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
The pandemic’s long tail • We will be living with the secondary impacts of covid-19 for years to come
New Scientist
Catch a falling rocket • A partially successful attempt at grabbing a rocket with a helicopter is a historic first, report Jonathan O’Callaghan and Alex Wilkins
Pollution makes coral less resilient
Call for robots at Chernobyl • After Russian troops destroyed radiation sensors at the nuclear plant and placed landmines around it, scientists seek other methods to monitor safety, reports Matthew Sparkes
US to bolster its ability to combat lawbreaking drones
Adenovirus is prime suspect in child hepatitis outbreak
Quantum technique could stop people faking their location
Meteorites on Mars may harbour signs of life there
The moon has a small but noticeable effect on Earth’s temperature
Flightless prehistoric swan paddled the seas near Japan
Why is the W boson so heavy? • The particle’s unexpectedly high mass has sent physicists scrambling for explanations that include a strange new Higgs particle and supersymmetry, reports Leah Crane
EU plan to cut emissions from planes may increase them
Milky Way’s gamma-ray glow could be from pulsars
Test dummies gauge radiation risk for female astronauts
Chemical waste can be recycled into a range of drugs and fertilisers
Volcano-dwelling mice are highest-living mammals
Microplastic particles stick to spiderwebs
Brain signal could stop you thinking unwanted thoughts
People visited Stonehenge site thousands of years before it was built
Virus spread among wild mammals may rise with warming
Many species of reptile are at risk of being wiped out
New diode could speed up computing
A possible genetic cause of lupus found
Really brief
Ancient giants just got even bigger
Robot with a spring in its step shoots for the moon
Super-fast battery charges in minutes
End of the road? • Banning ads that push high-carbon products such as SUVs would be a win for regulators looking to take climate action, says Andrew Simms
My botanical life • Keeping gardens green The rise in demand for exotic houseplants is damaging the environment. We need to make sure our gardening is sustainable, writes Beronda L. Montgomery
Creative juice
Your letters
A bad omen? • The story of a 1960s hunt for people who claimed they had premonitions is beautifully written, but goes too easy on the pseudoscience, says James McConnachie
The other battle • Bill Gates’s latest book is full of good ideas for preventing future pandemics. But he omits a key issue, says Adam Vaughan
Don’t miss
The sci-fi column • Identity crisis Shades of dark romanticism and late 19th-century social savagery haunt two wild new books, which are united in their exploration of how unreliably memories construct our identity, says Sally Adee
A seismic mystery • Deep inside Earth are two vast geological anomalies of unknown origin. Planetary scientists are on a mission to explain these mysterious blobs, as Robin George Andrews discovers
Shaping Earth
“Humans police the expression of sex and gender much more than other primates do” • Apes give us a better understanding of gender behaviour and identity in humans, says...