Unusual clouds form over the Martian volcano Arsia Mons each year ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/J. Cowart CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO A thin cloud that appears on Mars each year has baffled astronomers ever since it was first spotted, but it may be the result of a moisture-rich atmosphere that was thought impossible. Each winter, an 1800-kilometre-long cloud…
Ibex can move nimbly across steep mountain slopes Serge Goujon/Shutterstock Nearly 300,000 years ago, Neanderthals had already figured out how to hunt mountain goats along vertical cliffs and process them in well-organised camps. Known for ambushing large animals in Western Europe’s flat meadows and forests, it seems Neanderthals adapted to the hills of Eastern Europe…
Your phone charger needs precise quantum measurements Shutterstock/Zoomik If you are anything like me, you are almost always charging your smartphone. What you might not realise is that the ability to do so safely depends on a delicate quantum measurement at the cutting edge of physics. To understand why, we need to look at what…
Archaeological excavations near Aldborough, UK, are helping us understand life after Roman occupation R Ferraby & M.J. Millet When the Roman Empire withdrew from Britain, the result was not chaos and economic collapse. The metals industry in what is now northern England continued and even expanded in the subsequent centuries, according to an archaeological record…
Social media can bombard adolescents with people to judge themselves harshly against Alys Tomlinson/Getty Images How We Grow UpMatt Richtel (Mariner Books) The true story at the start of How We Grow Up, the latest book by Pulitzer-winning journalist Matt Richtel, is chilling to read as a parent of children nearing adolescence. Elaniv was a…
“Disaffection with climate policies has two root causes: economic and cultural” Alex Ramsay/Alamy I have written before about the outcry in my home city of York, UK, when the council announced plans to increase parking fees to discourage people from driving on our polluted streets. In case you were wondering, the council eventually caved in…
Illustration of two black holes merging and sending gravitational waves across the cosmos Maggie Chiang for Simons Foundation Stephen Hawking’s 50-year-old theorem on how black holes merge together has been successfully tested thanks to huge advances in gravitational wave astronomy, which helped astronomers catch the waves caused by an unusually powerful collision as they passed…
Artist’s impression of the planet TRAPPIST-1e NASA/JPL-Caltech There are promising signs that one of the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, which lies about 40 light years from Earth, has an atmosphere capable of supporting life. But scientists will need to image it 15 times more to make sure. TRAPPIST-1 is a small red dwarf…
A new map of the quantum landscape inside solids may unlock powerful materials Michael Strevens Imagine you are out on a walk. Outside the house in the fresh air you may have left the walls behind, but even so there are boundaries that limit where you can wander. In a city, you are constrained by…
Josie Ford 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 Super wasps One of Feedback’s least favourite genres of news story is “reports that sound like foreshadowing from the first 5 or 10 minutes of…