Subscribe now

This week's magazine

19 December 1998

Issue 2165

New Scientist issue 2165 cover
Previous issue Next issue

On the cover

Features

Christmas quiz
News
Brief encounter

Opinion

Year of the Bug
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.

Christmas quiz

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.

Lethal Xmas

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.

What makes a Turkey the right stuff?

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.

Midnight watch

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.

Meltdown

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.

Pure genius

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.

Hilbert's Hotel

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.

In salmon do did mobile bond...

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.

The artifice of giving

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.

The only good chair . . .

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.

Bear necessities

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.

Rave from the grave

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.

The magic clock

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.

The Big Yawn

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.

Mall Adjusted

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.

Brunette Sinks Battleship

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.

Life

Like a virgin

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.

Space

Brief encounter

THE world is going to end in 2028—or so we thought in March. Asteroid hunters are still soothing ruffled feathers after reports that asteroid 1997 XF11, a lump of rock between 1 and 2 kilometres across, might hit the Earth in 2028. The resulting furore persuaded astronomers to revise their procedures to avoid further debacles. …

News

Technology

Qubits go out for a spin

News

The tortoise and the hare

News

Can't stand the heat

News

Space

Falling hero breaks sceptics' hearts

News

Health

Under the weather

News

You read it here first…

News

Technology

It's an e-scoop!

News

The smoking gun

News

Physics

Mining for mass

News

Space

It's wet up there

News

From little seeds...

News

Cloning by numbers

News

You read it here first…

News

Frill chill

News

Dangerous liaison

News

Technology

Holiday hotlines

News

Turtles take the road past the isles

News

Relief at last

News

Aroma recall

News

Martian mystery

News

Follow that bird

News

Migrant histories

News

1998—The year in news

News

Sexual healing

News

Space

For ever and ever

News

Houston has a problem

News

Millennium angst

News

A taste for waste

News

Cosmic carousel

News

Cheats for the chop

News

DNA beats hepatitis

News

Wicked bubbly

News

Hunger striker pulls back from the brink

News

Hurricane forecast

News

Transplant fears

News

Gene crop charges

News

Great big softy

News

Gene therapy rejuvenates muscle

News

Trouble in store

News

It's a wrap for the small screen

News

Deck the halls

News

Friend or foe?

News

Eunuchs fight back

News

Technology

Digital wildlife

News

Technology

Spot the ball

News

Technology

Now you see it …

News

Mars attack

News

Lead stuffing

News

Move over, Lucy

News

Sound bananas

News

Pirates' platform

News

Death comes too soon

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.

Year of the Bug

ON 1 January 2000, the world will wake up to the biggest collective hangover in human history, or at least those of us who use the Julian calendar will. Thanks to the millennium computer bug, we have all lived for years with nightmare scenarios of planes dropping from skies, power blackouts paralysing nations, supertankers colliding …

Opinion

The holiday starts here

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.

Christmas quiz

For most of the year, Washington was transfixed by the Zippergate scandal and Bill Clinton's starring role—although in the end it all seemed rather tame from the viewpoint of a generation that was brought up with the campaign slogan: "Go all the way with LBJ". This was the generation of the permissive Sixties that dropped …

Features

The only good chair . . .

Features

Brunette Sinks Battleship

Features

Mall Adjusted

Features

The Big Yawn

Features

The magic clock

Features

Rave from the grave

Features

Bear necessities

Features

The artifice of giving

Features

Lethal Xmas

Features

In salmon do did mobile bond...

Features

Hilbert's Hotel

Features

Pure genius

Features

Meltdown

Features

Midnight watch

Features

What makes a Turkey the right stuff?

Features

Life

Like a virgin

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.

Bringing up babies

THE tiny crystal is only a few millimetres long, but it took two months to grow. During that time it was lovingly nurtured by Pu Wang, a PhD student at Macquarie University in Sydney. Wang jokes that growing such a crystal is "like taking care of a baby." If so, this is a baby with …

Forum

'tis the season to be jolly in Antarctica

Forum

Happy XXmas!

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

The Flight Inventor's Workshop from the Boston Museum of Science

Books & Arts

from Oxford

Books & Arts

In the swim

Books & Arts

Lost in space

Forum

London's dead

Books & Arts

Atomic power

Books & Arts

Heaven's above . . .

Books & Arts

. . . sea below

Books & Arts

Greetings from Apollo

Books & Arts

Ants rule

Books & Arts

Crime Busting by Jenny Ward

Books & Arts

Go nuclear

Books & Arts

After Herod

Books & Arts

Flying eye

Books & Arts

Tales of the old south

Books & Arts

Stories we live in

Books & Arts

Where it all began

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

FOR this year's Feedback Christmas Competition, readers were asked the question: what are the seven blunders of the modern world? Great minds, such as those possessed by New Scientist readers, clearly think alike. In this competition more than any previous one, the same ideas cropped up over and over again. In particular, a large number …

Regulars

The last word Christmas

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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