New Scientist Australian Edition 31-Oct-20

Virtual events The future of food Join us at our one-day event to hear from a farmer developing robots to plant, cultivate and harvest crops; a researcher making lab-grown meat; a microbiome expert overturning everything we know about diets; and a psychologist making food taste better by hacking your senses – and much more. Saturday 28 November from 10am GMT. newscientist.com/events Podcasts Weekly The surprising social lives of viruses; gene editing vs antibiotic resistance; risk in the time of covid-19; the diabolical ironclad beetle. newscientist.com/podcasts Newsletter Launchpad Our free newsletter sends you on a weekly voyage across the universe. This week: our ever-worsening space junk problem. newscientist.com/sign-up/launchpad Online Covid-19 daily briefing The day’s coronavirus coverage updated at 6pm GMT with news, features and interviews. newscientist.com/coronavirus-latest…

Virtual events The future of food Join us at our one-day event to hear from a farmer developing robots to plant, cultivate and harvest crops; a researcher making lab-grown meat; a microbiome expert overturning everything we know about diets; and a psychologist making food taste better by hacking your senses – and much more. Saturday 28 November from 10am GMT. newscientist.com/events Podcasts Weekly The surprising social lives of viruses; gene editing vs antibiotic resistance; risk in the time of covid-19; the diabolical ironclad beetle. newscientist.com/podcasts Newsletter Launchpad Our free newsletter sends you on a weekly voyage across the universe. This week: our ever-worsening space junk problem. newscientist.com/sign-up/launchpad Online Covid-19 daily briefing The day’s coronavirus coverage updated at 6pm GMT with news, features and interviews. newscientist.com/coronavirus-latest…

You may have seen adverts for this in the magazine, but if not, this is just to let you know about the launch of New Scientist Academy. As of next month, we will offer online courses for people who want to deepen their understanding of science and technology. They are aimed at adults and older teens, but younger science enthusiasts may also get a great deal from them. The first two courses on offer will be about the biggest mysteries in the cosmos and the workings of the human brain. We have plans for many more across all our most popular subject areas. So what will they involve and who will they be for? I’ll use our cosmic mysteries course as an illustration. This programme is for people who want…

You may have seen adverts for this in the magazine, but if not, this is just to let you know about the launch of New Scientist Academy. As of next month, we will offer online courses for people who want to deepen their understanding of science and technology. They are aimed at adults and older teens, but younger science enthusiasts may also get a great deal from them. The first two courses on offer will be about the biggest mysteries in the cosmos and the workings of the human brain. We have plans for many more across all our most popular subject areas. So what will they involve and who will they be for? I’ll use our cosmic mysteries course as an illustration. This programme is for people who want to understand…

LAST month, the world of planetary science blew up after the news that phosphine gas had been observed in Venus’s atmosphere, which could potentially be a sign of life. The team that spotted the phosphine, led by Jane Greaves at Cardiff University in the UK, couldn’t find any mechanism for forming enough phosphine on Venus to account for these observations. On Earth, the gas is made by living organisms and industrial processes. Now, though, that detection has been called into question. First, a look at old data by a group that included researchers who worked on the latest phosphine study found no hints of the gas. Then a re-analysis of Greaves and her team’s observations by an independent group concluded that the measurements showed no signs of phosphine (see page 18). According…

LAST month, the world of planetary science blew up after the news that phosphine gas had been observed in Venus’s atmosphere, which could potentially be a sign of life. The team that spotted the phosphine, led by Jane Greaves at Cardiff University in the UK, couldn’t find any mechanism for forming enough phosphine on Venus to account for these observations. On Earth, the gas is made by living organisms and industrial processes. Now, though, that detection has been called into question. First, a look at old data by a group that included researchers who worked on the latest phosphine study found no hints of the gas. Then a re-analysis of Greaves and her team’s observations by an independent group concluded that the measurements showed no signs of phosphine (see page…