New Scientist Space - Cosmology

Microbes isolated from the stomachs of termites can decontaminate timber that's been treated with toxic preservatives, enabling it to be converted into biofuels more easily

It’s sometimes been assumed that we experience brief periods without vision every time we shift our focus from one point to another – but now it turns out the assumption is wrong

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Detecting  DNA in air samples could make it much easier to monitor biodiversity around the world and also help in other fields such as atmospheric science

Digital stopwatches can make rounding errors of up to 0.11 seconds, which could be enough to change the winner of close races. Although the devices record time extremely accurately internally, they often make errors when converting that raw data to human-readable values

Red palm weevils are invasive insects known for damaging palm trees – affecting the date, coconut and palm oil industries – but a bit of clove or thyme oil reduced the amount of palm stems they ate by 35 per cent

We can calculate how fast Earth spins but that speed changes as you move towards the north or south pole

The US Federal Aviation Administration has updated its rules on who counts as a commercial astronaut, making it tougher for space tourists to earn official astronaut wings

A few curious cockatoos learned how to open residential waste bins in Australia, and now other birds have started copying them, with incidences of bin-looting spreading across eastern Australia

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Take a trip aboard a research vessel surveying kelp along England's south coast to see if these plants, crucial for locking up carbon and increasing biodiversity, can recover after a trawler fishing ban went into effect in the area

An ancient and now submerged road has been discovered in the Venice lagoon in an area that would have been accessible by land during the Roman era, about 2000 years ago

The wings of hatchling pterosaurs were ideally suited to powered flight, suggesting they took to the air almost immediately after emerging – unlike most modern birds

Deepmind's AlphaFold can predict the shapes of nearly all proteins in the human body, paving the way for the development of new drugs, and the company aims to use this AI to publish the structures of more than 100 million known proteins

Astronomers have spotted a disc of debris around a distant planet called PDS 70 c, and it is massive enough that the young exoplanet might be in the process of forming exomoons

The world’s first commercial deep-space communications antenna – at the Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK - has begun work by receiving images from ESA’s Mars Express mission

Brain scans show that a virtual ride on a roller coaster sets off altered brain cell activity related to dizziness and motion sickness in people who experience migraines

Dogs have lived with humans for tens of thousands of years. Imagining what would happen to them in a post-human world offers insights into how we can improve dogs’ lives right now

These flowers were captured by photographer Richard Learoyd using an ancient technique called camera obscura. The image comes from an exhibition called Unearthed: Photography's Roots at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London

The idea that the universe is continually inflating isn’t confirmed – but there are still some misconceptions about it, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein