New Scientist

22/06/2025

How Kaliane Bradley's obsession with 1845 arctic explorer inspired new book 📚️🥰

New Scientist Book Club has been reading Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time, a tale of a young woman who must help a naval officer snatched from death in 1847 adapt to the 21st century. This week, our culture editor Alison Flood caught up with Bradley to delve into the inspiration and process behind her time-travelling, romantic thriller.

From the humour and technicalities of time travel to the social commentary likening time travellers to refugees in the UK today, Bradley gives an amazing insight into her best-selling novel.

Tap the link to learn more and sign up to the New Scientist BookClub
https://www.newscientist.com/video/2485093-how-doomed-arctic-explorer-inspired-new-sci-fi-romantic-thriller

22/06/2025

The virus that commonly causes cold sores starts reshaping our genome within an hour of infection to boost its own growth, which scientists could take advantage of to treat severe cases.

Billions of people around the world have the infection, known as herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), although many of them don’t know it. It can spread through contact with other cold sores, saliva or even unbroken skin around the mouth.

After invading host cells, the virus replicates in the nucleus, where genetic material is stored within strands of DNA. These strands wrap around proteins, with some regions forming tight coils, inactivating the genes within them, while others form wider loops, where genes are active. In these looser regions, proteins can unwind and transcribe DNA into the molecule RNA, which encodes for proteins that keep the cell running.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2484960-cold-sore-virus-immediately-reshapes-our-genome-to-boost-its-growth/

Image: Esther Gonzalez Almela and Álvaro Castells García

22/06/2025

There are hundreds of TV apocalypses to choose from, but The Eternaut, a fresh and compelling adaptation of a classic Argentinian comic book series, is the one to pick, says Bethan Ackerley

22/06/2025

Milky Way viewing is at its best right now, especially if you’re in the southern hemisphere. Here's what to look out for, says Abigail Beall

22/06/2025

Sea spiders living near deep-sea methane seeps appear to cultivate and eat bacteria on their exoskeletons

21/06/2025

Attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities have already triggered at least one internal radiation leak, but should we be concerned that Israeli bombing could cause a larger nuclear accident?

21/06/2025

This photo series capturing efforts to save the Chinook salmon of the Klamath river in the western US won the New Scientist Editors Award at the Earth Photo 2025 competition

21/06/2025

Sunburn isn't just painful, it can seriously damage the long-term health of your skin. To avoid it, it helps to understand how the sun's UV rays cause inflammation.

We’ve known for nearly a century that UV radiation is linked to skin cancer, but modern advice about sunburn can be confusing. To understand what works, you need to kn...

21/06/2025

The human brain is one of the most complex objects in the universe – and that complexity may be due to a surge of hormones released by the placenta during pregnancy.

While numerous ideas have been proposed to explain human brain evolution, it remains one of our greatest scientific mysteries. One explanation, known as the social brain hypothesis, suggests that our large brains evolved to manage complex social relationships. It posits that navigating large group dynamics requires a certain degree of cognitive ability, pushing social species to develop bigger brains. For instance, other highly sociable animals, such as dolphins and elephants, have relatively large brains too. But the biological mechanism underlying this link has remained unclear.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2484993-our-big-brains-may-have-evolved-because-of-placental-sex-hormones/

Image: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images

21/06/2025

Agatha Christie's murder mysteries are made all the more compelling by the author's personal expertise, reveals Kathryn Harkup's new book V is for Venom

21/06/2025

From Fallopian tubes to the G-**ot, long-dead men have left their mark on women's anatomy. It's time to turf them out, says Adam Taor