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This week's magazine

20 November 1999

Issue 2213

New Scientist issue 2213 cover
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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.

Life on the edge

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.

Get real

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.

Mystery of the missing atmosphere

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.

Blazing a trail

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.

Seeing red

OXYGEN can form molecules made of four atoms rather than two when it is squeezed to 200 000 times atmospheric pressure. Normally, oxygen is a colourless gas consisting of two atoms, but when squeezed it forms a liquid, a solid and eventually behaves like a metal. Solid nonmetallic oxygen is bright red and Frederico Gorelli …

News

Mop it up

News

Deep south

News

Eaten alive

News

Disastrous Discovery

News

Ignorance is bliss

News

Making notes

News

Masters of symmetry

News

Ticked off

News

Taking the guilt out of rock-and-roll

News

Only ourselves to blame

News

Bubble bursts illusion of e-mail security

News

Splitting headache

News

Ration roulette

News

Fearless firefighter

News

Clean compromise

News

Mean and minty

News

Technology

Paperless writers

News

The nick of time

News

Waste nut, want nut

News

Whizzing polymers

News

Squeeze box special

News

Conflicting signals

News

Before time

News

Moon fires jets at Jupiter

News

Blown away

News

Relativity tester

News

More Hubble trouble

News

More is less

News

Mystery shrouds origins of giant planet

News

The Cold War resurfaces

News

Hell on Earth

News

Don't chew on this

News

Japanese cloning pioneers break the rules

News

In hot water…

News

Why you need heroin like a hole in the head

News

Technology

No stopping Bill

News

Technology

Get ahead

News

Technology

No sticky surprises

News

Back to the drawing board

News

Unflappable

News

On your markers

News

Alien inspiration

News

Chance inheritance

News

Happy medium

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.

Humans

Westminster diary

THERE's a long tradition of coal mining in my part of Scotland, so many of my constituents have experience of mining diseases. For anyone whose job involves drilling away at the coalface, the constant vibrations can reduce blood circulation to the fingertips, causing capillaries to contract and sensation to be lost. The condition is known …

Opinion

Groping with the future

Opinion

King of hearts

Opinion

Prophets of doom

Opinion

Endless forms

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.

Life on the edge

MOST people visit Australia's lush Wet Tropics rainforest to gawp at the gorgeous greenery. But in 1997, Christopher Schneider and Thomas Smith arrived with quite a different plan—and their eyes firmly on the ground. Shuffling through the forest, the two men spent four long weeks staring down at the leaf litter, watching for the flick …

Features

Get real

Features

Mystery of the missing atmosphere

Features

Blazing a trail

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.

Gifts and gore

IT'S not easy being a general these days. Where do you find a good supply of impressionable warrior recruits fit for all those looming high-tech wars? The British army apparently thinks ex-cons might fill the gap. Strange, when they could be recruiting in cyber cafes instead. After all, more people play world domination in Command …

Books & Arts

A very English idyll

Books & Arts

Bestplayers

Books & Arts

Real waterworld

Books & Arts

Secrets

Books & Arts

The wild and the wonderful

Books & Arts

A bag of delights

Books & Arts

Wannabe Archimedes?

Books & Arts

Kid chaos

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

MANY of America's best universities are "land-grant institutions", that were originally financed by the sale of public lands. They are supposed to emphasise research and teaching that are useful to citizens of their home states, which is why they always have agriculture faculties. But a master's candidate at Clemson, South Carolina's land-grant university, recently devoted …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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