suggest its output has plateaued so far in 2024

A typically fragile quantum superposition has been made to last exceptionally long, and could eventually be used as a probe for discovering new physics

A specialised algorithm could help autonomous vehicles track hidden objects, such as a pedestrian, a bicycle or another vehicle concealed behind a parked car

Antibiotics can reduce diversity in the gut microbiome, raising the risk of infections that cause diarrhoea - and the effects may last years

Asteroids that regularly fly between Earth, Venus and Mars could provide radiation shielding for human missions to explore neighbouring planets

In some recent years, the Amazon biome released more carbon than it absorbed, and further degradation could make it a permanent shift

Simulations suggest that when a quantum battery shares a quantum state with the device it is powering, the device can gain more charge than was stored in the battery to begin with

A fossil of a tadpole from Argentina is 161 million years old - and isn't that different from some modern species

A massive undertaking to map cancer tumours is providing new insights into how the disease forms, evolves and develops resistance to treatments

Scientists used AI to transform tourist photos into a 3D digital map of Antarctic penguin colonies – even as researchers debate whether to harness or discourage tourism in this remote region

The US Census Bureau processes data before publishing it in order to keep personal information private – but a new approach could maintain the same privacy while improving accuracy

The Renaissance artist Michelangelo had carried out human dissections, which may have led him to include women with breast cancer in some of his pieces

An off-the-shelf millimetre wave sensor can pick out the tiny vibrations made by a smartphone's speaker, enabling an AI model to transcribe the conversation, even at a distance in a noisy room

Radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have revealed that a complete skeleton found in a 2nd-century cemetery is made up of bones from many people spanning thousands of years – but we don’t know who assembled it or why

Fewer lakes are freezing over each winter compared with past years, posing environmental and economic consequences around the world

The infinite monkey theorem states that illiterate primates could write great literature with enough time, but the amount of time needed is much longer than the lifespan of the universe

People conceived during the UK's 1940s and 50s sugar rationing have a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure than those conceived after rationing ended

In support of their AI ambitions, tech companies are rapidly expanding US data centres, and this growth is on track to significantly increase US gas demand by 2030

Light can be directed and steered around bends using a method similar to the way clouds scatter photons, which could lead to advances in medical imaging, cooling systems and even nuclear reactors

Just under 5 per cent of the Wikipedia pages in English that have been published since ChatGPT's release seem to include AI-written content

Alan Turing's theories about computation seem to have a startling consequence, placing hard limits on how fast or slow any physical process in the universe can grow