51¶¯Âþ

This week's magazine

4 October 2014

Issue 2989

New Scientist issue 2989 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

Editor's picks

Life-extending drugs take humanity into new territory

Life

Life-extending drugs take humanity into new territory

Opinion
Mind expanding: How to hack your attention span

Humans

Mind expanding: How to hack your attention span

Features
Untangling physics: Knots in water, light and the sun

Physics

Untangling physics: Knots in water, light and the sun

Features
Dead art: Stopping the rot of our greatest creations

Life

Dead art: Stopping the rot of our greatest creations

Features
Mind expanding: Get your memory working

Life

Mind expanding: Get your memory working

Features
Mind expanding: Become a logical and rational being

Life

Mind expanding: Become a logical and rational being

Features
Mind expanding: Think like a child to learn faster

Life

Mind expanding: Think like a child to learn faster

Features
Mind expanding: Harness the power of knowledge

Life

Mind expanding: Harness the power of knowledge

Features
Mind expanding: Creativity on demand

Life

Mind expanding: Creativity on demand

Features
Mind expanding: Can you increase your IQ?

Life

Mind expanding: Can you increase your IQ?

Features
Mind expanding: Set your watch for genius

Life

Mind expanding: Set your watch for genius

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Life-extending drugs take humanity into new territory

Life

Life-extending drugs take humanity into new territory

The reasons to be cautious about taking longevity drugs probably won’t hold us back. They will just be too tempting to turn down

Opinion

51¶¯Âþ

Up to half of Earth's water is older than the sun

Life

Up to half of Earth's water is older than the sun

Moisture is a nice feature, but hardly exclusive it seems Who would have guessed that Earth's oceans are older than the sun? Much of the water on our planet and around the solar system started out as tiny grains of ice floating in interstellar space. The discovery provides important clues about not only the make-up …

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Cosmic inflation is dead, long live cosmic inflation!

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Hotspots in India's tiger-trading network revealed

51¶¯Âþ

Space

India's Mars triumph signals a rising space power

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

Strange rock formation was "fracked" by ancient quake

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Watson supercomputer looks for genetic heart danger

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Digital flip-book shows changing cities in time-lapse

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Online crowd can guess what you want to watch or buy

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

One Per Cent

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Lip-reading computers unlock with a word

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Sunflower solar harvester provides power and water

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Rogue winds swept humans to last uninhabited islands

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Hong Kong protesters use a mesh network to organise

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Chimp social network shows how new ideas catch on

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

Blame climate change for heatwaves that struck in 2013

51¶¯Âþ

Life

The best and worst countries in the world to be old in

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

World's wildlife population halved in just 40 years

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Earth gets a new companion for trip around sun

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Zoologger: Fickle female guppies fancy fresh faces

51¶¯Âþ

Major medical trials of embryonic stem cells announced

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Shuttle map gives the best view yet of Earth's curves

51¶¯Âþ

60 Seconds

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Everyday drugs could give extra years of life

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Monster neutrino solves cosmic-ray mystery

51¶¯Âþ

Health

Immune signature predicts recovery time after operation

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

World's smallest microphone is just one molecule

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Baby used in notorious fear experiment is lost no more

51¶¯Âþ

Environment

Crazy weather traced to Arctic's impact on jet stream

51¶¯Âþ

Opinion

Does a surplus of men really mean more violence?

Life

Does a surplus of men really mean more violence?

Conventional wisdom holds that things get violent when men outnumber women. But the picture is more complicated than that, say three anthropologists

Opinion

Earth

Should we upgrade photosynthesis and grow supercrops?

Opinion

Life

Forensics is stranger than fiction, says crime writer

Opinion

Analysis

3D printing's future is the high street, not the home

Technology

3D printing's future is the high street, not the home

Last week, US firm UPS announced it is putting 3D printers in 100 stores in response to demand from a public that wants to get creative

51¶¯Âþ

Aperture

The first micro-masterpieces to wow the public

Life

The first micro-masterpieces to wow the public

(Image: Arthur E. Smith/Nature Through Microscope & Camera) In 1904, the Royal Society in London exhibited an extraordinary collection of photographs – or more correctly, photomicrographs. The public had never seen anything like it: photographs taken through a microscope, revealing a startling, previously unknown world. The photographer was Arthur E. Smith, of whom little is now …

Regulars

Features

Untangling physics: Knots in water, light and the sun

Physics

Untangling physics: Knots in water, light and the sun

From our star's excess heat to the complexities of fluid turbulence, many a mystery might be unravelled by the bane of the headphone wearer – knots PERHAPS it was the foul stench that inspired William Thomson to one of his oddest ideas. In 1867, the physicist, now better known as Lord Kelvin, was observing his …

Features

Life

Dead art: Stopping the rot of our greatest creations

Features

Humans

Mind expanding: How to hack your attention span

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Get your memory working

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Become a logical and rational being

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Think like a child to learn faster

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Harness the power of knowledge

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Creativity on demand

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Can you increase your IQ?

Features

Life

Mind expanding: Set your watch for genius

Features

Culturelab

In the beginning: How geology taught us to think deep

Earth

In the beginning: How geology taught us to think deep

Deep past: Lower Antelope Canyon, Navajo Tribal Lands, Arizona (Image: Ralph Lee Hopkins/National Geographic Creative) Imagining Deep Time , National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, until 15 January 2015 A new book and exhibition explain how geology has taken us from an unchanging Earth to the knowledge that the rocks are shifting under our feet …

CultureLab

Life

Extreme coping tips for climbing your personal Everest

CultureLab

Life

The jaguar whisperer who gave them a voice

CultureLab

More

Japan eruption practically undetectable in advance

Earth

Japan eruption practically undetectable in advance

(Image: Reuters/Kyodo) Rescue workers are the only dots of colour in the ashen landscape at the peak of Mount Ontake in Japan, after the volcano erupted without warning on Saturday. Hikers and volcano-watchers were smothered by fine ash and other debris that swept down the mountainside without warning. Up to 36 people may have died …

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: Do cats give you the blues?

Environment

Feedback: Do cats give you the blues?

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Do cats give you the blues? LAST week we reported on the Ig Nobel prize awarded to David Hanauer and colleagues for their finding that patients suffering from cat bites were more than four times as likely to be depressed …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop