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Whether or not we have partial free will could soon be resolved by experiments in quantum physics, with potential consequences for everything from religion to quantum computers

The vividness of your mind’s eye isn't fixed - and training it up is the secret tool of top athletes and businesspeople. Here’s how you can help develop yours

Thousands of fossils from the La Brea tar pits in California show no signs of mammals and birds evolving in response to shifting temperatures over the past 50,000 years

Want to roll an armadillo when you play Dungeons & Dragons, instead of standard dice? Now you can, thanks to a technique for mapping the probabilities produced by any shape

Life is thought to have begun when RNA began replicating itself, and researchers have got close to achieving this in the lab

Imagination isn’t mere childhood whimsy – harnessing its extraordinary capacities can benefit us all

2024 was the first single year to surpass the 1.5°C global warming threshold – now scientists predict that a year above 2°C is possible in the near future

Weather forecasts based on AI are faster and sometimes more accurate than traditional ones, but they may miss rare and unprecedented weather events – which are becoming more common as the climate changes

The worlds inside our heads can be dramatically different. What does that reveal about how our minds shape our lives, asks cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

A skeleton found in London records a brutal killing about 1200 years ago, thought to be a rare example of a judicial execution of a woman in medieval England

More than 60 ancient tools found in France and Spain have been identified as whale bone, and the evidence shows that people made tools from this material a thousand years earlier than previously thought

Your imagination isn't just one thing. The latest neuroscience is untangling just how diverse this faculty really is, says cognitive neurologist Adam Zeman

The chance of a planet forming in the outer reaches of the solar system - a hypothetical Planet Nine - could be as high as 40 per cent, but it would have been a rough start

It’s natural to associate wild flights of fantasy with children and a more mundane internal world with adult life. The latest research, though, shows that isn't the whole picture

There have never been so many satellites orbiting Earth as there are today, thanks in part to the launch of mega constellations like SpaceX's Starlink internet service - and now we are learning just how the sun's activity can affect them

The pace of ageing accelerates as you get older, and it is linked to an individual's sex, ethnicity and level of education, according to studies of US and UK populations

Banking a baby’s umbilical cord blood was once seen as a reasonable way to protect their future health, but much of that potential has turned out to be mere hype

Captured carbon dioxide could be injected deep in the Earth to dissolve rocks, freeing up nickel and other key metals vital for batteries

Results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest that dark energy, a mysterious force in the universe, is changing over time. This would completely re-write our understanding of the cosmos - but now other physicists are challenging this view

The idea of a multiverse of universes is derived from a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, but now a new twist on a classic experiment says it is time to put the idea to bed