Science news

Around 1 in 10 Japanese people reach their 30s without ever having had sex

Forever chemicals, or PFAS, take a really long time to break down naturally and they’re everywhere

A one-off therapy could be our greatest weapon in the fight against heart disease

Space is big. Why not kick back, relax, and wait for them to come to you?

I wonder how many discoveries in human history were made because someone thought: Let’s take a look around the corner? This time, the corner – figuratively speaking – is the region of space just beyond Pluto. More precisely, the area where the Sun’s influence begins to fade – the boundary of the heliosphere. Think of the heliosphere as a vast bubble, emanating from the Sun, that envelops our Solar System. Solar wind blasts out from the Sun in all directions, but eventually, it fizzles out the further away it gets. Where the winds are strong, they push back more harmful cosmic radiation gusting in from elsewhere in our Galaxy, shielding us. But the further these winds travel, the weaker they become, until, eventually, the solar particles become inconsequential. This is the place that scientists consider to be the edge of our Solar System and the beginning of the interstellar medium. Here, space roils with a cosmic zoo of exotic particles from strange places. This is exactly what NASA’s recently launched Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) wants to study. Its mission is to make sense of the stuff that’s arriving here from other parts of space, to understand how our Sun forms a barrier that protects us from the more harmful elements out there, and to chart what’s going on at the very edge of what we know. Get the full story in the November issue.

Inspired by hibernating squirrels, scientists have developed a promising new drug that could transform how we treat heart failure

‘Liquid neural networks’ promise smaller, smarter and more transparent AI – and they’re already running on devices from drones to self-driving cars

Keeping moving is the best way to hold off the world’s biggest killer

Could all of this have happened before? And might it happen again?

Killer whales have a grisly new technique for hunting juvenile great white sharks – and scientists caught it on camera

Scientists are using electronic tags and satellites to track wild animals and build a data network.

From real-life holograms to smart contact lenses – these inventions are bringing science fiction into reality

Jimmy Wales, internet entrepreneur and founder of Wikipedia, reveals major changes coming to the web’s biggest bank of human knowledge

Jimmy Wales told BBC Science Focus the Tesla CEO’s claims are “just factually wrong"

The space rock is actually a ‘quasi moon’ on a similar orbit around the Sun

Scientists are building the clearest picture yet of how we age – right now to your cells and DNA

Not to self: never attempt an invasion of Russia in the winter

These foods could confuse your body’s internal clock and encourage it to store extra fat

Formula 1's 'sustainable' fuels are coming as soon as 2026, but critics are warning this could just be a 'box ticking exercise'

Nations which were ‘barely coping’ failed to feel the benefits of improving happiness

With the Moon out the way, 2025 is the perfect time to catch the Orionid meteor shower

By seeing which animals fall for a classic visual trick, scientists are uncovering how different brains make sense of the world

A deadly fly once wiped out across North America has resurfaced in northern Mexico