Why surrounding your plants with crushed eggshells won’t deter slugs
Broken eggshells around young plants … but will they stop the slugs? BIOSPHOTO/Alamy For as long as I have been gardening, there has been a
When, and where, did the covid-19 pandemic really begin?
People carrying out disinfection work at a market in Wuhan, where covid-19 is thought to have originated, in March 2020 An Yuan/China News Service via
Antarctica is in crisis and we are scrambling to understand its future
Drilling for ice cores helps reveal the health of the Antarctic Nerilie Abram If all our fear and uncertainty over climate change could be distilled
Chatbot gives medical advice to hundreds of users in largest trial yet
Some of Alan’s app users got answers to their medical queries from an AI chatbot miniseries/Getty Images A French health insurance company has tested its
Temporary scalp tattoo can be used to record brain activity
Tattoos printed onto a person’s scalp can detect electrical activity in the brain and carry signals to a recording device Nanshu Lu Analysing brainwaves could
Exoplanet plate tectonics: A new frontier in the hunt for alien life
Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Alamy There is something strange about Earth. A few billion years ago, a process started here that we have never seen anywhere
Heatwaves are surpassing the extremes predicted by climate models
The UK experienced a record-breaking heatwave in July 2022 DAMIEN MEYER/AFP via Getty Images We should brace for worse-than-expected heatwaves in the years ahead, as
Most comprehensive picture yet of how organs age at different rates
Someone’s kidneys could be a decade older, biologically, than their brain Christian Kitzmuller/Alamy Our organs appear to age at different rates, with our lungs and
Swarms of cyborg cockroaches could be manufactured by robots
A cockroach with an electronic backpack can be steered remotely Courtesy of Hirotaka Sato, Nanyang Technological University A robotic arm that can automatically turn cockroaches
The best new science fiction books of 2024, from Adam Roberts to Rachel Kushner
2024 has been a great year for sci-fi, from time travel stories to those set in space Matt Mawson/Millennium Images, UK It has been a good