A recent atomic physics workshop was outside my dark matter comfort zone, but learning about science beyond my usual boundaries was invigorating, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Daniele Oriti’s pursuit of a theory of quantum gravity has led him to the startling conclusion that the laws of nature don’t exist independently of us – a perspective shift that could yield fresh breakthroughs

Could the universe's missing matter be hiding in a "dark" extra dimension? We now have simple ways to test this outlandish idea - and the existence of extra dimensions more generally

The symbols and mathematical operations used in the laws of physics follow a pattern that could reveal something fundamental about the universe

Physicists finally know whether black holes destroy the information contained in infalling matter. The problem is that the answer hasn’t lit the way to a new understanding of space-time

Marie Curie redefined the role of women in science by training a generation of “lab daughters” to have stellar careers, shows Dava Sobel's detailed and intimate new biography, The Elements of Marie Curie

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

Inside a hunk of a material called a semimetal, scientists have uncovered signatures of bizarre particles that sometimes move like they have no mass, but at other times move just like a very massive particle

A surprising reversal of our usual understanding of the second law of thermodynamics shows that it may be possible for heat to move in the “wrong” direction, flowing from a cold area to a warm one

Launching a million tonnes of moon dust around Earth could dim sunlight across our planet by 1.8 per cent. This would reduce the global temperature, but whether it would be worth the resources, and the risks involved in such a strategy, are unclear

From a sea turtle and diver swimming in harmony in Malaysia to a red-eyed tree frog in its Costa Rican rainforest home, take a peek at some of the winning entries in one of the most prestigious photography competitions

Geologists think there may be vast natural stores of hidden hydrogen gas within Earth, but no one is sure how much there is or how much could be recovered for energy

Tiny pieces of stone found in a rock formation in Western Australia may be the oldest evidence of a meteorite impact on Earth, dating back nearly 3.5 billion years

Billions of years ago, crushed quartz reacting with water could have created the conditions needed for the evolution of the photosynthetic microbes responsible for most of the oxygen now in Earth’s atmosphere

Carbon emissions within the next 50 years could lead to a tipping point where large parts of the Greenland ice sheet melt over the next 10,000 years

The eruption of the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia on 11 April sent plumes of volcanic ash many kilometres into the air and could affect flights

Semi-mythical "earthquake lights" may be accompanied by changes to Earth's magnetic field. Now researchers say these changes could be used to forecast major tremors

The second series of this show about Earth 66 million years ago is a joy to watch - but it inspires more than it informs. A little more science would have been nice

A link between volcanic activity and rising bubbles of low pressure in the ionosphere has now been proven, which may be why the colossal Tonga volcano eruption in 2022 disrupted satellite communications

Pressure on the San Andreas fault from a now-dried lake could have been sufficient to trigger past major earthquakes in California. The lake’s disappearance could explain why there have been no such quakes for nearly 300 years

From a photograph of algae choking an Indian river to a shocking depiction of the wearing away of the UK coast, these are some of the pictures in the running for the contest

Changes in the distribution of groundwater around the planet between 1993 and 2010 were enough to make Earth's poles drift by 80 centimetres

Geologists hoping to declare a new epoch dominated by humanity’s influence on Earth have chosen Crawford Lake in Canada as the location where the start of the Anthropocene is defined

This photo of Tungurahua, a volcano exploding in the Ecuadorian night, comes from an illustrated book to accompany a TV series about Earth’s deep history

An analysis of GPS data has revealed a slow and otherwise undetectable slip of tectonic plates that begins two hours before an earthquake - but detecting this in advance would require more accurate sensors

A 33-million-year-old layer of Earth's crust is laced with helium-3, which is normally only found in space. Now we might have an explanation for how it got there

Climate researchers thought that current global average sea levels were the highest in more than 100,000 years, but new models suggest oceans just 6000 years ago may have been higher than at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and possibly even higher than today

Understanding how the world’s largest-known collection of pink diamonds came to the surface in Australia around 1.3 billion years ago could help us find hidden deposits elsewhere in the world

If humans still exist millions of years from now, they will face inhospitably warm conditions on a supercontinent centred at the equator. Most land mammals won't be able to survive

Analysis of tree rings shows that two faults near Seattle, Washington ruptured at the same time or soon after each other more than 1000 years ago – a repeat today would cause a major disaster in the region

Earth’s iron-rich inner core may owe some of its surprising softness to the motion of atoms, suggest experiments with iron at high temperature and pressure coupled to AI simulations

A better picture of the hidden landscape beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica could help us understand how the ice will respond to climate change

Two strange, high-density blobs buried more than a kilometre underground may have come from the ancient world Theia, which is thought to have slammed into Earth to create the moon

Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, the largest lake in South America, has been captured in detail by the European Space Agency's Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission

Once seen as miraculous, these days ice is no longer extraordinary. But in a winter season when Antarctic sea ice hit a historic low, it is clear we should cherish it more, says Max Leonard

When most people are asked to name a river, they often reach for the Amazon or Nile, but these aren’t the only remarkable rivers out there. Here are 10 more from around the world – and solar system

Some 550 years ago, a Venetian monk named Fra Mauro set out to create a world map. Rather than myth and religion, it was based on solid evidence for the first time

The stratosphere seems to be full of aluminium particles and other metals that come from spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere, and those particles could mess up polar clouds

A drilling project in the Taklamakan desert is aiming to reach more than 11,000 metres below Earth’s surface as China explores the deep earth for resources

This spectacular selection of images is taken from the winners of the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year competition, run by Capture the Atlas

An area of the seabed north of Australia has been mapped in detail for the first time, revealing that large numbers of people could have lived there until it was inundated by rising seas

Photographer Matjaz Krivic has been charting the effects of lithium mining on locals in the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia since 2016

Lightning strikes during volcanic eruptions could have provided nitrogen in a form that was needed by early life forms

The Kikai-Akahoya eruption of an underwater volcano off the coast of Japan ejected enough material to fill Lake Tahoe twice, three times as much as the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815

Global warming means many of the world’s ancient rivers of ice will be gone within decades, threatening ecosystems that rely on their meltwater, a looming crisis that photographer Edward Burtynsky highlights in his work

These stunning photographs are all shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards 2024

Humans are drastically changing the planet and the Anthropocene is a useful tool to help us deal with that – so let's stop quibbling over definitions

The Luna structure, a 1.8-kilometre-wide depression in north-west India, may have been caused by the largest meteorite to strike Earth in the past 50,000 years

Climate change is making extreme cold upwellings more common in certain regions of the world, and these events can be catastrophic for animals such as bull sharks

The networks of fibre optic cables that criss-cross the planet could be used to better understand what’s happening inside it