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This week's magazine

27 February 2016

Issue 3062

New Scientist issue 3062 cover
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Editor's picks

crystal ball

Physics

With science if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying

Opinion
new logic

Technology

A new kind of logic: How to upgrade the way we think

Features
Cry

Life

The crying game: How tears can work for you

Features
reality

Space

Beyond experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

crystal ball

Physics

With science if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying

The discovery of gravitational waves and string theory’s long search for vindication illustrate a truism: to be right in science, first prepare to be wrong

Opinion

51¶¯Âþ

A gamma ray burst

Space

LIGO's black holes may have lived and died inside a huge star

  A gamma ray burst Call it a gut reaction. The revolutionary discovery of space-time ripples may have come from two black holes colliding while inside the belly of an enormous star, whose subsequent collapse launched powerful jets of gamma rays. 51¶¯Âþs already knew that the gravitational waves detected by LIGO , the Laser Interferometer …

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Sea butterflies fly underwater just like insects do in the air

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

AI reads doctors' notes to find hidden links in cancer cases

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Ransomware threat highlighted by Los Angeles hospital payout

51¶¯Âþ

Humans

'Torture' study redo shows people feel less agency under orders

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Binary stars burned off cosmic fog and made universe transparent

51¶¯Âþ

Humans

Body fluids disgust us less if from someone who is 'one of us'

51¶¯Âþ

Physics

Quantum weirdness may hide an orderly reality after all

51¶¯Âþ

Space

India set to join hunt for gravitational waves with its own LIGO

51¶¯Âþ

Health

Vaccine halves cancer-causing HPV infections in US teen girls

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Plants have evolved forgetfulness to wipe out memory of stress

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

Carbon emission cuts could save 300,000 US lives by 2030

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

Record global temperatures bring strongest ever cyclone to Fiji

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

Mystery wind drought that cut US wind power in 2015 is back

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Virgin Galactic claims new 'Unity' spaceship fixes safety issues

51¶¯Âþ

Health

Doctors claim legalising some genital mutilation may help girls

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

Apple vs FBI: Who will win this struggle for power?

51¶¯Âþ

Life

A crab, shrimp and fish leave their shared home doing the conga

51¶¯Âþ

Health

Boost your mental muscle with 20 minutes of exercise

51¶¯Âþ

Technology

One Per Cent

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Astronauts may respond faster to warning voices than alarm tones

51¶¯Âþ

Facebook’s VR future and mass-scale mapping revealed

51¶¯Âþ

Life

60 Seconds

51¶¯Âþ

Health

Ketogenic diet’s reputed anticancer credentials put to test

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Bonobos know when others are being treated unfairly – and react

51¶¯Âþ

Earth

'Follow the salt' may be best strategy to find Martian microbes

51¶¯Âþ

Life

Ebola outbreak caused twice as many deaths as we thought

51¶¯Âþ

Space

Source of cosmic radio blast tracked down for the first time

51¶¯Âþ

Opinion

A smoggy day in London

Earth

How Brexit could lead the UK to a dirtier future

For the sake of our environment and the climate, the UK would be better off in the European Union than out, says Fiona Reynolds

Opinion

Life

Why I think genitals reveal the universe’s biological diversity

Opinion

Technology

Underwater drones may make hiding a nuclear missile sub harder

Opinion

Health

Tumor is the most important book I've ever written

Opinion

Aperture

teardrops

Life

Crystallised tears form beautiful patterns unique as snowflakes

ARE these bubbles, bacteria or perhaps space rocks? No – they're human tears as you've never seen them before. Each disc is a tear droplet that has been pipetted onto a glass slide, allowed to evaporate and photographed using dark field microscopy. The delicate white structures are the crystallised salts left behind from the briny …

Regulars

Features

new logic

Technology

A new kind of logic: How to upgrade the way we think

A lot of problems in today’s world are too big for our brains. An algorithm that identifies how cause and effect are linked could lead us to better solutions

Features

Life

The crying game: How tears can work for you

Features

Space

Beyond experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat

Features

Culturelab

Dark blue image of man apparently wearing unusual goggles

Competition: Your chance to have a sci-fi idea made into a film

EVERY week we fill 51¶¯Âþ with good ideas, extraordinary stories, breaking news and different ways of looking at the world. We also keep an eye on how those stories develop. Some of them go nowhere. Others end up changing the way we live and think about our lives. All very worthy. The thing is, …

CultureLab

Life

Why Only Us: The language paradox

CultureLab

Humans

The maddeningly magical maths of John Dee

CultureLab

More

raccoon on shore

Just the fear of big predators can alter an entire ecosystem

Woofing ruins my appetite Try telling raccoons that barking dogs don’t bite. The fear of large carnivores, such as dogs, can have knock-on effects throughout an ecosystem. Predators don’t control populations of their prey just by killing them. They also paint what is termed a landscape of fear , inhibiting prey from feeding and turning parts …

Regulars

Citroen

Physics

Feedback: Where we’re going, we don’t need fundamental physics

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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