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This week's magazine

16 November 2013

Issue 2943

New Scientist issue 2943 cover
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Editor's picks

Primeval planet: What if humans had never existed?

Earth

Primeval planet: What if humans had never existed?

Features
The man who weighed thoughts

Life

The man who weighed thoughts

Features
Summon the bee bots: Can flying robots save our crops?

Earth

Summon the bee bots: Can flying robots save our crops?

Features
Written in blood: Your life history in just one drop

Life

Written in blood: Your life history in just one drop

Features

Table of contents

News

Alga takes first evolutionary leap to multicellularity

Life

Alga takes first evolutionary leap to multicellularity

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii : no longer single A single-celled alga has evolved a crude form of multicellularity in the lab – a configuration it never adopts in nature – giving researchers a chance to replay one of life's most important evolutionary leaps in real time. This is the second time researchers have coaxed a single-celled organism …

News

Life

Oldest sex fossil shows bugs did it missionary style

News

Life

Monkey controls two virtual arms with thoughts alone

News

Technology

Sewage-powered bot beats blockages with printed heart

News

Space

Sunny fix would let defunct Kepler hunt planets again

News

Space

Astrophile: Dying asteroid is a six-tailed beast

News

Life

Genetic clue to high heart risk of black Americans

News

Health

Listen up: new tool to help people who are locked in

News

Life

Threatwatch: Is Syria's polio a danger to Europe?

News

Life

Meteor impact trapped ancient swamp plants in glass

News

Life

Himalayan fossils point to Asian origin of big cats

News

Earth

Philippines begs for action at climate summit

News

Health

UK mums offered vouchers in return for breastfeeding

News

Earth

Social media helps aid efforts after typhoon Haiyan

News

Space

India's first mission to Mars recovers from glitch

News

Life

Zoologger: Sea slugs stab partners in head during sex

News

Earth

Ban on discarding unwanted catch won't save fisheries

News

Life

Alien life may flourish on purple planets

News

Life

Options running out for the US death penalty

News

Earth

Air pollution blights London life

News

Health

World's largest cancer database launched

News

Environment

60 Seconds

News

Earth

Get off the carbon train soon or the world is stuffed

News

Life

World's oldest string found at French Neanderthal site

News

Life

Musical mind-reading can name that tune

News

Health

Exercise in pregnancy boosts baby brain development

News

Technology

Hacked Google Glass recognises finger gestures

News

Technology

How open data empowers citizens of poorer nations

News

Technology

Unmask Wikipedia sock puppets by the way they write

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Can a computer virus communicate via your speakers?

News

Life

Is it a sloth? Is it a camel? No, it's a dinosaur

News

Opinion

Noise is the key to quantum computing

Physics

Noise is the key to quantum computing

Discord, a controversial measure of quantumness, could unlock the potential of quantum technologies

Opinion

Technology

Don't let internet companies hoard the wealth of big data

Opinion

Earth

Natural disasters don't have to be human disasters

Opinion

Technology

Why string is one of the greatest inventions

Opinion

Life

Too much, too young: Should schooling start at age 7?

Opinion

Technology

Kick the data secrecy habit and everyone wins

Opinion

Aperture

Haiyan from space: See typhoon as it hit Philippines

Earth

Haiyan from space: See typhoon as it hit Philippines

(Image: Japan Meteorological Agency and EUMETSAT) EVEN from 36,000 kilometres above Earth, typhoon Haiyan makes an unmissable impact. The storm crashed through the central islands of the Philippines on 8 November . Probably the strongest recorded typhoon ever to make landfall, Haiyan can be seen to the right in this composite image from satellites operated …

Regulars

Features

Primeval planet: What if humans had never existed?

Earth

Primeval planet: What if humans had never existed?

A planet without humans? IMAGINE for a moment that the last 125,000 years of Earth's history exist somewhere on a tape – a thick, old-fashioned ribbon loaded between two metal drums. With every second that passes, more tape slowly unspools from one drum and is wound onto the other. Now suppose it's possible to stop …

Features

Life

The man who weighed thoughts

Features

Earth

Summon the bee bots: Can flying robots save our crops?

Features

Life

Written in blood: Your life history in just one drop

Features

Culturelab

The shaman's-eye view: A Yanomami verdict on us

Life

The shaman's-eye view: A Yanomami verdict on us

Davi Kopenawa hopes to overturn prejudices towards his people (Image: Vincent Rosenblatt/Camera Press) In The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman , Davi Kopenawa looks from the other side of the anthropological lens – and the result is a literary treasure STORIES are quilts. They are patches of brightness sewn together by narratives. And …

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 1775

Third symphony I have in mind three numbers. Each is a multiple of 3 and consists of three different non-zero digits, just one of which is 3. For each of these numbers individually, three of the following six statements are true and three are false. 1) It is the product of three different numbers, each …

Regulars

Engineers take skyscrapers to new heights

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Mega devaluation

Feedback: Mega devaluation

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Mega devaluation "MEGA" as a prefix seems to be suffering devaluation. James Kennedy saw a sign at a BP outlet offering "50 million megapoints" on the Nectar scheme. We find the same incentive on a website called hotukdeals.com – though …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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