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

A note from the magazine editor

Digging deeper • The way ancient artefacts are discovered tells its own story – if we want to hear it

New Scientist

Cosmic whirlpool captured by JWST

‘Demon’ dreamed up by physics actually exists in our cells

Kākāpō genomes sequenced to help save them

India’s historic moon mission • The success of Chandrayaan-3 has made India the first nation to land a craft near the moon’s ice-rich south pole, reports Matthew Sparkes

Women and men throw spears equally well using ancient atlatl tool

Sled dogs turn Svalbard greener with their faeces

Analysis Infectious disease • When will we see widespread vaccination against dengue? The way the four subtypes of dengue virus vary in their prevalence means making a vaccine against it is particularly challenging, says Jason Arunn Murugesu

AI can spot early signs of a tsunami from atmospheric shock waves

Cougars are shifting their hunting tactics to outsmart bears

Your height may affect your gut • The diversity of bacteria in your gut microbiome may be related to how tall you are

Plastic bottles can be recycled into supercapacitors

How genes affect education • Studies have overestimated the impact of the environment on how long people stay in education. Our genes are more influential to it than we thought, discovers Clare Wilson

Toughest known structure discovered by robot laboratory

The tropics could get so hot that all leaves on rainforest trees die

The human Y chromosome has been fully sequenced for the first time

Bees may be able to tell if water contains sugar just by looking

The rise of AI prompt engineers • Firms are hiring specialists to help them get more out of artificial intelligence, but the long-term need for such skills is debatable, finds Matthew Sparkes

Emperor penguin colonies lost all chicks due to ice breakup

Map of every molecule could be possible with AI

ChatGPT gets better marks than students

Turtles can act as radioactivity records

Tiny jets may power winds that stream from the sun

Really brief

Move over, Euclid • The history of mathematics is more diverse than you think. Credit shouldn’t only go to the ancient Greeks and Renaissance Europeans, says Kate Kitagawa

This changes everything • Covid calling Our priorities are all wrong when it comes to new technologies. We can’t get life-saving drugs, but we can get dubious self-driving taxis, says Annalee Newitz

Finite resource

Life at the crater’s edge • From a taste like sour milk to noises like a wailing child, a volcanologist reveals what it is like to get up close with his subject, finds James Dinneen

Hot on the trail of ET • Alien first contact is most likely to involve space junk or a probe, and only then because we have sought it out, learns Simon Ings

New Scientist recommends

The TV column • Déjà viewing At the heart of Painkiller, a new Netflix miniseries, is the highly addictive pain drug OxyContin. What can the show possibly add to a great series that told the same story less than two years ago, asks Bethan Ackerley

Your letters

Relax to the max • We are finally getting a grasp of what rest and relaxation actually do to the brain and body. The insights could help us all...