Olivier Grunewald took this image of the Icelandic volcano's central crater filled with lava, forming a fiery lake of liquid rock

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

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

Iceland is bracing for a volcanic eruption, as thousands of small earthquakes have shaken the southern part of the Reykjanes peninsula since October

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

Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano, located on the country’s south-west Reykjanes peninsula, has erupted after weeks of earthquake activity

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

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

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

Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada and Mexico is already worsening air quality in the US, but some signs suggest clearer skies than last year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In order to figure out how something came from nothing, we first need to explore the different types of nothing

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

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

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

Italian canoes capable of transporting people and goods have been dated to the Neolithic period, suggesting there was a bustling trade across the Mediterranean Sea

Isotopic analysis of horse teeth from a medieval burial site suggest that the animals were imported to England from Scandinavia or the Alps, perhaps for use in battle or jousting

A modern butchery experiment using replicas of Stone Age tools raises new questions about how often prehistoric peoples hunted large animals such as bison or mammoths

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

A site in Siberia has evidence of human presence 417,000 years ago, raising the possibility that hominins could have reached North America much earlier than we thought

Analysis of pollen in sediment cores from a large lake in Greece shows that nomadic livestock herders took over the region after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire

Rock art is a truly global phenomenon, with discoveries of cave paintings and etchings on every continent that ancient humans inhabited – but how many times was it invented over human history?

A fossil bone displaying features consistent with Down’s syndrome belonged to a Neanderthal child who survived beyond 6 years old, adding to evidence that these extinct humans cared for members of their community

The skeletons of ancient Egyptian scribes reveal the health toll of sitting on the floor while performing administrative tasks like writing

Highland and lowland populations in Papua New Guinea have different gene variants derived from Denisovan archaic humans, indicating possible adaptations for lower oxygen levels and higher malaria risk

Fossils found 50 and 100 years ago seemed to pinpoint the moment humanity emerged – but defining a human has turned out to be far trickier than we thought

An arm bone from an ancient human that lived 700,000 years ago on the island of Flores is the smallest ever found from an adult hominin, adding a new piece to the puzzle of Homo floresiensis

DNA analysis shows that people from Easter Island had contact with Indigenous Americans around the 1300s, and finds there was no population crash before the arrival of Europeans

In the opening to Rachel Kushner's Booker-shortlisted novel Creation Lake, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, we meet undercover operative Sadie Smith as she secretly reads the emails of an eco-activist group

Spear-throwing tools called atlatls allow humans to launch projectiles over great distances, but Neanderthals apparently never used them – and an experiment involving a 9-metre-tall platform may explain why

Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse peddles the idea that we have overlooked an extraordinary ancient civilisation. Flint Dibble explains why that is wrong, and why real archaeology is more exciting

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

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