Climate change isn’t just warming the planet; it’s shaking Earth’s foundations

Just as with human bereavement, losing a pet can cause intense grief

Several billion years ago, tiny little creatures may have changed the colour of the ocean

Whale pee is more important to the ocean than you might think. How important? Urine for a shock

I wonder how many discoveries in human history were made because someone thought: Let’s take a look around the corner? This time, the corner – figuratively speaking – is the region of space just beyond Pluto. More precisely, the area where the Sun’s influence begins to fade – the boundary of the heliosphere. Think of the heliosphere as a vast bubble, emanating from the Sun, that envelops our Solar System. Solar wind blasts out from the Sun in all directions, but eventually, it fizzles out the further away it gets. Where the winds are strong, they push back more harmful cosmic radiation gusting in from elsewhere in our Galaxy, shielding us. But the further these winds travel, the weaker they become, until, eventually, the solar particles become inconsequential. This is the place that scientists consider to be the edge of our Solar System and the beginning of the interstellar medium. Here, space roils with a cosmic zoo of exotic particles from strange places. This is exactly what NASA’s recently launched Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) wants to study. Its mission is to make sense of the stuff that’s arriving here from other parts of space, to understand how our Sun forms a barrier that protects us from the more harmful elements out there, and to chart what’s going on at the very edge of what we know. Get the full story in the November issue.

Researchers issue new warning over overlooked high cholesterol condition

Bytes don't spread diseases, but they do seem to be linked with your health

New research suggests that the timing of your puberty may affect your long-term health, including heart disease, diabetes and asthma

Some recent research has made headlines by linking frequent nightmares to an increased risk of dementia. Should we be worried?