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This week's magazine

4 October 2025

Issue 3563

New Scientist issue 3563 cover
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Editor's picks

Simple, conceptual image of loose pain killers on a plain white surface. They are three colours, red, white and blue. They cast shadows.

Trump's unfounded health claims cast a long shadow

Comment
Do black holes exist and, if not, what have we really been looking at?

Space

Do black holes exist and, if not, what have we really been looking at?

Features
The exceptionally tasty new fermented foods being cooked up in the lab

Health

The exceptionally tasty new fermented foods being cooked up in the lab

Features
'We're precipitating an extermination rather than an extinction event'

Environment

'We're precipitating an extermination rather than an extinction event'

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Simple, conceptual image of loose pain killers on a plain white surface. They are three colours, red, white and blue. They cast shadows.

Trump's unfounded health claims cast a long shadow

Adding flawed advice to the information overload around pregnancy is likely to cause harm, especially when there are few good ways to combat scientific misinformation

Comment

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Physics

Hints of exotic dark matter particles could be hiding in LHC data

Particles similar to axions, the leading candidate for dark matter that has long eluded detection, may have already been created in particle colliders – and remained hidden in the data

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Space

Venus has lava tubes, and they're weird

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Mind

Mapping the structure of the brain doesn't fully explain its function

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Life

Dinosaur found with a crocodile in its jaws named as new species

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Life

Cheetahs naturally turned into mummies in caves in Saudi Arabia

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Health

World’s oldest person had a young microbiome and 'exceptional genome'

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Technology

Device with 6100 qubits is a step towards largest quantum computer yet

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Health

How fast you age may be controlled by a DNA repair boss in your cells

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Environment

Could we have cracked one of the world's toughest climate problems?

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Space

We finally found the hot wind coming out of our black hole

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Health

Huntington’s disease breakthrough: what to know about the gene therapy

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Chemistry

Nanoparticles may be the secret ingredient in making ultimate plastics

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Environment

Climate change is making trees grow larger in the Amazon rainforest

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Mind

Babies' brains 'tick' more slowly than ours, which may help them learn

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Humans

Reconstructed skull gives surprising clues to our enigmatic Ancestor X

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Physics

Ultracold clocks could reveal how quantum physics alters time

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Environment

Atmospheric chaos has sent temperatures soaring in Antarctica

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Space

Did a star blow up and hit Earth 10 million years ago?

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Life

See the first-ever Socorro dove to hatch at Whipsnade Zoo

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Analysis

Health

What we know, and don't, about the link between painkillers and autism

Scientific evidence is lacking to support the US government’s decisions to caution against using a common painkiller in pregnancy and fast-track the approval of an experimental medication for autism

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Aperture

Trefoil Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus trifoliatus) range throughout most of Southeast Asia, living in understory forests. It roosts alone in foliage, including beneath palm and rattan leaves. and hunts by listening and waiting for insects to fly by it's feeding perches. Portraits

Life

Endearing photos of bats show clever adaptations like long tongues

In his book The Genius Bat, ecologist Yossi Yovel explains why these mammals are a vital part of ecosystems, pollinating plants and keeping insect populations in check

Regulars

Features

'We're precipitating an extermination rather than an extinction event'

Environment

'We're precipitating an extermination rather than an extinction event'

Broadcaster and campaigner Chris Packham is on a mission to cut overconsumption, take on fossil fuel giants and create a fairer world

Features

Space

Do black holes exist and, if not, what have we really been looking at?

Features

Health

The exceptionally tasty new fermented foods being cooked up in the lab

Features

Culture

TOPSHOT - This picture taken on October 11, 2023 shows an aerial view of buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City. Israel declared war on Hamas on October 8 following a shock land, air and sea assault by the Gaza-based Islamists. The death toll from the shock cross-border assault by Hamas militants rose to 1,200, making it the deadliest attack in the country's 75-year history, while Gaza officials reported more than 900 people killed as Israel pounded the territory with air strikes. (Photo by Yahya HASSOUNA / AFP) (Photo by YAHYA HASSOUNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Mind

A terrifying book dissects the neuroscience of warfare

Warhead by neuroscientist Nicholas Wright is an alarming insider account of how our brains influence conflict – and how those brains were, in turn, shaped by war, finds Elle Hunt

Culture

Health

Exploring PMS is a great idea, but The Period Brain can be simplistic

Culture

Space

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ recommends Chris Hadfield's Final Orbit

Culture

Disturbing Netflix mystery explores a world out to 'solve' adolescence

Culture

More

Why abandoning psychedelic research in the 1970s was a blow to science

Comment

Why abandoning psychedelic research in the 1970s was a blow to science

Work on medical uses of mind-altering substances was sidelined for decades by the political backlash against drugs, a misstep that has echoes in today’s intolerance of some fields of study

Comment

Space

Why 'beauty factories' could solve two massive cosmological mysteries

Comment

Space

Prepare to enjoy four spectacular supermoons in a row

Regulars

Tom Gauld on the power of intricate formulae

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on updating lecture slides (or not)

Regulars

Regulars

What might the humble house mouse be trying to tell us?

Comment

What might the humble house mouse be trying to tell us?

Feedback is amazed to find that the audible vocalisations of the house mouse is all but unstudied in favour of the ultrasonic sounds humans can’t hear. SQUEAK!

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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