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This week's magazine

2 March 2024

Issue 3480

New Scientist issue 3480 cover
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Editor's picks

E5APW3 North Platte, Nebraska - The North Platte Livestock Feeders feedlot, operated by the Gottsch Cattle Company.

Environment

If gene-edited meat eases the climate crisis, then we must embrace it

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Dishabituation: How to trick your brain to find more joy in life

Mind

Dishabituation: How to trick your brain to find more joy in life

Features
Woman applying body cream to her skin

Health

The unexpected ways your skin impacts your health and longevity

Features
Roman Space Telescope

Space

Why we're finally on the cusp of finding exomoons around other planets

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

E5APW3 North Platte, Nebraska - The North Platte Livestock Feeders feedlot, operated by the Gottsch Cattle Company.

Environment

If gene-edited meat eases the climate crisis, then we must embrace it

Livestock farming is a major source of carbon emissions and damage to biodiversity, so the advent of gene-edited animals reared for meat that can help address these issues is good news

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Life

Deadly plant kills its pollinators but nurses their young

A deadly flower kills the gnats that pollinate it but may help the insects’ offspring in return, which indicates that plant-pollinator relationships may be more complex than previously thought

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Physics

A single atom could drive a piston in a quantum engine

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Health

'Useless' appendage of the ovaries may play key role in fertility

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Health

Pet dogs smell Parkinson's disease with almost 90 per cent accuracy

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Technology

LGBTQ people seen as needing more protection online than Christians

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Mind

ADHD may have evolved to help foragers know when to cut their losses

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Space

Famous supernova left a blazing hot neutron star at its centre

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Life

First gene-edited meat will come from disease-proof CRISPR pigs

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Earth

Largest volcanic eruption in recorded history happened 7300 years ago

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Life

Humpback whales have a specialised larynx for underwater singing

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Space

Huge set of galaxies is set to form largest cluster in known universe

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Environment

Ultra-dry Death Valley has a temporary lake thanks to extreme rainfall

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Health

Early drug treatment leads to better outcomes for Crohn’s disease

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Mind

AI can tell where a mouse is by reading its brain activity

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Space

Martian soil could be turned into fibres as strong as steel

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Environment

Climate benefits of planting forests might be overestimated

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Physics

Tiny magnet could help measure gravity on the quantum scale

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Space

Weird white dwarf star has a metal scar after eating a planet

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Mathematics

Mathematicians discover 'soft cell' shapes behind the natural world

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Life

Jackals may urinate on their favourite fruit to deter thieves

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Mind

We finally know why live music makes us so emotional

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Space

Two lunar landers have fallen over – but they’re still doing okay

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Analysis

A woman holding several small flags of the United States checks her mobile phone while waiting with other onlookers prior to the arrival of the US President in Warsaw on February 21, 2023. - US President Biden is due to deliver a speech in Warsaw later on February 21 at Royal Warsaw Castle Gardens. (Photo by Wojtek Radwanski / AFP) (Photo by WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Technology

How will AIs like ChatGPT affect elections this year?

We are beginning to see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to threats from chatbots. In a huge election year, how will AI affect upcoming votes, asks Alex Wilkins

Comment

Mind

The art of olfaction should take its place alongside other art forms

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Aperture

Workers with NASA???s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) paint the bright red NASA ???worm??? logo on the side of an Artemis II solid rocket booster segment inside the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2024. The EGS team used a laser projector to mask off the logo with tape, then painted the first coat of the iconic design. The booster segments will help propel the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on the Artemis II mission to send four astronauts around the Moon as part of the agency???s effort to establish a long-term science and exploration presence at the Moon, and eventually Mars.

Space

NASA workers paint iconic logo onto Artemis II rocket boosters

These photographs show the scale of the work that goes into painting the NASA logo on spacecraft as they are readied for an epic new moon mission

Regulars

Features

Roman Space Telescope

Space

Why we're finally on the cusp of finding exomoons around other planets

Moons circling exoplanets would be some of the most promising places to look for life outside our solar system. Now, we might finally be about to find these elusive objects

Features

Mind

Dishabituation: How to trick your brain to find more joy in life

Features

Health

The unexpected ways your skin impacts your health and longevity

Features

Culture

A close-up view of a burial trench between rows of individual graves, excavated between the concrete foundations of the Royal Mint, from the excavation of the Black Death cemetery, East Smithfield, London, view looking west. (Photo by MOLA/Getty Images)

Comment

Crypt review: Alice Roberts on murder and mayhem in the Middle Ages

The archaeologist's latest book on what bones teach us about Britain's history not only provides the grisly facts, but helps us feel them

Culture

Comment

Bad therapy review: Is mental health industry fuelling youth crisis?

Culture

Comment

51¶¯Âþ recommends London's When Forms Come Alive exhibition

Culture

Comment

The Arc of Oblivion review: Offbeat film about preserving our world

Culture

More

A young man lying on the grass and watching the Milky Way. Taken in A Veiga, Orense.

Mind

Could the 'spirituality of science' provide the perks of religion?

New research suggests that a greater appreciation of science could bring the same health benefits that religion can provide for believers. David Robson goes looking for awe

Regulars

BrainTwister #9: Rectangulator

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Tom Gauld on a feeling of inferiority

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Twisteddoodles on a drug that gives workers that Friday feeling

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Analysis of cats during a cat show reveals they mostly lazed around

Analysis of cats during a cat show reveals they mostly lazed around

Feedback is entranced by researchers' detailed study of cat behaviour during a "feline exposition", which shows the cats were mainly sleeping, resting and looking around

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Letters

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The last word

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