New Scientist Space - Cosmology

Feedback is alarmed by a study that explored how funny people think they are, and discovered certain traits in those who rate themselves the most humorous

Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves

Researchers diving 7 kilometres deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science

The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's rings

Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties

A near miss with a Waymo while cycling through London hasn't changed my optimistic stance on driverless cars, but we can't ever let our guard down, says Matthew Sparkes

Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. Despite their limitations, these remotely controlled robots could be the deciding factor in many conflicts

Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals

A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals

Bleaching has devastated reefs around the world, raising fears of an irreversible shift. Yet new interventions have revealed that corals can be remarkably resilient if we can give them enough help to recover

Drill cores at the impact site of the Chicxulub asteroid show evidence that, alongside widespread destruction, the collision created a vast underground ecosystem filled with hot water that sheltered microbial life

Brown dwarfs are somewhere between the size of a planet and a star, so how could we have potentially mistaken two of them for distant galaxies? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argues that solving this cosmic mix-up is particularly possible now, as galaxy research has never been stronger

Physics is considered a cold, hard science – but it will transform your life if you view it with a bit more subjectivity, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Anthropic has warned that recursive-self-improving AI could be on the horizon, but the truth is the company is more immediately concerned with marketing itself for a blockbuster initial public offering on the stock market, says Matthew Sparkes

The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Marshall examines how archaeologists are rethinking this critical part of our history

Lapses in memory are a normal part of ageing but can also be signs of dementia. Here’s how to distinguish between typical brain ageing and cognitive decline

A diverse range of bird species has been recorded at a solar park on rewetted peatland in Germany, suggesting that combining energy generation with habitat restoration could benefit biodiversity, the climate and the economy

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned tech firms, including Apple and Google, that they must voluntarily implement tools to stop children sharing explicit images, but experts warn this is easier said than done

Each decade the world is losing over 7 per cent of its freshwater storage capacity to sediment build-up, according to an analysis of over half a million reservoirs