New Scientist Space - Cosmology

By 2050, 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban centres - that's just one reason why mayors will be essential to addressing the climate crisis, making vital adaptations to cities to make them more bearable in a warming world

Using GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling

A large planet has been spotted orbiting a dwarf star that is just 3 million years old, offering possible clues to how the worlds in our solar system came into being

IBM has bet big on a modular approach to building quantum computers, and now it has successfully linked two quantum chips together to operate as a single device, a key step towards that goal

Quantum computers could get a boost from artificial intelligence, thanks to a model created by Google DeepMind that cleans up quantum errors

Unbearable heat in China’s megacities reveals the future many of us face, but also suggests ways we can adapt

Many restaurants in countries such as England and the US now print calories on their menus, but some researchers question whether this is really tackling their obesity problem

The best pictures we have of the sun yet have been delivered thanks to the Solar Orbiter spacecraft

The effects of being in space can worsen an astronaut's working memory, processing speed and attention - which could be a problem for future missions

Analysis of millions of galaxies upholds Albert Einstein’s ideas about gravity and also offers tantalising new hints of how dark energy may have evolved

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. It aims to conduct the launch at 4pm Central Time (10pm UK). Here’s everything we know so far

The vast computational power of the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be used to support the US nuclear deterrent

Tiny, solid windows in the shells of heart cockles let in light for the photosynthetic algae inside them – and they could show us how to make better fibre-optic cables

A cataclysmic quantum fluctuation could wipe out everything at any moment. The fact that we’re still here is revealing hidden cosmic realities

The largest number of logical qubits has been linked through quantum entanglement, which is a key step towards quantum computers that can detect and correct errors

More than 20 million people have joined Bluesky, a social network that gives you fine-grained control over what you see and who you interact with. I think it is the future of social media, says Chris Stokel-Walker

Four southern giant hornets have been identified in northern Spain, leading to concerns that the species could harm native insects if it becomes widespread

Several populations of Mexican tetra fish that live in darkness have independently evolved to need hardly any sleep, but the reason why is a mystery

Most mathematicians have been reluctant to start working with artificial intelligence, but a new tool developed by researchers at Meta may change that

A supercomputer simulation of iron and carbon atoms in Earth’s inner core may explain how a molten ball at the centre of our planet froze solid