After many, many interviews I'm sitting down to write up a long feature today. My cat has taken that as a cue to be sick on my keyboard, rendering it not only gross but also, somehow, entirely broken. Tiny laptop keyboard it is, then.

Small modular nuclear reactors sound great, but they won't be ready any time soon. ”This is very rich men giving a few crumbs off the table to this technology they’ve always loved the idea of, without really looking too carefully,” says one expert. www.newscientist.com/article/2496...

An important part of this story (which I am not expecting the NASA live stream to mention) is that the sample return mission that could potentially answer the question of life on Mars is being threatened by budget cuts from the Trump administration www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

Gravitational waves have finally proven Stephen Hawking's 50-year-old black hole theorem. This research was made possible because of increasingly sensitive gravitational wave detectors, but also an extremely loud signal. www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

NASA hasn't found life on Mars yet – but the signs are promising. More evidence stacking up. We have multiple rock samples that need to be analysed further back on Earth. But the mission to bring them home is in budget jeopardy. www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

TRAPPIST-1e might have an atmosphere that could host life. But we're going to need to scan it over a dozen more times to find out. www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

Asteroid 2025 QD8 will buzz Earth this week at 218,000km - 57% of the average distance from Earth to our moon. Totally safe. No danger. But a reasonably close one. www.virtualtelescope.eu/2025/09/01/n...

Every embassy in the UK has a different code for diplomatic number plates. Today I learned that Joint European Torus staff are extended the same privilege: if you see a car plated with three numbers then "D 931" it might be on important fusion business. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Weather apps regularly differ in their predictions for the same location – why is it so hard to predict local forecasts, and where can we get the best weather information?

Weather apps regularly differ in their predictions for the same location – why is it so hard to make local forecasts, and where can we get the best weather information? www.newscientist.com/article/2494...

Glad that @mjflepage.bsky.social is shining a light on these claims. bsky.app/profile/mjfl...

CPR doesn't work in space, because people have no weight. So NASA recommends that you wedge yourself and the patient between two hard objects, handstand on their chest and push with your feet. It's not ideal. Now there's a better way. www.newscientist.com/article/2493...

Inveterate cyclist Matt Sparkes, who has been knocked off his bike by human-driven cars several times, wonders if the arrival of driverless cars in London is a good thing - or a bad one

Across 142 routes in Europe, trains are on average twice as expensive as flights On some routes, they are 26 times the price Low-cost airlines profit from unfair tax exemptions, but trains are burdened with VAT, energy taxes and high track fees Governments and the EU must stop rewarding polluters

What's the plan for all these vast GPU data centres when the AI bubble bursts, and recedes back to a sane level? Please don't say bitcoin.

Driverless taxis are on their way to London. As a cyclist, a Londoner and a journalist who's spent years covering AI’s pratfalls, I am a tad nervous. Yet, given how often I've been hit by inattentive human drivers in London, part of me is cautiously optimistic. www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

I saw Ian McKellen's S/2025 U1 at the National, absolutely stunning interpretation of the classic work

We've found another moon around Uranus. That brings the total to 29. They're conventionally named after characters from Shakespeare plays, so "S/2025 U 1" should get a more interesting title soon. www.newscientist.com/article/2493...

In the two weeks since I wrote this story ATLAS has rather stubbornly not slowed down to give us a better chance. www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

Scientists are exploring various proposals to repurpose existing spacecraft in order to chase after the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS and take a closer look – but time is against them

I particularly like Total War: Warhammer as an example of British gaming because it's one of the biggest British developers (Creative Assembly) working with an IP from one of the UK's fastest growing culture-sector companies (Games Workshop). It should rightly be seen as a jewel of British industry.

The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum has switched to solar power to save energy costs. www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

Scientists are exploring various proposals to repurpose existing spacecraft in order to chase after the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS and take a closer look – but time is against them

My niece just smashed her A-levels and got into her first choice uni, but rather than talking about that we're currently obsessed with the fact that her college doesn't do paper results but its social media seems full of people holding random bits of paper.

