New Scientist Australian Edition 14 January 2023

Tour Marine ecosystems of the Azores: Portugal Grab an exciting chance to explore the volcanic craters and lagoons of the Azores archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean. Alongside a team of experts, including marine biologist Russell Arnott, you will go whale spotting, visit seabird colonies and learn how the islands’ volcanism supports the local viniculture. The eight-day tour begins on 13 May 2023 and costs £2999. newscientist.com/tours Virtual event Secrets of the Large Hadron Collider Join particle physicist Clara Nellist, part of the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC, for a deep dive into the past, present and future of the largest particle collider ever built. Find out how the LHC expands our knowledge of the universe, and learn what it is like to work on one of the world’s greatest physics experiments. Catch it on 7…

SCIENCE is the culmination of humanity’s attempts to reason about the world. It produces knowledge in a reliable way, and it has done so with great success. It has revealed many of nature’s secrets, from the molecular machinery inside cells to the grand scheme of how the universe began and evolved to what we see today. But for all their undoubted achievements, science and reason have their constraints. Our species is unique (as far as we know) in its ability to know what we don’t know. That alone might make us duty bound to explore the limits of knowledge and understanding. More than that, however, these limits represent the hinterlands of what is knowable and what isn’t. Exploring them, as we do on page 38, can not only shed light on…

SWATHES of California have seen “atmospheric rivers” dump heavy rains since the end of December, with storms forecast to bring trillions more litres in January. The deluge has wreaked havoc and led to at least 12 deaths, but it could also offer some respite to a state in the throes of a severe water crisis. While some of the stormwater will top up depleted reservoirs and aquifers, much of it will flow off pavements and farmland into rivers and drainage systems to be carried out to sea. Several projects are testing efforts to capture water before it is lost. “Historically, we’ve viewed stormwater as a nuisance,” says Andrew Fisher at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The approach that a lot of places have taken is to get it off the landscape as…

AN ARTIFICIAL intelligence is set to advise a defendant in court for the first time ever. The AI will run on a smartphone and listen to all speech in a courtroom in February before instructing the defendant on what to say via an earpiece. The location of the court and the name of the defendant are being kept under wraps by DoNotPay, the company behind the AI. But it is understood that the defendant is charged with speeding and will say only what DoNotPay’s tool tells them to via an earbud. The case is being considered as a test by the firm, which has agreed to pay if any fines are imposed, says its founder, Joshua Browder. DoNotPay is also offering $1 million to anyone with an upcoming case at the US…

THE first orbital satellite launch from the UK took off from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay, but failed to deploy its satellites to orbit. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, which took off attached to a modified Boeing 747 plane at 10.01pm GMT, began its ascent to orbit after about an hour into the flight, but some 25 minutes later, there was an “anomaly” and the launcher had to abort its mission. It isn’t certain whether the rocket and its satellites burned up in Earth’s atmosphere on reentry or came to ground over unpopulated areas. Thousands of people gathered near the runway to watch and cheer on the plane, Cosmic Girl, as it took off amid fierce winds and speakers blaring Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones. While there may not have been much to see…

THE twisted, deformed shapes of very old pine trees may be a sign of an exceptional ability to adapt to stress that has helped them live for more than 600 years. Ancient trees are important because they store large amounts of carbon, hold records of the past climate and serve as pillars of forest ecosystems. “Like old people in human societies, they connect everything,” says Sergi Munné-Bosch at the University of Barcelona in Spain. Munné-Bosch and his colleagues went hunting for ancient trees in a forest of mountain pines (Pinus uncinata) in Alt Pirineu Natural Park in Catalonia, Spain, combing a section of 1300 trees at high altitude that was exposed to cold, harsh weather. They chose this area since stressful conditions tend to produce the oldest trees as they have to…