Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, is expected to grace our skies from mid-October. Abigail Beall is hoping for a dazzling display

A groundbreaking civilian spacewalk saw two astronauts partially exit a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule wearing a brand new design of spacesuit. Every previous spacewalk completed before this was performed by government-trained astronauts.

The Cassini mission’s samples from Saturn’s moon Enceladus have signs of various organic molecules that could be among the ingredients needed for life to get started

The second-closest planet to the sun is more geologically active than we thought and could have more than 17,000 venusquakes a year

Spanning 23 million light years, or 220 Milky Way galaxies, a set of giant, newly discovered black hole jets known as Porphyrion may change our understanding of black holes and the structure of the universe

A distant planet should have been consumed when its star expanded to become a red giant, perhaps offering insights into planetary migration

Astronomer Jo Dunkley is planning to use the Simons Observatory to snare evidence for inflation, the theory that the universe expanded at incredible speed after its birth

A computer simulation suggests that some collisions between exotic, hypothetical stars would make space-time ripple with detectable waves

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Bacteria grown from carbon compounds in asteroids could be turned into a kind of nutritionally balanced milkshake

The ion tail of C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) could appear as a blue streak across the northern hemisphere sky during October, in a rare event thought to happen only every few decades

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

The Euclid space telescope's massive “cosmic atlas” promises to shed light on fundamental questions in physics and cosmology

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Complex carbon-based molecules crucial to life on Earth originated somewhere in space, but we didn't know where. Now, huge amounts of them have been spotted in a huge, cold cloud of gas

The largest and most ambitious Martian drone yet could carry kilograms of scientific equipment over great distances and set itself down on the Red Planet unassisted

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots

Asteroids that regularly fly between Earth, Venus and Mars could provide radiation shielding for human missions to explore neighbouring planets

From nuclear strikes to giant spikes, discover the systems in place to prevent a collision and test your decision-making to see if you could avoid a catastrophic impact

The first ever full-scale demonstration of a nuclear reactor designed to passively cool itself in an emergency was a success, showing that it should be possible to build nuclear plants without the risk of dangerous meltdown

Between 2005 and 2021, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were more likely to make policy changes in the weeks after negative stories in the media

Computer code dating back to the 1960s is still vital to banks, airlines and governments, but programmers familiar with the language are in short supply. Now AI models are being trained to fill the skills gap

Computers made from DNA have previously only been able to store information or perform computations on it – now a new device can do both

An AI-powered model found that approaching intersections more slowly could lower yearly US carbon emissions by up to around 123 million tonnes

A neural network can recreate the classic computer game Doom despite using none of its code or graphics, hinting that generative AI could be used to create games from scratch in future

A new procedure turns an alloy of nickel and titanium into a material as strong as steel but 20 times stretchier – and one application could be building planes with shape-shifting wings

Google has built a quantum computer that makes fewer errors as it is scaled up, and this may pave the way for machines that could solve useful real-world problems for the first time

As misinformation about the upcoming US elections rockets across social media, creating chaos, companies need to be honest about where this content is coming from, says Annalee Newitz

In a basement beneath City St George's, University of London, senior NATO leaders watch on as four research teams demonstrate the latest in AI-controlled, autonomous drone technolo0gy

Information on faces recognised, voice commands and internet searches can be extracted from an Amazon Echo smart assistant without help from the user or manufacturer

Are humanoid robots the future of space exploration? New Scientist reporter James Woodford took NASA's Valkyrie for a spin to find out

‘Battle of Technologies’ sees electric vehicles and combustion cars compete at the highest level. Who will win?

Our Future Chronicles column explores an imagined history of inventions and developments yet to come. This time, Rowan Hooper takes us to the early 2030s, when a technological step change enabled us to produce all the food we needed without the use of animals

Cyborg: A documentary tells the intriguing story of Neil Harbisson, who wears an antenna to “hear” colour, but it is lacking in depth and should have probed its subject more, says Simon Ings

Archaeologists are using AI and US spy satellite imagery from the cold war to find ancient underground aqueducts that helped humans survive in the desert

A new design for a nuclear battery that generates electricity from the radioactive decay of americium is unprecedentedly efficient

A quantum computing protocol makes it possible to extract energy from seemingly empty space, teleport it to a new location, then store it for later use

Smart TVs from Samsung and LG monitor what you are watching even when you are using the screens to display a feed from a connected laptop or video game console

Google, Microsoft and others have taken big steps towards error-free devices, hinting that quantum computers that solve real problems aren’t far away

Machines are fighting machines on the Ukrainian battlefield, as a technological arms race has given birth to a new way to wage war

Hurricane Helene hit a quartz mine in North Carolina that is key to global semiconductor production, which could impact the entire tech industry. Here is everything we know so far

Gears just a few micrometres wide can be carved from silicon using a beam of electrons, enabling tiny robots or machines that could interact with human cells

It is thought that humans can only maintain relationships with around 150 people, a figure known as Dunbar's number, but it seems that AI models can outstrip this and reach consensus in far bigger groups

The UK government's decision to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius surprisingly threatens the extinction of millions of website addresses ending in ".io", and no one is quite sure what will happen next

A new way to store numbers in computers can dynamically prioritise accuracy or range, depending on need, allowing software to quickly switch between very large and small numbers

Next-generation phone networks could dramatically outperform current ones thanks to a new technique for transmitting multiple streams of data over a wide range of frequencies

Google’s NotebookLM tool is billed as an AI-powered research assistant and can even turn your text history into a jovial fake podcast. But it could also tempt you into narcissism and nostalgia, says Jacob Aron

A new supercapacitor design that uses only water, clay and graphene could source material on Mars and be more sustainable and accessible than traditional batteries

The US Census Bureau processes data before publishing it in order to keep personal information private – but a new approach could maintain the same privacy while improving accuracy

Thanks to artificial intelligence, understanding animals may be closer than we think. But we may not like what they are going to tell us, says RSPCA chief executive Chris Sherwood