Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft that never made it beyond Earth’s orbit on its way to Venus, is due to come crashing down on 9 or 10 May

When huge scientific discoveries are made, you may hear that they are “statistically significant” or pass a threshold called “5 sigma” – but those calculations can be manipulated to make claims seem grander than they are, finds Jacob Aron

Simulations suggest that an extraordinary jump in temperatures seen in 2023 and 2024 could simply be natural variability, rather than a new phase of climate change as some researchers have suggested

Superb starlings appear to swap between parent and ‘nanny’ roles to help raise chicks over their lifetimes, even when they aren’t related to them

A powerful enough quantum computer could crack the encryption methods currently used to protect data around the world, but the solution might be a quantum algorithm once thought to be completely useless