Philip Ball
03 September 2025
Predicting the traffic jam, not the automobile
Some of the best science fiction is not so much about dreaming up futuristic technologies but imagining the kinds of societies they will engender
Read the full article27 August 2025
Is Nasa’s nuclear moon plan sheer lunacy?
Nuclear power may be essential for a future lunar base, but Nasa’s latest announcement looks more like a flag-planting contest than a serious mission plan
Read the full article23 August 2025
Measles: The return of a killer
Anti-vaccine lies mean the disease is now spreading in Britain, the US and around the world. And this is just the start
Read the full article18 August 2025
Trump’s war on scientific truth
Ideologues don’t like science because it confronts them with truths they can’t dismiss. Donald Trump seems to think he has a workaround
Read the full article13 August 2025
The mystery of the Mpemba effect
How a Tanzanian secondary school student's ice cream making prompted a probe into why hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold water
Read the full article06 August 2025
Find life on other planets? We can’t even agree what it is
We can’t be sure that, even if life were staring us in the face on Europa, we’d recognise it as such
Read the full article30 July 2025
Why we need to be more chill about language change
It appears that our vocabulary is entrained with the Zeitgeist, whether we like it or not
Read the full article23 July 2025
In physics, sometime it is the size that matters
It seems ironic that the more deeply we want to see into the world, the bigger we have to make our instruments
Read the full article16 July 2025
The deepest view into the universe yet
A new telescope, 2,650 metres up on a mountainside in Chile, is one of the most ambitious astronomical projects of our times
Read the full article09 July 2025
The danger of fetishising genome sequencing
The worry is that this becomes a technology that we use because we can rather than because we know it can make a difference
Read the full article02 July 2025
The mystery of the so-called double-slit experiment
It seems that, in the quantum world, making a measurement doesn’t tell us how things are but actually determines how they are: it creates our observable reality
Read the full article25 June 2025
We still don’t know the state of Iran’s nuclear programme
Donald Trump’s claim to have taken nuclear arms out of Iran’s hands is probably little more than bravado
Read the full article18 June 2025
Why there is still no consensus on what quantum mechanics means
Surveys indicate that there’s no sign of convergence, even after 100 years, about the various interpretations of the theory that have been put forward
Read the full article11 June 2025
Can we save the planet by geo-engineering the sea?
Experiments to combat climate change using ‘iron fertilisation’ to boost plankton growth, first proposed in the 1980s, remain unproven and contentious
Read the full article05 June 2025
Is there really another planet out there?
2017 OF201 is the largest object to have been found in our solar system for more than a decade
Read the full article05 June 2025
The rise of bombs: how physics lost its innocence
How did an inquiry into the laws of nature produce a form of technology capable of annihilating civilisation?
Read the full article28 May 2025
Is science failing, or are we failing science?
Truly groundbreaking scientific discoveries may be on the decline – but it’s not because we’ve run out of big ideas
Read the full article21 May 2025
Why is Trump's America anti-science?
The US has long led the science world but now, researchers are moving abroad to continue their work
Read the full article14 May 2025
Is there a colour we’ve never seen before?
Scientists at the University of California claim to have created a new colour, called ‘olo’, which is outside the human visual spectrum
Read the full article07 May 2025
The dire truth about ‘de-extinction’
The creation of a genetically modified Ice Age wolf has sparked a scientific backlash over the politicisation of ‘de-extinction’
Read the full article30 April 2025
Is there life in a galaxy far, far away?
Astronomers have detected potential biosignatures on exoplanet K2-18b, but experts warn that the evidence is inconclusive
Read the full article23 April 2025
Unearthing the secrets of dark energy
Astronomers have discovered that the mysterious force accelerating the universe’s expansion appears to be weakening over time
Read the full article09 April 2025
A new glitch in the cosmic code
New findings at Cern offer tantalising clues to why the universe contains matter rather than antimatter – but answers remain elusive
Read the full article02 April 2025
The cancer vaccines under threat from MAGA
Researchers have developed a promising vaccine for pancreatic cancer, but its future is uncertain due to Robert F Kennedy Jr
Read the full article26 March 2025
The return of Nasa’s ‘stranded’ astronauts
The politicisation of SpaceX’s routine mission raises concerns over Nasa’s reliance on the increasingly erratic Elon Musk
Read the full article19 March 2025
What we can learn from Covid
The government is planning a major drill this autumn to test the UK’s readiness in the event of a new pandemic
Read the full article12 March 2025
Critical Mass: A cosmic close call that wasn’t
The chances of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth and causing catastrophic damage were always small, but the probability has now been downgraded to 0.001%
Read the full article05 March 2025
Trump’s war on science
The president’s funding freezes, gagging orders and ideological purges are wreaking havoc on US scientific research
Read the full article26 February 2025
Why conspiracists love bird flu
Despite the lessons from the pandemic, the demagogues and their followers are all too ready to embrace a cult of death
Read the full article12 February 2025
The scientific reality of Trump 2.0
As a universal criterion applied to individuals, the president’s executive order on gender ideology is hopeless
Read the full article05 February 2025
The quantum leap: a century of innovation
It’s 100 years since Werner Heisenberg developed the theory of quantum mechanics. No one could possibly have imagined how this discovery would be put to use in the future
Read the full article29 January 2025
The ethics and risks of editing our DNA
Polygenic editing – making changes to DNA – is now a reality. But are the medical benefits outweighed by the ethical risks and hidden dangers?
Read the full article