Subscribe now

This week's magazine

6 December 2014

Issue 2998

New Scientist issue 2998 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

Will remote-controlled robots clean you out of a job?

Technology

Will remote-controlled robots clean you out of a job?

Opinion
Root intelligence: Plants can think, feel and learn

Life

Root intelligence: Plants can think, feel and learn

Features
Cereal killer: Are you eating too much iron?

Health

Cereal killer: Are you eating too much iron?

Features
Join our shoestring mission to find life on Europa

Space

Join our shoestring mission to find life on Europa

Features
The deepest limits: How low can fish go?

Life

The deepest limits: How low can fish go?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Will remote-controlled robots clean you out of a job?

Technology

Will remote-controlled robots clean you out of a job?

Who are you looking at? (Image: Yves Gellie/Picture Tank) "Digital immigrants" in other countries could soon guide robots around your house. Some find that creepy – and that could be just the start of the trouble THE death of distance. That was the great promise of the internet in its early days: by making cheap, …

Opinion

News

Super-safe iodide may save millions from heart disease

Health

Super-safe iodide may save millions from heart disease

The worst damage may actually occur after treatment A common dietary supplement can massively reduce damage to the heart after a heart attack. The effect was seen in mice but if the same is true for humans, it has the potential to transform treatments for the developed world's biggest killer. Heart attacks generally occur because …

News

Life

Lucky strike in search for Earth's most common mineral

News

Life

Zoologger: The rodent with a taste for spines

News

Technology

Social media T&Cs branded as 'meaningless drivel'

News

Technology

Time cloak used to hide messages in laser light

News

Health

Has the brain-zap backlash begun?

News

Life

The smart mouse with the half-human brain

News

Technology

Haptic holograms let you touch the void in VR

News

Health

HIV evolves into less deadly form

News

Health

Ebola burials target met as number of cases plateaus

News

Earth

First carnivorous-plant fossil is 40 million years old

News

Technology

Cleaning bot operators get censored view of your home

News

Online abuse case heard by Supreme Court for first time

News

Tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay to boost flood defences

News

60 Seconds

News

Life

Shell 'art' made 300,000 years before humans evolved

News

Technology

Google and NASA ride D-Wave to a quantum future

News

Earth

Armies of ants keep New York squeaky clean

News

Life

Alien life arrested by climate catch-22

News

Technology

Curious bots make better companions in the classroom

News

Technology

Locked-on lasers burn through leaves on train lines

News

Technology

One Per Cent

News

Life

Genetic analysis confirms Richard III skeleton find

News

Space

Hayabusa 2 probe begins journey to land on an asteroid

News

Space

Spotted: First quadruple star image produced by gravity

News

Space

NASA test launches Orion space capsule for Mars trip

News

Technology

Bulletproof graphene makes ultra-strong body armour

News

Health

'Hug' brain test could diagnose conditions like autism

News

Opinion

What Pacific islanders have taught me about friendship

Life

What Pacific islanders have taught me about friendship

"I'd love to see two Chicago gangs meet in this way on our marae at the Field Museum" Human culture is about survival of the friendliest, says anthropologist John Edward Terrell – and Westerners could learn from more traditional societies You say that friendliness, rather than savageness, is what marks us out as a species... …

Opinion

Earth

Don't drop the two-degree climate target

Opinion

Physics

I'm making science in Africa a numbers game

Opinion

Analysis

AI knows a great sporting moment when it sees one

Technology

AI knows a great sporting moment when it sees one

Computer thinks you want to see this MATCH of the Day, watch out. Computers have already tried their hand at sports commentary , now they're picking highlight clips. Chopping out boring bits from video of sports events – leaving just the goals and penalties in a soccer match, say – is currently the work of …

News

Aperture

Back from the brink: See European beavers at work

Life

Back from the brink: See European beavers at work

(Image: Ingo Arndt/ingoarndt.com) IF YOU believe the legend, Snow White and the seven dwarves lived in the Spessart, a range of wooded low mountains in central Germany – a semi-mythical region that was also home to the brothers Grimm in the 1790s. As well as a source of folklore, it is an important region for …

Regulars

Features

Root intelligence: Plants can think, feel and learn

Life

Root intelligence: Plants can think, feel and learn

With an underground "brain network" and the ability to react and remember, plants have their own kind of intelligence – and may even cry out in pain

Features

Health

Cereal killer: Are you eating too much iron?

Features

Space

Join our shoestring mission to find life on Europa

Features

Life

The deepest limits: How low can fish go?

Features

Culturelab

How we can avert the coming mass extinction

Earth

How we can avert the coming mass extinction

What kind of future faces peoples like the Bushmen of Botswana? (Image: Christophe Courteau/Nature Picture Library/Corbis) From can-do technical fixes to listening to Earth's peoples, there are ways to mitigate our devastation of nature, argue two new books THE end may be nigh, but there are different ways to stave off the extinction of species, …

CultureLab

Life

Too simple minds: Debunking myths about the human brain

CultureLab

Life

The wonders of orchids: Beautiful, smelly and sexy

CultureLab

Technology

The nitty-gritty of killing off WMDs

CultureLab

More

Earth, wind and data: Making sense of our planet

Environment

Earth, wind and data: Making sense of our planet

(Image: Gary Braasch/Corbis) Data scientists must collect, store and find patterns in vast amounts of information about Earth – a job some have termed the "sexiest of the 21st century" What does a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California have to do with climate change? On the face of it, not much. …

Careers

Regulars

Feedback: Weight of evidence of error

Feedback: Weight of evidence of error

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Weight of evidence of error MUPHRY'S Law holds, as regular readers may recall, that whenever one criticises editing or proofreading, there will be a fault in what you have written. It appears to have the power to propagate errors to …

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

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