Have cosmic events, like asteroid impacts or nearby supernovae, changed the course of human evolution? I see a lot of claims about this, but guess what, I don't think they stand up. Our Human Story, @NewScientist newscientist.com/article/249559…

After the Romans abandoned Britain, the island descended into chaos and economic collapse - except actually it didn't, say archaeologists. Story in @NewScientist newscientist.com/article/249584…

Congratulations to physicist Avi Loeb, who is the namesake for a new scale intended to grade interstellar objects on how artificial they appear to be. But who decided to call it the Loeb scale, asks Feedback in @NewScientist? newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

I reviewed Steven Pinker's new book for New Scientist. Most of it is pretty good - until you get to the chapter on cancel culture, which is an ill-informed, ill-considered mess. newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

Feedback in New Scientist discusses a study showing that dog ownership causes hurricanes - except that's, er, not what it shows newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

I reviewed Steven Pinker's new book for New Scientist. Out of 9 chapters, 7 are good, one is mush, and one is so bad it retrospectively makes the rest of the book look worse. newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

How can we get disaffected high-schoolers to take an interest in botany? Why, by using the music videos of @TaylorSwift13 of course - as Feedback learns in @NewScientist. newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

This is a million-year-old skull from Yunxian, China. It belongs to an extinct species of human. And it suggests that our own species had a much longer prehistory than we thought. @NewScientist newscientist.com/article/249776…

Here I am talking about a million-year-old skull from China, and what it means for the story of human evolution, on the @NewScientist podcast. NS: newscientist.com/podcasts/skull… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sku… YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=H621UT…

Neurodiversity just got more diverse: Some autistic kids get diagnosed much later than others, and that's partly because they're actually developing in different ways. They also carry different genetic variants. #neurodiversity #autism @NewScientist newscientist.com/article/249832…

Here's a strange lacuna in our knowledge: we know a lot about ultrasonic vocalisations by mice, but hardly anything about their audible squeaks. They can't all mean "oh shit, a cat" - can they? @NewScientist newscientist.com/article/mg2673…

Hold your head so it doesn't explode: roses don't have thorns. Those sharp things are prickles. In @NewScientist, Feedback takes up the task of rewriting the vast corpus of poems and songs that are now wrong. newscientist.com/article/mg2683…

New for BBC Future: In north-west England, the foundations are being laid for the world's first commercial-scale liquid air energy storage facility. If successful, it will enable the electricity grid to handle even more renewable energy. bbc.co.uk/future/article…

New "Our Human Story" in @NewScientist: Who were the first ancient humans to settle in the British Isles? And why did it take them so long to get there from Africa, given they made it to Indonesia much quicker? newscientist.com/article/249978…

Bad news, everyone: the human species will go extinct by the year 2339. At least, so says one of the silliest scientific papers @NewScientist's Feedback has ever encountered. newscientist.com/article/mg2683…

New for @NewScientist: Banning phones in schools may make students a little more lonely, rather than rescuing their mental health as is often claimed newscientist.com/article/250022…