New Scientist Space - Space Headlines

Samples taken from people’s shoes and phones have been found to contain DNA from nine mysterious and unstudied branches of the bacteria family tree

Autotune can often sound robotic because it shifts off notes into perfect pitch, a new version listens to the notes you've already sung and uses them to help fill in the gaps

Elon Musk-backed firm OpenAI has built a text-generating AI that it says is too dangerous to release because of potential misuse

The New York Times' online quiz can pinpoint where in the UK or Ireland you grew up by the words you use and how you say them. We asked a linguist to explain why dialects persist

New Scientist went to meet the UK schoolchildren who have left their classrooms to join a global protest that calls for the government to declare a climate emergency

Hung-Chun Chang told New Scientist about his team’s controversial project to find drugs for depression and schizophrenia using clones of gene-edited monkeys

Media reports suggest Russia is contemplating disconnecting from the global internet. The move is not about isolationism but security, says James Ball

The interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua might be an alien spaceship, at least according to one prominent researcher, but now there is a much more reasonable explanation

There are calls to improve a treaty on the international trade in endangered species – but there is no standard way to define species, says Stephen Garnett

People with bowel cancer often have higher levels of certain toxic-producing bacteria. The toxin has now been shown to damage DNA in gut cells in mice

Gene-edited white blood cells could let us hack our immune systems to prevent infections with pathogens like HIV, flu, and the virus that causes glandular fever

New images of a black leopard taken by a camera trap in Kenya were claimed to be the first in 100 years, but that wasn't strictly true

NASA latest book includes big launches, moon landings, Martian panoramas and behind the scenes images that give a human scale to its vast endeavours

As measles outbreaks take hold, some teenagers in the US are beginning to look for ways to get vaccinated – against their parents' wishes

A region of the brain called the left entorhinal cortex varies in size from person to person, and it’s smaller than average in those who find tonic water bitter

Experiments in fish suggest offspring from older sperm may be healthier – a finding that could change the ways IVF clinics select sperm

AntBot is a six-legged robot that can get home without the help of GPS, thanks to tactics borrowed from desert ants

Though it has its satirical elements, John Lanchester's discomforting new novel does more than point the finger at present ills

Can Mike Berners-Lee's guide to changing how we think and live help us dump our dangerous habits and learn to use resources respectfully rather than rapaciously?

The origins of our paradoxical nature lie in murder and self-domestication. It's a weird story that may even explain why our species came into existence