Subscribe now

This week's magazine

19 May 2012

Issue 2865

New Scientist issue 2865 cover
Previous issue Next issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

Editor's picks

Dump the pump: When oil will lose its lustre

Earth

Dump the pump: When oil will lose its lustre

Features
The incredible flying squid

Life

The incredible flying squid

Features
Change your stomach, change your brain

Health

Change your stomach, change your brain

Features
Reality respray: The hidden digital world uncloaked

Technology

Reality respray: The hidden digital world uncloaked

Features

Table of contents

News

DIY circuit turns your alphabet soup into a keyboard

Technology

DIY circuit turns your alphabet soup into a keyboard

Probably the strangest musical instrument you'll see today Ever wanted to move Pac-Man using pencil drawings, make music with bananas or type an email with alphabet soup? Now you can thanks to Makey Makey, a simple circuit board that turns almost any object into a computer key ( see video here ). "It works with …

News

Health

Imaging HIV in infected cells reveals viral tactics

News

Health

Say what? Even everyday sounds can damage hearing

News

Earth

1.3 billion people rely on forests to survive

News

Antiviral drug backed for use in HIV prevention

News

The ancient American bones at centre of two lawsuits

News

Teleportation record heralds secure global network

News

America's report card science skills improving

News

Warm winters may fuel Chikungunya outbreak in New York

News

Americans would pay more for green energy

News

60 Seconds

News

Health

Trials highlight worrying flaws in psychiatry 'bible'

News

Egypt: Arab Spring could be wasted in youthful nations

News

Life

Biological clock began ticking 2.5 billion years ago

News

Earth

Monitoring tides could predict major quakes

News

Technology

Brain-controlled arm could beat paralysis

News

'Solar panel' eye implant promises sight without wires

News

Technology

Online friendships light up shadow social networks

News

Life

Sumatran orang-utans delay puberty to build up strength

News

Lightning gong could reveal solar system history

News

Sun too sluggish to act as a cosmic Concorde

News

Astrophile: Two craters that launched 1000 meteoroids

News

Thermostat protein could help burn off the flab

News

Mayan astronomical tables found daubed on wall

News

Technology

Interactive 'wallpaper' screens are the future of TV

News

Space

Telerobotics offers third way for space exploration

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.

Augmented reality offers a new layer of intrigue

IF YOU ever come across a photograph of communist-era East Berlin, or modern Pyongyang in North Korea, the cityscapes look drab and featureless. Billboards, advertising hoardings, neon signs, shopfronts and graffiti are conspicuous by their absence. To future eyes, that is how drab today's London and New York will appear. Not because of an even …

Opinion

Health

Brain rewiring offers slim hope for obesity epidemic

Opinion

Health

'Label jars, not people': Lobbying against the shrinks

Opinion

Humans

Why gay marriage divides the world

Opinion

Life

Widen the goal in the search for alien life

Opinion

Life

The man who gave us risk intelligence

Opinion

Aperture

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.

Rubber soul: California's 6-million-tyre mountain

AN UNUSUAL mountain stands in Westley, California. Made up of 6 million tyres, of which just a fraction are shown here, it is testament to our love affair with – or, as some would say, perverse reliance on – oil. This shot was taken by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky as part of his study of …

Regulars

Features

Dump the pump: When oil will lose its lustre

Earth

Dump the pump: When oil will lose its lustre

Oil production may fall in 10 years – not because it is running out but because electric cars will be cheaper and gasoline engines will be better

Features

Life

The incredible flying squid

Features

Health

Change your stomach, change your brain

Features

Technology

Reality respray: The hidden digital world uncloaked

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 history of the insatiably curious

NOBEL prizes in science are awarded for the fruits of curiosity moderated by discipline; Ig Nobel prizes for the results of apparently aimless curiosity. Thus, curiosity in science may inspire both respect and wariness. Knowing where we should draw the line is not always easy, as becomes clear in Curiosity , science writer Philip Ball's …

CultureLab

Mixing art and science in Moscow

CultureLab

How does a bee know where it is heading?

CultureLab

Will technology kill humanity?

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 1698

The pied piper I found an old eight-digit calculator. As usual, each position of the display consisted of seven light segments – with, for example, seven lighting up to display an "8" and four lighting up to display a "4". To see if it still worked, I typed in the approximation for π, namely 22/7, …

Regulars

Germany rising

Careers

Technology

Kinect imaging lets surgeons keep their focus

Uncategorized

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: Chemistry without the chemicals

Chemistry without the chemicals WAITING in line at the Heathcote post office in Victoria, Australia, Beck Lowe's eye was caught by one of the items on sale there – the Chemistry 60 science kit for children, which boasts that it contains "60 Fun Activities With No Chemicals". This improbable concession to "chemicals" hysteria is produced …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop