Record heat in 2023 and 2024 may just have been natural variability 08. May 2025 (16:36) Simulations suggest that an extraordinary jump in temperatures seen in 2023 and 2024 could simply be natural variability, rather than a new phase of climate change as some researchers have suggested(New Scientist)
The maths that tells us when a scientific discovery is real – or not 08. May 2025 (11:00) When huge scientific discoveries are made, you may hear that they are “statistically significant” or pass a threshold called “5 sigma” – but those calculations can be manipulated to make claims seem grander than they are, finds Jacob Aron(New Scientist)
99.999 per cent of the deep seabed remains unexplored by humans 07. May 2025 (21:00) Deep-sea submersibles have been diving for decades, but records show that we have still only explored a tiny area of the deep seabed, which makes up the majority of Earth's topography(New Scientist)
Science is a Pandora's box – but we should open it anyway 07. May 2025 (20:00) We are often warned of the consequences of knowing too much, but even when scientific ideas have the potential to be harmful we should still seek to understand them(New Scientist)
Would snails be better than whales for explaining big data? Maybe 07. May 2025 (20:00) Feedback's proposal that the genome of the blue whale could be used to communicate the scale of large datasets is knocked back by a reader with a radical alternative suggestion(New Scientist)
What if we could experience life as another species? 07. May 2025 (20:00) In this latest instalment of our speculative column Future Chronicles, an imagined history of future inventions, Rowan Hooper explores the pros (and cons) of networking our brains with those of other animals(New Scientist)
