For nervous newbie gardeners, starting out with a single plant in a small pot is pitched as an easy win by the horticultural industry. James Wong explains why it isn't

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

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

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

Strange solids called temporal metamaterials finally make it possible to investigate the controversial idea of quantum friction – and push special relativity to its limits

There may be ways to work with your body’s natural daily and monthly cycles to get the maximum benefits from workouts and avoid injury

There are secrets aplenty in a pot of honey – from information about bees' "micro-bee-ota" to DNA from the environment – that can help us fight food fraud and even monitor shifts in climate

Conventional measures like blood pressure and body mass index only tell you so much. Testing your microbiome and metabolites, or even discovering your “immune grade”, can offer a clearer picture of your health

Up to 100,000 extraordinary species, from spiders and beetles to salamanders and fish, live in subterranean caves and cracks. They aren’t as safe down there as we thought

With its particles in two places at once, quantum theory strains our common sense notions of how the universe should work. But one group of physicists says we can get reality back if we just redefine its foundations

A super-stretchy hydrogel can stretch to 15 times its original length and return to its initial shape, and could be used to make soft inflatable robots

Information contained within quantum objects gets scrambled when they interact. Physicists have now derived a speed limit for this process, challenging the idea that black holes are the fastest data scramblers

One way to explain why time only moves forward is the quantum arrow of time, and it has major implications for both the universe's early period and its eventual demise

Strange solids called temporal metamaterials finally make it possible to investigate the controversial idea of quantum friction – and push special relativity to its limits

ITER, a €20 billion nuclear fusion reactor under construction in France, will now not switch on until 2035 - a delay of 10 years. With smaller commercial fusion efforts on the rise, is it worth continuing with this gargantuan project?

Photographer Enrico Sacchetti captures the power and potential of ITER, an international nuclear fusion experiment currently under construction in southern France

The gamma ray burst known as GRB221009A is the biggest explosion astronomers have ever glimpsed and we might finally know what caused the blast

Researchers were surprised to find that a very slightly curved object produces a more dramatic splash than a perfectly flat one

A weird quantum phenomenon called delocalisation has been measured for a 100-nanometre glass bead, helping reveal where the boundary lies between quantum and classical physics

Smashing gold nuclei together at high speeds billions of times has resulted in 16 particles of antihyperhydrogen-4, a very exotic and heavy form of antimatter

The hunt for particles of dark matter has been stymied once again, with physicists placing constraints on this mysterious substance that are 5 times tighter than the previous best

With its particles in two places at once, quantum theory strains our common sense notions of how the universe should work. But one group of physicists says we can get reality back if we just redefine its foundations

If gravity is a truly quantum entity, something as simple as measuring the strength of an object’s gravitational field should change its quantum state

A new technique uses glowing molecules, laser light and microscopes to measure distances as minuscule as 0.1 nanometres – the width of a typical atom

Researchers used a collection of charged atoms to create a quantum superposition of an exotic type of defect

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

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

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 ocean research vessel has just discovered four underwater mountains, the tallest almost 3 kilometres high, that might be hotspots of deep-sea life

As a 15-kilometre crack formed ahead of the recent eruptions, magma flowed into it at the highest rate observed anywhere in the world

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Harlan Ellison to Haruki Murakami, via an intergalactic cooking competition, this month has plenty of science fictional treats on offer

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

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

A stone wall nearly a kilometre long found under the Baltic Sea may have been built by ancient hunters to channel deer into a confined space

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

Five years ago, a fossil found in the Philippines was determined to be from a new species of hominin called Homo luzonensis. Since then, we’ve learned a bit more about the newest member of the human family

Genetic analysis of 50,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons has uncovered the remnants of three viruses related to modern human pathogens, and the researchers think they could be recreated

An experiment inspired by Homer’s description of combat in The Iliad tested the capabilities of the Dendra armour suit from Greece’s Bronze Age

An excavation on Timor reveals humans first settled on the island 44,000 years ago, long after the earliest occupation of Australia – suggesting migration to the latter took another route

Cut marks on a 4000-year-old skull suggest ancient Egyptian doctors tried to treat a man with nasopharyngeal cancer

Rock art along the Orinoco river in South America is made up of some of the largest etchings we know of and could date back 2000 years

An urn found in a tomb in Spain contained the cremated remains of a man, a gold ring and about 5 litres of liquid, which has been identified as now-discoloured white wine

Wooden sticks found in an Australian cave appear to match the accounts of a 19th-century anthropologist, suggesting the GurnaiKurnai people practised the same ritual at the end of the last glacial period