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This week's magazine

26 February 2011

Issue 2801

New Scientist issue 2801 cover
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Editor's picks

Reality check: Closing the quantum loopholes

Physics

Reality check: Closing the quantum loopholes

Features
Sonic doom: Making a sound barrier

Technology

Sonic doom: Making a sound barrier

Features
Finely tuned minds: The secret of perfect pitch

Life

Finely tuned minds: The secret of perfect pitch

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.

Health

Low sperm count? Your bones might be to blame

Sex hormones are already known to play an important role in maintaining healthy bones – but the relationship may be a two-way street. New evidence suggests that bones are important for controlling testosterone levels. Gerard Karsenty at Columbia University in New York City and his colleagues applied osteoblasts – bone cells involved in building new …

News

Earth

Foreshocks may warn that a big quake is coming

News

Technology

'Anti-laser' built for first time

News

Physics

Molecules seen rebounding before they hit a surface

News

Life

Did Neanderthals use feathers for fashion?

News

Physics

Carbon buckyballs can turn to jelly

News

The unknown fault that caught out Christchurch

News

Earth

Germany's coal own goal over carbon permits

News

Health

Is lack of sleep and water giving ecstasy a bad name?

News

Health

Raise alcohol prices to save British livers

News

Earth

Mobile phones boost brain activity

News

Earth

Uncertain future for east coast koalas

News

Technology

Nuclear agency plans for futuristic waste option

News

60 Seconds

News

Space

What's an alien solar system like?

News

Earth

Coral 'whisperers' diagnose reef pollution woes

News

Life

First animal to wear exoskeleton armour

News

Health

Diabetics: is it time to bin the insulin?

News

Earth

Memory fails time-travelling chimps

News

Life

Does the comfort of conformity ease thoughts of death?

News

Health

Shaped pulses make opaque film see-through

News

Life

Gene behind seed germination found

News

Life

Bitter tastes make you more judgemental

News

Earth

Power of cool: Liquid air to store clean energy

News

Technology

Robot subs seek a downed plane's secrets

News

Technology

Sticky feet send insect-bot climbing up the walls

News

Technology

Magnetic 'battery' to report on century-old nuke waste

News

Space

Two planets found sharing one orbit

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.

Kepler shows us a galaxy fit for life

ARE we alone in the universe? For centuries that question has been purely speculative, but now, for the first time, there is genuine cause for hope of getting an answer. The first results from NASA's planet-detecting Kepler space telescope suggest that Earth-sized planets are more common than we dared hope. Its survey of some 150,000 …

Opinion

Environment

Courts may offer coral relief

Opinion

A tankful of sun is what the renewables mix needs

Opinion

Physics

Tevatron closure: There's life in the old dog yet

Opinion

Earth

A country with no time for climate change scepticism

Opinion

Earth

Biology Nobelist: Natural selection will destroy us

Opinion

Physics

Theoretical physics and the art of the abstract

Opinion

Features

Reality check: Closing the quantum loopholes

Physics

Reality check: Closing the quantum loopholes

Guiding light: the tracking laser of the Tenerife observatory Can the universe really be as weird as quantum theory suggests? Ingenious experiments are coming close to settling the issue WHEN Rupert Ursin stood in the darkness at the highest point of La Palma in the Canary Islands he found it scary. "Really scary," he says. …

Features

Technology

Sonic doom: Making a sound barrier

Features

Life

Finely tuned minds: The secret of perfect pitch

Features

Culturelab

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 vast history of information

James Gleick's The Information: A history, a theory, a flood is a biography of information that puts today's revolution in some much-needed context FOR most of history, messages were things : clay tablets, scrolls, scraps of paper, even glyphs tattooed on to the head of a slave, which were revealed only when he visited the …

CultureLab

Saving the future with lessons from the past

CultureLab

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 Number 1635

Marty's date Our niece Ennie, nephew Iggy and their friend Marty were born on different dates in December. Ennie's birth date is the 19th and Iggy's is the 21st. The trio have tried writing down all numbers that can be expressed as a multiple of 19 plus a multiple of 21 plus a multiple of …

Regulars

Colour me beautiful: Wellcome Image Awards winners

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: Gates and doors for quantum users only

Gates and doors for quantum users only READER Geoff Kirbly sends us a photo of a sign at Southwell Business Park in Portland, Dorset, UK. It says: "NOTICE. This gate must be locked at all times." At first, Geoff says, he wondered how access could be possible through a gate that was always locked. Then …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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