Europe's home-grown space shuttle gears up for launch
The IXV is Europe's first attempt in 16 years to build a spaceship that can re-enter Earth's atmosphere – it could one day carry astronauts into space
Rise of robot reporters: when software writes the news
Earlier this week, a robot wrote a breaking news story about an earthquake. But this is not the first machine to carry a press pass
Less gloopy oceans will slow climate change
As the seas warm they will become less viscous, which may be good news because carbon will sink faster to the seabed where it is out of harm's way
Turkey's Twitter takedown can't stop citizens tweeting
Turkish prime minister Recep Erdoğan has blocked the country's access to Twitter – but users are finding clever ways to get round the ban
Invisible: How to see hidden truths in a picture
There is more to reading an X-ray, or even a photo, than meets the eye – hard-to-spot details of an image can make the difference between life and death
Lava fossilised this Jurassic fern down to its cells
This incredibly detailed fossil shows individual chromosomes splitting – courtesy of a mini-catastrophe 180 million years ago
Feedback: Going down the tubes with CO2
Global flattening, acrostic topology, Gove me the word and more
Facing up to the limits of DNA-based forensics
A new crime-fighting technique lets police reconstruct a suspect's appearance from DNA – but we must be alert to its potential for misuse
Invisible: What your brain refuses to see
You see only what your mind wants you to see, and this exerts a profound influence on your behaviour
Moon impacts eject debris at shotgun speeds
The risk to future lunar explorers is significant but manageable, provided we build strong enough spacesuits and moon bases
Genetic mugshot recreates faces from nothing but DNA
The best model yet of how genes affect face shape will one day give police DNA photofits of suspects – and allow us to gaze into extinct humans' faces
Is Exxon Valdez oil still a threat 25 years on?
Oil from the Exxon Valdez spill lingers, as do disputes about its current impact on wildlife. John Wiens asks what a quarter century of research can tell us
Expert nose: we can sniff out over a trillion smells
The human sense of smell is often denigrated, yet we can distinguish at least a trillion different smells, far more than we give our noses credit for
Invisible: How to see beyond sight
We can't see most of the universe with the naked eye, but we've come up with some incredible inventions to bring things into view
Wrinkly radar rainbows reveal a galloping glacier
The shifting ice field of the Arctic's biggest glacier looks like a shimmering soap bubble in a radar image that captures even the slightest movement
UV wristband helps you get vitamin D without sunburn
UVA+B SunFriend claims to make sunbathing safe by monitoring UV exposure, allowing users to get vitamin D from catching rays without the dangerous burn
Smelly cuckoos protect hosts' chicks from predators
Chicks of the great spotted cuckoo are parasites, but they also help their host by producing a foul-smelling fluid that repels cats and other animals
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
