Table of contents for 1 November 2025 in New Scientist

IT IS a familiar pattern. A new website or app arrives that is so good you just have to try it. It’s free, so why not? You and millions of others quickly become hooked, using it every day. But then it starts to change. Some of your favourite features can now only be used for a fee. Ads start to interfere with your user experience. It’s still the same thing, only now it’s a bit worse, a bit more corporate, a bit less fun. What has happened, using a term coined by author Cory Doctorow, is “enshittification” (see page 25). Users are no longer the priority; shareholders are. The internet is filled with examples of this, so much so that it now defines the story of the web itself. Most…

THE colours of microbes that live in clouds high in the sky have been measured for the first time, giving scientists clues that could help us find life on other planets. A diverse range of microorganisms have been found living high in Earth’s atmosphere at concentrations of up to 100,000 microbes per cubic metre, and they are known to play a role in cloud formation. These organisms produce pigments to protect themselves from the strong ultraviolet light at extreme altitudes. If similar airborne life forms exist in the atmosphere of other planets, we could therefore detect them from afar by analysing the wavelengths, or spectra, of light that those planets reflect, says Ligia Coelho at Cornell University in New York state. To learn more about the colours of airborne microbes on…

TINY “Ferris wheels” made from light and extremely cold particles could allow researchers to test a facet of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity on unprecedentedly small scales. Theories of special and general relativity, which Einstein formulated in the early 1900s, reshaped our understanding of time by revealing that moving clocks can tick more slowly than those that stay still. If you move sufficiently quickly or if you accelerate enough, the time you measure will become dilated; the same can happen if you find yourself moving in circles. These phenomena have been observed for relatively large objects, but Vassilis Lembessis at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia and his colleagues have now devised a way to test them on very small scales. To study rotations and time for the smallest objects…

A ROBOT hand built from Lego pieces by a 16-year-old and his father can grab and move objects, displaying similar qualities to a leading robotic hand. Jared Lepora, a student at Bristol Grammar School, UK, started work on the hand when he was 14 with his father, Nathan Lepora, who works at the University of Bristol. The device borrows principles from cutting-edge robotic hands, including the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, but uses only off-the-shelf parts from Lego Mindstorms, a line of educational kits for building programmable robots. “My dad’s a professor at Bristol University for robotics, and I really liked the designs [of robotic hands],” says Jared. “It just inspired me to do it in an educational format and out of Lego.” The hand is driven by two motors using tendons, and…

CATS are distinctive animals: domesticated for centuries, they have been revered and reviled in equal measure throughout history and bred to match our own aesthetic tastes and whims. Renowned animal photographer Tim Flach explores their world in his new book Feline, showing how intertwined our lives have become with theirs. “At the heart of this project was to unmask the essence of feline,” says Flach. Including more than 170 of Flach’s cat images, Feline also sees neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach explore why we find cats so compelling, and evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos delve into the species Felis catus and its evolution. Pictured at the far left is Stella, a Cornish Rex from Montreal, Canada, whose striking appearance is a result of genetic quirks during her embryonic development. Cats with differentcoloured eyes…

Alison George Features editor London This year is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Kazuo Ishiguro’s renowned novel Never Let Me Go and I have finally got round to reading it. I can hardly believe that such a haunting story has been sitting on my shelf all that time, awaiting discovery. It is one of the best books I have ever read – and one of the most unnerving. At first, Ishiguro’s English boarding school setting seems so familiar. Then, slowly and obliquely, the cruel reality facing the young protagonists, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, emerges. But I’m not going to reveal any spoilers. For me, one of the most poignant aspects of turning the pages of this heartrending book was trying to work out what exactly was going on…

