When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we'd be discussing them three centuries later. Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have ...

Placebos offer the tempting possibility of pain relief without drugs or surgery, largely relying instead on expectations that pain will go away. As intangible and elusive as that sounds, the placebo effect is a very real thing, which scientists have now traced to specific neural circuits ...

When it comes to exercise for heart health, you don't want to peak too early in life. Recent research suggests that if you want to protect yourself against high blood pressure as you age, you need to play the long game and keep your exercise levels up through middle age. But social factors ...

For the second time this year, bumblebees have stepped up to scientists' tests and shown that they can solve cooperative tasks that transcend their tiny brains. In a series of lab experiments, bumblebees (Bombus sp.) that trained together on tasks to retrieve a sugary reward were more ...

The resting mass of ghostly neutrinos is one of the most sought-after quantities in particle physics that scientists are one step closer to accurately determining, thanks to a new experiment led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany. If the mass of ...

The potential of quantum computing is immense, but the distances over which entangled particles can reliably carry information remains a massive hurdle. The tiniest of disturbances can make a scrambled mess of their relationship. To circumvent the problem, quantum computing researchers ...

Dozens of broken pieces of pottery dating between 2,000 and 3,000 years old have been unearthed on a windswept island on the Great Barrier Reef – the oldest pottery ever discovered in Australia. The remnants, found less than a meter below the surface by Traditional Owners and ...

Owning a pet could protect against the mental decline that can foreshadow dementia in older folks living alone, a study of nearly 8,000 people has found. The findings of the sizeable UK study add to existing evidence from the US that having a pet can help buffer against the effects of brain ...

Zits are the pits, shattering anyone's confidence in a radiant pustule of pain. So the idea that the same bacterium thought to cause acne could also be co-opted to clear it up is strangely satisfying news. Like popping a good pimple (not that you should do that). Cutibacterium acnes is one ...

Epstein-Barr virus, a common virus that infects most people at some point in their lives, has long been suspected as a trigger of multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease affecting around 36 people in every 100,000 worldwide. But exactly how this virus trips the immune system into ...