New Scientist Australian Edition

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.

Elsewhere on New Scientist

Do look up • Getting to grips with our place in the universe can offer a grand source of comfort

New Scientist Australian Edition

The stars align for cosmologists

The youthful face of Jupiter? • An Earth-sized storm on Jupiter known as the Great Red Spot may be a recent addition

World’s oldest wine found in 2000-year-old Roman tomb

Overheated trees are contributing to urban air pollution

AI reads brain activity to tell which bit of a movie you are watching

Quantum ‘super behaviour’ could create energy seemingly from nothing

Meet Lokiceratops, the frilliest of dinosaurs

The dark side to brightening clouds • Climate models suggest that a possible scheme to cool the western US by geoengineering clouds could work, but may have severe consequences in Europe, finds James Woodford

Analysis Health • Should people with obesity be paid to lose weight? Studies suggest that financial incentives lead to weight loss, but whether the approach is sustainable or cost-effective remains to be seen, finds Grace Wade

Sleeping on the job • Prizewinning photo captures cuckoo bees clinging to grass as they snooze

Driverless cars safer than humans – when it’s light

Maxwell’s demon invoked on the largest scale yet

Easter Island’s supposed population collapse probably never happened

Sick chimps seek medicinal plants • Chimpanzees with wounds or infections eat plants with antibacterial or anti-inflammatory properties

Walking helps keep people free of lower back pain for longer

Farmland near Chernobyl safe to use • Radiation surveys suggest it is finally safe to grow food on farmland in Ukraine that has been unused since the 1989 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. But will it happen, asks Michael Le Page

Glassy gel is as hard as plastic but also stretchy

We finally know why some people seem immune to the coronavirus

Dwarf planet Pluto and Neptune’s moon Triton might be siblings

Bloodsucking leech jumps by coiling its body like a cobra

What a nerve! • Influencers are obsessed with the health benefits of stimulating the vagus nerve. But we should be wary of their claims, says Kevin Tracey

Field notes from space-time • The arrow of time We don’t yet know why time always moves forwards, but some physicists are looking for answers that invoke the evolution of entropy, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

A lonely life

A world of wars • With global peace still a distant dream, our need to understand conflict remains as urgent as ever. Jeremy Hsu explores a powerful synthesis of the explanations

Making it all add up • A sometimes fascinating book by a stand-up mathematician leaves Chris Stokel-Walker in an unexpected bind

New Scientist recommends

Free your inner wild • We weren’t built for domestication and must release our wild side. Graeme Green is intrigued by the message of a passionate new book

Your letters

A cosmic perspective

YOU ARE HERE

‘There’s a feeling that overusing antibiotics can’t hurt, but it can really hurt’ • Avian flu, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that spread easily through water and another pandemic are what keeps infectious disease specialist Jeanne Marrazzo up at night, finds Charlotte Lytton

Blazing into sight • A...