Issue 2173 | Magazine cover date: 13 February 1999 | New Scientist

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13 February 1999

Issue 2173

New Scientist issue 2173 cover

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On the cover

Features

Cosmic crystal

News

First chemists

Opinion

The great divide?

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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.

Cosmic crystal

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.

Ooops...sorry

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.

Health

To kill a superbug

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.

Replaying LIFE

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.

First chemists

ANCIENT Egyptians pioneered the art of synthetic "wet" chemistry up to 4000 years ago, say forensic chemists at the Research Laboratory for the Museums of France. Philippe Walter and his colleagues in Paris discovered that Egyptian cosmetic powders held by the Louvre contained ingredients which were so rare they could only have been synthesised (Nature, …

News

Stroke of luck

News

Washed-out coral

News

Neon spiders

News

Buried bones

News

Free speech first

News

Rights for rats

News

Cat virus yields clues on hard-to-treat HIV

News

No-fly zone

News

How calmer traffic stays green

News

A dark cloud over Asia

News

The Wright stuff . . .

News

. . . and how to see through the wrong stuff

News

Zap it and see

News

Pure white-out

News

Aftershocks

News

Technology

World wide war

News

Almost human

News

Safer flying

News

What a card

News

Bamboo battery

News

Golden goals

News

Watering down the citizen's right to know

News

The heat is on

News

Electric DNA

News

Deep life

News

Surf's not up

News

Time for a retread

News

All change

News

Diabetics get a painless test for glucose

News

Spare the child

News

Of mice and men

News

Shadowlands

News

Wild encounter

News

Ivory impasse

News

Light relief

News

Health

Transplant hope

News

Money talks

News

Fleeting return of the native

News

Blessed relief

News

Blood-brain barrier `exists in the womb'

News

Technology

Must I repeat myself?

News

Technology

Fizzy fish yo-yo

News

Technology

Magic potion

News

A deadly light

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.

The great divide?

If you want to give rights to animals, you'd better do some clear thinking PICTURE the war-torn face of an orphaned child in Kosovo. Now imagine the face of a baby chimpanzee in Africa whose mother has just been slaughtered for bushmeat. Both are compelling images of vulnerability amid violence, but if you had to …

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.

Cosmic crystal

IN THE beginning, space was filled with a liquid hovering below its normal freezing point. Supercooled liquids like this are on a hair-trigger: the merest nudge is enough to set off a runaway frenzy of freezing. That nudge might be provided by a dust-like impurity in the liquid or perhaps by a small region which …

Features

Ooops...sorry

Features

Health

To kill a superbug

Features

Replaying LIFE

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.

Mind's I

THEY had it easy in the 17th century, says philosopher Mary Midgley. Then, the pioneers of modern science deliberately chose to confine their attention to the physical world of perceived reality, evading what Midgley calls "the problem...that each of us has in trying to relate our own individual experience sensibly to that of others and …

Books & Arts

Panic stations

Forum

Let's sup a while

Forum

. . . . .

Forum

Do cots crib on safety?

Forum

Blooming lovely

Books & Arts

Helical high

Books & Arts

Culture clash

Books & Arts

from Washington

Books & Arts

Pulling power

Books & Arts

Third rock

Books & Arts

Family album

Books & Arts

Seeing stars

Books & Arts

United we stand

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

NOT THAT we're paranoid or anything, but ... In a bid to win digital satellite subscribers, Rupert Murdoch's Sky and partners are offering receivers at half price. But to qualify for the discount, subscribers must agree to have the receiver—the so-called Digibox—permanently connected to a phone line, so that it can communicate with a central …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word