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This week's magazine

22 November 2008

Issue 2683

New Scientist issue 2683 cover
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Editor's picks

What makes the universe tick?

What makes the universe tick?

Features
Why the universe may be teeming with aliens

Life

Why the universe may be teeming with aliens

Features
Safer sex in a pill

Health

Safer sex in a pill

Features
Recipes for life: How genes evolve

Life

Recipes for life: How genes evolve

Features
A well full of stars

A well full of stars

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.

Green policies may flush water down the drain

It seems obvious that encouraging farmers to switch over to more efficient irrigation techniques should help tackle our planet's growing water shortage. Obvious, but not necessarily correct, according to a study of farming in the parched US Southwest. Drip irrigation, which trickles water onto plant roots, requires about half as much water as flooding an …

News

Forecast of economic collapse backed by data

News

Will genes play a part in the next US elections?

News

Health

Booze tax stops people drinking themselves to death

News

Life

Ancestral genes are not black or white

News

World ahead of Kyoto emissions targets

News

Gulf war syndrome is real, says US report

News

Add daylight, save energy

News

Enzyme takes us a step closer to eternal youth

News

Earth

Bush to go out with a green bang?

News

Technology

Light opens up a world of sound for the deaf

News

So this is what other planets look like

News

'It does seem weird, being excited about seeing whale shark poo'

News

Life

Monkey gossip hints at social origins of language

News

Woolly mammoth genome back from the dead

News

Space

What has the Phoenix mission taught us about Mars?

News

Earth's 'mineral kingdom' evolved hand in hand with life

News

'Flintstones' bones are earliest known nuclear family

News

Has dark matter signal been found in Antarctica's skies?

News

Hidden floods beneath Antarctica send glaciers speeding

News

Rare fossil find shows how women drove human evolution

News

Remains of devoured planet discovered

News

Health

Stress-free lifestyle helps fight cancer

News

Health

Brain works better with neurological disease

News

How religious people see the world differently

News

Ants' practice doesn't make them perfect

News

Earth

Under construction: The fuel tank of the future

News

Technology

Cellphone clusters give traffic jams away

News

Technology

Artificial diamonds - now available in extra large

News

Technology

Gizmo

News

Earth

Plumbing the oceans could bring limitless clean energy

News

Earth

Electric production car just keeps on going

News

Technology

Computer chips give new spin on saving energy

News

Opinion

The free lunch that made our universe

Space

The free lunch that made our universe

A timeline of the universe's expansion since the big bang TWICE in the past week I have been confronted in debates with the question that Thomas Aquinas and others have used in a theological context: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I don't want to dwell on whether this justifies the existence of God. …

Opinion

A tough pill to swallow?

Opinion

Save America's green cars

Opinion

The population paradox

Opinion

Space

Will the next Einstein come from Africa?

Opinion

Features

What makes the universe tick?

What makes the universe tick?

LEE SMOLIN wants to save your time. He is not a lifestyle guru offering handy tips on managing a diary, though: he is a physicist who works at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. Many of his colleagues, he says, are planning to rid the universe of the common-sense notion that time …

Features

Life

Why the universe may be teeming with aliens

Features

Health

Safer sex in a pill

Features

Life

Recipes for life: How genes evolve

Features

A well full of stars

Features

More

<i>Splendors and Miseries of the Brain</i> by Semir Zeki

Humans

Splendors and Miseries of the Brain by Semir Zeki

THIS year, University College London made Semir Zeki the world's first professor of neuroaesthetics. In recent decades, he has used brain imaging techniques to pioneer the modern study of visual perception, as Nobel laureate Eric Kandel writes on the jacket of Splendors and Miseries of the Brain , and his earlier books include an impressive …

Books & Arts

Enigma No. 1521

Regulars

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.

Bad news for the accident-prone

Enid Blyton, prodigious polymath CHILDREN'S writer Enid Blyton has to be admired for her prodigious output. According to the Enid Blyton Society , she wrote around 700 books at a rate of more than one a month. Andy Boddington, however, has discovered that she appears even more prolific than her fans in the society have …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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