New Scientist Space - Cosmology

Late Cretaceous dinosaur tracks found in Canada might have been made by different species walking together, but the evidence is far from conclusive

Hidden layers of colour in the plumage of tanagers and some other songbirds explain what makes them so eye-catching

From R2D2 to the Terminator via Bender and Johnny-5, we choose our favourite robots from books, films and television series

A new moon in late July will give us dark skies – perfect for spotting this beautiful meteor shower, says Abigail Beall

Rival magicians in Victorian England both claim they can teleport. Is this all illusion, asks Emily H. Wilson, as she explores Christopher Priest’s extraordinary novel, The Prestige

Mountaineering Women: Climbing through history tells the stories of more than a dozen female climbers who have conquered the world's greatest peaks

Sierra Greer's novel about a female robot, Annie Bot, just won a prestigious sci-fi prize, the Arthur C Clarke award. But she is hardly the first of her kind, says Sophie Bushwick

A new information ecosystem is on the rise, featuring closer connections, cosy media and worker-owned websites, writes Annalee Newitz

Feedback watches with raised eyebrows as Anthropic's AI Claude is given the job of running the company vending machine, and goes a little off the rails

From reducing pain to relieving stress, the evidence for music's power is strong. Stefan Koelsch says we should use it – now

If ancient humans with brains a third the size of our own buried their dead, as some archaeologists are claiming, then our species may be less special than we thought

Keeping a baby's skin moisturised could significantly reduce their risk of eczema - but perhaps only for babies who aren't genetically at risk

Google DeepMind and historians created an AI tool called Aeneas that can predict the missing words in Latin inscriptions carved into stone walls and pottery sherds from the ancient Roman Empire.

Claims that a small-brained hominin called Homo naledi buried its dead raise intriguing questions about ancient minds and why we engage in this peculiar practice

A 247-million-year-old fossil reptile boasted an enormous crest on its back made from feather-like appendages, long before the appearance of feathered dinosaurs

With fast heating, sheets of gold can shoot past the theoretical maximum temperature a solid can have before it melts – raising questions about what the true limits are

By analysing videos of penalty kicks, a deep learning model was able to predict whether a shot would go to the goalkeeper’s left or right with 64 per cent accuracy

A 13-million-year-old leg bone from an enormous flightless bird carries crocodilian tooth marks, showing South America was once a predator-eat-predator world

Reducing air pollution is critical for improving public health, but it has brought big climate trade-offs

Two AI models have achieved gold medal standard for the first time in a prestigious competition for young mathematicians – and their developers claim these AIs could soon crack tough scientific problems