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

Few volcanos come with more risk than Mexico's Popocatépetl, situated near Mexico City.  To mitigate danger, volcanologist Chiara Maria Petrone is trying to predict its next eruption

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

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

In Iceland, scientists are planning to drill two boreholes to a reservoir of liquid rock. One will give us our first direct measurements of magma – the other could supercharge geothermal power

Several enormous craters left by explosions have been spotted in Siberia over the past 15 years, and a new explanation links them to hot gas – and climate change

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

An analysis of satellite observations has identified some extreme thunderstorms over the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Mexico with lightning flashes so frequent that the sky would appear continuously lit

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

Companies are searching all over the world for deposits of geologic hydrogen that could be used as clean fuel, and a mine in Albania could give them clues about where to look

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

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

Mysterious green sunsets were reported after the massive eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 – now simulations show how they were created and just how rare they are

A huge plume of sulphur dioxide from the latest eruption in Iceland is drifting across Europe, but it isn't expected to cause any significant harm

Last year’s marine heatwaves saw an unprecedented decline in the growth of phytoplankton and algae, which many animals in the oceans depend on for food

For decades, planetary scientists have been trying to understand the origins of two colossal geological anomalies inside our planet. New insights suggest they could be leftovers from a cosmic collision

A proposal to define the Anthropocene as a geological epoch was rejected this March, but humanity's impact on Earth is real, whether formalised or not, says Jan Zalasiewicz

In an ongoing swarm of earthquakes that began hitting Japan in 2020, the shifting weight of surface water may have spurred the shaking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In some recent years, the Amazon biome released more carbon than it absorbed, and further degradation could make it a permanent shift

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

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

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

The health benefits of fermented food and drink have long been touted, but firm evidence in favour of kombucha, sauerkraut and kefir is surprisingly elusive

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

Just under 5 per cent of the Wikipedia pages in English that have been published since ChatGPT's release seem to include AI-written content

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

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

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. In our latest glimpse into the near future, Rowan Hooper tells how seaweed was a game changer when it came to getting carbon out of the atmosphere in the 2030s

The climate impact of flights taken by the super-rich rose sharply from 2019 to 2023, fuelling calls for a carbon tax on private aviation

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

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