New works by Robert Macfarlane and Mike Berners-Lee are among the best new science books of 2025
The weather outside may be frightful but the new books inside are delighful Lechatnoir/Getty Images An Increasingly divisive politics. Media technologies that reinforce and radicalise
Remarkable images capture the diversity of Earth’s ice formations
Michael Hambrey and Jürg Alean A giant, impossible icicle. Starkly exposed mountain slopes. Billion-year-old rocks behind a lone iceberg. And the view from within a
Supersonic flight will see a dramatic return in 2025 with new aircraft
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 taking off for a test flight Boom Supersonic Commercial supersonic aircraft may soon return for the first time since Concorde was retired
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets started next year. I can’t wait
Rubin Observatory’s commissioning camera (ComCam) Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand Sometime in May or June, as the southern hemisphere winter sets in beneath the skies of the
Is Christmas better now it’s over? Don’t worry, that’s common
Happy now? Assuming you are reading this issue promptly, it’s the post-Christmas lull: the weird interregnum between Christmas and the New Year when nobody is
Should chatbots have rights – and should we care?
Is your chatbot in distress? Many people, myself included, would scoff at this question. It is just computer code, optimised to predict the next word
Mathematicians found – and fixed – an error in a 60-year-old proof
Oops! Try that again Tetra Images/Alamy An error in a proof underlying a widely used branch of modern mathematics was accidentally discovered by mathematicians while
We’ll learn about Ozempic’s potential for Alzheimer’s disease in 2025
The brain shrinkage observed in Alzheimer’s may be prevented by semaglutide, the drug in Ozempic ZEPHYR/Science Photo Library/Alamy Ozempic and Wegovy are already transforming how
The best sci-fi books to look forward to in 2025 from Adrian Tchaikovsky to Ken Liu
Voyages, both interstellar and Earth-bound, frame many new sci-fi novels Shutterstock/PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek I am writing this without (so far) having read any of the
Is Google’s approach to error-free quantum computers already outdated?
Google’s Willow quantum chip Google Many researchers believe that the only way to build unambiguously useful quantum computers is to enable them to correct their