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Explore the most exciting new ideas and emerging concepts in science, health, technology and the environment with New Scientist’s exclusive in-depth articles, interviews and long reads.
Why we only recently discovered space is dark not bright

Space

Why we only recently discovered space is dark not bright

For centuries, Europeans thought that eternal daylight saturated the cosmos. The shift to a dark universe has had a profound psychological impact upon us

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Did ancient humans start farming so they could drink more beer?

Humans

Did ancient humans start farming so they could drink more beer?

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Two hands holding three clams on a beach

Environment

The surprising longevity lessons from the world’s oldest animal

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Aurora Borealis dancing over Tromso Urban Skyline. Tromso Panorama and winter night landscape with Northern Lights (Aurora Polaris) on a cold night, with starry sky, polar lights and snowcapped mountains on Kvaloya Island in the background. Cityscape with Brightly Street Light of the Arctic Capital, Northern Norway

Earth

The audacious quest to light up the sky with artificial auroras

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We’ve finally cracked how to make truly random numbers

Mathematics

We’ve finally cracked how to make truly random numbers

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A polar bear grizzly bear hybrid , Ursus maritimus, t

Life

What the family drama of interbreeding polar and grizzly bears reveals

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A woman on a subway with her eyes shut

Mind

Too busy to meditate? Microdosing mindfulness has big health benefits

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Are we living in a simulation? This experiment could tell us

Physics

Are we living in a simulation? This experiment could tell us

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The collaborative Human Challenge study is the first in the world to perform detailed monitoring over the full course of COVID-19, from the moment a person first encounters SARS-CoV-2, throughout the infection to the point at which the virus is apparently eliminated. The Human Challenge Programme is a partnership between Imperial College London, the Vaccine Taskforce and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), hVIVO (part of Open Orphan plc.), and the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.

Health

How deliberately giving people illnesses is supercharging medicine

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An artwork made my layering many paper cutouts, showing an astronaut near a black hole. Within the black hole are colourful swirls, stars and specks

Physics

Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe

Two clashing ideas about disorder inside black holes now point to the same strange conclusions, and it could reshape the foundations of how we think about space and time

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Life

A sinister, deadly brain protein could reveal the origins of all life

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Health

A revolutionary way to map our bodies is helping cure deadly diseases

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Life

The long-overlooked insects that could save our crops

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Physics

A new understanding of causality could fix quantum theory’s fatal flaw

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