New Scientist

New Scientist covers the latest developments in science and technology that will impact your world. New Scientist employs and commissions the best writers in their fields from all over the world. Our editorial team provide cutting-edge news, award-winning features and reports, written in concise and clear language that puts discoveries and advances in the context of everyday life today and in the future.

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The first of many epic journeys

Quantum error correction • Useful quantum computers are getting closer Google, Microsoft and others have taken big steps towards error-free devices, hinting that quantum computers that solve real problems aren’t far away, says Alex Wilkins

Day flights are better for the climate • Aircraft contrails seem to have a net cooling effect in the daytime because they reflect sunlight

New picture of how our immune system changes as we age

Tumours targeted by a precision radioactive ion beam

How ‘river piracy’ may have made Mount Everest even taller

AI photo tweaks can alter memories • People misremember more details if images are edited to change what really happened

Octopuses and fish team up to catch prey

Jet stream linked to fires and plague • The historical impacts on Europe of shifts in these high-level winds have been revealed by tree ring data, highlighting risks in a warming world, finds Madeleine Cuff

Microplastics in the body • How much should we worry about microplastics harming us? Many studies have found tiny bits of plastic throughout the human body. But whether they are bad for our health is still to be worked out, says Grace Wade

World’s oldest cheese found on Chinese mummies

Hundreds more Nazca drawings discovered in Peruvian desert

AIs get worse on simple questions as they get bigger

The greenest cooking oil? • Growing camellia plants for cooking oil could boost production and reduce environmental impacts

Cannibalised person on doomed Franklin expedition identified

How smart devices can learn your habits • Smart TVs and voice assistants can track your behaviour and habits at home in their own ways – and it isn’t always easy to opt out, finds Jeremy Hsu

Axolotls seem to pause their biological clocks and stop ageing

Hunt for alien transmissions draws a blank

New chemical bond between atoms created

Forests became less diverse when ancient people started herding pigs

Planet found in star’s ‘forbidden zone’ • A distant planet should have been consumed when its star expanded to become a red giant

Placebo pain relief may not involve dopamine

Mixed signals • Smartphones have indeed created an anxious generation, but it isn’t young people, it is their parents, argues neuroscientist Dean Burnett

Not sure what to see at New Scientist Live? • Here’s what members of the New Scientist team are most looking forward to

This changes everything • Sexy Asian lady robots? No thanks Techno-Orientalism is a strand of futurism that condemns and erases Asian cultural power. We need to fight back against it, says Annalee Newitz

Down to Earth

Rewriting nature for our time • A new entry in the canon of white, middle-class English nature writers is welcome, says James McConnachie, but what about the flowering of other, more diverse voices?

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