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

A bird flu virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle for months has now been found in a pig in the US for the first time, raising the risk of the virus evolving to become more dangerous to people

A new study amplifies the horror of an excellent series about the doomed Franklin expedition. The Terror is a worthy tribute to the lost sailors, says Bethan Ackerley

DNA analysis suggests Pando, a quaking aspen in Utah with thousands of stems connected by their roots, is between 16,000 and 81,000 years old

Peaks in appetite and metabolism driven by our body's inbuilt clocks mean that eating at the wrong time can have consequences for our health and waistline

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

Before Mesopotamian people invented writing, they used cylinder seals to press patterns into wet clay – and some of the symbols used were carried over into proto-writing

Fibres in wet wipes and clothes often make their way into soil - and natural versions could be more damaging than synthetic ones

One day, doctors might be able to 3D print copies of your organs in order to test a variety of drugs, thanks to a new technique that uses light and sound for rapid printing

A small world in the outer solar system appears to have volcanic activity possibly spurred by liquid water

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

Experts predict that the number of cancer cases around the world will skyrocket, resulting in millions more fatalities by 2050

The earliest evidence of livestock with modified horns has been discovered in ancient Egypt – sheep skulls with horns that point in unnatural directions suggest humans forced them to grow that way

Chronic pain has increased among adults in the US since 2019, which could be due to a rise in sedentary lifestyles or reduced access to healthcare amid covid-19 restrictions

Averting an asteroid strike will need many of the same skills we must hone to tackle climate change and future pandemics

Shapes created by vortices in water often fall apart, but an odd quantum fluid made from ultracold atoms could support vortex knots that never lose their knottiness

Data collected by the Zhurong rover and orbiting satellites suggests the existence of an ancient shoreline in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars

Blood tests have shown that about 7 per cent of workers on dairy farms that had H5N1 outbreaks had antibodies against the disease

Oil and water can be separated efficiently by pumping the mixture through thin channels between two semipermeable membranes

The brain pathway that causes hairy mammals like mice and dogs to shake themselves dry appears to have more to do with pressure than temperature

In More and More and More, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues that tackling climate change means rethinking our history of energy consumption – and exposing the green transition as a fiction

Dangerous radiation reaches Mars at levels we aren't exposed to on Earth, which makes the Red Planet a particularly dangerous place to be during pregnancy

Genetic analysis of five individuals preserved as plaster casts in the ruins of Pompeii contradicts established beliefs about the people and their relationships

Allowing for moves that create quantum superpositions makes a quantum version of a Rubik’s cube incredibly complex, but not impossible to solve

Asian elephants at Berlin Zoo show impressive skill when using a hose as a tool, and even appear to sabotage each other by stopping the flow of water

An analysis of thousands of cognitive tests carried out by chimpanzees finds that the number of spectators influenced their performance in different ways depending on the difficulty of the task

From seed oils to olive oil, we now have an overwhelming choice of what to cook with. Here’s how they all stack up, according to the scientific evidence

Our ancestors probably used a wide range of plant-based tools that have since been lost to history. Now we're finally getting a glimpse of this Botanic Age

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

From just listening to reframing the situation, there are a few ways you can help someone with a negative outlook, says advice columnist David Robson

The controversies surrounding football’s video assistant referee (VAR) system highlight our troubled relationship with uncertainty – and point to potential solutions

Reaching net-zero emissions is essential for halting climate change - but even after we achieve this goal, parts of the planet will continue to warm. Delaying net zero will worsen these effects

Never underestimate what a single gopher can achieve in a day: one of the burrowing mammals helped boost soil fungi in an area blanketed by ash from the explosive eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington state

Seven major datasets used to train audio-generating AI models are three times more likely to use the words "man" or "men" than "woman" or "women", raising fears of bias

Extreme weather and a growing population is driving a food security crisis. What can we do to break the vicious cycle of carbon emissions, climate change and soaring food costs – or is it already too late?

Voyager 2 flew by Uranus in 1986, giving us our only up-close look at the planet – but unusual space weather just before the craft arrived has given us a misleading idea about the planet’s magnetic field

Experiments show that illuminating the underside of a decoy seal reduces attacks by great white sharks, revealing a possible strategy to protect surfers and swimmers

Campaigners are calling for stricter controls on rodenticides after finding that birds of prey in England are increasingly being exposed to high doses of rat poison

Most assessments of global warming use 1850-1900 as a baseline, but researchers have now established a new pre-industrial reference by using Antarctic ice cores to estimate the average temperature before 1700

An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

You might have heard about plans to establish a self‑sustaining city on Mars. Here’s what life would really be like on the Red Planet

An analysis of crystals in lava from the 2022 eruption of Mauna Loa has revealed an unknown magma reservoir within the volcano, which could extend forecasts of eruptions from minutes to months

Eurasian reed warblers don’t just get a sense of direction from Earth’s magnetic field – they can also calculate their coordinates on a mental map

An annual accounting of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and land use change finds no sign emissions will peak this year

DNA from bones found in a cave in Germany has been identified as from Homo sapiens, showing that our species endured frigid conditions there as they expanded across the continent

A Greek philosopher’s musings on pleasure, contained in ancient papyrus scrolls buried by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption 2000 years ago, have been rediscovered with the help of AI

3D mapping and artificial intelligence has helped decipher an ancient Herculaneum papyrus scroll which had been digitally scanned

Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea

A 2200-year-old burial ground in northern Italy includes people interred with dogs and horses, perhaps showing they had strong bonds with their animals

Fossil evidence shows that humans have been practising cannibalism for a million years. Now, archaeologists are discovering that some of the time they did it to honour their dead