Sandra Newman's sequel to the classic dystopian novel, told from the perspective of the woman at the original's heart, is doubleplusgood – not least because it reminds us how relevant George Orwell's dark vision of the future still is, says Sally Adee | Continue reading
Just as the power sector looks set to reach peak carbon emissions, the rise of AI use brings a new pressure on our energy requirements | Continue reading
A star behaving strangely was the first clue that astronomers were witnessing two Neptune-sized planets smashing into each other, creating a doughnut that may one day birth a new planet and moons | Continue reading
An analysis has found that Bordeaux wines made in years with wet winters and hot, dry summers – which are becoming more common as a result of climate change – are judged more highly by wine critics | Continue reading
Scars of collisions with other universes could show up in radiation from the big bang. A new experiment aims to mimic these collisions and help us look for them | Continue reading
Levels of the psychoactive compound THC have been steadily rising in marijuana since the 1970s, due largely to growers selecting for more potent strains | Continue reading
A profile of “crypto king” Sam Bankman-Fried has been rushed out as his fraud trial starts in the US. Does its author Michael Lewis get to grips with his subject? | Continue reading
Poor river management means that London is number nine in the list of global cities most likely to run out of drinking water, campaigner Feargal Sharkey said at New Scientist Live | Continue reading
Queen Thyra, the mother of King Harald Bluetooth, was commemorated on four runestones in different parts of Denmark – suggesting she was a powerful figure | Continue reading
Frog mating can be a competitive and sometimes deadly affair as many males compete for females – but females have some tricks to avoid unwanted attention | Continue reading
Orcas hunting a seal, duelling Nubian ibexes and a stunning horseshoe crab appear in winning images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition | Continue reading
The Dogger Bank offshore wind farm is located off England’s north-east coast and has begun generating power following installation of the first turbine at the site | Continue reading
The moon can be a scourge for astronomers, so the Dead Planets Society has figured out how to destroy it, with consequences both disastrous and visually stunning | Continue reading
Driving under the influence of cannabis increases the risk of traffic accidents, but despite plenty of research into cannabis use by drivers, there is no consensus on deciding who is too high to drive | Continue reading
Quantum computers may soon be able to crack encryption methods in use today, so plans are already under way to replace them with new, secure algorithms. Now it seems the US National Security Agency may be undermining that process | Continue reading
Modifying a protein in chicken cells can help the birds resist infection by influenza viruses, but further testing is needed before this approach can be rolled out | Continue reading
The expanding use of large AI models demands huge numbers of powerful servers, which could end up consuming as much energy as whole countries | Continue reading
A fall in sea surface temperatures around 500 million years ago led to the evolution of aquatic life that could survive in newly hospitable environments | Continue reading
The strange drive to be remembered after death may result from a cognitive glitch, but it could help solve big problems from climate change to inequality | Continue reading
Psychological tests reveal that goalkeepers are much better than outfield players or non-footballers at segregating visual and auditory information | Continue reading
Microgreens are an increasingly popular hobby, and have gained a reputation as the superheroes of the nutrition world - are they actually good for you? | Continue reading
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, commander on the International Space Station, answers questions from students at New Scientist Live ahead of him doing his first space walk on Thursday | Continue reading
A snake kept in a museum in Zimbabwe since 1982 has been assigned to a new species, the Nyanga rinkhals, but biologists fear it may no longer exist in the wild | Continue reading
The Draconid meteor shower is happening between 6 and 10 October, peaking on 9 October, and you should be able to see it if you are in the northern hemisphere | Continue reading
With the recent launch of the Psyche mission and the return of samples from the asteroid Bennu, asteroids are all the rage – but if they're just big rocks floating in the void, why do scientists care so much about them? | Continue reading
A mammalian cell cannot crawl just anywhere – computer simulations based on experiments suggest that the chemicals the cells leach control the process | Continue reading
By comparing the rings of 140 trees buried in the bank of a French river, researchers estimate that the largest solar storm that we know of occurred 14,300 years ago | Continue reading
Placebos may minimise pain by decreasing activity in systems of the brain that regulate emotions, a discovery that could help us to harness the placebo effect to ease discomfort | Continue reading
Techniques developed to stop people believing conspiracy theories could be adapted to prevent terrorism | Continue reading
Autonomous farm machinery may enable farmers to scale up the benefits of plant interactions, according to research presented at New Scientist Live | Continue reading
Smaller groups of countries should be working together to coordinate on policies to reduce emissions, says former UK climate adviser Simon Sharpe at New Scientist Live | Continue reading
Astronomers working on the Event Horizon Telescope project didn't know if their attempt to photograph a black hole would pay off, Luciano Rezzolla tells New Scientist Live | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope is looking ever further back in the universe’s history and the unexpected behaviour it is spotting hints that the standard model of cosmology may need tweaking, astrophysicist Richard Ellis has revealed at New Scientist Live | Continue reading
Cosmologists in the 1960s thought they had the end of the universe worked out – then an unknown PhD student called Beatrice Hill Tinsley upended it all | Continue reading
Genetic analysis suggests that two subspecies of Atlantic puffin began interbreeding in Norway in the 20th century, perhaps as a result of warming in the Arctic | Continue reading
Microsoft's AI-powered Bing Chat can be tricked into solving anti-bot tests with stories about deceased grandmothers or missing glasses | Continue reading
An annular solar eclipse, also known as a “ring of fire” eclipse because of the way the sun and moon line up, will be visible in the US, Central America and South America on 14 October | Continue reading
An artificial intelligence model could one day alert medical professionals if someone has recently used cannabis and may be dangerously intoxicated | Continue reading
A study involving 16 million people in the US found that those prescribed so-called GLP-1-agonists had an increased risk of serious gastrointestinal conditions, including stomach paralysis | Continue reading
Flooding from rising tides has added at least 23 minutes to the total annual commuting time for people living in coastal communities of the US, adding up to millions of hours wasted each year | Continue reading
Archaeological surveys have uncovered earthworks built by pre-Columbian societies across the Amazon, suggesting the rainforest isn't as pristine as we once thought | Continue reading
The idea that overcoming addiction means abstaining from all psychoactive substances for good is outdated and misguided - particularly as we learn more about the potential therapeutic uses of cannabis, says Maia Szalavitz | Continue reading
The audience's heartbeats synchronise during classical music concerts, particularly if its members have "agreeable" or "open" personalities | Continue reading
Gamma rays with energies upwards of 20 teraelectronvolts have been recorded from the Vela pulsar – 20 times higher than any other light ever seen from one of these odd stars | Continue reading
Animals at watering holes in South Africa were twice as likely to flee in response to recordings of humans talking compared with sounds of lions | Continue reading
The Draconid meteor shower is happening between 6 and 10 October, peaking on 9 October, and you should be able to see it if you are in the northern hemisphere | Continue reading
The Draconid meteor shower is happening between 6 and 10 October, peaking on 9 October, and you should be able to see it if you are in the northern hemisphere | Continue reading
A robotic gripper inspired by a patent from 1913 consists of a nested arrangement of pivoting joints that can wrap around odd shapes using a single motor | Continue reading