New Scientist Space - Cosmology

A team that looked at how 55 orcas in the Pacific Ocean died found cases linked both directly and indirectly to human activity

Geothermal energy on Mars may have melted ice below the planet’s surface billions of years ago, creating an environment that could have been suitable for life

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The Arecibo Observatory telescope in Puerto Rico has collapsed, just weeks after the US National Science Foundation revealed plans to decommission the 57-year-old structure

An artificially intelligent pilot created by Google and Loon can keep huge stratospheric balloons in the air for hundreds of days at a time to act as floating cell towers in remote areas

The prehistoric cognitive revolution that saw an explosion of inventions was driven by a new, pattern-seeking network in the brain – and that’s highly correlated with autism today, says researcher Simon Baron-Cohen

China, the country at the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, now sees few cases and deaths. How has it done it and are the official numbers trustworthy?

Many European countries are exiting a second lockdown, but each had different strategies – did they work, and could they have been avoided?

The UK has become the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, with the first shots set to be administered to vulnerable people in the coming days

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Noisy MRI machines are an unpleasant place to have a migraine, but scanning people in the middle of an attack has revealed which brain regions may be responsible for the condition

The UK has embarked on a step to building the world’s first nuclear fusion power station, by launching a search for a 100-plus hectare site where it can be plugged into the electricity grid

Some birds can detect the movement of hidden prey by plunging their beaks into soil or water – and the “sixth sense” may have begun to evolve in predatory dinosaurs

Limiting warming to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels will require $393 billion each year to incentivise forest managers to store more carbon in their forests

Fruit flies that are lulled by gentle vibrations while they fall sleep snooze for longer, a finding that could explain why babies like to be rocked or why people fall asleep in the car

A tsunami swept across the North Sea 8150 years ago - but the Dogger archipelago that existed in the area at the time survived the disaster

AI firm DeepMind's latest creation, AlphaFold, can predict the shape of proteins from their sequence alone. This fiendish problem normally requires time-consuming experiments, but is key to understanding the machinery of life

Ivy is multiplying across European forests, riding a perfect storm of warmer conditions and forest management practices

Liquid marbles that can be picked up and handled have now been linked together in a 1.7-metre-long chain – and could be used as chemical microreactors

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