Taylor Roades's images of a river in north-west Alaska that has turned orange because of global warming have won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo competition

A documentary film about three young survivors of super-typhoon Odette, a tropical cyclone that hit the Philippines in 2021, wins the New Scientist Editors Award at Earth Photo 2024

Millions of tonnes of water vapour have been lingering in the atmosphere since the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in 2022– possibly contributing to global warming

Exhausted by today's political and environmental instability, Annalee Newitz investigated what a future Earth might look like. Get ready for green mining, soft cities and robo-taxis

Sea-floor nodules raise oxygen levels in the deep ocean, suggesting they may have a valuable role in ecosystems and adding to concerns about the impact of deep-sea mining

Amazing images of an open-air library, underground lab and design museum show the reincarnation of dead mines, captured in a new book, 102 Things to Do With a Hole in the Ground

The dynamics of how plants and animals change Earth is central to this last book in a trilogy by Other Minds author and "scuba-diving philosopher" Peter Godfrey-Smith

See some of the top entries to this year's Mangrove Photography Awards, showing the beauty and fragility of these unique ecosystems

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

A scientific drilling ship has burrowed further into Earth’s mantle than ever before, obtaining new clues about the processes that feed oceanic volcanoes and the possible origins of life

Pascal Maitre's photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo detail the problems arising as demand for cobalt grows

After over a year of record-high global sea temperatures, the equatorial Atlantic is cooling off more quickly than ever recorded, which could impact weather around the world

James Lovelock's hypothesis that our planet is a living entity is well known. Ferris Jabr's new book Becoming Earth takes it a step further

Quartz crystals produce electricity when they are deformed by mechanical stress, which may explain how enormous chunks of gold can form in inert rock

This claustrophobia-inducing image is taken from photographer Martin Broen's new book Light in the Underworld, a collection of shots from the Yucatán’s cenotes, or sinkholes

Seismologists were mystified by a strange signal that persisted for nine days in 2023 – now its source has been identified as a standing wave caused by a landslide in Greenland

A ring of asteroid debris could have orbited Earth for tens of millions of years, and perhaps even have altered the planet's climate

A sprawling research program aims to improve hurricane forecasts by collecting data at the chaotic interface of ocean and atmosphere

Geographer Alastair Bonnett on his pick of the most diverse maps, from a collection of 100,000 galaxies to a 12th-century Chinese depiction of rivers on a grid

Rapid erosion caused by a geological act of “piracy” tens of thousands of years ago may have raised Earth’s crust and elevated Mount Everest by as much as 50 metres

A story passed down in folklore led scientists to evidence of an 8-metre tsunami that hit an island in Hawaii hundreds of years ago

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

Forget Armageddon-sized rocks, just one of 25,000 smaller asteroids could destroy a city on Earth. How to Kill an Asteroid by Robin George Andrew shows how science plans to save the planet

Endurance sank beneath the ice during Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition. More than a hundred years later, researchers document their own saga of how they found the vessel

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

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

Recent research shows that anti-inflammatory diets are not as faddish as they might sound, with the power to reduce the risk of heart attacks and some cancers

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

Diets that claim to control excess oestrogen or stress hormones are all the rage on Instagram and TikTok. They could be good for us, just not for the reasons claimed

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

From the benefits of fermented foods to diets that promise a better hormone balance, there is a confusing array of dietary advice out there

Our metabolism's response to food is highly idiosyncratic and there are hints that tailoring our diet to these personal differences can deliver health benefits

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

Orca – Black & White Gold digs deep into the dirty waters surrounding the killer whale trade and captures a daring rescue mission

Thanks to artificial intelligence, understanding animals may be closer than we think. But we may not like what they are going to tell us, says RSPCA chief executive Chris Sherwood

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

Feedback digs into a baffling ad for a mobile game and identifies a new and devilish way to advertise a product online: make it as confusing as possible to encourage people to click (it worked on Feedback)

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

I have a confession to make. After taking a handful of autonomous taxi rides, I have gone from a hater to a friend of robot cars in just a few weeks, says Annalee Newitz

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

Forget Armageddon-sized rocks, just one of 25,000 smaller asteroids could destroy a city on Earth. How to Kill an Asteroid by Robin George Andrew shows how science plans to save the planet

Endurance sank beneath the ice during Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic expedition. More than a hundred years later, researchers document their own saga of how they found the vessel