Set in an empty world after a superflu pandemic wipes out most of humanity, Peter Heller's The Dog Stars - the August read for the New Scientist Book Club - will be released as a film later this month ...

In this extract from Peter Heller’s novel, the August read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to pilot Hig, who lives alone after most of the world was killed in a superflu pandemic ...

To predict when we’ll have a truly useful quantum computer, we need to know precisely what one is. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan finds that’s harder to pin down than you might think ...

The mummies of two people who lived in Chile more than 400 years ago carry DNA from smallpox, providing the first molecular ...

We all have bits of DNA from a long-lost “ghost ancestor” inside us – and by putting all the different bits together, we ...

A tiny sensor that unfolds within the body could continuously monitor our heart activity and breathing after showing promise ...

Rebecca Skloot told the story of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells were taken without her permission in a bestselling book, ...

Networks of pipes carrying chilled water have proven to be an efficient way to cool hospitals and universities. Now, they are ...

Genetic tests of mammoth remains have found a stark contrast in the sex ratio between sites where the animals died naturally ...

Three problems that are out of reach for conventional computers have been cracked by quantum computers and show how important ...

A treatment that turns off the bit of the immune system that goes haywire in Guillain-Barré syndrome may be the first ...

The cosmological principle is the foundation of modern cosmology – but its usefulness doesn’t necessarily make it true, says columnist Leah Crane ...