Human engineering appears to have moved the planet, literally. According to new research published this month, the global boom in dam construction over the past two centuries has caused measurable ...

Star trails above the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang, Hubei province, China. Large dams like this one are shifting the Earth's poles away from its axis of rotation. In an ideal model of our planet, the ...

Russell has a PhD in the history of medicine, violence, and colonialism. His research has explored topics including ethics, science governance, and medical involvement in violent contexts. Russell has ...

Last Word is New Scientist’s long-running series in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions, ranging from the minutiae of everyday life to absurd astronomical hypotheticals. To ...

Scientists are beginning to read Earth in a different way, not from orbit, but from the surface of the moon. A recent study, ...

Which way does the Earth rotate? That e-mail question comes from William in Milan, a viewer who says he has heard both clockwise and counterclockwise. A general statement concerning the direction of ...

Last Word is New Scientist’s long-running series in which readers give scientific answers to each other’s questions, ranging from the minutiae of everyday life to absurd astronomical hypotheticals. To ...

It’s no wonder that the uneducated minds of antiquity—and some simpletons today—were anthropocentric. The Sun, the Moon, and the entire sky seem to revolve around us. We are so special, they thought.

Here’s a reminder: We’re not the center of the Universe. As species, as members of this planet, this solar system or even the Milky Way galaxy. We are just a speck twisting in interstellar dust. Which ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...