New Scientist Space - Cosmology

In 2022, countries pledged to halt biodiversity loss by protecting 30 per cent of the planet by 2030, but progress has been too slow thus far

An outlandish experiment searching for a brain network that tunes up and down the feeling of immersion is hoping to unlock the therapeutic effects of psychedelics

In a small study, women experienced more empathy for strangers who were experiencing pain after an eight-week meditation training programme

Single-celled organisms called archaea can become multicellular when compressed, highlighting the role of physical forces in evolution

Ancient stone goods found across France may have been made by skilled craftspeople in what is now Paris, who traded along vast networks

Large language models can be used to scam humans, but AI is also susceptible to being scammed – and some models are more gullible than others

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

The Sverris saga describes how castle invaders “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”, in what may have been an early act of biological warfare - and now researchers believe they have found the skeleton of the man in question

Weaving tales of magical fruit and vegetables into your children's stories may encourage them to eat healthy snacks

The recent surge in warming led to fears that climate change may be accelerating beyond model projections, but a fall in how much heat Earth is gaining makes this less likely

A lithium-ion battery made from three droplets of hydrogel is the smallest soft battery of its kind – and it could be used in biocompatible and biodegradable implants

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day

In the western US, the average maximum growth rate of fires has more than doubled over the past two decades

A new supercapacitor design that uses only water, clay and graphene could source material on Mars and be more sustainable and accessible than traditional batteries

A new battery design that uses only water, clay and graphene could source material on Mars and be more sustainable and accessible than traditional batteries

Zapping the skin with electricity could stop bacteria that live there harmlessly from entering the body and causing blood poisoning

Despite talk of a green recovery, global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise as the world emerged from coronavirus lockdowns