New Scientist Space - Cosmology

A trial using data to prevent child abuse helped a UK police force drastically cut the time it takes child protection experts to review cases

Crabs in the Thames are ingesting “shocking” amounts of plastic and may be passing it on in high doses to other species in the river, researchers have found

UK taxpayers gave around £5m to the company Dyson to support the electric car project that it announced this week will be scrapped

A NASA engineer has published plans for an engine that could accelerate a rocket without using propellant. But there are questions over whether it could work

Urea, a chemical found in urine, can be used to make simple genetic molecules similar to DNA – which could have been the basis of the first life on Earth

We were unsure if wormholes could exist long enough to allow a person through. Now calculations indicate they are extremely rare, but could last the age of the universe

Ancient DNA suggests that during the Bronze Age, wealthy families once lived with poorer individuals, suggesting live-in slavery could be 1300 years older than we thought

Cooling powered by twisting materials could make more efficient and sustainable fridges that don't rely on compressing greenhouse gasses

Depression appears to cause changes to the structure of the brain, as well as the other way around. That may be due to behaviour changes that can shrink unused brain pathways

A proposal to ban snacks on public transport has appeared in a UK government report. But it doesn't seem based on evidence, and the government won't discuss it

New Scientist readers are more knowledgeable than the general public and experts on the state of the world, but still score worse than monkeys would on some questions

We'll be live streaming several talks from New Scientist Live including British astronaut Tim Peake's question and answer session, the full announcement of SpaceBit's plans for the first British lunar rover and the real life rocket man Sam Rogers

Two protomammals from the dinosaur era were still cold-blooded like their reptile ancestors, even though their skeletons and brains were mammal-like

Bacteria in deep-sea anglerfish give the predators a luminescent glow – but despite being adapted to this lifestyle the microbes leave for the open water

A UK-based space start-up is planning to send the smallest rover ever to the moon in 2021, and it will walk around on legs instead of rolling on wheels

We had evidence that bees could count up to four. But it seems they can go further - if prompted with both rewards for correct answers and penalties for errors

The reappearance of a vast blob of abnormally warm water in the Pacific, around seven times the size of Alaska, has raised the prospect of impacts on marine ecosystems and weather systems  

Patterns of markings from skinning preserved bones are the first evidence that humans living 200,000 to 400,000 years ago stored food to eat later

Miniature clumps of cells grown from a person's tumour biopsy can be used to test different cancer treatments so medics can decide which one is best for the individual

Warm water can leave corals looking dead – but in some cases polyps still survive deep in the coral skeleton and in time they can return the coral to life