Rowan Hooper

London

Journalist and Podcast Editor at New Scientist

Host at New Scientist Weekly Podcast

Journalist & podcast host @newscientist. Former Tokyoite. Books: SUPERHUMAN (2018), HOW TO SPEND A TRILLION DOLLARS (2021). Next book: on SYMBIOSIS. すごい!

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Articles

Could brain-computer interface let us inhabit robot avatars on Mars?

2 weeks ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

In 2034, the first person landed on Mars. While she didn’t go there physically, she still experienced the planet intimately. She explored an ancient river delta and built a base. She put up a flag (China’s) and conducted a detailed analysis of rock samples. She achieved all this by inhabiting a robot via a sophisticated brain-computer interface. Some people claimed the woman had â€“ in a real sense â€“ been to Mars. Critics said she hadn’t, because her body was always in a lab in Beijing.
Are we really doomed? An entertaining guide to humanity's extinction

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

The future of Earth looks bleak, but we have the capacity to change courseShutterstock/Liu zishanThe Decline and Fall of the Human EmpireHenry Gee Pan Macmillan (UK: Available now US: 18 March)We’re doomed, says Henry Gee, doomed! Homo sapiens is reaching a crest, after which our global population size will start to drop.
How we could achieve dog-level sense of smell - and what it would mean

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

In the olden days, a “nose job” referred to a cosmetic surgical procedure to improve the shape of someone’s nose. By the mid-21st century, it signified the “super smell” procedure whereby a person’s olfactory sense was augmented and supercharged. In this case, people went from having the standard human number of 6 million olfactory receptors in the nasal cavity, to over 100 million, the average in a canine nose. Human sense of smell became equivalent to that of a dog.
Dancers float like jellyfish in the abyss in new Wayne McGregor show

1 month ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

Deepstaria At Sadlers Wells in London until 2 March, then touringDeepstaria is a genus of deep-sea jellyfish, rarely seen, mysterious and delicate yet predatory. It is usually found between 600 metres and 1750 metres beneath the waves. It is also the favourite jellyfish of choreographer Wayne McGregor, who has constructed a new show inspired by marine life.
Striking artworks reveal the beauty of mushrooms and other soil life

2 months ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

Life A new exhibition at Somerset House in London, SOIL: The World at Our Feet, wants us to rediscover how key soil is to our lives and to the planet’s future Soils around the world are polluted, worn out, over-fertilised and exhausted. How did we get to a place where we think of soil as dirt?
How the future rise of AI lawyers could force Big Oil to pay up

2 months ago | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

Fossil fuel companies were never going to voluntarily admit to their role in the climate crisis. By the late 2020s, people turned to two methods to force the issue. Illegal means involved sabotage, destruction of oil infrastructure and more. Legal methods focused on litigation to force governments to comply with emissions targets and on corporations to pay reparations for past damage. If the energy policies of the 47th US president, Donald Trump, were “drill, baby, drill”,…
Could spider silk be the answer to sustainable fashion?

Jan 15, 2025 | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

One of the things children of the late 21st century remark on, when looking back at people in the 2020s, is the clothes. What are they wearing, the kids ask. The issue isn’t so much the design and the peculiar fashion as the fabrics. Kids these days wear clothes made from silk â€“ spider silk â€“ from head to toe. They can’t imagine wearing garments that scuff and fray, that are heavy, ugly BA: I did wonder what this meant, possible to…
How a space elevator could make trips to the moon affordable for all

Dec 4, 2024 | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

Even as the price of space flight came down dramatically in the 2030s, the environmental and financial cost of using chemical rockets to escape Earth’s gravity held back human expansion to the moon and beyond. There was also widespread anger that space exploration was becoming a preserve of the ultra-rich, leading to a desire for access to space to be democratised. A dream, for centuries, had been to build a space elevator to take us from Earth into space without using rockets. But how…
2024 Booker prize goes to Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital, set over 24 hours on the ISS

Nov 12, 2024 | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

Samantha Harvey, who has won the UKâs top fiction award, the Booker prize, for her novel Orbital, has created a new genre: nature writing about space. âI see it as a kind of space pastoral,â Harvey told the New Scientist podcast earlier in the year.
Could seaweed be the ultimate carbon capture solution?

Nov 6, 2024 | newscientist.com | Rowan Hooper

The big question, in the mid-21st century, wasn’t how to transition away from fossil fuels â€“ that process became self-propelling as renewable energy became ever cheaper â€“ but how to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In the end, achieving the Great Drawdown, as it became known, required many different approaches, including biological, chemical and technological methods of removal.