New Scientist Space - Cosmology

In this terrifying extract from Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, the author lays out what would happen in the first seconds after a nuclear missile hits the Pentagon

Embryos seem to have a sensor that picks up when nutrients are scarce, prompting them to pause their development until resources become more abundant again

A once-independent bacterium has evolved into an organelle that provides nitrogen to algal cells – an event so rare that there are only three other known cases

About 1.5 billion people worldwide carry a risk of conditions including malnutrition because of parasitic infection, and AI could help identify those affected

We can’t stir ordinary solids, but one research team now claims to have stirred an extraordinary quantum “supersolid”, generating tiny vortices

The physicist Peter Higgs quietly revolutionised quantum field theory, then lived long enough to see the discovery of the Higgs boson he theorised. Despite receiving a Nobel prize, he remained in some ways as elusive as the particle that shares his name

A small early-stage trial of the approach, which involves testing dozens of drug combinations on thousands of dishes of cells, may help people with cancer live for longer

Ground-level ozone, a product of pollution from cars, degrades insect pheromones, and this can result in mismatched mating and sterile offspring

We don’t know what alien life might look like, but if other civilisations can colonise multiple worlds, we might see planets that look unusually similar