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This week's magazine

28 September 2019

Issue 3249

New Scientist issue 3249 cover
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Editor's picks

Giving nature human rights could be the best way to protect the planet

Earth

Giving nature human rights could be the best way to protect the planet

News
The story of how humans got to the Americas isn’t a simple one

Humans

The story of how humans got to the Americas isn’t a simple one

News
Deliver us from evil: How biology, not religion, made humans moral

Humans

Deliver us from evil: How biology, not religion, made humans moral

Features
Screen time: How smartphones really affect our bodies and brains

Technology

Screen time: How smartphones really affect our bodies and brains

Features
The first Americans: The untold story of the pioneers of the New World

Humans

The first Americans: The untold story of the pioneers of the New World

Features
Helen Sharman: First British astronaut speaks out on science, climate

Space

Helen Sharman: First British astronaut speaks out on science, climate

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

The story of how humans got to the Americas isn’t a simple one

Humans

The story of how humans got to the Americas isn’t a simple one

The New World wasn’t conquered by a single group of people - different populations migrated and interbred in a tangled web. This is the new normal for human evolution

News

News

A shrunken world

Mind

Man sees the world in miniature after a stroke damages his brain

A man whose brain was damaged by a stroke now sees all objects and people about a third smaller than their actual size. The 66-year-old had a stroke in December 2017 that cut off oxygen to the back right of his brain . Afterwards, he noticed that everything appeared strangely smaller than normal. For example, …

News

Life

Whales evolved large brains in the same way that we did

News

Health

Radio waves from electric devices may affect the body clock of insects

News

Technology

Fast swimming fish robot could perform underwater surveillance

News

Environment

Climate change will boost risk of extreme flooding in northern Europe

News

Life

Frogs evolved to be more scared after mongooses came to their island

News

Life

The US and Canada have lost three billion birds since 1970

News

Humans

This is almost certainly not what Denisovans looked like

News

Mathematics

Mathematicians find a completely new way to write the number 3

News

Space

Saturn's moon Enceladus is having a snowball fight with other moons

News

Health

AI is learning to diagnose schizophrenia from a smartphone video

News

Health

A hat that zaps the scalp with electricity helps reverse male balding

News

Space

Some planets may orbit a supermassive black hole instead of a star

News

Technology

Autonomous killer drones set to be used by Turkey in Syria

News

Technology

Robots, uranium dioxide, fly food: What UK scientists are stockpiling

News

Health

Herpes vaccine to be tested in humans after best result yet in animals

News

Health

UK families in buyers club fly to Argentina for cystic fibrosis drugs

News

Space

Weird galaxies suggest our best understanding of the cosmos is wrong

News

Physics

Google claims it has finally reached quantum supremacy

News

Environment

Greta Thunberg: You have stolen my childhood with your empty words

News

Humans

Prehistoric baby bottles found in Bronze and Iron Age sites in Germany

News

Analysis

Burning rainforest

Environment

Beef-eating consumers are helping drive Amazon deforestation

Fires in the Amazon are sometimes started deliberately to clear land for ranches BRAZIL’s president Jair Bolsonaro has been called “Captain Chainsaw” for his rhetoric about the need to exploit resources in the Amazon. Many see this as the impetus for the rocketing deforestation and ensuing fires in the rainforest this year. But there is another side to …

News

Earth

Giving nature human rights could be the best way to protect the planet

News

Comment

Should people with mental health conditions be drugged to stand trial?

News

Comment

Ancient grains are misnamed and their health benefits are unconfirmed

News

Aperture

Dinosaurs go goth horror for unusual outing at London exhibition

Life

Dinosaurs go goth horror for unusual outing at London exhibition

Photographer Christian Voigt LURCHING out of the gloom like something from a gothic horror movie, this otherworldly creature is a 66-million-year-old dinosaur called Euoplocephalus . Like its relative Ankylosaurus , it was a heavily armoured herbivore with a club-like defensive tail. It was over 5 metres long and weighed around 2.5 tonnes. The specimen resides …

Regulars

Features

The first Americans: The untold story of the pioneers of the New World

Humans

The first Americans: The untold story of the pioneers of the New World

The Americas were the last continents conquered by humanity. Now we know that those who settled there were a hardy group that first had to survive in the Arctic

Features

Technology

Screen time: How smartphones really affect our bodies and brains

Features

Space

Helen Sharman: First British astronaut speaks out on science, climate

Features

Humans

Deliver us from evil: How biology, not religion, made humans moral

Features

Culture

Bill Bryson's new book celebrates the miraculous human body

Humans

Bill Bryson's new book celebrates the miraculous human body

Forget disease and frailty. Bill Bryson’s new book, The Body: A guide for occupants, is a hymn to the way the things inside us just work without us telling them to

Culture

Life

Don't miss: Computer collage, global gold and orbital capital

Culture

Humans

The Institute by Stephen King leads a revolutionary sci-fi reboot

Culture

More

How to find the North Star and Southern Cross

Space

How to find the North Star and Southern Cross

In the next in our stargazing series, learn to navigate by the stars by finding Polaris in the north, or using the Southern Cross to find the South Pole

Regulars

New Scientist quick crossword #41

Regulars

New Scientist puzzle #23: Circling the squares

Regulars

Technology

Real-life Iron Man on what it's like to fly a Jet Suit

Regulars

New Scientist Live

New Scientist Live 2019 highlights: Aliens, jet packs and Homo naledi

New Scientist Promotions

Upgradeable Aircraft

bae-systems

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.

Revealed: What Margaret Thatcher really thinks about Brexit

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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