Long reads: New Scientist’s five best in-depth articles of 2022

To have fun the tip of the 12 months, our editors have picked New Scientist’s absolute best options of 2022. And as a present from us to you, they’re all free to learn till 1 January

By Daniel Cossins and Catherine de Lange

To learn our high 5 characteristic articles of 2022, click on via to an article and observe the prompts to register with New Scientist without spending a dime.

A few of our biggest-hitting tales this 12 months requested mind-bending questions on physics, spoke to our readers concerning the points dealing with their on a regular basis lives or have been in-depth exclusives uncovered by New Scientist workers. As a vacation reward to you, we have now curated a number of a few of our greatest characteristic articles, from the most recent anti-ageing analysis to hints of fully new physics. These in-depth tales are often solely out there to paid subscribers, however it is possible for you to to learn them without spending a dime between 25 December and the tip of the 12 months. Right here is our choose of the very best and why they made the lower.

1. The longevity food regimen that would add years to your life

It would sound apparent to say that what you eat could make you reside longer. Everyone knows that an excessive amount of processed meals, crimson meat and fats can ship us to an early grave, however this text isn’t about that sort of accepted knowledge. As an alternative, it lays naked the most recent analysis that, if adopted, may see individuals who change away from a typical Western food regimen add many years to their life. However this isn’t one other flimsy fad food regimen. What makes this text so compelling is that the analysis it options brings collectively many years of organic research into food regimen and ageing, together with scientific trial knowledge, epidemiological research and analysis into centenarians. In addition to being rigorous, with a wholesome sprinkling of New Scientist scepticism, this text can also be true information you need to use, with loads of details about what this new longevity food regimen actually consists of. No marvel it grew to become our most learn characteristic of the 12 months.

2. Tantalising hints of latest physics from the Giant Hadron Collider

You might need heard concerning the anomalies on the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Giant Hadron Collider. Intriguing hints of latest physics had been teased again in 2021, however anybody holding their breath was in for an uncomfortable time. Then, earlier this 12 months, New Scientist workers landed an unique preview of latest outcomes popping out of the LCHb experiments that steered not solely that the anomalies have been firming up, but additionally that they pointed to a brand new force-carrying particle that would clarify the peculiar patterns we observe in identified matter particles.

Within the longer run, it’d even permit physicists to lastly make progress in direction of a grand unified idea, exhibiting that three of the 4 basic forces of nature are all manifestations of the identical pressure. If the outcomes actually are confirmed, they’d change our understanding of the universe as we all know it. Written by particle physicist Harry Cliff on the College of Cambridge, who works on LHCb, this story provides you the within monitor on what may very well be one of many largest discoveries of the 12 months, if not the last decade.

3. A greater understanding of insomnia and methods to deal with it

When you occur to have scrolled upon this text in your cellphone at an ungodly hour whereas the world round you sleeps, you’re absolutely in good firm. Round 10 per cent of individuals meet the standards for insomnia, which may have a massively debilitating influence on day-to-day life. The fruits of analysis into the situation have been frustratingly lacklustre. Nevertheless, a brand new flurry of findings across the neurological and psychological processes underlying insomnia is, finally, bringing with it highly effective insights into how we are able to deal with the situation. Certainly, as this text goes on to debate, insomnia has change into a solvable drawback. So dig in, and if you’re studying this as a result of you’ll be able to’t sleep, right here’s hoping our article may also help ship you to sleep – in the very best approach.

4. The daring effort to reformulate physics to account for consciousness

This can be a story that attracts you in to have interaction with one of many deepest, most mind-bending questions round: what place is there for consciousness in our understanding of the universe? Of their quest to elucidate the universe and every thing in it, physicists try for an goal “view from nowhere” – one which has nothing to do with the subjective perspective of observers. However the reality is that there isn’t any such factor. We all know from our efforts to make sense of quantum idea and time, for example, that the function of the observer can’t be ignored. Because of this, some courageous souls are attempting to reformulate physics to incorporate subjective expertise as a bodily constituent of the world. These concepts could be a tad bewildering, starting from the concept that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter to a brand new cosmology rooted in occasions and the relationships between them, moderately than objects in space-time. However we prefer to assume this text is as thought-provoking and entertaining as it’s baffling.

5. AI unlocks the secrets and techniques of historic cuneiform texts

With numerous anniversaries in Egyptology this 12 months, researchers engaged on historic Egyptian texts have been within the highlight, however far much less consideration is paid to individuals who research the civilisations who wrote within the cuneiform script, such because the Sumerians and the Babylonians. The mesmerising marks in clay tablets that make up the world’s oldest written language are famously laborious to decipher. Now, synthetic intelligence is being deployed to crack cuneiform’s code, releasing the riches written inside for the primary time. This charming characteristic goes behind the scenes at London’s British Museum, giving an unique have a look at expertise in motion, as AI is used to piece collectively the tiny fragments of the best library of antiquity.