“I often feel like I’m invisible,” a Dear David reader complains. “My colleagues don’t listen to my ideas and my friends take me for granted, but I’m afraid that if I express my frustration, it will only lead to conflict. What can I do to earn more respect?” This letter got me thinking about the value of assertiveness, which is the capacity to express our feelings and needs directly, while maintaining respect for others. The latter part is crucial, as assertiveness cannot be an excuse for aggression. The problem is that many people, like our reader, veer too far in the opposite direction: they are so worried about seeming rude that they fail to say what they mean. One common sign is that you find yourself apologising for simply stating…

IMMUNE cells that have been genetically engineered to kill cancerous cells, known as CAR T-cells, have transformed the treatment of blood cancers but proved largely ineffective against solid tumours. Now, “weaponised” CAR T-cells have eradicated large solid prostate tumours in mice, raising hopes this approach will work in people. “The tumours were gone, completely gone,” says Jun Ishihara at Imperial College London. It is the first time such results have been achieved in an animal study, he says. Our immune system kills off many cancers before they become a problem. Mutant proteins on the surface of cancer cells are recognised as foreign, and immune cells known as T-cells are sent to eliminate them. T-cells identify cancerous cells using receptor proteins on their surface that bind to the mutant proteins. Not…

A SIMPLE jar with a cranked handle could revolutionise the provision of clean drinking water. In off-grid communities and disaster zones, traditional water purification isn’t reliable, so Xu Deng at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu and his team invented a device that can disinfect water with a minute of easy, manual stirring. Their solution is based on spherical silica nanoparticles coated with amine group chemicals, which are positively charged in water, and gold nanoparticles, which become negatively charged in the stirred water. “Think of a hand-cranked jar with a small dose of engineered, sand-like powder,” says Deng. “A few turns of the handle creates gentle shear in the water, and that motion ‘wakes up’ our nanoparticles.” The flow of water on the surface of…

Book One Hand Clapping Nikolay Kukushkin  Swift Press (UK); Prometheus Books (US) “IF TWO hands come together and make a sound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Meditate on this Zen Buddhist koan (a paradox used to train Zen Buddhist monks) long enough, promises neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin at the start of his book, and the origins of mind, and perhaps even human experience, will become clear. But as many Buddhists also know, the path to enlightenment is long and difficult, even if it is ultimately rewarding, and One Hand Clapping is no different. First published in Russian, the book has been translated into English by its author, now at New York University. In it, Kukushkin explores the origins of life and its evolution along wonderfully diverse branches. He…

ED SAYERS, a director of commercials and music videos, has a passion for Super 8, a motion-picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak. He’s not alone: the dinky film cassettes survive because of the advocacy of a small global community of film-makers. What marks Sayers out is his organisational ability. His first feature, Super Nature, which premiered at the London Film Festival last month, assembles Super 8 footage from 25 countries shot by 40 film-makers and local enthusiasts who captured the natural world near where they live. When I read the premise of this movie, I will admit I was buckling in for 82 minutes of sparrows and house cats, but boy was I wrong. While the film’s distributor BFI is making much of its “green” credentials, what…

CHANGING just one of the materials used in lithium-ion batteries could prevent the uncontrollable fires that erupt if they are pierced or bent. Lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and laptops contain a graphite electrode, a metal oxide electrode and an electrolyte of lithium salt dissolved in a solvent. The liquid electrolyte allows ions to flow in one direction to charge the battery and in the other direction to release energy and power devices. But if this design is punctured in such a way that it creates a short circuit, all the chemical energy stored inside is released rapidly, which can cause a fire or explosion. Now, Yue Sun at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and her colleagues have created a safe design that can be built exactly like existing…

COFFEE beans collected from the faeces of civets have a unique chemistry that may explain why such beans are prized for their flavour. Asian palm civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) are mongooselike animals native to South and South-East Asia. Civet coffee, also known as kopi luwak, is one of the world’s strangest luxury beverages. The beans sell for up to $1000/kg. However, animal welfare groups accuse the industry of keeping civets caged in terrible conditions. To learn how coffee beans are transformed after passing through a civet, Palatty Allesh Sinu at Central University of Kerala, India, and his colleagues collected coffee samples from five coffee-growing farms near Kodagu in the Western Ghats mountain range of India. Civets live wild within these farms, none of which keeps them caged. The researchers obtained nearly…

