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This week's magazine

29 September 2012

Issue 2884

New Scientist issue 2884 cover
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Editor's picks

Busted! The myth of technological progress

Earth

Busted! The myth of technological progress

Features
Reality: The definition

Reality: The definition

Features
Reality: The bedrock of it all

Physics

Reality: The bedrock of it all

Features
Reality: Is matter real?

Physics

Reality: Is matter real?

Features
Reality: Is everything made of numbers?

Physics

Reality: Is everything made of numbers?

Features
Reality: A universe of information

Physics

Reality: A universe of information

Features
Reality: How does consciousness fit in?

Life

Reality: How does consciousness fit in?

Features
Reality: How can we know it exists?

Life

Reality: How can we know it exists?

Features
Reality: The future

Physics

Reality: The future

Features

Table of contents

News

ancient filling in a tooth

Health

Oldest dental filling is found in a Stone Age tooth

Some chippings with round and smooth edges are present on the occlusal buccal margin of tooth This article is being made free to view thanks to sponsorship from P&G You may not want to try this at home. A simple wax cap that was applied to a broken tooth 6500 years ago is the oldest …

News

Earth

Weird waves help model tsunamis' destructive potential

News

Space

Asteroid Vesta's hydrogen suggests water-delivery role

News

Life

Vampire squid from hell eats faeces to survive depths

News

Earth

Climate change already harming the global economy

News

Earth

Poll deals climate change blow for Mitt Romney

News

Health

Threatwatch: New killer virus in the Middle East

News

Space

California space law boosts business, not safety

News

Health

Can castration really prolong a man's life?

News

Life

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes slip through the net

News

Mind

Russian chemist faces trial over expert testimony

News

Earth

Storm over genetically modified maize study worsens

News

60 Seconds

News

Health

Ageing cells offer new target for Alzheimer's therapy

News

Earth

Causality test could help preserve the natural world

News

Life

Burn victim identified by maggots on body

News

Earth

Earth cracking up under Indian Ocean

News

Space

Space surgery possible with zero-gravity tool

News

Space

Solar maximum? Oh, you just missed it

News

Life

Crustaceans hide their true age in stomach

News

Technology

Atomic clocks get a grip on gravity

News

Technology

Cheap 'postage stamp' test monitors liver health

News

Technology

GPS workaround helps make dumb phones smart

News

Technology

Snakes on a plane slither in engines

News

Life

Jazz-singing robot could shed light on consciousness

News

Technology

Home prenatal scans help keep babies safe

News

Opinion

Getting down with the cavenauts in training

Space

Getting down with the cavenauts in training

Into the darkness Sometimes astronauts head to the most unlikely places to train for the rigours of space, as NASA's Andrew Feustel reveals You just emerged from six days in a cave in Sardinia, Italy. Why were you down there? I was training with an international team of astronauts. The idea was for them to …

Opinion

The US presidential election is no contest

Opinion

Cause test could end up in court

Opinion

Technology

The Singularity is upon us? Not so fast

Opinion

Reality: ineffable, but impossible to forsake

Opinion

Space

Physicist: 'I carried a gun. And learned calculus'

Opinion

Analysis

Graphics chips are for more than just eye candy

Technology

Graphics chips are for more than just eye candy

Processing the cosmos CHANCES are there is a graphics chip in your desktop computer, and it is fuelling a revolution. These chips, called GPUs, have of late been co-opted from their original use in giving video games their impressive visuals. Their talent for parallel processing is helping to speed up everything from medical imaging to …

News

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.

Beak-a-boo: Birds have their portraits taken

See more: To see the image this article refers to, keep checking Picture of the Day on our news blog Short Sharp Science

Regulars

Features

Busted! The myth of technological progress

Earth

Busted! The myth of technological progress

The history of technology holds some salutary lessons for anyone who blithely believes there is a high-tech fix for all our 21st-century problems

Features

Reality: The definition

Features

Physics

Reality: The bedrock of it all

Features

Physics

Reality: Is matter real?

Features

Physics

Reality: Is everything made of numbers?

Features

Physics

Reality: A universe of information

Features

Life

Reality: How does consciousness fit in?

Features

Life

Reality: How can we know it exists?

Features

Physics

Reality: The future

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.

Top 10 most influential popular science books

See more: An illustrated version of this article will be published within the next two weeks on our CultureLab books and arts blog

CultureLab

Humans

How do you make a good prediction?

CultureLab

Earth

Will we save the planet to be happy?

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 1717

On the beach Clearing my attic, I found my old 8mm cine-projector and films of our children. It still worked. The film moves through the projecting gate at an essentially constant speed from the stock spool to an identical take-up spool. The empty spool has a 4-centimetre diameter and the spool when full has a …

Regulars

Welcome to the Graduate Careers Special

Careers

Your personal job consultation

Careers

10 questions every grad should know the answers to…

Careers

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: Ig Nobel prize for dead fish

Ig Nobel prize for dead fish FEEDBACK's favourite prizes, the Ig Nobels, were handed out on 20 September in a packed ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre. Their goal is to make people laugh, then think. Feedback is proud to say that we spotted one Ig Nobel winner in advance. The neuroscience prize honours the …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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