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This week's magazine

23 September 2000

Issue 2257

New Scientist issue 2257 cover
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On the cover

Features

Trailblazer

News

Heart of darkness

Opinion

Westminster Diary
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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.

Trailblazer

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.

Reach For The Sky

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.

sunblock

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

Here be monsters

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.

Heart of darkness

ASTRONOMERS have pinpointed the black hole at the centre of our galaxy with unprecedented accuracy by watching three stars wheel around it. Five years of observations at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii by Andrea Ghez of the University of California at Los Angeles show the black hole's gravity pulling on the stars. This proves that …

News

Food parcel

News

Thanks to fungi

News

Spreading alarm

News

Marine menace

News

Pox stocks

News

Don't step on my webbed toes

News

Salamander power

News

Long and loose

News

Putting your ore in

News

Shore bet

News

Technology

Shock of the old

News

You are what you eat

News

Save our spuds

News

A giant in the making?

News

E-mail hotheads told to chill out

News

Smashing up the seabed

News

Rudder refit

News

Bye-bye videotape...

News

Sound and fury

News

Chemical soup

News

Totally tropical Tokyo

News

Catch 'em young

News

Killer wings its way to France

News

Love that taste

News

Crawling out of the swamp

News

Metallic mutt learns to talk

News

Technology

Baby booming

News

Technology

Eau de fat cat

News

Technology

Reading between the words

News

Health

Lifesaver

News

Health

Rub on the Rioja

News

Killer tomatoes

News

Super sensors

News

Sun, sea and surprises

News

Last lap for LEP

News

Reservoir bugs turn up the heat

News

Crisis in the Caspian

News

Rocks ahoy

News

Charles who?

News

Never a traitor

News

If sheep get BSE from blood, why can't people?

News

Intellectual muscle

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.

Westminster Diary

I CAN'T remember a time when the tabloids, broadsheets and newscasters were so preoccupied with soaring crime statistics. Rachel Nowak's recent report on work by the University of Technology in Sydney and elsewhere on the usefulness of trace elements from documents—ransom notes, altered business contracts and the like—in catching criminals seemed timely (22 July, p …

Opinion

The roughest guide to India

Opinion

Biting back

Opinion

Earth

Back from the brink

Opinion

The future belongs to . . .

Opinion

Oil addicts

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.

Trailblazer

ONE WEEK in 1997, a mouse of a galaxy between the shoulders of Hercules turned into a monster. "It was rather inconspicuous before," says Heinz Völk, who watched the action from the island of La Palma. "But all of a sudden it became the strongest source we've ever seen." This outburst from the galaxy Markarian …

Features

Reach For The Sky

Features

sunblock

Features

Life

Here be monsters

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.

Marvellous machinery

John Lienhard's The Engines of Our Ingenuity is a stunning book, endlessly insightful, deeply interesting and easy to read. It is crammed with anecdote and amusement. You hardly realise that what you are enjoying is really a survey of technology and culture and how they have influenced each other through the ages. If you lend …

Books & Arts

Turned out nice again

Books & Arts

Bestsellers from San Francisco

Books & Arts

Feeding frenzy

Books & Arts

Carl's saga

Books & Arts

Pitiful tales

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

IS IT POSSIBLE for the environmental impact of two hydroelectric schemes over 100 kilometres apart to be precisely the same? Could two dams blocking two different rivers have identical effects on wildlife? Apparently so, if we believe the international consultants Ernst & Young. According to press reports in India, the company produced a report on …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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