Science
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NASA calls off rescue effort to save doomed telescope | New Scientist
The Swift observatory will now re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a few months, after a mission to boost it higher failed
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A MAGA County’s Top Election Official Wants to Hire Election Denial Superstar Tina Peters
Tina Peters was convicted of seven counts related to election interference in 2024. Now, she’s fielding an offer from a county that’s become a hotbed of voting-related conspiracy theories.
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How Teen ‘After-Prom’ Kings in LA Monetized the High School Rager
The West Coast house-party scene has long been iconic. For these young, tech-savvy entrepreneurs, it was also inspiration for MyPlots, a party-promotion empire.
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Bumble Tried to Change Dating, but the Dating Market Forced It to Change Instead
The app now allows men to make the first move, suggesting its women-first positioning was limiting growth. It joins other dating apps now throwing everything at the wall in a bid to stay relevant.
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This $110 Pool Robot Is Cheap for a Reason
The Poolease X1 can collect leaves from the pool floor, but dirt, silt, walls, and steps are all beyond its pay grade.
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Elon Musk Is Expected to Point His Money Machine at Texas Politics
Sources tell WIRED that Elon Musk is expected to spend up to $200 million in the midterms. It could be a big boost for GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, who’s struggled to raise cash.
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Why Is It Absolute Hell to Buy a Movie Ticket Now?
Overwhelmed theater apps and a scarcity mindset around exclusive big-screen formats for blockbusters like “Dune: Part Three” and “The Odyssey” have led to the “concertification” of movies.
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Suggesting that ADHD is a myth is pseudoscientific and dangerous | New Scientist
ADHD is a real condition that can have serious consequences if undiagnosed. An ill-informed documentary that suggests it is a modern, social construct could cause harm, says Caroline Williams
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Coders Say They Already Found Workarounds to Claude’s Invisible Watermarks
Anthropic announced last week it would include invisible watermarks in AI-generated content to comply with new EU rules. Within hours, overrides were being touted online.
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Tom Gauld on popularity in the lab | New Scientist
Tom Gauld's weekly cartoonTom Gauld's weekly cartoon
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Stunning image of a polar bear with an outsized snack wins major award | New Scientist
Roie Galitz's breathtaking shot is one of the winners of the 2026 World Press Photo Contest, praised for its unusual perspective and scale
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This sci-fi novel is a riveting tale of an oppressive galactic empire | New Scientist
The Infinite State review: A riveting tale of an oppressive galactic empire
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Twisteddoodles on distribution graphs (with added cats) | New Scientist
This week's cartoon from Twisteddoodles
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I Can’t Stop Rambling to My Pixel 11 Pro
Google’s new voice typing is pure magic, but subpar gaming performance and a useless rear LED keep these flagships from true greatness.
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The wild, gripping story of the psychedelic secreted by desert toads | New Scientist
Kimon de Greef's The Ego Trip chronicles the rise of a potent psychedelic drug, from the toads that secrete it to the man who claimed it has amazing powers. Olivia Goldhill discovers an extraordinary tale
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Last Word: Are flies following a strategy when they keep hitting windows? Part 4 | New Scientist
Answers continue to pour in as New Scientist readers ponder this question, with one reader widening it out to consider dragonflies, and another focusing on cluster flies
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It is finally time to talk about the impact of fluctuating hormones | New Scientist
For decades, women have felt the need to hide the impact of changes in their hormones, while scientists have excluded women from research to avoid hormonal fluctuations complicating their research. Thankfully, this is starting to change
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I Saw the Future of AI in a Robot That Can Learn on the Spot
During a recent visit to Generalist AI, I watched a robotic arm improvise and use a banana as a tool.
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Last Word: This week’s new questions | New Scientist
Why do humans have a common sense of beauty for things like sunsets, and do other animals share this appreciation? And why can’t we cool water as quickly as we can heat it?
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Google’s Pixel Watch 5 Pumps Up Its Fitness Smarts
With smarter gym tracking, new health alerts, and offline Gemini, the Pixel Watch 5 fine-tunes a winning formula—for a price.
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Don't be an archaeologist in a movie if you want to survive | New Scientist
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Archaeologists RIP In July, Feedback
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I Tried a Window-Cleaning Robot and Hated It
I tested the top-of-the-line Ecovacs Winbot W2S Omni window-cleaning robot on my Victorian home, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
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There’s a Very Simple Reason Why You Love the Slate Truck
The car world is filled with designers still obsessed with shoehorning sex into their rides. Slate went a different route, and it’s why people are smitten with the charming electric pickup.
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‘Your Excel Skills Suck’: The Power Users Turning Spreadsheets Into a Spectator Sport
Data and finance professionals are competing in Excel obstacle courses—amassing huge followings and keeping the Microsoft program relevant.
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Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code
Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.
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Hot or Not Built the Internet We’re Still Swiping Through
The early website Hot or Not taught its users to rank people at scale. Twenty-six years later, dating apps are trying to escape the culture the site helped create.
