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This week's magazine

22 March 2025

Issue 3535

New Scientist issue 3535 cover
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Editor's picks

Technology

Should governments really be using AI to remake the state?

Comment
Is our cosmos just a membrane on the edge of a far stranger reality?

Space

Is our cosmos just a membrane on the edge of a far stranger reality?

Features
Psychology is revealing how to have a better relationship with money

Mind

Psychology is revealing how to have a better relationship with money

Features
What the extraordinary medical know-how of wild animals can teach us

Life

What the extraordinary medical know-how of wild animals can teach us

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Technology

Should governments really be using AI to remake the state?

New Scientist's revelation that a UK minister is asking ChatGPT for advice raises the question of what role these new AI tools should play in government – and whether we should really think of them as intelligent

Comment

News

Environment

Can we rely on forests to soak up the extra CO2 in the atmosphere?

A patch of old oak trees in the UK is helping scientists to predict how the world’s forests will respond to higher levels of carbon dioxide, a crucial question for our future climate

News

Chemistry

Metals can be squeezed into sheets just a few atoms thick

News

Health

Giving blood frequently may make your blood cells healthier

News

Life

H5N1 flu is now killing birds on the continent of Antarctica

News

Space

Dark energy isn't what we thought – and that may transform the cosmos

News

Space

The asteroid Bennu is even weirder than we thought

News

Humans

Ancient face bones offer clues to identity of early humans in Europe

News

Space

Euclid space telescope captures 26 million galaxies in first data drop

News

Mind

Memory illusion makes you think events occurred earlier than they did

News

Life

Fossils reveal what the fur of early mammals looked like

News

Technology

Revealed: How the UK tech secretary uses ChatGPT for policy advice

News

Mind

What makes a good day a good day, according to science

News

Space

Best ever map of early universe is double-edged sword for cosmologists

News

Mind

You could train your brain to be less fooled by optical illusions

News

Space

Rolling boulders on Titan could threaten NASA's Dragonfly mission

News

Mathematics

Mathematicians solve 125-year-old problem to unite key laws of physics

News

Humans

Surprising skeletons prompt a radical rethink of Egyptian pyramids

News

Life

We may have discovered how dark oxygen is being made in the deep sea

News

Space

Most quakes on Mars happen during the summer – and we don’t know why

News

Aperture

10. Regalia presented to Ashurbanipal

Humans

Ancient clay tablets offer vivid portrait of Mesopotamian life

When a vast library of texts amassed by Mesopotamian King Ashurbanipal was burned to the ground about 2700 years ago, the clay tablets were preserved by the heat. Selena Wisnom's new book reveals more

Regulars

Features

What the extraordinary medical know-how of wild animals can teach us

Life

What the extraordinary medical know-how of wild animals can teach us

Birds do it, chimps do it, even monarch butterflies do it – and by paying more attention to how animals self-medicate, we can find new treatments for ourselves

Features

Space

Is our cosmos just a membrane on the edge of a far stranger reality?

Features

Mind

Psychology is revealing how to have a better relationship with money

Features

Culture

TOPSHOT - A passenger wearing a protective face mask waits for his train at Hua Lamphong Central Railway Station in Bangkok on January 4, 2021, as health officials in Thailand announced on Monday 745 new Covid-19 coronavirus cases, the country's highest daily figure since the start of the pandemic. (Photo by Mladen ANTONOV / AFP) (Photo by MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Mathematics

This excellent guide to the science of uncertainty is very welcome

Adam Kucharski's new book Proof is a life raft in a sea of fake news and misinformation

Culture

Mind

What happened when one woman set out to improve her personality

Culture

Technology

Brilliant sci-fi novel shows robots coming to grips with emancipation

Culture

More

Visual impression of the ultra-high energy neutrino event observed in KM3NeT/ARCA. The colours indicate the light seen by the ?eyes? on each module, where the different colours represent different observation times. The almost horizontally reconstructed track of the particle is shown as a line from right to left. Courtesy KM3NeT.

Physics

Why particle physicists are going wild for a record-breaking neutrino

Last month's discovery of the most energetic neutrino yet detected is incredibly exciting for us particle physicists – but it also raises many questions, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Comment

Life

Why you don't need to worry about 'over-potting' your plants

Regulars

BrainTwister #65: Prime magic squares

Regulars

Environment

An early-warning system for climate 'tipping points' is an awful idea

Comment

Tom Gauld on keeping science safe

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on making peer review fun

Regulars

Regulars

Is this new Lego model a nod to the terrifying idea of mirror life?

Comment

Is this new Lego model a nod to the terrifying idea of mirror life?

Feedback, a Lego fan, delves into a new science-related set, and learns that the model of a DNA double helix is the wrong way around. Time for some jokes about mirror organisms...

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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