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This week's magazine

12 October 2013

Issue 2938

New Scientist issue 2938 cover
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Editor's picks

Life's purpose: Can animals guide their own evolution?

Life

Life's purpose: Can animals guide their own evolution?

Features
What is the point of a theory of everything?

Physics

What is the point of a theory of everything?

Features
The great greening: The coming of our new lush Earth

Earth

The great greening: The coming of our new lush Earth

Features
The mind minders: Meet our brain's maintenance workers

Life

The mind minders: Meet our brain's maintenance workers

Features

Table of contents

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ButtonMasher: The rise of consequences in video games

Technology

ButtonMasher: The rise of consequences in video games

ButtonMasher is our new column about video games and gaming culture – from the offbeat fringes to the cutting-edge innovations behind the latest blockbusters

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Space

Virgin Galactic joins the reality TV space race

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Technology

Silk Road bust hints at FBI's new cybercrime powers

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Health

Smoking in pregnancy linked to child depression

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Health

Hefty twins shed light on obesity paradox

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Earth

The oceans are heating, acidifying and choking

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Life

Medicine Nobel for solving how cells shuttle molecules

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Life

Competition drives marsupial males to suicidal sex

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Life

Reading literary fiction makes you a nicer person

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Technology

Invisible force field gives touchscreens a new feel

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Earth

International airlines face emissions caps from 2020

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Space

Speed limit found for sluggish dark matter

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Health

World's first malaria vaccine on course for 2015

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Life

Microbes frozen in gelatine jail reveal all

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Physics

Elusive Higgs wins physics Nobel, shared with Englert

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Earth

Are some rich firms' land grabs not the real deal?

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Space

Supernova echoes found trapped in meteorite metals

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Life

Swifts stay airborne for six months at a time

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Space

Astrophile: Lost moon Naiad swims back into view

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US firm patents DNA-analysis tool for planning a baby

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60 Seconds

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Physics

The maths that saw the US shutdown coming

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Earth

Terraforming Earth: Geoengineering megaplan starts now

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Health

Bedside scan can show embers of consciousness in comas

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Earth

How to sniff aliens' gas in exoplanet atmospheres

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Life

Animals tracked with tiny tags summon their own drones

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Technology

One Per Cent

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Opinion

Rockstar planet hunter: Genius award will free my brain

Space

Rockstar planet hunter: Genius award will free my brain

Sara Seager Astrophysicist and newly named MacArthur genius Sara Seager talks about her hunt for exotic new worlds, and draws links between parenting and science You have been studying exoplanets – planets outside the solar system that orbit Sun-like stars – almost since they were first discovered. How did you get into it? I was …

Opinion

Earth

Is the world getting better or worse?

Opinion

Life

Think fast – you're a physics genius

Opinion

Physics

Can science stop government shutdowns?

Opinion

Life

Social realism lets gamers feel reality's bite

Opinion

Aperture

Fighting iguanas are real-life <i>Game of Thrones</i> dragons

Life

Fighting iguanas are real-life Game of Thrones dragons

(Image: Gergely Biro) FROM Beowulf to The Hobbit and Game of Thrones we all love a good dragon story. Perhaps that's why this shot of fighting male iguanas has a special magic. OK, they don't have wings or breathe fire, but these are surely the closest thing we have to dragons. After looking at the …

Regulars

Features

Life's purpose: Can animals guide their own evolution?

Life

Life's purpose: Can animals guide their own evolution?

It’s heretical, but it might just be true: organisms may be able to direct the evolutionary path their descendants take

Features

Physics

What is the point of a theory of everything?

Features

Earth

The great greening: The coming of our new lush Earth

Features

Life

The mind minders: Meet our brain's maintenance workers

Features

Culturelab

Dance work shows how physics and art Collide@CERN

Technology

Dance work shows how physics and art Collide@CERN

Making a song and dance of particle physics (Image: Michael Hoch) Up, down, spin …that's dancers at work at the premiere of Quantum , a contemporary dance piece inspired by particle physics. For extra drama, it was performed immediately above the CMS particle detector , one of the two experiments running on CERN's Large Hadron …

CultureLab

Life

The secret life of science in the second world war

CultureLab

Life

Why we are all accidental musicians

CultureLab

More

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Enigma Number 1770

Power point 2 I have written a list of five different three-figure numbers, each of which is a power of a single digit. The first number is odd and thereafter each number has the same hundreds digit or the same tens digit or the same units digit as its predecessor. What (in order) are the …

Regulars

First past the postdoc

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Well-trained electrons

Feedback: Well-trained electrons

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Well-trained electrons HERE is our pull-the-other-one quote of the week: "At the core of the Power Optimizer energy saving device is our patented semiconductor chip. This chip utilizes specific wavelengths of infrared light to stabilize the vibration state of 'spinning' …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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