Astronomy

An exploration of how biological cooperation underpins all life - and why we’ve overlooked its power until now - makes thrilling reading, finds Penny Sarchet

A group of researchers have proposed rules to prevent artificial intelligence from overpowering humans in math

Where did stars, and light itself, come from? Is there a hidden sector of particles and forces called “dark energy” affecting the cosmos?

By encoding mathematical statements into numbers, mathematician Kurt Gödel used ordinary arithmetic to check whether a statement can be proved

The dwarf planet Ceres has a surface that seems to get more perplexing with each new study. A recent paper presented at EGU26 in Vienna only adds to its mystery.

The Trump administration has fast-tracked research into psychedelics, and experts say it is likely a matter of time before the drugs are used to treat minors

The JWST found an abundance of overmassive black holes at high redshifts, pushing the limits of black hole (BH) science in the early Universe. Results have claimed that these BHs are significantly more massive than expected from the BH mass-host galaxy stellar mass relation derived from the local Universe. But new research shows they were just outliers in the normal range of masses that don't require any special causes.

The upper galaxy might be more photogenic, but the lower galaxy is more unusual.

Multi-billion dollar space telescope programs aren’t only feats of aerospace engineering. They also feature “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. Or at least statistics. They definitely feature those, as does all good observational astronomy. The problem with statistics is, in order to get a clear definitive answer, you need lots of samples. And, to put it mildly, it’s hard to find lots of samples of planets with alien life on them. And even harder to prove that the signals we think are caused by alien life aren’t caused by some other non-biological process. Or at least that’s the theory underpinning a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from David Kipping of Columbia University (and Cool Worlds YouTube fame).

The universe is full of fascinating structures, and some of the most striking take shape inside the giant clouds where stars are born. There, streams of gas appear to converge from all directions toward a dense central hub, like spokes meeting at the center of a wheel. New simulations show why this is, and why star formation overall is so inefficient.

Some clinics are touting pressurized oxygen chambers as a treatment for long COVID, but the evidence is mixed

People with advanced pancreatic cancer taking an experimental daily pill lived nearly twice as long as those receiving chemotherapy infusions

People with advanced pancreatic cancer taking an experimental daily pill lived nearly twice as long as those receiving chemotherapy infusions

The physics of neutron stars are almost too fantastic to believe. Something the weight of two Suns compacted to a sphere the size of a city. Each teaspoon of its material would weigh billions of tons. If you’ve done any reading on the topic, you’ve heard these facts before. But despite the intense interest these extreme objects hold, we are still actively learning lots about them. One of the most pertinent outstanding questions is where is the line between becoming a neutron star and becoming a black hole when a star dies. A new paper by researchers at the HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Hungary describes what they believe to be a definitive answer to that question - between 2.2 and 2.3 solar masses.

Turmeric is heralded for its anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties, but columnist Alice Klein finds that the evidence for this is shaky. Taking high doses of its curcumin extract in supplement form can be risky

Turmeric is heralded for its anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties, but columnist Alice Klein finds that the evidence for this is shaky. Taking high doses of its curcumin extract in supplement form can be risky

A new analysis of red lines inside a cave in Wales suggests they were made deliberately by ancient humans some 17,000 years ago

Mathematicians are stunned at the progress AI is making in solving advanced problems, leaving some questioning whether there will still be room for humans

Mathematicians are stunned at the progress AI is making in solving advanced problems, leaving some questioning whether there will still be room for humans

Alan Turing proposed a test for machine intelligence: could a computer convince a human it was human? We have begun conducting the same test on ourselves, writes Max Moser