Could a new calculation based on two commonly tracked metrics offer a cheat code for your long-term health?

People everywhere use protein supplements on a daily basis, but a new report suggests some contain worrying amounts of a harmful substance

Could invisible chemical signals sway our behaviour, or who we’re attracted to – all without us knowing?

Your bed is nowhere near as clean as you think it is. Thankfully, experts have laid out the rules of how clean your bed really needs to be… and when dirty becomes dangerous

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.

Wakey wakey. Science is here and it wants to give you the best possible start to your day

We might finally be able to spot osteoarthritis early… and bring it to a halt

An ancient Maya structure was likely built around communal astronomical observations – but the identity of a mysterious woman is still unknown

A brand new technique is uncovering Earth’s oldest secrets, and could soon be turned to the stars