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.

Eat yourself old • We rightly worry about children’s diets, but adults aren’t off the hook

New Scientist

CO₂ clears brain of Alzheimer’s proteins • Intermittently breathing in a high dose of carbon dioxide may spur the brain’s waste-disposal system to clear proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease, finds Carissa Wong

This El Niño is set to be the most powerful ever

Does dark energy really exist? • A controversial analysis of supernovae argues that the universe’s expansion isn’t speeding up, so there is no need for dark energy to explain it, finds Matt von Hippel

Having a young biological age could help with weight loss

China is now regulating AI companionship

OpenAI’s hacking test goes sideways • A company’s servers were recently hacked by an OpenAI model that had escaped the confines of a safety test. How worried should we be, asks Matthew Sparkes

Big hominin footprints in Kenya are a mystery

Black holes can be flung across the universe

Most neurons seem to be jacks-of-all-trades

Rituals in cave span 25,000 years • Ash layers reveal deep history of GunaiKurnai cultural practices in Australia

Orcas work together to make huge sunfish explode

Fields medal winners announced

AI cracks major maths riddle • Mathematicians have been trying to prove the Jacobian conjecture for 87 years, but now an AI has apparently found a counterexample that disproves it, finds Matthew Sparkes

Effort to solve biggest maths controversy comes up short

IVF embryos may need less oxygen • Reducing oxygen levels during IVF embryo development could improve birth weights

Clothes made from living fungi can repair themselves

Sabre-toothed cats had bone-breaking teeth

Breathalyser can spot when you are burning fat

Age-defying supplements • On the issue of supplements, Graham Lawton is a hardened sceptic – but a few studies are finding some could slow biological ageing

Trading knowledge • A trip to an ancient Silk Road city highlights that people, not devices, are key to technological innovation – a lesson Silicon Valley could learn, says Annalee Newitz

AI’s Goldilocks zone • A study found that artificial intelligence can boost creativity when it’s used in moderation. But what do we lose when we outsource our creative thinking, asks David Robson

Small world

Two great reads on pandemics: fiction and fact

Infectious reading • First, Annie Jacobsen explored a fictional scenario for nuclear war. Now, she is looking at how the release of a bioweapon might play out. Jacob Aron digs in

New Scientist recommends

Signs of life • Did the samples gathered by the Viking landers of the 1970s actually find life on Mars? Paul Marks is glued to an expert rethink

Champagne supernova • Slow Gods, an elegant and big-concept space opera, is one of our most popular books yet with book club members, says Alison Flood

What we are reading in August

Your letters

Eat your age • As you get older, your body’s response to food changes. Switching up your diet could add years to your life, discovers David Cox

Feeling the burn? • In adulthood, our metabolic rate is stable from the age of 20 until around 60, when it begins to decline

Death in paradise • Rats are a scourge on island wildlife all over the...