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This week's magazine

11 August 2012

Issue 2877

New Scientist issue 2877 cover
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Editor's picks

The algorithm that runs the world

Technology

The algorithm that runs the world

Features
Digital doppelgängers: Building an army of you

Technology

Digital doppelgängers: Building an army of you

Features
A bumblebee hovering over a flower

Life

Plight of the bumblebee: Scruffy pollinator in peril

Features
Space fuel crisis: NASA confronts the plutonium pinch

Space

Space fuel crisis: NASA confronts the plutonium pinch

Features

Table of contents

News

Higgs certainty boosted by more complete analysis

Technology

Higgs certainty boosted by more complete analysis

ATLAS scores a six Its discovery last month sparked a media storm but the Higgs boson is now even more of a sure thing. ATLAS, one of the two experiments behind the original discovery, has carried out a more complete analysis that boosts the statistical significance of the Higgs signal even further. The analysis also …

News

Health

Natural immunity may protect Peruvians from rabies

News

Earth

Greenland loses ice in fits and starts

News

Space

Iran Space Agency to launch a monkey into space

News

Space

Astrophile: The Most Cruel Death of Cupid and Belinda

News

Technology

Power struggle: How to keep India's lights on

News

Life

Chimeric birds could explain how brains get big

News

Space

Where next? Curiosity's scientific priorities on Mars

News

Life

Drug tests catch Olympic athlete eight years late

News

Earth

Gibson Guitar reaches agreement in ebony investigation

News

Earth

Manhattan project sites may become national parks

News

60 Seconds

News

Technology

The financial meltdown forecasters

News

Life

Curiosity might prove we've already found life on Mars

News

Brain might not stand in the way of free will

News

Synthetic 'upgrade' for fruit fly's DNA

News

Earth

Salmon shortages leave grizzly bears stressed

News

Earth

Salmon sex delayed by global warming

News

Technology

Augmented reality kitchens keep novice chefs on track

News

Technology

Software reveals the most influential Victorian novelists

News

Technology

Buzzing clothes could teach you to be a better athlete

News

Technology

Smartphone that feels your strain

News

Life

Missing Congolese gorillas found in rebel-held region

News

Life

Liquid protein challenges importance of water

News

Health

Fire, theft and jealousy: a Hollywood fertility saga

News

Life

Woman's missing digits grow back in phantom form

News

Physics

Logic blooms with new 11-set Venn diagram

News

Opinion

Asteroid miners want to turn rocks into spacecraft

Space

Asteroid miners want to turn rocks into spacecraft

Eric Anderson (left) and Chris Lewicki (right) aim to launch asteroid-spotting telescopes by 2014 Not content with sending the first tourist into space and landing NASA's Mars rovers between them, Eric Anderson and Chris Lewicki have an outlandish plan to mine asteroids, backed by Google billionaires. But, they tell Paul Marks , that's just the …

Opinion

Life

Can we live without free will?

Opinion

Time for banks to show us the money

Opinion

Space

Curiosity: A Mars robot for our times

Opinion

Life

Olympic blade runner challenges our view of humanity

Opinion

Technology

New remote warfare: Smaller, better, deadlier?

Opinion

Space

Mysterious Pioneer anomaly: 'This is the answer'

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.

Flying off a Shetland cliff in search of offal

From this vantage point, fulmars may not look like the most graceful of birds. Yet they glide more elegantly than their gull lookalikes, floating effortlessly in the air as they rise on updrafts to reach breeding sites high on a cliff face. "They really are masters of the air," says photographer Andrew Parkinson , who …

Regulars

Features

The algorithm that runs the world

Technology

The algorithm that runs the world

Its services are called upon thousands of times a second to ensure the world's business runs smoothly – but are its mathematics as dependable as we thought?

Features

Technology

Digital doppelgängers: Building an army of you

Features

Life

Plight of the bumblebee: Scruffy pollinator in peril

Features

Space

Space fuel crisis: NASA confronts the plutonium pinch

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.

Cyborg makes art using seventh sense

Read more: Click here to read a longer version of this story Meet Neil Harbisson , the colour-blind man with a prosthetic eyepiece that allows him to "see" colours as sounds – and create unique artworks out of them When did you realise you were colour blind? When I was a kid people noticed that …

CultureLab

Stephen Hawking: man, icon and myth

CultureLab

The strange world of sleep

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 1710

Carregio Since the second world war, car registrations in my country have consisted of three parts: the first is the four-figure year of manufacture, the second is made up of two letters, and the third consists of a number which, in my case, has three digits. However, we are now switching to all-digit car registrations, …

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: No more snow on late night TV

Feedback: No more snow on late night TV

No more snow on late night TV DYSKEUOMORPHS – anachronistic representations of flawed technologies, such as on-screen clocks that replicate the mechanical juddering of a second hand – fascinate Feedback (10 September 2011) . Tim Cross writes to remind us of a potential recruit to the club: the "snow" on untuned analogue TV sets. As …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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