Issue 2226 | Magazine cover date: 19 February 2000 | New Scientist

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19 February 2000

Issue 2226

New Scientist issue 2226 cover

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On the cover

Outrageous fortune

News

Comet crunch

Westminster Diary

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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.

Technology

Outrageous fortune

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.

Breaking the light barrier

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.

Mars on a shoestring

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.

Roots of immunity

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.

Oh brother!

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.

Comet crunch

NEARLY 90 per cent of the 104 comets that the SOHO spacecraft has discovered close to the Sun in the past four years are small fragments of a single giant comet. Astronomers believe they are descendants of a giant comet that broke up, possibly the one observed by the Greek historian Ephorus in 372 BC. …

News

Hotting up

News

Digital gene

News

Long-haul infection

News

Paradox lost

News

Puppy love

News

India's tests pollute Pakistan

News

Gulf syndrome dispute

News

Gene screen ban

News

Resistance is useless

News

Sunny days were best for saving ancient DNA

News

The hole story?

News

Paternal care

News

Death watch

News

Technology

Reeling in the years

News

Bear trails

News

Farmers' free-for-all

News

Wet, wet, wet

News

Bottle it

News

A picture a day…

News

Hear the Net

News

Precious junk

News

Toxic wave

News

F is for fake

News

Double-crossed

News

Sugared implant

News

Technology

Sneaking through

News

Technology

Hot-wired

News

Technology

Tan tattoos

News

Tug of worlds

News

Blast from the past

News

Cut off in their prime

News

Injection fears

News

Reject fuel

News

Scary monsters

News

Locked out

News

Go-slow at patent office puts inventions on hold

News

Noise nuisance

News

Match made in heaven

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

DALLAS researchers have found signs of brain damage in Gulf War veterans who claim to have severe neurological problems (New Scientist, 4 December 1999, p 10). Robert Haley, an epidemiologist at Texas South Western University Medical Centre, and his radiologist colleague James Fleckenstein scanned the basal ganglia of 18 patients using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. They …

Opinion

Whither clever country?

Opinion

Raising the stakes

Opinion

Crimes of passion?

Opinion

Sale of the century

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.

Technology

Outrageous fortune

There's not much left of the Novelty, just four wheels and a cylinder. But if fate had not dealt this smart little locomotive such a lousy hand one day in October 1829, things could have turned out differently. Novelty might have been the world's most famous locomotive and Stephenson's Rocket just a footnote in the …

Features

Breaking the light barrier

Features

Mars on a shoestring

Features

Roots of immunity

Features

Oh brother!

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.

Truth was out there

James Bruce was born too early. An 18th-century African explorer, he discovered the source of the Blue Nile, went into battle with the Emperor of Abyssinia, travelled as an Arab and seduced African princesses a century before such deeds became fashionable. But rather than acquiring fame and fortune, this real-life Georgian Flashman died at home …

Books & Arts

Square ideas

Books & Arts

Humans

The truth is out there

Inside Science

Zero's heroes

Books & Arts

Creative thinking

Books & Arts

Mapping's past it

Books & Arts

from Berkeley, california

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

WE ARE distressed to hear that hungry insects are trying to eat New Orleans. The historic city is being attacked by a creature called the Formosan termite, which arrived from Asia on the Gulf coast of Louisiana and Texas 35 years ago. "This species gets my vote for the most important structural pest of the …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word