Astronomers have discovered the first "bubble of galaxies," an almost unimaginably huge cosmic structure thought to be a fossilized remnant from just after the Big Bang sitting in our galactic backyard.

Small farms with natural landscape features such as shade trees, hedgerows and tracts of intact forest provide a refuge for some tropical bird populations, according to an 18-year study in Costa Rica.

Geoff Renshaw has realised that the chatbot can’t say ‘I don’t know’, Tom Brown thinks it has been reading too much KafkaFrom Elif Batuman’s experience with ChatGPT, it seems that artificial intelligence possesses one very human characteristic: a deep reluctance to confess to ignorance (Proust, ChatGPT and the case of the forgotten quote, 5 September).Many, many times I have found that...

My husband, Dr Geoff Durbin, who has died aged 78, was a consultant neonatologist whose early research was one of the crucial steps in improving the treatment of babies with breathing difficulties.In 1973 he became a research fellow in Sir Osmund Reynolds’s team at University College London (UCL), one of the early pioneers of intensive care for babies. Geoff was at the heart of this work from...

The early ancestors of humans deliberately made stones into spheres 1.4 million years ago, a study said on Wednesday, though what prehistoric people used the balls for remains a mystery.

On Sept. 6, a new satellite left Earth; its mission is to tell us about the motions of hot plasma flows in the universe.

Explorer Ludovic Slimak has dedicated decades to unearthing the mystery of our prehistoric ancestors. Now he has found a missing piece that radically reshapes our understanding – not just of the Neanderthals but of humanity itselfThere’s no confusing Ludovic Slimak for just another hotel guest. It’s a sweltering Sunday afternoon in late August and we’ve arranged to meet in the car park of...

Forecasts can now predict the location and onset of marine heat waves that can disrupt marine ecosystems. Scientists say the next step is to forecast what happens to top predators that inhabit those ecosystems.

The United Kingdom’s recently formed Advanced Research & Invention Agency (ARIA) today announced the eight program directors who will each oversee up to £50 million for “high-risk, high-reward” research. The effort, modeled on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that is credited with the development of a range of critical technologies including...

The smell of sawdust and popcorn fills the air. The clowns, acrobats and magicians are all in place.

More than 50 world sites hope for inclusion on the UN's coveted heritage list at a meeting opening in Riyadh Sunday, while some incumbents, including Venice and Kyiv, face the risk of a downgrade.

Researchers at Karolinska Institute have developed a novel method using DNA nanoballs to detect pathogens, aiming to simplify nucleic acid testing and revolutionize pathogen detection. The study's results, published in Science Advances, could pave the way for a straightforward electronic-based test capable of identifying various nucleic acids in diverse scenarios quickly and cheaply.

Separating molecules is critical to producing many essential products. For example, in petroleum refining, the hydrocarbons—chemical compounds composed of hydrogens and carbons—in crude oil are separated into gasoline, diesel and lubricants by sorting them based on their molecular size, shape and weight. In the pharmaceutical industry, the active ingredients in medications are purified by...

South Africa is renowned for having one of the world's biggest populations of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). Substantial declines have been observed, however, in places where the sharks normally gather on the coast of the Western Cape province. Sharks congregate at these locations to feed, interact socially, or rest.

Patients must be given better access to the latest drugs, technology and clinical trialsCancer has been hitting the front pages again, and it can be difficult from the headlines to judge whether it is good news or bad.We seem to lurch from a game-changing new treatment one day to reports of rising rates the next – most recently, alarming news about the increase in global incidence of cancer...