New Scientist Space - Space Headlines

Mandy Barker's new book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype imperfections, highlights the ongoing ocean pollution crisis by echoing an influential 19th-century book

Drug trials are vital to medicine, but what of those taking part? Jennie Erin Smith's moving new book about what happened in a rural community hit by early-onset Alzheimer's disease gives them a voice

Feedback is baffled – baffled! – as to why Facebook owner Meta's attempts to suppress a previous employee's memoir sent the book rocketing to the top of the book charts

A cost-cutting initiative in the world of passenger aviation could see flight-deck staff reduced to just a captain, with their co-pilot replaced by AI. It may save money, but it's a risk too far, argues Paul Marks

Why are some people drawn towards exploration and challenge – even to the point of extreme danger? Alex Hutchinson's bracing new book unpicks the complex reasons

For decades, autistic women and girls have had to play "diagnostic bingo" before getting their true diagnosis. As new neuroscience offers a fresh understanding of the condition, the time for change is now

A more precise definition of the second is crucial to all sorts of physical measurements – but to get there, scientists have to pack up their extraordinarily fragile optical clocks and take them on tour

A company in the Netherlands says it has perfected a way to create "graft chimeras" with the skin of one plant and the innards of another

From robot rights to ageing and climate change, this month’s science fiction squares up to the big topics, with new titles from authors including Nick Harkaway and Eve Smith

Squeezing exercise into one or two days a week seems to have similar health benefits as doing the same amount of physical activity spread out throughout the week

A termination letter obtained by New Scientist reveals that the Trump administration has gutted the office that runs the country’s only nationwide survey on drug use and mental health

The concept of nothing once sparked a 1000-year-long war, today it might explain dark energy and nothingness even has the potential to destroy the universe, explains physicist Antonio Padilla

Under pressure from Elon Musk’s DOGE task force, NASA is cancelling grants and contracts for everything from lunar dust research to educational programmes

Even animals with very small brains turn out to have cultural traditions, which poses a puzzler for biologists wondering what makes human culture unique

As semaglutide-based weight loss treatments such as Ozempic and Wegovy become more popular, new side effects are emerging – and one is hair loss

Urine that has sat in the sun for a while seems to fertilise crops while warding off pests, without affecting the produce's taste

At the Dakshineswar temple complex in India, Hanuman langurs beg for food by grabbing visitors’ legs or tugging on their clothes – and they don’t stop until they get their favourite snacks

After a container ship struck and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, researchers began calculating the risks of similar catastrophic incidents for other US bridges – and they’re surprisingly high

Cave-dwelling orb spiders have adapted their webs so they act as tripwires for prey that crawl on the walls of the caves

By studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed