New Scientist Space - Space Headlines

The incompleteness theorem is accepted as part of the mathematical canon today, but columnist Jacob Aron says it was a bombshell when Kurt Gödel first introduced it. Gödel’s seminal work directly contradicted one of the great minds of mathematics and limited the field forever

Two extremely precise experiments agree with a previously shocking measurement of just how big the proton is, which may help future searches for new particles

Researchers who observed a murderous conflict unfolding in a once-unified group of wild chimpanzees say there are parallels with civil wars in human societies

A woman with three different autoimmune conditions had all of them treated simultaneously by genetically modifying her immune cells to kill off the rogue ones causing problems

Elizabeth Banks stars as an author shrunk by her scientist husband Matthew Macfadyen in this major new series – but it fails to live up to its promise, finds Josh Bell

A drug known only as compound X helped to remove the problematic proteins associated with Parkinson's disease from the brains of mice, and improved their balance and mobility

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated the Red List status for three of Antarctica’s most famous species after a dire assessment of their prospects under climate change

Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

The maths problems that secure your online bank transactions and emails may soon be undermined by quantum technology. It’s imperative we act now, before it’s too late

Luminous by Silvia Park and Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer are both thoughtful and well-written science fiction novels, featuring robots in richly realised worlds. But there the similarities end, says Emily H. Wilson

A new book from photographer Jon McCormack collects his shots of patterns in nature from around the world, from flamingoes to icebergs

A fresh and important book reveals the messy reality of our ever-mutating cells – and why the quest to defeat ageing is futile, says Michael Le Page

Feedback is delighted by the discovery of a very specific scientific sculpture park in China – and wonders if readers can top it

A method that relies on hitting materials with neutrons can measure how much quantum entanglement hides within them, which could enable new kinds of quantum technology

A decline in ancient megafauna in the Middle East coincided with a shift towards smaller, lighter toolkits in the archaeological record – though scientists are still in debate about why

Massive herbivores became scarce in the Middle East about 200,000 years ago, and this coincided with a shift towards smaller, lighter toolkits in the archaeological record

John Pendry is known for creating an invisibility cloak. Twenty years on, he has used the same principles to fashion an even more powerful kind of metamaterial that can teach us about the wild frontiers of physics

By tracing the origins of an unusual, short-lived particle, researchers have gathered some of the strongest evidence yet that mass can emerge from fluctuations in the vacuum

James Watson’s The Double Helix is probably one of the greatest science books of all time – but Michael Le Page finds he can’t recommend that anyone actually reads it