The US National Science Foundation cancelled funding for research on misinformation, disinformation and AI-generated deepfakes, even as misleading information runs rampant on social media

Text-generating AIs such as ChatGPT can be used to hide encrypted messages inside fake conversations, which could help people living under oppressive regimes communicate secretly

Rather than a volcanic winter, the Toba eruption 74,000 years ago resulted in several years of warm and dry weather, geochemical evidence from India suggests

Hackers may be able to garble the output of programs running on quantum computers, leaving other people with unknowingly incorrect results - but thankfully, there is a fix

A black hole bomb – an idea first proposed in 1969 – has now been realised in the lab as a toy model made from a rotating cylinder and magnetic coils. Studying the bomb could help us better understand real black holes.