New Scientist Space - Cosmology

Want to save our seas? Make exotic cocktails? Ponder life's meaning? Whatever your plans this July, Simon Ings rounds up the year's best non-fiction so far

We shouldn't fear life-extending medical advances based on unintended consequences. If we can make lives longer and healthier, potential problems are a price worth paying

Google's Sycamore quantum computer was the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy – solving calculations that would be unfeasible on a classical computer – but now ordinary machines have pulled ahead again

A fossil found in the Namib desert has been described as a 2.5-metre long predator that resembled a giant salamander

A new radiometric dating technique reveals that cave paintings on Sulawesi, Indonesia, are even older than previously thought, pushing back the earliest evidence of storytelling

Thousands of bones found in a Tibetan cave have been analysed to learn how mysterious ancient humans known as Denisovans lived

It may soon be possible to vaccinate ourselves against the diseases of old age, keeping our body and brain healthier for longer

The egg hatch rate of one shark species may plummet by up to 90 per cent by the end of the century, suggesting that other egg-laying sharks are at risk

Identical wording placing limits on the export of quantum computers has appeared in regulations across the globe. There doesn't seem to be any scientific reason for the controls, and all can be traced to secret international discussions

Large language models can be abused by malware to help them avoid detection and propagate by crafting realistic replies to emails

Twenty people may have died 2000 years ago when an Iron Age bridge suddenly collapsed following a tsunami or flood, but scientists also cannot rule out that they were sacrificed

Many dams in the US were designed decades ago using estimates of precipitation based on outdated science – and that makes them more vulnerable to warming-driven extreme weather

A 1.8-millimetre-wide silicon chip with over 1000 components could help quantum devices communicate without the need for wires or specialised fridges

Small changes to the temperature of your cheeks, nose and around your eyes could let an AI estimate how old you are and flag issues like diabetes and high blood pressure

Ants are one of the few animals that tend to the injuries of their peers, and now it seems they are also the first non-humans known to perform life-saving amputations

Remote sensing, including lidar, reveals that the Amazon was once home to millions of people. The emerging picture of how they lived challenges ideas of human cultural evolution

An AI model learned to predict the choices made by monkeys and their eye movements while playing Pac-Man, hinting that a machine intelligence can “think” in a similar way to mammals

The atoms within quasicrystals are arranged in repeating forms, but unlike ordinary crystals they have more complex symmetry. It turns out this makes them perfect for producing mazes

US company Source, which makes solar panels that produce drinking water from moisture in the air, plans to launch a canned water brand called Sky Wtr later this year

Wooden sticks found in an Australian cave appear to match the accounts of a 19th-century anthropologist, suggesting the GurnaiKurnai people practised the same ritual at the end of the last glacial period