Artificial intelligences opt for nuclear weapons surprisingly often Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises. Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against…
Backing up information on quantum computers is tricky RUSLANAS BARANAUSKAS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Alamy In quantum mechanics, the idea that quantum information can’t be duplicated is ironclad – or at least, it was. A surprising approach to backing up qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, appears to allow a sidestepping of this fundamental law of physics….
Killhouse Academy, run by the 3rd Assault Brigade, is Ukraine’s leading drone-pilot school. Its R&D chief (pictured) is known as Shark Mykhaylo Palinchak The grinding, attritional war between Russia and Ukraine is now entirely dominated by drones. Russia pummels Ukraine with long-range kamikaze aircraft and Ukraine knocks them out of the sky with specialised interceptors….
An illustration of the molecule rapamycin, which may aid extend your life, but then again, may not Science Photo Library The longevity benefits of fasting or taking rapamycin are more like a lottery than a sure bet. The interventions were linked to a robustly extended lifespan less than a year ago, but a reanalysis of…
Orcas may be at risk of predation by other orcas Francois Gohie/VWPics/Alamy Biologists have seen signs of orca-on-orca predation in the North Pacific, and such cannibalism may explain why some orcas travel in large family groups. Two distinct subspecies of orcas, also called killer whales (Orcinus orca), are found in the North Pacific. Transient or…
Vitiligo involves paler, less-pigmented skin patches Getty Images A first-of-its-kind cream that targets the underlying cause of vitiligo will be made available on the National Health Service in England. In clinical trials, the cream significantly increased pigmentation in the white skin patches caused by the condition, but the treatment has previously been described as controversial,…
A woman receiving the measles vaccine in Mexico JULIO CESAR AGUILAR/AFP via Getty Images I am currently arranging to get a shingles vaccination. I had shingles at university and still bear the scars, so I really don’t want to risk getting it again. But I also have in mind the fact that the benefits of…
International Women’s Day, held annually on 8 March, is a stalwart of what we might call the “awareness calendar” – the loose collection of days, weeks and months dedicated to informing the public about different issues. It’s unfortunate that some men’s response to IWD is to ask “when is International Men’s Day then?”, especially when…
We now know how horses whinny Horizon International Images/Alamy When a horse whinnies, it is making two sounds simultaneously as no other animal can: a low-pitched noise made in a similar way to a cow’s moo and a high-pitched whistle made in its throat. It has long been known that a horse’s whinny contains both…
The Adorant figurine, approximately 38,000 years old, consists of a small, ivory plate bearing an anthropomorphic figure and multiple sequences of notches and dots Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch, CC BY 4.0 Stone Age people 40,000 years ago used a simple form of writing comparable in complexity to the earliest stages of the world’s first…
