Was a little-known culture in Bronze Age Turkey a major power? 01. December 2025 (11:00) Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked(New Scientist)
Ancient humans took two routes to Australia 60,000 years ago 28. November 2025 (20:00) Scientists have long tried to uncover the perilous journey humans took to reach the ancient land mass that now makes up Australia. Now, a genetic study has edged us closer to understanding how and when they achieved this(New Scientist)
Why Google’s custom AI chips are shaking up the tech industry 28. November 2025 (17:00) Google is reportedly in talks to sell its tensor processing units – a type of computer chip specially designed for AI – to other tech companies, a move that could unsettle the dominant chip-maker Nvidia(New Scientist)
Upheavals to the oral microbiome in pregnancy may be behind tooth loss 28. November 2025 (14:00) Dental problems often arise or get worse during pregnancy, and a new study hints that rapid changes to the oral microbiome at this time could be at least partly to blame(New Scientist)
Africa’s forests are now emitting more CO2 than they absorb 28. November 2025 (11:00) Logging and mining are destroying swathes of the Congo rainforest, with the result that African forests went from being a carbon sink to a carbon source in 2010 to 2017(New Scientist)
Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days, months or years 28. November 2025 (11:00) Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment(New Scientist)
Read an extract from The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks 28. November 2025 (10:40) The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading Iain M. Banks's classic sci-fi novel The Player of Games. In this extract, we meet protagonist Gurgeh for the first time(New Scientist)
Why sci-fi novelist Iain M. Banks was an ‘astounding’ world-builder 28. November 2025 (10:35) The New Scientist Book Club is currently reading the late Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel The Player of Games. Fellow science fiction author Bethany Jacobs reveals how his work inspired her(New Scientist)
Supermassive dark matter stars may be lurking in the early universe 28. November 2025 (07:00) Stars powered by dark matter instead of nuclear fusion could solve several mysteries of the early universe, and we may have spotted the first hints that they are real(New Scientist)
