Food without farming

Welcome back to New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best stores in science and technology. Today, we’ve got plague, digital life, and an extremely blue frog, but first – an exiting new development in what you may one day be putting on your toast.

'Butter' made from CO2 could pave the way for food without farming

Would you eat butter made from coal? It doesn’t sound particularly appetising to me, but this new kind of dietary fat, producing using complex chemistry, could free up land for other uses. Really, it all comes down to how it tastes, and I wouldn’t mind at least giving it a try.

The plague may have wiped out most northern Europeans 5000 years ago

Population levels for the people who built Stonehenge mysteriously declined around 5400 years ago, and now researchers have genetic evidence that the plague may have been to blame.

Google creates self-replicating life from digital 'primordial soup'

I’m fascinated by digital efforts to mimic lifeforms, and this is one of the most interesting yet. It involves an environment of completely random data, with no rules or guidance, being allowed to vary over time, and eventually leading to the emergence of self-replicating “life”. While it might not actually tell us anything about how life on Earth involved, it’s still pretty cool.

More from New Scientist

• I completely love this mutant blue frog.
• This week’s magazine cover dives into the “dark dimension” – a hidden realm of reality that we may soon get a glimpse into.
• The latest episode of Dead Planets Society explores what would happen if we put tiny black holes inside things, including ourselves, and it is extremely unhinged in all the best ways.

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Jacob Aron, News Editor