New Scientist Space - Space Headlines

A study of 4.5 million people suggests that ex-smokers who take up vaping are more at risk of dying from lung cancer than people who quit without the use of e-cigarettes

A visit to Kew Gardens’ exhibit of the sculptor’s work is a fascinating insight into how he was inspired by nature

Researchers suggesting that the keto diet could treat mental health conditions find themselves uncomfortably aligned with people like vaccine-sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr, but that is not a reason to reject the idea

With its origins in a creepy image posted on 4chan, Backrooms is an unusually potent big-screen experiment in fear and perception, says Davide Abbatescianni

A photo essay from Tommy Trenchard explores efforts to protect the fragile ecosystems of oases in Chad

Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte's The Story of Birds offers an excellent and sometimes startling account of bird evolution, finds Michael Marshall

Feedback is alarmed by a study that explored how funny people think they are, and discovered certain traits in those who rate themselves the most humorous

Europe’s largest land animal, the bison, is thought to be relatively unthreatened by predators, but footage from Białowieża Primaeval Forest in Poland shows it does face attacks from wolves

Researchers diving 7 kilometres deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science

The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's rings

Climate models suggest a small nuclear war in the tropics would do even more damage to the ozone layer than a larger nuclear war in more northerly latitudes, increasing exposure to dangerous ultraviolet radiation all over the world

A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties

A near miss with a Waymo while cycling through London hasn't changed my optimistic stance on driverless cars, but we can't ever let our guard down, says Matthew Sparkes

Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. Despite their limitations, these remotely controlled robots could be the deciding factor in many conflicts

Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals

A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals

Bleaching has devastated reefs around the world, raising fears of an irreversible shift. Yet new interventions have revealed that corals can be remarkably resilient if we can give them enough help to recover

Drill cores at the impact site of the Chicxulub asteroid show evidence that, alongside widespread destruction, the collision created a vast underground ecosystem filled with hot water that sheltered microbial life

Brown dwarfs are somewhere between the size of a planet and a star, so how could we have potentially mistaken two of them for distant galaxies? Columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein argues that solving this cosmic mix-up is particularly possible now, as galaxy research has never been stronger

Physics is considered a cold, hard science – but it will transform your life if you view it with a bit more subjectivity, says Karmela Padavic-Callaghan