New Scientist Australian Edition 21 January 2023

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 February at 6pm GMT/1pm EST. Tickets cost £14. newscientist.com/events Tour Norway: Wonders of the Arctic Explore Norway’s beautiful fjords and discover the frozen Svalbard archipelago by land, sea and air, all with a chance of glimpsing whales, polar bears and the northern lights. Led by Rowan Hooper, podcast editor at New Scientist, the nine-day tour starts on 2 March and costs…

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 February at 6pm GMT/1pm EST. Tickets cost £14. newscientist.com/events Tour Norway: Wonders of the Arctic Explore Norway’s beautiful fjords and discover the frozen Svalbard archipelago by land, sea and air, all with a chance of glimpsing whales, polar bears and the northern lights. Led by Rowan Hooper, podcast editor at New Scientist, the nine-day tour starts on 2 March and costs £5549. newscientist.com/tours Podcast Weekly The podcast team discusses news that…

CONTROVERSY has surrounded the most popular class of antidepressants ever since their development in the 1990s. Initially seen as wonder drugs, we have since come to realise that these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, don’t help everyone and can cause unpleasant side effects. The most recent cause for concern is that the once widely accepted explanation for how SSRIs work – namely by mitigating a lack of the brain chemical serotonin – is no longer thought to be correct. The unsettling conclusion is that, although the drugs work for many, we don’t know why. It is clear that depression is a lot more complicated than we thought and that developing better treatments is therefore going to be more complicated too. For one thing, it seems that there may be many different…

CONTROVERSY has surrounded the most popular class of antidepressants ever since their development in the 1990s. Initially seen as wonder drugs, we have since come to realise that these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, don’t help everyone and can cause unpleasant side effects. The most recent cause for concern is that the once widely accepted explanation for how SSRIs work – namely by mitigating a lack of the brain chemical serotonin – is no longer thought to be correct. The unsettling conclusion is that, although the drugs work for many, we don’t know why. It is clear that depression is a lot more complicated than we thought and that developing better treatments is therefore going to be more complicated too. For one thing, it seems that there may be…

HUNDREDS of climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, have been removed by police from protest sites around the German village of Lützerath. Activists have been squatting there for more than two years in protest at the planned expansion of the Garzweiler coal mine by German energy company RWE. RWE owns the village and almost all of its original residents have been evicted. Police launched a large operation to clear the area of activists on 11 January, after the German government came to an agreement with RWE that the demolition of the village and the mine’s expansion could go ahead. Ministers say the project is necessary for Germany’s energy security. In return for permission to expand Garzweiler into Lützerath, RWE has agreed to remove coal from its power supplies by 2030, eight years earlier…

A GLOBAL shift to an El Niño climate pattern later this year could pave the way for the world to breach 1.5°C of warming for the first time in 2024, according to the UK Met Office. New modelling from the agency suggests the current three-year La Niña phase will end in March and this looks likely to be followed by an El Niño pattern later this year. “At the moment, the vast majority of forecasts are going into El Niño in the latter half of 2023,” says Adam Scaife at the Met Office. El Niño and La Niña are terms used to describe fluctuations in Earth’s climate system, driven by changing sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. El Niño is declared when sea temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific rise 0.5°C…