ANTIDEPRESSANTS vary greatly in their side effects – from weight gain to weight loss and blood pressure changes. This may need to be taken into account when doctors decide which drug is best for each person. About 1 in 10 people in Europe and the US take antidepressants for conditions such as depression and anxiety. Research earlier this year found withdrawal symptoms may be less common than we thought. But there can also be a range of physical side effects when taking these drugs. It just isn’t clear which drug causes which effect. To find out more, Toby Pillinger at King’s College London and his colleagues analysed results from 151 randomised-controlled trials and 17 US Food and Drug Administration reports. These covered 30 antidepressants whose effectiveness and side effects were…

ROBERT FROST’s poem The Road Not Taken opens with “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,/ And sorry I could not travel both”. These lines come to mind when I consider the US government’s public letter of 9 July stating that it would no longer support the CMB-S4 project. CMB-S4, short for Cosmic Microwave Background-Stage 4, was meant to be a nextgeneration, multi-continental telescope facility that would have given all of humanity unprecedented insight into the earliest light to ever fly free through the cosmos. In the beginning, the universe was full of a dense particle-plasma stew. The plasma was so dense that particles of light, photons, couldn’t go very far without running into something. As well as being thick, the stew was very hot, which prevented the formation of…

Book Enshittification Cory Doctorow MCD Books “ENSHITTIFICATION” is one of those rare new words that so perfectly sums up a prevailing but innominate concept that it feels like it has existed forever, like “shrinkflation” or “greenwash” before it. We are all painfully familiar with websites or apps enshittifying – that is, getting worse over time – as their owners squeeze users for profit. This can be seen everywhere from Instagram ditching a chronological stream of friends’ photos for algorithm-cobbled influencer nonsense to Apple preventing easy repairs and forcing you to buy a new handset. Cory Doctorow coined the term in 2022 and has developed the idea in his latest book, Enshittification: Why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it, which is also a call to action. The…

Editor’s pick A new way to think about mental illness 18 October, p 6 From Ros Groves, Watford, UK The fact that genetic developments linked to higher intelligence have been dated to around the time of a sudden explosion in the making of more complex tools would appear to be more than a coincidence. What was required in a tool? How and where it would be used? How it could be adapted to suit changing circumstances? These all became compelling questions to ponder. Could this shift in focus towards planning for the future be the original source of mental illness? As technology and, consequently, life itself have become more complex, we find ourselves forced to make more difficult choices. We agonise over the endless permutations and possible worst-case scenarios. On…

TIM BERNERS-LEE has a map of everything on the internet. It can fit on a single page and consists of around 100 blocks connected by dozens of arrows. There are blocks for things like blogs, podcasts and group messages, but also more abstract concepts like creativity, collaboration and clickbait. It plots the lay of the digital landscape from a unique vantage point: the view of the man who invented the World Wide Web. “Most of it is good,” he tells me, sitting in New Scientist’s London offices, as we discuss what has gone wrong and what has gone right with the web. He created the map to help show others – and perhaps also remind himself – that the parts of the internet judged as causing harm to society form…

Digging in There are few things Feedback appreciates more than a truly committed hobbyist: someone who happily spends months or even years building something that is of no practical use whatsoever, just to be able to look at it or play with it. So, then, to the online world of Minecraft. For those who might be unfamiliar, Minecraft is an openworld game in which everything is made up of cubical blocks. Players dig into the ground to collect cubes of useful minerals, which they can use to build things. For instance, they might build a house so that the monsters that come out at night can’t get them. Or they might go big. Really big. Feedback is fond of a group called Minecraft Middle Earth (shouldn’t that be Minecraft Middle-earth?)…