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

Could potassium fortification be the answer we're looking for when it comes to battling our unhealthy addiction to salt?

The New Horizons mission to Pluto, now zooming out of the Kuiper belt, has made a discovery that could upend what we know about where the solar system ends

Climate change means extreme heat will become the norm for millions across the world. We joined an experiment in the Saudi Arabian desert designed to find out what that means for our brains and bodies

Through science, we are striving for objective knowledge about the universe around us. But physicists increasingly believe achieving this will never be possible

Almost all the stars that will ever exist have already been born, and they have been around long enough for life to evolve on planets that orbit them

One hundred years ago, we discovered there were other galaxies beyond our own. Now, we might be on the verge of another discovery: that there are other universes

Taiwan’s first ever minister of digital affairs has transformed politics, using online platforms and AI to give power to the country’s citizens – with lessons for us all

Remote sensing, including lidar, reveals that the Amazon was once home to millions of people. The emerging picture of how they lived challenges ideas of human cultural evolution

It may soon be possible to vaccinate ourselves against the diseases of old age, keeping our body and brain healthier for longer

Alex Lupsasca plans to extend Earth's largest telescope network beyond the atmosphere with a space-based dish. It could spot part of a black hole we've never seen before – and perhaps discover new physics

To even out the intermittent power supply from wind and solar, we need to build vast energy storage facilities. It turns out the best solution might be cheap, simple ideas like heating bricks and lifting weights

The lifestyle choices you make in middle age play a particularly important role in how your brain ages

When your gym class is online at home, you don't necessarily need to miss out on the benefits that come from exercising in-person with others

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

When we take a break from exercise, it can feel like we quickly go back to square one. But this isn't the case, and there are various ways to minimise the decline

If the idea of exercise is more attractive than the reality, you aren't alone. But there are ways to train your motivation and develop better habits

When it comes to exercise, more isn't necessarily better – and we're now discovering the ideal dose for better health

The first generation of stars changed the course of cosmic history. Now, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, we have a real chance of spotting them

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

New blood tests can reveal whether your immune system is fighting fit by looking at the balance of different immune cells, but there may be a simpler way of gauging your immune health

Evidence suggests that cynicism is bad for your health. Neuroscientist Jamil Zaki describes the three ways to conquer your inner cynic to boost your well-being

We instinctively know that relaxing feels good, but we are now figuring out what it does to the brain and uncovering the best ways to unwind to maximise its benefits

There are several evidence-backed ways of calming an anxious mind – from eating specific foods to adding certain exercises to your routine

For decades, the oceans have absorbed much of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases. The latest observations suggest they are reaching their limits, so how worried should we be?

Past observations have indicated that the icy moon of Jupiter has a vast subsurface ocean. Launching in October, NASA’s Europa Clipper will go there in search of evidence that it could support life

Promising new vaccines are designed to be given to patients at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. If they perform well in clinical trials, they have the potential to one day rid society of dementia

Advances in generative AI mean fake images, videos, audio and bots are now everywhere. But studies have revealed the best ways to tell if something is real

Astronomer Jo Dunkley is planning to use the Simons Observatory to snare evidence for inflation, the theory that the universe expanded at incredible speed after its birth

A new diet based on research into the body's ageing process suggests you can increase your life expectancy by up to 20 years by changing what, when and how much you eat

A better understanding of what happens to our bodies when we get fitter can unlock ways to speed up the journey – and it might be simpler than you think

We're finally pinning down the mechanisms that drive obsessive-compulsive disorder, revealing a complex combination of imbalanced brain networks, the immune system and even gut microbes

Confidence in politics is falling around the world. Can scientific insights help us create a fairer, smarter foundation for government?

The discovery that a small blue blob of neurons, the locus coeruleus, controls your mode of thinking suggests ways to increase learning, creativity, focus and alertness

The systems we use to produce food have many problems, from horrifying waste to their dependence on fossil fuels. Vaclav Smil explains how to fix them

New research into the moments between wakefulness and sleep could bring hope for insomniacs and even make us more creative problem-solvers

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

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

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

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

A new equation shows a surprisingly simple relationship between pressure and the temperature needed to melt any solid substance into a liquid

The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. Despite receiving a Nobel prize, he remained in some ways as elusive as the particle that shares his name

To capture the clearest and most direct images of a “Wigner crystal”, a structure made entirely of electrons, researchers used a special kind of microscope and two pieces of graphene unusually free of imperfections

In the 1920s, Erwin Schrödinger wrote an equation that predicts how particles-turned-waves should behave. Now, researchers are perfectly recreating those predictions in the lab

The very weak forces of attraction caused by the Casimir effect can now be used to manipulate microscopic gold flakes and turn them into a light-trapping tool

Concern over the risks of enabling nuclear weapons development is usually focused on nuclear fission reactors, but the potential harm from more advanced fusion reactors has been underappreciated

Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be shaped into vortices similar to smoke rings – when chained together, they can carry enough information to transmit a simple image

A practical superconductor would transform the efficiency of electronics. After decades of hunting, several key breakthroughs are inching us very close to this coveted prize