Tim Winton: “There may be places on our planet where the reality of our burning world can still be overlooked or evaded. Australia is not one of them.” Shutterstock / Vibe Images My grandparents were born at the end of the 19th century, in the era of the horse and cart. My mum and dad…
“On and on we go, hour after hour, over country as black as the night sky, across a fallen heaven starred with eruptions of white ash and smears of milky soot.” Tim Winton’s Juice Shutterstock / Denis Torkhov So I drive until first light and only stop when the plain turns black and there’s nothing…
Bella Hadid smoulders terrifyingly as Ruby in The Beauty Philippe Antonello/FX The BeautyRyan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson, Disney+/FX The intentions and limitations of The Beauty (Disney+/FX), the new series from TV titan Ryan Murphy and collaborator Matthew Hodgson, are on full display in its first scene. Amid the models strutting down a catwalk in Paris,…
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer was the Book Club’s January read Dittmeier The New Scientist Book Club moved on from reading a classic piece science fiction in December – Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games – to an award-winning sci-fi novel in January: Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot, which won the Arthur C. Clarke prize…
Edward Jenner performing his first vaccination against smallpox in 1796 Ernest Board/Wellcome Collection/De Agostini via Getty Images A new look at one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in history, which rapidly eradicated smallpox in Copenhagen in the early 1800s, has uncovered possible lessons for boosting vaccine uptake in modern times. Smallpox was a devastating…
Mars is the location for two new science fiction novels out in February dottedhippo/iStockphoto/Getty Images Do you want to travel to Mars, to an alternate version of 1939 London or even to the very far future? If so, then February’s science fiction is for you, with all three flavours on offer from our authors. I’m…
There’s more going on when we yawn than we had realised VIVEK PRAKASH/AFP via Getty Images Yawning isn’t just a deep breath indicating tiredness or boredom, but a process that reorganises the flow of fluids out of the brain, according to MRI scans that also suggest we each yawn in a slightly different way. Most…
Billionaire Elon Musk recently spoke at the World Economic Forum Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images Elon Musk is a busy man, heading up multiple billion-dollar companies. While he is increasingly a divisive figure, there is no doubt that Tesla and SpaceX, his two most important ventures, have done much to advance the future of electric…
The plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease usually cause devastating symptoms, but some people seem to be resilient to them Associated Press / Alamy Some people develop Alzheimer’s-related brain changes without experiencing symptoms of the disease, such as memory loss. We don’t know exactly why this occurs, but two recent studies are inching us…
Biologist George Church maintains a list of potentially beneficial gene variants DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images “Why should only the tall have access to tall genes? And why should only the smart have access to smart genes?… our goal is to give as many people as possible the opportunity to choose their genes for themselves…
