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This week's magazine

26 March 2011

Issue 2805

New Scientist issue 2805 cover
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Editor's picks

Starting over: Coining a new dollar

Technology

Starting over: Coining a new dollar

Features
Starting over: Ultimate democracy

Life

Starting over: Ultimate democracy

Features
Starting over: Choosing my religion

Life

Starting over: Choosing my religion

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.

Physics

Starting over: Let's decimalise time

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.

Starting over: Brave new toilet

Features
Starting over: Rebuilding civilisation from scratch

Earth

Starting over: Rebuilding civilisation from scratch

Features
Heard it on the grapevine: The secret society of plants

Earth

Heard it on the grapevine: The secret society of plants

Features
Proton puzzle: Trouble at the heart of the atom

Physics

Proton puzzle: Trouble at the heart of the atom

Features
Mammoth mystery: Why giants no longer rule the north

Life

Mammoth mystery: Why giants no longer rule the north

Features

Table of contents

News

Dark energy is not an illusion after all

Space

Dark energy is not an illusion after all

New measurements of exploding stars are challenging an upstart theory that dark energy is just an illusion caused by our location within a giant void. In 1998, astronomers reported that the universe's expansion seems to be faster now than it was in the past, based on measurements of supernova explosions in both nearby and distant …

News

Health

Gene therapy for Parkinson's passes the ultimate test

News

Earth

Nuclear crisis: How safe is Japan's food and water?

News

Physics

Single atom quantum memories are easier to access

News

Health

HIV in donor kidney

News

NASA and ESA 'divorce' over money

News

Earth

Food waste increases UK's water footprint

News

Health

Test children for tobacco smoke exposure

News

Earth

Hold planes at the gate to cut greenhouse gases

News

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Thorium reactors could rescue nuclear power

News

Earth

Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power

News

Technology

How newer reactors would have survived Fukushima

News

Technology

Where robots labour to overcome genetic disease

News

Biology's 'dark matter' hints at fourth domain of life

News

Physics

Best-ever quantum measurement breaks Heisenberg limit

News

Health

First viable sperm cells grown from scratch

News

Life

Right-handers can be made to think like lefties

News

Five-million-year-old monster bunny couldn't hop

News

Life

Escher-like impossible shapes confuse newborn chicks

News

Life

How a robot can replace you at work – and how it can't

News

Earth

Online 3D insect sleuth tells friend from foe

News

Technology

US inventors on their marks for race to patent office

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Quantum trickery could lead to stealth radar

News

Technology

Hardware-only add-on lets phones shoot video in 3D

News

Health

Look into my eyes to predict my amputation risk

News

Opinion

Don't let polio eradication slip away again

Health

Don't let polio eradication slip away again

Last stand After years of frustration, polio is on the ropes. But we could still miss the historic opportunity to wipe it out for good IT IS the disease that's always down, but never quite out. In 1998 the World Health Organization claimed it was going to eradicate by 2000. In 2000 it revised the …

Opinion

Earth

Risk expert: Why radiation fears are often exaggerated

Opinion

Cut nuclear power's umbilical cord to the military

Opinion

In praise of the humble proton

Opinion

Life

Religion is irrational, but so is atheism

Opinion

Features

Starting over: Rebuilding civilisation from scratch

Earth

Starting over: Rebuilding civilisation from scratch

Big-city living could be a recipe for happiness The way we live is mostly down to accidents of history. So what if we thought it through properly? IN JUST a few thousand years, we humans have created a remarkable civilisation: cities, transport networks, governments, vast economies full of specialised labour and a host of cultural …

Features

Earth

Heard it on the grapevine: The secret society of plants

Features

Physics

Proton puzzle: Trouble at the heart of the atom

Features

Life

Mammoth mystery: Why giants no longer rule the north

Features

Life

Starting over: Choosing my religion

Features

Physics

Starting over: Let's decimalise time

Features

Starting over: Brave new toilet

Features

Technology

Starting over: Coining a new dollar

Features

Life

Starting over: Ultimate democracy

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.

Let the geek worship begin

As The New Cool by Neal Bascomb shows, classroom robot wars can inspire the celebration of invention "IT IS almost a miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry," Albert Einstein once observed, expressing his frustrations with his early formal education. "For what this delicate little plant needs …

CultureLab

The Icarus complex: How humans long to fly

CultureLab

A book full of filth

CultureLab

The evolutionary roots of animal morality

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 1639

Square clocks In, say, 5-clock arithmetic, counting runs from 1 to 5, but starts again at 1 when 6 is reached. So, in 5-clock arithmetic, 3 + 4 = 2 and so on. Anne, Brian and Cate have been investigating x -clock arithmetic, where x is 2 to 15 inclusive. They have each discovered a …

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.

Feedback: Meeting yourself in other universes

Meeting yourself in other universes THIS could be the loopiest website we have come across yet. Several readers have gleefully suggested we bask in the craziness of quantumjumping.com , a website that tells us we can "jump" into parallel universes and benefit from encounters with alternative versions of ourselves that live in them: "Imagine the …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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