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Reverse-Lookup Service Exposed Millions of Photos of People’s Faces
The people-search tool ClarityCheck says its reverse image search service is “private and secure”—but it left a database containing more than 9 million image files exposed.
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I Tested the Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Neo Side by Side. The Results Surprised Me
The Dell XPS 13 and MacBook Neo are both premium-feeling laptops with only 8 GB of RAM. Which $700 laptop is the better buy?
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We Bought a $500 Counterfeit Rolex So Good, Even Rolex Didn’t Spot It
The replica watch industry is in its “super clone” era. Following tips from murky internet forums, we bought three budget fakes that were good enough to pass as real—but ultimately disposable.
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Squeeze More Juice Out of a Dead Battery!
How the joule thief circuit “steals” energy from seemingly depleted power cells.
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Sean Carroll interview: The surprising upsides of living in a reality that repeats for eternity | New Scientist
Having faced the prospect that our minds are random fluctuations in a dead universe, quantum cosmologist Sean Carroll suggests that we may be stuck in an eternally repeating reality
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My Favorite Garmin Watch Is Back at Its Lowest Price Ever
The Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED is $250 off, plus I found deals on Garmin Vivoactive 5 and Forerunner 265.
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Viral Disneyland Content Creator Defends Her ‘Special Friendship’ With Peter Pan
Disney superfan Toni Kulusich has been accused of stalking her favorite character, sparking discourse about boundaries with park actors. She tells WIRED the backlash is unfair.
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Meta Ran Ads for an App That Promised to Nudify Female Politicians
One advertisement featured a pornographic video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician. Apple removed the app from the App Store after an inquiry from WIRED.
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OpenAI Overhauls Safety Protocols After Its AI Agents Went Rogue
The ChatGPT maker says its upcoming Astra model may have reached “critical” cyber capabilities, prompting it to halt a significant number of training runs while it tightens internal safeguards.
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Female clones created from the blood of male mice | New Scientist
A CRISPR-based tool can perform sex reversal on male mouse embryos, reliably turning them into healthy females – a feat that could be valuable for conservation
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Planes flying over the Atlantic will be re-routed to avoid contrails | New Scientist
Operation Blue Skies is the world’s first trial to deploy contrail avoidance measures across an entire airspace, aiming to lower the climate impact of flights on a large scale
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The Powerful Chinese AI Model Experts Warned About—and Waited for—Is Here
Z.ai’s latest AI model release could help companies secure their systems—or find its way into the hands of hackers.
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The Cop Who Took On Flock
After Noel Pichardo called out his city's embrace of Flock surveillance cameras, he was subjected to five internal affairs investigations in less than two years.
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Can the Upcoming ‘Expanse’ Game Avoid ‘Mass Effect’s’ Biggest Mistake?
The universe may never tell you if your choices mattered. Owlcat’s ‘Osiris Reborn’ might not either.
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Did humans evolve to be active throughout the day and night? | New Scientist
Evidence from hunter-gatherers suggests humans aren't diurnal but cathemeral, with bouts of activity at nighttime – a sleep pattern similar to some lemurs
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Postbiotic could reduce the risk of brain damage after a concussion | New Scientist
Giving mice a byproduct produced by gut bacteria reduced their risk of severe brain damage and cognitive difficulties after a traumatic brain injury
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Can AI Coexist With Privacy? Proton’s Andy Yen Says It Will Have To
Proton’s CEO is a champion of encryption for everyone. So why is he going all in on un-encryptable AI?
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Fairphone Is Finally Selling Its Repairable Phone in the US
More than a decade after launching in Europe, the Netherlands company is now selling its repairable phones in the US, starting with the Fairphone (Gen 6+).
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Feeding our books into generative AI risks creating a cultural void | New Scientist
When we put our literature, games and films into AI models, we risk replacing our cultural history with a mishmash of auto-generated works. We desperately need to preserve human writing, says columnist Annalee Newitz
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Physicists may have solved a 30-year mystery over missing neutrinos | New Scientist
Since the 1990s, researchers have wondered if unexpected results from gallium-based neutrino detectors are a sign of a new kind of particle, but a new study suggests that revising their calculations could explain the anomaly
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What Is El Niño, and What Does It Mean for Weather, Water, and the Global Economy?
This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be the strongest on record. Here’s what to expect.
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This R-Rated Film Studio Wants to Be the HBO of AI
Rogue Studios, a new cinematic adult AI-generator, is betting big on the future of “sophisticated” spicy content.
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Why women with ADHD feel overwhelmingly 'controlled' by their hormones | New Scientist
People with ADHD are unusually sensitive to hormone shifts. Psychiatrists have started to pay attention, creating strategies to address the intense emotions and cognitive challenges caused by these changes
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Britain's only desalination plant remains idle during drought | New Scientist
Water flow in the river Thames has dropped low enough to warrant the use of England’s only large-scale desalination plant, but it hasn’t been switched on at all this year
