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This week's magazine

15 November 2008

Issue 2682

New Scientist issue 2682 cover
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Editor's picks

Is Earth at the heart of a giant cosmic void?

Space

Is Earth at the heart of a giant cosmic void?

Features
Dumb eco-questions you were afraid to ask

Earth

Dumb eco-questions you were afraid to ask

Features
Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network

Life

Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network

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.

Obama's win was an historic day for forecasters too

Barack Obama's win was as much a triumph for mathematicians. For all the inherent uncertainties in electoral outcomes, the 2008 contest may be the one that established election forecasting as a powerful predictive science. Even pollsters who predicted Barack Obama's smooth ride to the White House were aware of a possible fly in the ointment: …

News

Calculating the cost of the 'eco-crunch'

News

Google to help medics plan flu response

News

NASA bids farewell to Phoenix lander

News

Health

'Invisible' transplant organs now in sight

News

Controversial animal lab opens for business

News

Earth

Australian river fails the acid test

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

How warfare shaped human evolution

News

Technology

Broken nerves can be fixed in a flash

News

'Maybe it's just a good place to pick up girl sharks'

News

Obama moves swiftly to repair stem cell damage

News

Health

Drug protects mice from heart failure

News

Health

Personalised cancer treatment on the way

News

Life

Speed daters go for crowd-pleasing looks

News

Space

Quantum effects bring no solace for physicists

News

Life

Why we love to hate the spider

News

Why a speeding shark is like a golf ball

News

Health

Antioxidant could lead to safer thalidomide

News

Plastic not so fantastic in the lab

News

Life

Planet wobbles could reveal Earth 2.0

News

Life

Finches keep the beat with a mental metronome

News

Harmless virus harnessed to attack tumours

News

Humans may have prevented super ice age

News

Life

For tastier food, just add bacteria

News

Technology

Harnessing the power of the beating heart

News

Technology

Liquid mirror could filter out stars' twinkles

News

Technology

US gives go-ahead for super Wi-Fi

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Technology

Poker bots raise the stakes for human players

News

Space

Sun shines on future Mars colonies

News

Technology

Digital images contain their maker's mark

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.

Obama needs to put his faith in rationality

AMERICA has a new and charismatic leader. The expressions of hope and optimism that followed the US presidential election are without equal in recent memory. Among those cheering the election of Barack Obama are many US scientists and policy-makers, who are anxious to repair a damaging rift between science and the federal government that has …

Opinion

Lean times ahead for non-US stem-cell research

Opinion

Science can imagine it for you wholesale

Opinion

Space

Why Europe should build its own crewed space vehicle

Opinion

Features

Is Earth at the heart of a giant cosmic void?

Space

Is Earth at the heart of a giant cosmic void?

IT WAS the evolutionary theory of its age. A revolutionary hypothesis that undermined the cherished notion that we humans are somehow special, driving a deep wedge between science and religion. The philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for espousing it; Galileo Galilei, the most brilliant scientist of his age, was silenced. But Nicolaus …

Features

Earth

Dumb eco-questions you were afraid to ask

Features

Life

Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network

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.

Enigma No. 1520

Just pondering AROUND the edge of the rectangular fish pond in Joe's back garden is a path two-paving-slabs wide. The square slabs are coloured light brown, grey or light green. Joe has arranged them so that the pattern of colours of any square of four slabs is unique, however viewed. If Joe had needed to …

Regulars

Sci-fi special: Is science fiction dying?

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: William Gibson

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Ursula K Le Guin

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Kim Stanley Robinson

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Nick Sagan

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Stephen Baxter

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Margaret Atwood

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Your all-time favourite science fiction

Books & Arts

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Books & Arts

The Last Theorem by Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl

Books & Arts

City at the End of Time by Greg Bear

Books & Arts

Saturn's Children by Charles Stross

Books & Arts

Incandescence by Greg Egan

Books & Arts

Sci-fi special: Ones to watch

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.

A festival of brain-evolving drivel

Time travel competition MISTS and mellow fruitfulness are the marks of this season in northern latitudes, so clear the mists from your mind and start feeling fruitful because the time has come to announce the Feedback end-of-year competition. Our theme this year is time travel. When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was about to …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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