Subscribe now

This week's magazine

7 September 2013

Issue 2933

New Scientist issue 2933 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

Voices from the past: Ancient secrets in today's words

Life

Voices from the past: Ancient secrets in today's words

Features
Penal code: The coming world of trial by algorithm

Technology

Penal code: The coming world of trial by algorithm

Features
Chance inheritance: The subtle power of birth order

Life

Chance inheritance: The subtle power of birth order

Features
Higgs boson: Why do we need it?

Physics

Higgs boson: Why do we need it?

Features
Higgs boson: A discovery

Physics

Higgs boson: A discovery

Features
Higgs boson: What's next?

Physics

Higgs boson: What's next?

Features
Higgs boson: At a crossroads

Physics

Higgs boson: At a crossroads

Features

Table of contents

News

Vast canyon discovered under Greenland ice sheet

Earth

Vast canyon discovered under Greenland ice sheet

Video: Fly through the canyon A 3-D view of the hidden canyon Hidden beneath the thick layers of ice that smother Greenland, there is a valley to rival the Grand Canyon. At almost twice the length of Arizona's landmark, the canyon once carried a river as large as any in Europe, until it was buried …

News

Life

Whooping cranes learn migration from wise elders

News

Space

Astrophile: Milky Way's black hole is a picky eater

News

Technology

Bio-inspired speaker uses clear gel to play music

News

Life

Poverty can sap people's ability to think clearly

News

Health

Steep rise in drug harm – opioids the most deadly

News

Life

Whales tan too, basking in the big blue

News

Earth

Victorian skiing holidays melted Alpine glaciers

News

Life

Skin-eating fungus is wiping out fire salamanders

News

Technology

Wristband unlocks your devices with your heartbeat

News

Technology

How the US may try to destroy Syria's chemical weapons

News

Space

Hobbyists tracked US spy satellites leaked by Snowden

News

Earth

Japan will build wall of ice to stem Fukushima leak

News

Earth

Fracking chemical leak kills threatened fish

News

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Stop global warming and save biodiversity? Yes, we can

News

Health

Your genomic future: Personalised medicine is here

News

Space

Death by Higgs rids cosmos of space brain threat

News

Martian chemistry was friendlier to life

News

Health

Wrap brain in antibiotic film to protect after surgery

News

Technology

Frugal science gets DIY diagnostics to world's poorest

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

The rare red kites that keep blogs about their flights

News

Space

NASA orbiter will use laser to bring broadband to moon

News

Health

Brain gyms can work – if they train one skill at a time

News

Opinion

Mind into matter: Where we end and the world begins

Life

Mind into matter: Where we end and the world begins

The objects we use are part of our minds, argues a cognitive archaeologist

Opinion

Health

The right to genetic ignorance

Opinion

Earth

Biodiversity: Keep fighting the good fight

Opinion

Space

'Boring' Higgs has powers we never dreamed of

Opinion

Technology

Why a cyberwar won't happen

Opinion

Technology

Forget roads – drones are the future of goods transport

Opinion

Analysis

Future factories let workers build a car from home

Technology

Future factories let workers build a car from home

Machines that can be controlled over the internet open up the possibility of factory workers joining the home-working revolution

News

Aperture

Moth-hunters prowling the English countryside

Life

Moth-hunters prowling the English countryside

(Image: Dan Kitwood/Getty) A group of amateur lepidopterists, clustering around a lantern, inadvertently mimic the animals they are studying. Their home-made light source uses a mercury-vapour bulb and a piece of white fabric to draw moths into a non-lethal trap. There are some 2500 species of moth in the UK, and only 60 or so …

Regulars

Features

Voices from the past: Ancient secrets in today's words

Life

Voices from the past: Ancient secrets in today's words

Genome-cracking tools are helping us pull the past from modern languages, revealing ancient origins, migrations and relationships

Features

Technology

Penal code: The coming world of trial by algorithm

Features

Life

Chance inheritance: The subtle power of birth order

Features

Physics

Higgs boson: Why do we need it?

Features

Physics

Higgs boson: A discovery

Features

Physics

Higgs boson: What's next?

Features

Physics

Higgs boson: At a crossroads

Features

Culturelab

Play your way to evolutionary fitness

Life

Play your way to evolutionary fitness

Fun stuff: children might need play so they can become creative as adults (Image: Aldo Sperber/Picturetank) No one is exactly sure why humans and animals play, but Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin propose an answer in Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation BEFORE their first pregnancy, young female chimps often play with logs, cuddling them like …

CultureLab

Life

Giraffes look gorgeous, even in decline

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 1765

Repeating digits I have before me some positive whole numbers, each consisting of a single digit, which may be repeated. The digit is different for each number, and the number of times it is repeated is also different for each number. The sum of my numbers is a number in which each digit is larger …

Regulars

Chemists' clever fakes are better than nature

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: God Particles for sale

Feedback: God Particles for sale

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more God Particles for sale "SINCE the beginning of time, mankind has sought to fully understand the laws by which our universe works," it says on the website we're reading. This site hails the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which it …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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