New Scientist Space - Cosmology

The large language models behind AI chatbots are developing so rapidly that after eight months, a model only needs half the computing power to hit the same benchmark score - which is much faster than the rate at which computer chips improve

Horses show signs of stress if people touch them while they are tethered, but they appear much less anxious if they are able to walk away

Toilet paper made from bamboo is supposed to be more eco-friendly than traditional paper made from virgin wood pulp. But new tests suggest some products contain as little as 3 per cent bamboo

Insufficient sleep seems to result in people feeling older than they are, with a higher "subjective age" previously being linked to depression

An explosive found inside many bombs and shells used during the first and second world wars is becoming more likely to explode in response to impacts

The US Department of Agriculture has detected bird flu in dairy cows from Texas and Kansas – the first time the virus has been found in cattle

Some basic equipment can help you safely enjoy the eclipse on 8 April – here's how to easily make what you need

An AI model trained on chemical and perceptual data on 250 Belgian beers can predict the flavour profile of a brew – and how to make it tastier

Claudia de Rham thinks that gravitons, hypothetical particles thought to carry gravity, have mass. If she’s right, we can expect to see “rainbows” in ripples in space-time

An AI forecaster based on the language model GPT-4 can predict the outcome of future events more accurately than single humans. In some cases, it can even outperform the “wisdom of crowds”

The rollout of heat pumps and other green heating technologies is going far too slowly in the UK – here’s what’s needed to get it moving

A robot that can design, build and test objects made from folded paper can make paper planes that fly further than ones made by a human having the same number of attempts

A unique site in Brazil features rock carvings closely associated with dinosaur tracks, suggesting prehistoric people saw the footprints as meaningful

The Luna structure, a 1.8-kilometre-wide depression in north-west India, may have been caused by the largest meteorite to strike Earth in the past 50,000 years

When recounting an episode of the children's TV show Pingu, people from Italy made an average of 22 gestures per 100 words, compared with 11 for Swedish people

Smoke from wildfires made worse by climate change is set to cause thousands of additional deaths each year in the US

Why childhood is so protracted has long been mysterious, now a spate of archaeological discoveries suggest an intriguing explanation

The author of In Ascension, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club, on why he wrote his novel, cultivating a sense of wonder and the role of fiction in the world today

Changes in wind patterns and desertification may be increasing the amount of dust from the Sahara desert blown over western Europe and the frequency of these events

Japanese tits sometimes flutter their wings in an apparent gesture of encouraging their mate to enter their shared nest first