Marginal oil and gas wells have outsized pollution impact
Low-producing oil and gas wells in the US account for 5 per cent of national oil and gas production but produce 40 per cent of the industry's methane emissions
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Anthropic won't fix a Claude Dispatch flaw that could let attackers execute remote commands across corporate boundaries
From EOP to RCE in six simple steps
Investigation into 'major fish kill' after pollution incident
The pollution caused the death of brown and migratory sea trout in the Inler river.
Google refused 54K-name petition, say campaigners
Campaigners oppose the development of a large data centre on a wildlife site at Thurrock.
‘No one cares about the little guy’: Sri Lanka’s fishers still reeling from 2021 toxic plastic spill
A stricken container ship shed tonnes of tiny pellets called nurdles on the west coast. Five years on, locals are counting the cost to marine life and livelihoods On the beach in Pamunugama, on Sri Lanka’s west coast, women in uniform work under the scorching sun. They sift through rubbish washed ashore, searching among the usual litter for something much smaller: tiny plastic pellets. Five years…
Warming UK seas could ‘fundamentally reshape marine ecosystems’ – report
Four-year study warns destabilised marine food webs could jeopardise food security by 2050 Warming seas around the UK and the wider north-east Atlantic could destabilise marine food webs, weaken ocean health and jeopardise food security by 2050, according to a four-year study. Scientists who projected the impact of climate breakdown on four key groups of marine life crucial to maintaining ocean…
‘Ferritin face’: can you really diagnose low iron from a selfie? – podcast
Social media is awash with claims iron deficiency can be identified in the mirror by dark circles, breaking hair and dry skin. But is ‘ferritin face’ real? Madeleine Finlay tells Ian Sample why so many of us struggle to keep our iron levels up, how we can actually diagnose low iron and the best way to correct a deficiency, with help from Hal Drakesmith, a professor of iron biology at Oxford…
Stunning collection of prehistoric engravings found in Spanish cave
A close examination of a frequently visited cave wall in Spain has revealed a spectacular assembly of rock art engravings thought to be at least 19,000 years old
British Iron Age ‘king’ who prompted Roman invasion was probably a woman
Verica, a British ruler who encouraged the Roman emperor Claudius to launch an invasion, may not have been the man historians thought he was
Swapping from dairy to plant-based milk, cheese and yoghurt ‘could lead to micronutrient deficiencies’
Young people and women most at risk, study finds, as researchers call for vegan products to be fortified with iodine in particular Switching from dairy products to plant-based alternatives could lead to deficiencies in vital micronutrients, especially among young people and women, a study has found. Even moving partly to vegan alternatives to milk, cheese and yoghurt could lead to falls in…
Typhoons batter East Asia as El Niño makes Pacific 'burn with fever'
Even for countries where typhoons are a way of life, the last few months have brought unusually wild weather.
US prosecutors drop criminal charges against scientist detained over frog embryos
Kseniia Petrova was detained for four months after arrest with research samples, and feared deportation to Russia Federal prosecutors have dropped all criminal charges against a Russian scientist who spent four months in immigration detention after flying into Boston with frog embryos intended for cancer research at Harvard Medical School. Kseniia Petrova, 31, was arrested in March 2025 after…
If every ship were taken out of the water, would sea levels change?
This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions. Here’s what our readers had to say
Why do people look better in a mirror than in a photograph? Part 3
This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions. Here’s what our readers had to say
Why don’t dogs look up when a low-flying plane passes overhead? Part 6
This question was posed as part of New Scientist’s Last Word series, in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions. Here’s what our readers had to say
This week’s new questions
Why do carnivorous quadrupeds sit on their haunches, but herbivorous ones don’t? Is the order of mathematical operations, given the acronym BODMAS, universal or does it break down in the quantum world?
The DNA is backwards on The Selfish Gene’s cover – again
Feedback notes with weary inevitability that a 50th anniversary edition of Richard Dawkins's classic work features a double-helix twisting the wrong way – not for the first time
Tom Gauld on our future robot overlords
Tom Gauld's weekly cartoon
Twisteddoodles on scientific equipment training
This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles
Physicists get first glimpse of the zeptoverse from LHC experiment
Data from a particle collider has revealed evidence of a long-sought particle process that serves as a guide into the realm of the smallest scales ever probed
Antarctica’s permafrost is emitting worrying amounts of CO2
Carbon dioxide emissions from ice-free ground in one area of Antarctica have grown fivefold in just five years, suggesting there may be a significant source of emissions we haven’t accounted for
Endangered giant burrowing frog returns to wild after tadpoles rescued from ashes of black summer fires
Tadpoles collected from puddles in East Gippsland were transported to Melbourne zoo, where they were raised to metamorphosis and successfully bred in captivity for the first time After the 2019-20 black summer bushfires, scientists in eastern Victoria stumbled across something they had been after for years: puddles of tadpoles from the southern giant burrowing frog, one of the state’s most…
Hannah Fry: How to win The Traitors with maths (step one, don’t get made a traitor)
With a little help from Alan Turing and Thomas Bayes, I came up with a mathematical model I hoped would help me win The Traitors. Unfortunately, events then got in the way, writes Professor Hannah Fry in her latest column
Firework noise limit should be drastically cut to protect wild animals, UK government told
Ministers urged to go further than proposed cut to 110 decibels to ease acute stress on birds and others animals Campaigners are calling on the government to protect the welfare of wild animals by cutting the maximum noise level of fireworks sold to the public from 120 to 90 decibels. The Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW) has said lowering the limit to 90 decibels – which is about one-eighth…
William meets firefighters who tackled summer blazes
The prince says 2026 was the first summer he felt "worried about the scale of the wildfires".