An AI analysis finds that since the 1970s, speeches by US Congress members have shifted to favour language such as “fake news” and “mislead” over words such as “science” and “statistics”

There have been several claims of quantum computers performing at a level impossible to match with a classical computer – most of which have been refuted. Could there be a mathematical reason why this keeps happening?

A baby has been born after being conceived via IVF performed by a machine, with a medical professional merely overseeing the process

Cellulose, the main component of paper, can be turned into clear, waterproof objects such as cups that are almost indistinguishable from plastic, but break down more quickly

Pluto isn’t the only dwarf planet in our solar system's outer reaches. Now is an ideal time to look for the egg-shaped Haumea, says Abigail Beall

Larry Niven's Ringworld won him the Hugo and Nebula awards when it was published 55 years ago. As the New Scientist Book Club embarks on a reread, Emily H. Wilson looks at how it holds up

With a background in maths and design, Rebecca Kaye uses data to make sense of the natural world

Nafis Hasan's Metastasis is a deep dive into the economics and politics of cancer treatment. This makes for a dense and difficult read, but one that is well worth the effort

In the latest instalment of our Future Chronicles column, which explores an imagined history of inventions yet to come, Rowan Hooper reveals how brain-computer interface let us travel to Mars via robot avatars in the late 2020s

Feedback is delighted to hear from a reader who proposes an ingenious new unit of data – but we have some quibbles with the maths

Bed rest is commonly prescribed for high-risk pregnancies. It can't hurt and might help, right? Wrong, says Jacqueline Sears

Cuneiform, the oldest identified writing system, defied deciphering – until 1857. What happened then makes a terrific read, in Joshua Hammer's The Mesopotamian Riddle

Governments love asking what scientific research will bring society, but the most important discoveries come from wondering without direction

A new understanding of why some animals evolved to be loners, and the benefits that brings, shows that a social lifestyle isn’t necessarily superior

Amazon is aiming to launch its first operational satellites today to provide speedy internet connections in remote regions, but it will still take some time to catch up with its main competitor, SpaceX's Starlink  

A map of part of a mouse brain, which is expected to be generalisable to people, could help scientists understand behaviours, consciousness and even what it means to be human

Ancient rocks reveal there were several humid spells in Arabia’s past, which might have given early hominins a route out of Africa long before our genus migrated

Computers that use photons rather than electrons to manipulate data promise greater speed and energy efficiency, and the technology is developing rapidly

An investigation of the changing behaviour of a single quantum bit through time has uncovered a tantalising similarity to the geometry of three-dimensional space

It’s incredibly tricky to pin down the origin of the language that led to the words spoken everywhere between Spain and India – and it’ll be even harder to be sure we’ve got it right