Mars rocks that were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet millions of years ago have been traced back to craters where they originated, which could transform our understanding of Mars’s volcanism and evolution

A radio signal detected in 1977, sometimes claimed as evidence for aliens, may have been caused by a laser-like beam of microwave radiation

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

The failure of Boeing's Starliner capsule has left two astronauts stuck in space for months – but also proved how private spaceflight can go right

The Polaris Dawn mission will include the first ever civilian spacewalk, and with a new spacesuit and no airlock, it may also be the most dangerous spacewalk ever

Four private astronauts are riding a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule further from Earth than any human since 1972, where they will attempt the first ever civilian spacewalk

Five satellites due to launch this week could be brighter than most stars, and astronomers fear the growth of such constellations could have a catastrophic impact

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 success of the all-civilian spacewalk on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission shows that private space flight is starting to catch up with government space agencies

Genetic analysis shows that microbes growing inside the International Space Station have adaptations for radiation and low gravity, and may pose a threat to astronauts

How did the supermassive black holes we’re now seeing in the early universe get so big so fast? Astrophysicist Sophie Koudmani is using sophisticated galaxy simulations to figure it out

My first sight of Saturn through a telescope inspired my love of space. Dig out your telescopes or visit your local astronomy club, and you may be lucky enough to spot our sixth planet's stunning thick band of rings, says Leah Crane

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

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

A small world in the outer solar system appears to have volcanic activity possibly spurred by liquid water

Averting an asteroid strike will need many of the same skills we must hone to tackle climate change and future pandemics

Samantha Harvey has won the UK's top fiction prize for a novel that takes place over 24 hours on the International Space Station

Combining two neural networks has helped researchers predict potentially disastrous collapses in complex systems, such as financial crashes or power blackouts

Anil Ananthaswamy's Why Machines Learn: The elegant maths behind modern AI explores the mechanics of the AI revolution, but doesn't examine its ethics

A robot can hold a squash, pumpkin or melon in one hand, while it is peeled by the other

In Still Wakes the Deep, you play as a Glaswegian electrician on a 1970s oil rig. The well-crafted setting gives way to horror, but I wish I could linger in mundanity for longer, says Jacob Aron

Roads with variable speed limits, designed to manage traffic flow, are normally adjusted according to simple rules, but a 27-kilometre section of the I-24 freeway near Nashville, Tennessee, is now overseen by an artificial intelligence

Plans to create an interactive AI model of the legendary code breaker Alan Turing are reckless and problematic, says Matthew Sparkes

AI companies hope that feeding ever more data to their models will continue to boost performance, eventually leading to human-level intelligence. Behind this hope is the "transformer", a key breakthrough in AI, but what happens if it fails to deliver?

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

AI tools could help eliminate human bias in forensic investigations, say UCL scientists, who are using eye-tracking technology to study decision-making in skeletal analysis and crime scene examinations

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

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

The author of Sapiens has turned his attention to the information networks that shape our societies, but when you stop and think about what he's saying, it's obvious

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

NASA’s Valkyrie is undergoing tests to understand what it would take to get a humanoid robot onto offshore facilities or into space. New Scientist's James Woodford took the controls to see what it is capable of

Supremacy, a new book from tech journalist Parmy Olson, takes us inside the rise of machine learning and AI, and examines the people behind it

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

A powerful new AI called o1 is the most dangerous that OpenAI has ever released, the firm claims – but who are these warnings for, asks Chris Stokel-Walker

An artificial intelligence model that can identify the calls of eight whale species is helping researchers track the elusive whale behind a perplexing sound in the Pacific

We're trying to avert Judgment Day yet again – this time in an anime series for Netflix. But striking visuals can't make up for shortcomings in narrative and character development

Using more training data and computational power is meant to make AIs more reliable, but tests suggest large language models actually get less reliable as they grow

It has become trivially easy to use artificial intelligence to edit images or generate video to remove unwanted objects or beautify scenes, but doing so leads to people misremembering what they have seen

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

In What's Next? Bill Gates digs into AI, climate, inequality, malaria and more. But the man looms too large for alternative solutions to emerge, says Bethan Ackerley

The 2024 Nobel prize in physics has gone to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for discoveries that enabled machine learning and are key to the development of artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT

Two of the three science Nobel prizes in 2024 have been won by people working in AI, but does this mean that AI models are now vital for science?

AI models have safeguards in place to prevent them creating dangerous or illegal output, but a range of jailbreaks have been found to evade them. Now researchers show that writing backwards can trick AI models into revealing bomb-making instructions.

Google DeepMind has been using its AI watermarking method on Gemini chatbot responses for months – and now it’s making the tool available to any AI developer

A specialised algorithm could help autonomous vehicles track hidden objects, such as a pedestrian, a bicycle or another vehicle concealed behind a parked car

Scientists used AI to transform tourist photos into a 3D digital map of Antarctic penguin colonies – even as researchers debate whether to harness or discourage tourism in this remote region

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

Feedback digs into a baffling ad for a mobile game and identifies a new and devilish way to advertise a product online: make it as confusing as possible to encourage people to click (it worked on Feedback)