“We are composed not only of human cells and microbes but also fragments of others…” Lois Fordham/Millennium Images Hidden GuestsLise Barnéoud, translated by Bronwyn Haslam, Greystone Books My children were conceived using donated eggs, so you would be forgiven for assuming we share no genetic material. Yet science has proved this isn’t entirely true. We…
Hackers has gained a cult following in the 30 years since its debut Maximum Film/Alamy Tim BoddyPicture editor, London It is 1995. Geocities, Yahoo! and Netscape are kings of a burgeoning internet. Spending an hour by your screeching dial-up modem on the information superhighway is thrilling. And the film Hackers is released, a psychedelic celebration…
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Peekaboo is a delightful game to play with infants. Lacking as they are in object permanence, the act of hiding your face from a baby before revealing it with a flourish is sure to raise a smile, as their little brains try to figure out what on Earth…
Historical accounts say Ingólfr Arnarson was the first Norse settler of Iceland, arriving in the 870s, but this may not be true Public domain Norse people may have lived in Iceland almost 70 years earlier than historians thought, and their arrival might not have been the environmental disaster it is often portrayed as. Historical accounts…
Masud Husain The New Scientist Book Club stepped away from science fiction for our October read, turning to the winner of the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize instead, serendipitously announced just in time for us to start on our next literary adventure. Six books had been up for the award, from Daniel Levitin’s Music…
As Every Version of You opens, New Year’s Eve is being celebrated in a virtual utopia akinbostanci/Getty The sky’s all wrong tonight. Oversaturated blue, it pixelates at the horizon into streaky seawater, and is hole-punched by the sun sinking towards its bloated reflection. The tide beats against the shore. One, two, three up the sand.…
“What does it really mean to upload your consciousness into intangible space?” Francesco Carta/Getty In Every Version of You, the characters face an impossible choice: upload your mind into a virtual utopia, or crumble away in the abandoned physical world. Mind-uploading is familiar to us as a science fiction trope, often anchoring relationship dramas and…
The mummified remains of a boy buried in a copper box between 1617 and 1814 Annamaria Alabiso An adolescent boy buried around three centuries ago in a copper box in northern Italy has become the only near-complete green mummy ever known. Other ancient body parts have been partially mummified or turned green after burial with…
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as seen by the Gemini South telescope in Chile International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist; J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (Intl Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is, once again, doing something strange. This interloper from another star is currently concealed…
Kidney stones are a common and painful complaint wildpixel/Getty Images A magnetic device may be able to remove kidney stones more efficiently than standard approaches, avoiding the need for repeated surgical procedures. Kidney stones occur when minerals in urine crystallise. They can be painful when they become lodged inside the kidneys or enter the ureters,…