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

Counting the cost • The covid-19 pandemic makes plain the consequences of abusing nature

New Scientist Australian Edition

Brazil variant reaches UK • The P.1 variant of coronavirus could be more transmissible, but vaccines should still provide protection, reports Michael Le Page

Children of the pandemic • After a year of repeated lockdowns for many, there is a limit to children’s resilience. Michael Marshall investigates how they are coping

Face masks needed until 2022 • People in the UK will protect themselves from covid-19 for years, predict disease experts

Complex life’s days are numbered • Earth sustains large oxygen-breathing organisms today, but in a billion years it won’t

Wikipedia had a big spike in edits during the pandemic

Safer computer chips, fast • Virtual testing slashes the time to make and test computer components

Ship noise affects dolphins that help humans catch fish

Climate targets at risk from efficiency paradox

Dining with healthy eaters pushes you to eat better food too

A warp drive that doesn’t break the laws of physics

Neanderthal hearing was tuned for language like ours

AI smashes video game high score • Learning from previous successes can help an artifical intelligence perform better

Shadow snake rediscovered in Ecuador’s rainforest

China’s self-sustaining biosphere • Crew lived a record 200 days on recycled oxygen and water, growing their own food

Our earliest human ancestors may have swung on branches like chimps

Pufferfish pull in their eyeballs and pucker skin to blink

Bird can mimic sound of an entire defensive flock

Cancer-resistance of cetaceans in the genes

Electrostatic effect could defrost your car

Really brief

It is tricky to know when to stop talking

How do you detect a deep-sea earthquake? Just ask Google

How pets conquered the Americas with us

What’s in a name? • The names given to new coronavirus variants and bacteria have become too confusing, but there is a better way, says Mark Pallen

Field notes from space-time • Cosmic conflict There is a mismatch between two ways of measuring galactic mass. Dark matter is one way to solve it, but so is rewriting the laws of gravity, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Editor’s pick

Strange beauty

Game of Thrones meets Brexit • Just as we are totally reliant on technology to survive lockdowns, Tribes of Europa shows us a violent, divided world without it, says Anne Marie Conlon

Polluted discourse • Fake news and conspiracy theories create a kind of pollution – and we should treat it as such, finds Simon Ings

Don’t miss

The TV column • Once more, with feeling For All Mankind, an alternative space race story, returns with the cold war raging. NASA is under pressure to militarise the moon, politicking is everywhere and small acts of defiance are as good as it gets, says Bethan Ackerley

Friendship-ology • Why do some friendships last and others fade? Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar reveals the hidden rules of our relationships and what your social style says about you

Spillover • The covid-19 pandemic was precipitated by our disruption of natural ecosystems. But how exactly, asks Adam Vaughan

How diseases jump to...