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This week's magazine

4 January 2014

Issue 2950

New Scientist issue 2950 cover
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Editor's picks

Breaking relativity: Celestial signals defy Einstein

Space

Breaking relativity: Celestial signals defy Einstein

Features
Ultrasound killed the surgical star

Technology

Ultrasound killed the surgical star

Features
Pachyderm politics and the powerful female

Life

Pachyderm politics and the powerful female

Features
Land of make-believe: Fake archaeology in paradise

Life

Land of make-believe: Fake archaeology in paradise

Features

Table of contents

News

Flu vaccine helps unravel complex causes of narcolepsy

Health

Flu vaccine helps unravel complex causes of narcolepsy

The Pandemrix vaccine opened a window on the mechanism behind narcolepsy It was as unexpected as it was tragic: children in northern Europe who got one particular vaccine against the 2009 swine flu pandemic were at a much higher risk of developing narcolepsy , a lifelong disorder in which people fall asleep involuntarily and experience …

News

Life

First exomoon glimpsed – 1800 light years from Earth

News

Life

Turning back time: ageing reversed in mice

News

Technology

Try mixed reality, where the virtual and real collide

News

Life

Genetic test screens embryo without disturbing it

News

Earth

Volcanic lightning captured in a bottle

News

Space

Astrophile: Heavy metal asteroid is a spacecraft magnet

News

Space

Christmas Eve spacewalk a success for NASA

News

Electricity use drops as UK passes 'peak light bulb'

News

Life

We want to know meat's origin – but not if it costs

News

Life

Athletes' biological passports will track steroid use

News

60 Seconds

News

Health

Our liver vacation: Is a dry January really worth it?

News

Life

Water plumes spark a race to Jupiter moon Europa

News

Earth

Spray bacteria on the desert to halt its spread

News

Life

Designer plants have vital fish oils in their seeds

News

Space

GPS satellites suggest Earth is heavy with dark matter

News

Life

See half a world and you can't reason about the past

News

Earth

Pacific coral happy as acidity of the ocean rises

News

Health

Mix of hepatitis and pollen blows hay fever away

News

Technology

Collapsing backpack charges gadgets as you walk

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Technology

Log your routine and say goodbye to passwords

News

Life

Ice-loving sea anemones found in Antarctica

News

Physics

Higgs boson could reveal deviant behaviour in 2014

News

Life

Texas repels creationist threat to biology textbooks

News

Technology

ButtonMasher: AI takes on humans to create video game

News

Space

Astrophile: Wrinkles reveal Mercury's rapid slimming

News

Earth

Renewable village offers lifeline to Fukushima farmers

News

Opinion

We have the tools to keep sport free of match-fixing

Technology

We have the tools to keep sport free of match-fixing

The advent of rapid, global online betting could make match-fixing rife. But technology to spot it is better than ever

Opinion

Space

Robots aren't yet ready to work alone in space

Opinion

Health

Killing cancer with fever: An old therapy revisited

Opinion

Health

A break from booze, a break from bad habits

Opinion

Life

Playing make-believe with history is a risky business

Opinion

Life

We don't need to land to find life on Europa

Opinion

Analysis

Virtual tailor measures you up for perfect online shop

Technology

Virtual tailor measures you up for perfect online shop

Body scanners and virtual fitting rooms could solve the common problem of clothes ordered online being too baggy or tight

News

Aperture

Buffalo stance: Broadside of an American icon

Life

Buffalo stance: Broadside of an American icon

(Image: Heidi and Hans-Jurgen Koch) ON HIS deathbed in 1890, Crowfoot, chief of the Siksika Native American tribe, said these last words: "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime." Is there a more iconic American animal than the bison? …

Regulars

Features

Breaking relativity: Celestial signals defy Einstein

Space

Breaking relativity: Celestial signals defy Einstein

Space-time is the fabric of the universe, perhaps of reality itself. But what is it? (Image: Sam Chivers) Strange signals picked up from black holes and distant supernovae suggest there's more to space-time than Einstein believed WE LIVE in an invisible landscape: a landscape that, although we cannot perceive it directly, determines everything that we …

Features

Technology

Ultrasound killed the surgical star

Features

Life

Pachyderm politics and the powerful female

Features

Life

Land of make-believe: Fake archaeology in paradise

Features

Culturelab

Anybody out there? The how and what of alien life

Life

Anybody out there? The how and what of alien life

Artists' impressions of Pluto are all we have until a probe reaches it in 2015 (Image: ESO/L. Calçada) Three new books bring us up to speed on extraterrestrial life, its prospects and possible forms – but it remains "queerer than we can suppose" THERE are some 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, with about …

CultureLab

CultureLab pans for gold in 2014 reads

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

Answer to 1775 Third symphony: The three numbers are 231, 273 and 435 The winner Ian Duff of North Berwick, East Lothian, UK

Regulars

Regulars

Feedback: How many ducks in a row?

Feedback: How many ducks in a row?

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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