Recorded live online for New Scientist subscribers, in this holiday special the team takes you through their stand out moments of the year, the funniest stories to hit the headlines, and their hopes for 2023 - and they answer questions from the audience too.
For stand-out highlights of 2022, the team discusses Deepmind and its transformative AI AlphaFold which predicted the structures of most known proteins. They celebrate the successes of the James Webb Space Telescope and a recent nuclear fusion experiment that has, for the first time ever, generated more power than it requires to run. They also chat about advances in organ transplants and the amazing discovery of ants which have evolved the ability to treat the wounds of their nest mates.
For their funniest picks of the year, they highlight the story of a fish that evolved to stand up on land then thought “nah”, and went back to living in water. Then there’s the news of researchers who wanted to find out if covid-related loss of smell correlated with negative reviews of scented candles on Amazon. And they discuss North America’s invasion by alien earthworms.
After audience questions, the team looks to the future. From the scientific discoveries spurred on by the covid pandemic, to developments in quantum computing, new innovative ways of producing food in more environmentally friendly ways, advancements in gene replacement therapies and the future of space travel, they discuss the stories they’re most looking forward to next year.
On the panel are Rowan Hooper, Penny Sarchet, Alexandra Thompson, Anna Demming and Sam Wong. To read about these subjects and much more, you can subscribe to New Scientist magazine at newscientist.com.
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#41: The function of dreams
#40: Halloween special: real-life vampires, the science of ghosts, deep-sea zombies, monster black holes
#39: Social lives of viruses; CRISPR to fight antibiotic resistance; dealing with risk; George RR Martin and the moon
#38: Tackling the climate crisis; essential, like, filler words of, um, language; mystery of the human penis; your covid questions answered
#37: Black holes and CRISPR gene editing spring Nobel surprises; climate change and indigenous people in the Arctic; symptom clusters identified for covid-19
#36: Hunt for life on Venus and Mars; how the paleo diet affects your age; strategy for the second wave of coronavirus; species extinction crisis
#35: The first woman on the moon; evolution special; purpose of sleep and dreams; deep water mystery
#34: Race to find life on Venus; coronavirus claims lives of 1 million people; extinction crisis; how the brain slows time
#33: The healthy-eating revolution; China’s cosmic ambitions; Russia’s pursuit of gene-editing technology; the world’s greatest mammal
#32: Billionaire plan to geoengineer the planet; how the moon affects your health; Neuralink’s telepathic pigs
#31: Widening the search for alien life on habitable planets; why unconscious bias training might not work; the microbiome of cancer tumours
#30: Redefining time; why mindfulness can cause problems; secrets of super-resilient tardigrades
#29: Loneliness during lockdown; medical artificial intelligence beats doctors; who gets the coronavirus vaccine first
#28: Origin of life on Earth; second wave of coronavirus; science of miscarriage
#27: Putting plastic back on the agenda; revisiting the iconic black hole image, how dinosaurs dominated the planet
#26: The hidden dark matter of our food; NASA’s new search for life on Mars; smallpox in the American civil war
#25: Coronavirus effects on children, and on other diseases; changing the way you sit could add years to your life; supercrops for a climate-changed world
#24: Half a year in a world of covid-19; meat production breaking Earth’s nitrogen limits; what does gravity weigh?
#23: Coronavirus immunity and vaccine implications; evolutionary reasons for the types of world leader; treating people with CRISPR gene editing
#22: Consciousness from the body as well as the brain; record temperatures in the Arctic; long-term symptoms of covid-19
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