Subscribe now

This week's magazine

24 February 1996

Issue 2018

New Scientist issue 2018 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
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

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.

Risky business

Features
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.

Truly, madly, deeply parallel

Features
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.

How to measure a million red shifts

Features
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.

Blades at the cutting edge

Features

Table of contents

News

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.

Light-hearted choice

ENIGMA 863 THERE is a rumour going around that in choosing your six lottery numbers it is better to choose higher numbers because those balls weigh more and are therefore more likely to fall to the bottom of the selection machine! In fact there's an element of truth in this rumour. This is due to …

News

Blast them

News

Europe joins the information cul-de-sac

News

Sticky fingers

News

Signed in blood

News

Technology

Gene saves tobacco from salty death

News

Technology

Immature eggs seed a revolution

News

Technology

Netropolitan

News

Technology

Dialysis leaves wine clear of crystals

News

Technology

Trick of the light fools forgers

News

Who hears what?

News

Why small black holes are just hippies

News

Technology

Pregnancy provides clue to arthritis vaccine

News

Good vibrations help jumping spiders to hunt

News

Fat story gains weight

News

Good connections, quantum style

News

The subtle side of killer cells

News

Canadian lakes suffer triple blow

News

Sherpas' sweet hearts prepare them for the mountains

News

How blood puts on the brake

News

Robotic insects tread where humans fear to go

News

There's one born every minute …

News

How the brain minds its peas and bees

News

Eye in the sky needs help on the ground

News

Dentists' probing reveals new muscle

News

Bone protein reverses gum disease

News

West bows to psychology's cultural revolution

News

New Agers cast a spell on science

News

Hothousing toddlers makes teenagers smarter

News

Seizures may have triggered murders

News

Kids in space

News

Maneless wonder snapped on safari

News

Net goes East

News

Virtual crime

News

Tiny killers bloom in warmer seas

News

Chilled strokes

News

Fishy finding

News

Fish drug snagged in politics

News

Good vibrations make violins sing

News

Diamonds are an engineer's best friend

News

'Wrong needles' do addicts more harm than good

News

Stowaway drives fish to brink of extinction

News

Dounreay could push locals over the limit

News

Frustrated researchers diverted to Net's fast lane

News

Poison rains down on rare plants

News

Opinion

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.

A very comforting illusion

JUST because you're better educated doesn't mean that you're any more rational than everyone else, no matter how hard you may try to give that impression. Take the selection of lottery numbers. A survey in Florida described at this year's annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see This Week) shows …

Opinion

Give me a child before five …

Opinion

Features

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.

Risky business

LUSH green pastures stretch for miles around David Kinyanjui Njuguna's compound near Muguga, just west of Nairobi. But his two cows are confined to a small mud-floored pen behind his house. Like many farmers across Kenya, Njuguna is reluctant to let his cattle graze freely for fear that they will be bitten by a brown …

Features

Truly, madly, deeply parallel

Features

How to measure a million red shifts

Features

Blades at the cutting edge

Features

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.

Sign up now for the Space Experience

SPACE flight may be about to undergo a transformation far more radical than anything planned by national or international space agencies. In the next fifteen years or so, there could be a fleet of fifty spaceplanes carrying a million people into orbit about the Earth each year, at $10 000 per head. A prototype of …

Forum

Papering over the cracks

Forum

Ghosts in the machinery

Forum

Return to the soft machine

Books & Arts

Collected works: Rounds up the birds

Books & Arts

Bestsellers from London

Books & Arts

Women and animals first

Books & Arts

Rich pickings

Books & Arts

Exit Gradgrind

Books & Arts

Caves, man

Books & Arts

Desparately seeking certainty: Fire in the Mind

Books & Arts

Despoliers all

Books & Arts

Perfect prose

Books & Arts

Dialogue sans pedagogue

Books & Arts

Who did what

Books & Arts

Safe in the digital playpen

Books & Arts

Regulars

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.

Feedback

IT IS not all beaches, barbies and bronzed bodies when spring arrives Down Under. Our Sydney correspondent informs us that the black-backed magpies have been swooping again. Not content to quietly build nests and raise their brood, these territorially minded high flyers divebomb anything that moves anywhere near their nesting places: kids, cats, dogs, politicians, …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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