New Scientist Space - Cosmology

A crossword-solving AI has beaten more than a thousand of the best human solvers at the prestigious American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

A robot that uses its spiked feet to cling to the mucus-covered lining of the gut could one day climb through the human body to install monitoring devices or deliver therapies

As part of its Innovative Advanced Concepts programme, NASA has given a major award to a team working on solar sails that can move in any direction using ridges that diffract light like prisms do

A super-sized atom plus a cold ion have been combined to make a completely new molecule that is 4 micrometres across and makes extremely long molecular bonds

In the aftermath of yet another school shooting, many people in the US are desperate for solutions to the country’s gun violence epidemic. Andrew Morral from the research initiative Gun Policy in America discusses the latest evidence on which interventions work

Replacing faulty genes with healthy ones has enabled several children with rare genetic disorders to have typical life experiences, such as attending school and living with their families

Many ancient Romans died when the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried by hot volcanic ash, but the high temperatures didn’t destroy proteins in their skeletons

The average US car now contains hundreds of kilograms of plastic that end up in landfill when the vehicle has outlived its use, but a new process could convert those waste plastics into graphene that can be used to create new car parts

The ancient town of Pompeii was buried under hot volcanic ash in AD 79, but DNA still survives in the bones of the people who died in the disaster

A nanoparticle coat helps an immunotherapy drug cross the blood-brain barrier in mice so it can target brain tumours more effectively

Blockades and supply issues limit access to life-saving medical devices in war zones. Companies are creating open-source 3D-printed products to fill the gap

Imagen, from Google, is the latest example of an AI seemingly able to produce high-quality images from a text prompt – but they aren't quite ready to replace human illustrators

Flashes of gamma radiation that seem to be produced by lightning storms have puzzled researchers for some time, but now there may be an explanation

A study of people in the US suggests those at high genetic risk of dementia are less likely to develop the condition if they improve their lives in seven ways

Baking a mixture of saltwater and materials that mimic dust from the moon or Mars at a high temperature produced sturdy bricks that could be used to build human habitats in space

In the past three decades, suicides involving guns have steadily dropped around the world. While down overall in the US since 1990, they began to climb in 2006 – coinciding with increased access to firearms

Finding out how acidic or alkaline your soil is means you can select the right plants for it, and maximise their chance of thriving, says Clare Wilson

Plague may seem like an ancient disease, but the bacterium that causes it persists in rodents and fleas around the world. Researchers are warning that it could resurface in a form that our antibiotics can't treat and cause another pandemic

The history books say the infamous plague pandemic of the 14th century killed at least half of the population of Europe. But recent scientific investigations have called that figure into question

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