Subscribe now

This week's magazine

17 February 2001

Issue 2278

New Scientist issue 2278 cover
Previous issue Next issue
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.

Technology

War and peace

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.

small wonder

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.

Retail therapy

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.

Listen up

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 the beginning was the bit

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.

Made in space

ORGANIC molecules are not created in comets, say astrochemists. Instead, the organics come from pristine molecular clouds that form stars. When astronomers detected complex organic molecules around Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, they wondered if they might have formed in the comet's energetic atmosphere. Now Steven Rodgers and Steven Charnley at NASA's Ames Research Center in …

News

Jump to it

News

Seat with a view

News

Hair hazard

News

Magic garlic

News

Tune in, tune out

News

Technology

The gaming genome project

News

Technology

Crisp my nuggets

News

Technology

Off the scent

News

Quantum mischief

News

Wave-piercer cuts rescue times in half

News

Smarty pants

News

Gyro failed? Don't get in a spin

News

It's good not to talk

News

Sealing the cracks

News

Play misty

News

Chubby cherubs

News

BSE alert in Thailand

News

Supermoth takes flight

News

Drugs and rubber

News

Would you trust these people with your genes?

News

Meet the relatives

News

Don't count on dung

News

Biblical strongman was plagued by mental illness

News

Into space on thin air

News

Crisis, what crisis?

News

A smile is just a smile

News

False alarm

News

Grow fast, die young

News

The maize munchers

News

Mobile money

News

NEAR lives!

News

Up, up and away

News

Load of old bull

News

Physics

Substandard model?

News

Babar fluffs first shot at universal mystery

News

Drowning in data

News

Put in our place

News

Less is more

News

What's next

News

The revolution has begun

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.

Science given a sporting chance

AUSTRALIANS are keen to see the past emphasis on sport balanced by improved scientific achievement, according to a recent opinion poll commissioned by The Australian newspaper. The survey found that about 60 per cent of people view sport as the field in which Australia has been most successful in the past. Scientific achievement ranked second, …

Opinion

Humans

Westminster Diary

Opinion

The weighing game

Opinion

Bugs bite back

Opinion

Free for all

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

War and peace

The words "Maxim" and "peace" somehow don't seem to go together. Hiram Maxim's most famous invention-the machine gun-has killed countless thousands of men, from Matabeleland to Manchuria and Mafeking to Mons. Yet there, tucked neatly into a box at London's Science Museum, is a strange glass globe distinctly labelled "Sir Hiram Maxim's Pipe of Peace". …

Features

small wonder

Features

Retail therapy

Features

Listen up

Features

In the beginning was the bit

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.

Java Man by Garniss Curtis, Carl Swisher and Roger Lewin

Java Man by Garniss Curtis, Carl Swisher and Roger Lewin, Little, Brown, £18.99, ISBN 0316648604 WE ARE certain as anyone can ever be in biology that modern humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than any other living animal. We are also reasonably sure that it was in Africa that the earliest exclusively human ancestor …

Books & Arts

Sale of the Century

Books & Arts

TINY DEATHDEALERS

Books & Arts

He Thinks it's All Over

Books & Arts

Flower Power from Scent to Dissection

Books & Arts

Bestsellers

Books & Arts

Under Watchful Eyes

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.

The Last Word

How big's your bow? Question : What determines the size of a rainbow? They obviously vary as shown by double rainbows. Answer : The size of a rainbow is fixed by the way the Sun's rays go through the raindrops. When a light ray strikes a raindrop, part of it is reflected and lost and …

Regulars

Feedback

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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