Language is how we make sense of the world: it gives form to abstract concepts and influences our perception of everything we encounter. So it isn’t surprising that the language we use to describe neurodevelopmental conditions like autism and ADHD guides how people understand themselves and others, as well as how support is offered –…
Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Ready, set… Athletics enthusiasts, here is a new competition for you to ogle: Sperm Racing. You may have read that male fertility is declining, and that decreased…
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. About 317 billion times per year members of the U.S. public check the weather on their phones, TVs or some other source. Those updates and alerts do everything from saving campers from rainy days to saving lives during big disasters. But what most of us…
June’s new science fiction includes a space opera from Megan E. O’Keefe Science Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo Do you like your world ravaged by unstoppable and deadly viruses or technologies? If so, then June is your month, because we have everything from a contagion that makes people lustful to a neural chip that…
US President Donald Trump last week laid out one of the biggest challenges ever for NASA — to land the first humans on Mars. But his detailed budget request for the fiscal year 2026 also proposed cancelling dozens of the space agency’s missions, including projects to study Earth, Mars and Venus. And the next day,…
A strange type of star could be powered by dark matter Artsiom P/Shutterstock Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for the existence of dark stars, a type of enormous star in the early universe that is partially powered by dark matter. If confirmed, these hypothesised stars could help explain why we see mysteriously large…
Tree Planting Efforts Could Actually Worsen Climate Change With wildfires turning forests into “massive carbon emitters,” planting trees in some places could inadvertently increase carbon emissions, a new report says By Anne C. Mulkern & E&E News Ross Moore Lake wildfire in British Columbia, Canada on July 28, 2023. Jesse Winter/Bloomberg via Getty Images CLIMATEWIRE…
Women’s faces are widely considered more attractive than men’s AleksandarNakic/Getty Images Female faces are regarded as more attractive than male ones, a large study involving 12,000 people around the world has found. Surprisingly, women are even more likely than men to rate other women’s faces as more attractive. “When we look at the rater sex,…
The Trump-Musk Fight Could Have Huge Consequences for U.S. Space Programs A vitriolic war of words between President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could have profound repercussions for the nation’s civil and military space programs By Lee Billings edited by Dean Visser Elon Musk (left) and President Donald Trump (right) seemed to be…
Illustration of massive objects warping space-time koto_feja/Getty Images A mathematical test for the nature of space-time – the fabric of physical reality – may be the first step towards novel computer-like devices that process information using gravity. Is space-time an unchanging expanse, or can it be warped in ways that affect a signal travelling through…