Very good Larry Elliott column which eloquently makes two undeniable points: - Freezing fuel duty has been vastly expensive and disproportionately benefits the rich. - We really need to start talking about road pricing. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Buried in The Observer yesterday was this: UK police knocking on doors demanding details of social media accounts of people, to pass to a foreign government, simply because they happen to live near where a US politician wanted to have a holiday observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

New Scientist's @sparkes.bsky.social was also trying to get to the bottom of these strange posts. www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

The winners of the 2025 Obfuscated Code Contest have been announced. www.ioccc.org/news.html @newscientist.com had a story on the competition earlier in the year: www.newscientist.com/article/2466...

Fascinating artistic depictions of sea life over millennia - @sparkes.bsky.social @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

Academics who have questioned the validity of efforts to “de-extinct” animals like the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf have complained of an apparent campaign to discredit them.

I'm OK with that. bsky.app/profile/tech...

Critics of #ColossalBio and #DeExtinction @toriherridge.bsky.social @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social, @flintdibble.bsky.social, and I have been targeted by "articles" attacking our credibility, looks like a targeted smear campaign against us for honest criticisms... www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

Several scholars (including me) who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences and de-extinction have been targeted by a mysterious harassment campaign www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

In far less pleasant news -- it turns out that @devoevomed.bsky.social, @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social & I have all been targets of on-line smear articles, all in reference to our public criticisms of de-extinction. www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

What's harder than a diamond? An hexagonal diamond. What's even harder than that? Making hexagonal diamonds. www.newscientist.com/article/2489...

Her right hand is bigger than her whole head. bsky.app/profile/dyna...

Today PornHub introduced mandatory age verification for UK users - as demanded by the Government's new Online Safety Act. In other news, searches for "VPN" in the UK just went through the roof.

Thanks to the Online Safety Act I now have to prove how old I am in order to access DMs on BlueSky. Or I can just switch my apparent location using my free VPN, which requires no age verification or credit card to set up. Then I don't. What's the Online Safety Act going to achieve?

Journalists reporting for AFP from Gaza are starving and too weak to work. Foreign reporters have no access. Soon there may be no news coming from Gaza at all. bsky.app/profile/cnor...

There was a moment, somewhere in late 2022, after which we couldn't be sure words or pictures were computer-generated or not. Some people are trying to preserve what came before, and some are trying to preserve what came after. www.newscientist.com/article/2488...

If you are in the UK, you will soon need to verify your age to access certain online services. The new law behind the measures is intended to protect children from harmful content, but its impacts could be much wider.

From a silhouetted space station to glowing comet tails and swirling stars, this year's ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest inspires us to see the cosmos in a new light

Cutting trees down so that more people can fly is a double-whammy of bad news for the environment. Grim stuff. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Out of the office and in the workshop yesterday, making some progress on fitting the neck. Only taken 6 years to get this far. In another 6 I might have a playable but mediocre guitar.

Cabinet member for transport and environment at Nottinghamshire County Council... There are no words. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@flintdibble.bsky.social Hi Flint. I'm a writer at @newscientist.com. I don't suppose you'd be available for a chat about a certain vulpine-linked company, would you?

Imagine seeing Star Trek's utopia where all needs are met and there's a well-functioning and benevolent society that priorities peaceful exploration, science and the arts, and thinking "no thanks". bsky.app/profile/maus...

I'm told that Saturn has *not* been hit by an asteroid or comet. Unfortunately it was a false alarm. We'll certainly see an impact eventually if we keep watching, but this ain't it. bsky.app/profile/spar...

Is the flash highlighted here in blue our first ever look at an impact on Saturn? Astronomers hope so and are searching for more images to confirm.

Did something just hit Saturn? Astronomers are racing to find out. A video shows a flash indicative of an impact but until a second video is found we can't rule out that it was just a glitchy pixel. It would be the first impact with Saturn ever captured. www.newscientist.com/article/2487...