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This week's magazine

30 October 2021

Issue 3358

New Scientist issue 3358 cover
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Editor's picks

Space junk concept. Toxic garbage in the space over Earth

Space

Why we need to get serious about solving the space junk problem

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Satellites and junk are littering space and ruining our night skies

Space

Satellites and junk are littering space and ruining our night skies

Features
Are vegan meat alternatives putting our health on the line?

Health

Are vegan meat alternatives putting our health on the line?

Features
Andreas Malm interview: Why climate protesters need to embrace unrest

Environment

Andreas Malm interview: Why climate protesters need to embrace unrest

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Space junk concept. Toxic garbage in the space over Earth

Space

Why we need to get serious about solving the space junk problem

ALL eyes are on the COP26 climate summit, which starts in Glasgow, UK, on Sunday. But amid the "anarchy", in the words of former UK climate minister Ed Miliband , of the hot phase of negotiations , in quieter moments, we might cast our thoughts to a problem fast brewing further skywards . In mid …

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A Moderna covid-19 vaccine is prepared

Health

Covid-19 news: Moderna’s omicron booster has promising immune response

A regular round-up of the latest coronavirus news, plus insight, features and interviews from 51¶¯Âþ about the covid-19 pandemic

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Environment

COP26: Which countries are doing best at tackling climate change?

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Environment

Meet the key players and big names at the COP26 climate summit

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Environment

What to expect from the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow

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Space

Astronomers left puzzled by the dimmest supernova ever seen

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Life

Domestic cats are driving parasitic infections in wild animals

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Life

Danish children trap 19,000 ants to study impact of climate change

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Health

How much less likely are you to spread covid-19 if you're vaccinated?

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Technology

Watch a wooden knife that is sharper than steel cut through steak

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Health

Male fertility could be restored by reimplanting frozen testes tissue

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Environment

How Finland plans to create a circular bioeconomy that runs on wood

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Environment

Microplastics in the air have a small cooling effect on our climate

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Life

We've found the time and place that horses were first domesticated

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Life

99-million-year-old crab discovered trapped inside amber

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Space

Saturn’s moon Titan may be doomed to fly away or smash into the planet

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Health

Lab-grown human mini-brains kept alive for a year by slicing them up

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Environment

‘It’s anarchic’: Ed Miliband on what COP climate talks are really like

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Technology

AI can change a fashion model’s pose and alter their clothes to match

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Technology

AI can turn a collection of 2D images into an explorable 3D world

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Technology

El Salvador's bitcoin adoption hit by an easy money-making loophole

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: September to October 2021

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: November to December 2021

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: January 2022

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: February 2022

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: March 2022

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: April 2022

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Health

Covid-19 news archive: May 2022

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Analysis

Meadows could be our secret weapon in the fight against climate change

Environment

Meadows could be our secret weapon in the fight against climate change

HUMANITY'S connections to grasslands run deep. Our ideas of the perfect habitat lean heavily on the meadow, brimming with bumblebees and butterflies flitting between wild flowers: the perfect idyll. As the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi wrote: "When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about." Permanent grasslands hold …

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Technology

The flawed way Netflix measures views leaves TV stuck in the past

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Aperture

FEATURE CROP Close up of the air '1765'

Environment

COP26: Exhibition displays air from dawn of the industrial revolution

Photographer Pete Bucktrout/British Antarctic Survey THESE captivating images encapsulate the past, present and future of the global climate. They provide a taste of what's on show at Polar Zero , an art and science exhibition designed by artist Wayne Binitie to complement the COP26 summit on climate change in Glasgow , UK. One of the …

Regulars

Features

Are vegan meat alternatives putting our health on the line?

Health

Are vegan meat alternatives putting our health on the line?

Veganism is typically equated with healthy eating, but today’s factory-produced fake bacon, sausages and burgers could be tarnishing the halo of a plant-based diet. 51¶¯Âþ investigates

Features

Space

Satellites and junk are littering space and ruining our night skies

Features

Environment

Andreas Malm interview: Why climate protesters need to embrace unrest

Features

Culture

W39B3T Group of activists is protesting outdoors - Crowd demonstrating against global warming and plastic pollution, concepts about green ecology and environ

Humans

Kim Stanley Robinson on how to have a good Anthropocene

The fightback against climate change is an all-hands-on-deck situation "EVERYTHING is happening way faster than it happens in The Ministry for the Future ," says Kim Stanley Robinson of his latest novel, set in a world where an international agency is tasked with fighting for future generations on climate change. That vision was imagined mostly …

Culture

The gruesome science behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Culture

Don't miss: Tom Hanks beats the apocalypse with a dog and a robot

Culture

From the Neck Up review: Dark, weird and totally captivating

Culture

More

This is the Belt of Orion with its three blue stars across the top of the frame (L to R: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka), with the iconic Horsehead Nebula (aka B33) below Alnitak, with the dark Horsehead set against the bright nebula IC 434, aka Orion???s Dagger. The pinkish nebula above Alnitak is NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula. The small blue reflection nebula left of the Horsehead is NGC 2023, with smaller IC 435 to the left of it. The field is filled with the large open cluster Collinder 70. The multiple star at bottom left of centre is Sigma Orionis. Many other smaller bits of reflection nebulas populate the field in and around the Belt. This is a blend of 8 x 5-minute exposures at ISO 800 unfiltered with 6 x 10-minute exposures at ISO 1600 shot through an Optolong L-Enhance dual-band nebula enhancement filter (it lets through only Oxygen III blue-green and Hydrogen-alpha red to really enhance the nebulosity). The filtered shot is blended in with the unfiltered shot to retain the best of both worlds: the rich reds captured by the filtered images without losing the range of colours in the other nebulas such as the salmon pinks of the Flame and the blue reflection nebulas and stars. All exposures with the Canon EOS Ra mirrorless camera through the SharpStar HNT150 Hyperbolic Newtonian Astrograph at f/2.8, from home on a very clear moonless night January 27, 2020. All stacked, aligned and blended in Photoshop 2020. (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Space

How to use Orion to find Canis Major and Canis Minor

IN NOVEMBER – at least in the part of the northern hemisphere I call home – the nights begin to get darker, the leaves turn all sorts of shades of orange and my dogs' paws seem to get muddier on every walk. But the one thing that really signals to me that winter is on …

Regulars

Puzzle #137: Did James end up with a good Halloween haul?

Regulars

Tom Gauld's illustrations on the evolution of the headless horseman

Regulars

Twisteddoodles: 'I hear the body's temperature is going up'

Regulars

Regulars

What we have learned from making honeybees repeatedly crash into walls

What we have learned from making honeybees repeatedly crash into walls

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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