New Scientist

New Scientist covers the latest developments in science and technology that will impact your world. New Scientist employs and commissions the best writers in their fields from all over the world. Our editorial team provide cutting-edge news, award-winning features and reports, written in concise and clear language that puts discoveries and advances in the context of everyday life today and in the future.

Elsewhere on New Scientist

Gold hydrogen fever • Earth may hold huge deposits of carbon-free fuel, but we can’t count on it yet

New Scientist

An upstanding Endeavour

New virus-like replicator discovered • Previously unknown replicating agents named “obelisks” have been found in genomic data from stool samples – but we know little about what these entities do, says Michael Marshall

What we know about the stars where NASA will hunt for life

Bees tend wounds, which suggests that they feel pain

AI mimics sleep to learn better • Making models rehash learned data in a sleep-like state boosts performance

SLIM moon lander regains power after botched landing

Patch with ‘octopus suckers’ helps drugs penetrate the skin

Plagues that shook the Roman Empire linked to cooler climate

Playing piano triggers changes in the brain

Engineered cells could slash cost of cultured meat

Smash-ups may explain light leaks • We may now know why strange light emissions from the early universe have been reaching us

Layer of graphene could help protect historical statues

Time to rethink thermodynamics? • Heating and cooling seem to be fundamentally different processes, not mirror images

Newly discovered smoking stars emit huge strange clouds

Smart sticker checks tumour growth and shows you in an app

Orangutan calls have complex structure like human language

Exquisite fossils reveal cannibalism • Three fossils of fish from the dinosaur era have members of the same species in their guts

Robot avatar lets people feel things remotely

Groundwater levels are dropping fast all over the globe

US states had 65,000 rape-related pregnancies after banning abortion

Retinal images could predict future risk of heart or lung disease

Toxic mud can be used to make greener steel

Black holes may be cosmic ray source

Putting pen to paper may boost memory

How the world looks through the eyes of other animals

Really brief

No need to detox • Describing ourselves as addicted to our phones is a counterproductive way to frame our overuse of technology, argues Pete Etchells

Health Check • Spotting the problem With measles outbreaks around the world, perhaps public health messaging should also focus on the virus’s ability to suppress the immune system, says Clare Wilson

Times past

Your letters

The power of chance • An extraordinarily rare event could upend our lives or alter the course of history. George Bass takes a journey into the chaos all around us

Keeping a clear head • A leading economist argues that we can increase our overall happinesss by thinking logically. Chris Stokel-Walker explores

New Scientist recommends

The film column • Don’t fence us in Occupied City, by 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen, is an epic work that explores how a city and its people react to civil control under Nazi occupation and, 80 years on, lockdown against a deadly disease, says Simon Ings

Gaseous gold • Huge excitement is gathering around a clean fuel known as “gold hydrogen”. James Dinneen tracks it down in Oman and asks if it can speed our path to net zero

Hints of hydrogen

The hydrogen rainbow

Where quantum weirdness hides • Our world emerges from clouds of...