New Scientist Space - Cosmology

Feedback, a Lego fan, delves into a new science-related set, and learns that the model of a DNA double helix is the wrong way around. Time for some jokes about mirror organisms...

Improving our understanding of sudden climate shifts is welcome. But framing this as creating an "early-warning system" is wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin, says Bill McGuire

Adam Kucharski's new book Proof is a life raft in a sea of fake news and misinformation

After weeks of criticism, Microsoft promised to show new data about its Majorana 1 quantum computer at the biggest meeting of the world's physicists. Researchers in the room tell New Scientist they were not impressed with what they saw.

Recordings of brain activity in budgerigars reveal sets of brain cells that represent different sounds like keys on a keyboard – a structure never seen before in any bird brain

A record-setting test of quantum communication used a microsatellite to connect ground stations in China and South Africa, bringing a global quantum internet closer to reality

String theory may be our best attempt at a theory of everything, except that it can't describe an expanding universe like ours. Now a radical new twist on the idea could finally fix that – but it requires us to completely reimagine reality

The first randomised controlled trial of microdosing LSD as a treatment for ADHD found the psychedelic drug wasn’t any more effective than a placebo in alleviating symptoms

The European Space Agency has released the first batch of large-scale images from the Euclid space telescope, which astronomers have already used to find hundreds of strong gravitational lenses

A World Meteorological Organization report details a long list of grim records for everything from CO2 levels and temperature to sea ice loss and sea level rise

A meteorite discovered in north-west Africa in 2023 didn’t come from a large asteroid or any of the known planets of the solar system – but it might have formed on a planet that was destroyed long ago

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range, but will they be widely used?

Speedy new chargers from Chinese automaker BYD take just 5 minutes to restore 400 kilometres of an electric car’s range

The finest ever map of the cosmic microwave background - the faint evidence of the universe's early form - has yielded precise confirmation of the age of the cosmos and its rate of expansion. But for some scientists, the findings offer a frustrating lack of clues to major cosmological mysteries

Money is a deeply emotive subject, our attitudes to it vary wildly and we are reluctant to bring it up in conversation. Could new research help us to be less weird about it?

There are a couple potential explanations for distinctive markings found on a Martian rock, but new evidence suggests they are most likely to be related to microbial activity

NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded unusual sounds as a Martian dust devil passed directly over the robotic vehicle in 2021, and we now know they came from electrical activity in the storm

For years, Egyptologists have assumed pyramid tombs were just for the rich – but the burials at a site called Tombos don’t fit this pattern

A new way of estimating rural populations has found that we may be undercounting people who live in these areas, potentially inflating the global population beyond the official count of 8.2 billion – but not everyone agrees

NASA’s InSight lander recorded surprisingly large quakes that indicate Mars is more seismically active than we first thought. Mysteriously, they only happen during Martian summers