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This week's magazine

4 September 2004

Issue 2463

New Scientist issue 2463 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.

Dark side of the sun

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.

Half the universe is missing

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

Heat wave

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.

The mysteries of 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.

Technology

Radio-powered airships

High-flying airships could be used as a cheap alternative to satellites, but their propulsion systems and transmitters need more power than solar panels can deliver. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California thinks radio energy can help (US 2004/0156400). A millimetre-band transmitter beams a megawatt of radio energy at an airship hovering at an altitude …

News

Technology

Orbit is the next holiday hotspot

News

Technology

Enter the spim doctor

News

Technology

Charge those bugs

News

Technology

Cutting edge

News

Technology

Bending sound for a sharper scan

News

Technology

US plans 'take-away' nuclear power plants

News

Technology

Robot hoofs it up the football table

News

Small scopes scoop big find

News

Get ahead with the beanstalk factor

News

A familiar face is all it takes to keep sheep chilled out

News

Full-body scan 'as bad as A-bomb'

News

Friendly bacteria don't prevent thrush attacks

News

Older, wiser and safer on a bike

News

Starvation diet may not be the only way to reach your 120th birthday

News

Fractal shores

News

Marmoset dads are lust-free

News

Smart aliens should try the message in a bottle

News

Eat just as much and shed the fat

News

Soundbites

News

Iron meteorites offer clue to life's big puzzle

News

Pollution triggers a wild, wild world

News

File-share snare

News

60 Seconds

News

Not long ago, in a galaxy far away…

News

How to polish up your skid flip

News

Anglers pose hidden danger to vanishing fish

News

Poo furore stalls bird flu study

News

Hepatitis E strikes

News

Bush's U-turn

News

US tackles missile terror risk

News

Life

Cloning the dead?

News

Clean up, save lives, cash in

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

A GERMAN U-boat crept through the hitherto safe defences of the home fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney, on 14 October 1939 and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak. A huge quantity of dangerous ordnance remains aboard the Royal Oak and other sunken warships. How to salvage the ordnance safely is a huge challenge. These ships are …

Opinion

Get it right!

Opinion

Stand up for your rights

Opinion

Is Bush warming to global warming?

Opinion

Editorial: Alien attraction

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.

Dark side of the sun

On 1 September 1859, Richard Carrington had just completed his morning observation of the sun when he saw a pair of bright crescent shapes forming near a large group of sunspots. For years, Carrington had been observing the sun by projecting its image onto a screen and meticulously sketching what he saw. He had never …

Features

Half the universe is missing

Features

Technology

Heat wave

Features

The mysteries of 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.

A singular planet

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross, Orbit, £12.99, ISBN 1841493333 Reviewed by David Langford SINGULARITY SKY is UK author Charles Stross's first novel: an imaginative, melodramatic and often hilarious space opera. It is set centuries after our technological progress accelerates beyond comprehension into a "singularity" (today's favourite SF concept) that changes everything. Yes, now there is …

Books & Arts

Part works

Books & Arts

Digibox

Books & Arts

Lives

Books & Arts

Things

Books & Arts

Words

Books & Arts

On a winning streak

Careers

A Reason for Everything: Natural selection and the English imagination by Marek Kohn (2004)

Books & Arts

Grand designs

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

IF A tree makes a phone call in the forest and no one answers, did it happen? Our updated version of the famous philosophical question from Bishop George Berkeley is made necessary by the proliferation of fake trees trying, without ever quite succeeding, to pretend they are not cellphone masts. Now there is, inevitably, a …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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