Just over 50 years ago, US astronauts and Soviet Union cosmonauts met in space for a ceremonial handshake. This mission serves as the background for former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s latest alt-history space thriller, Final Orbit, which introduces an accident that kills half the crew. Meanwhile, Hadfield revives the cancelled 1960s Shuguang space programme in…
Abbie (Sydney Topliffe, left) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) Netflix WaywardMae Martin, Netflix Like most people, I suspect, I don’t really like thinking about my teenage years – a time of too much brooding and too little self-awareness. But despite any lingering embarrassment I might feel, I have never seen adolescence as some mistake or…
The New Scientist Book Club has just read Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed Gollancz; Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian/AP/Alamy After our head-spinning read of Alex Foster’s Circular Motion, in which Earth’s rotation starts speeding up, the New Scientist Book Club headed to two very different worlds in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed. This…
Marcel Proust, photographed in 1905 Photo 12 / Alamy Dawn had crept serenely over the city. The shadows draped over the avenues were slowly receding to usher in a beautiful, bright morning. It was June, and the few early risers on their way to set up market stalls were basking in the quiet, pale radiance…
The human brain is one of the most complex objects to have ever existed Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images Science books, especially those written by scientists, sometimes have the reputation of being dry, dull and difficult. Perhaps they are thought of as thinly disguised textbooks, something to learn from in a structured way. The books on the…
Complex problem-solving may arise earlier in a child’s development than previously thought plusonevector/Alamy Children as young as 4 years old are capable of finding efficient solutions to complex problems, such as independently inventing sorting algorithms developed by computer scientists. The scientists behind the finding say these skills emerge far earlier than previously thought, and should…
The Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, where the near-pristine star SDSS J0715-7334 was spotted Josh Lake/NASA/ESA A relatively nearby star that appears to lack almost any of the heavy elements produced by supernovae could be a direct descendant of the very first stars that formed in the universe. Astronomers think…
An asymmetry in the average temperature of the cosmic microwave background doesn’t match the standard model of cosmology ESA/Planck Collaboration An anomaly in the temperature of the universe has long stumped physicists, and a new analysis of data from several radio telescopes has only deepened the mystery of what is causing it. This weird streak…
Jane Goodall died on October 1 at the age of 91. When I heard the news, my mind raced back 35 years to a conversation I had with the pioneering observer and student of chimpanzee behavior. As the ‘90s began, Goodall had been studying chimps in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park for nearly 30 years. Her…
Our happiness levels are not constant throughout our lives Ippei & Janine Photography/Getty Images The commonly held belief that happiness follows a U-shaped curve – with peaks at the beginning and end of life – might be incorrect. The pattern was popularised in a seminal paper by researchers David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald in 2008,…
