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This week's magazine

29 February 2020

Issue 3271

New Scientist issue 3271 cover
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Editor's picks

How everyone decided trees will save the planet – and why they won’t

Earth

How everyone decided trees will save the planet – and why they won’t

News
Coronavirus is a pandemic in all but name as the infection goes global

Health

Coronavirus is a pandemic in all but name as the infection goes global

News
Ancient viruses buried in our DNA may reawaken and cause illness

Health

Ancient viruses buried in our DNA may reawaken and cause illness

Features
People who get lost in the wild follow strangely predictable paths

Mind

People who get lost in the wild follow strangely predictable paths

Features
landscape artwork

Physics

The antimatter factory about to solve the universe's greatest mystery

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Coronavirus is a pandemic in all but name as the infection goes global

Health

Coronavirus is a pandemic in all but name as the infection goes global

With outbreaks of covid-19 hitting Italy, Iran and South Korea, the World Health Organization's reluctance to label the spread of the virus a pandemic seems odd

News

News

neanderthal bones

Humans

70,000-year-old remains suggest Neanderthals buried their dead

This Neanderthal was deliberately buried between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago Neanderthals really did bury their dead. Archaeologists in Iraq have discovered a new Neanderthal skeleton that appears to have been deliberately buried around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. “We are quite confident,” says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge. The first evidence that …

News

Life

Watch tadpoles breathe by sucking in air bubbles at water's surface

News

Health

CRISPR safety switch can make cells self-destruct if they go rogue

News

Technology

Hunt through satellite images of Earth with an AI search engine

News

Technology

AI could help make fast-charging, long-lasting electric car batteries

News

Life

Some ants disinfect food by drinking the acid they spray at enemies

News

Life

Blue tits learn to avoid gross food by watching videos of other birds

News

Life

Cretaceous insect discovered with extremely weird antennae

News

Environment

Australia bush fires burned a globally unprecedented area of forest

News

Space

A wobbling star may explain pattern of weird radio signals from space

News

Technology

Robots are taking manufacturing jobs but making firms more productive

News

Health

We now know how much our genes influence the risk of contracting HIV

News

Life

Earliest known cave-dwelling animal is a 99-million-year-old cockroach

News

Space

A planet could have been stolen from the solar system as it formed

News

Space

Five things we have learned about Mars from NASA's InSight mission

News

Life

Solar storms may interfere with the ability of whales to navigate

News

Health

Covid-19: Our chance to contain the coronavirus may already be over

News

Environment

We really can control the weather - but it may not be very useful

News

Environment

Svalbard doomsday vault gets first big seed deposit since upgrade

News

Mind

Exclusive: Brain scans used to read minds of intensive care patients

News

Analysis

Cobalt mining

Technology

Can we quit cobalt batteries fast enough to make electric cars viable?

Most of the world's cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Electric cars are getting cheaper and their sales are on the rise, but their future success may depend on ditching a key ingredient: the heavy metal cobalt. The mineral is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars, and demand …

News

Environment

Keep raising money to save the pandas - it helps other animals too

News

Environment

E-scooters are a disaster for cities – but we must embrace them

News

Space

The atmosphere gets in the way of the universe’s most amazing objects

News

Earth

How everyone decided trees will save the planet – and why they won’t

News

Aperture

Differentiating-brain-cancer-cells_web

Health

Close-up image of brain cancer cells wins photography prize

Differentiating brain cancer cells For the past three years, cancer researchers at two of the UK’s leading institutes have been showcasing the unexpectedly beautiful side of their work  through a special award . Staff from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, both in London, submitted the images they …

Regulars

Features

Ancient viruses buried in our DNA may reawaken and cause illness

Health

Ancient viruses buried in our DNA may reawaken and cause illness

Stress or infection may prompt viruses hidden in our genome to stagger back to life, contributing to some cases of multiple sclerosis, diabetes and schizophrenia

Features

Mind

People who get lost in the wild follow strangely predictable paths

Features

Physics

The antimatter factory about to solve the universe's greatest mystery

Features

Culture

Wondering on alien planets is part of the fun o game playing is

Space

Journey to the Savage Planet review: It's wacky but not in a good way

There’s nothing like crash-landing on an alien planet. Journey to the Savage Planet doesn't always get it right, but it has echoes of classic Metroid Prime, says Jacob Aron

Culture

Technology

Will Instagram filters alter our view of beauty and who we are?

Culture

Humans

Don't miss: Netflix's Altered Carbon, Reply All and our future fossils

Culture

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.

Mind

Learning whilst you sleep was big business in the Soviet Union

“Sleep-learning,” we observed half a century ago “is big business in the Soviet Union.” A slew of studies, experiments and trials from behind the Iron Curtain showed an enthusiasm for pumping information, such as lists of foreign words, into people whilst they were asleep

Regulars

Sponsored

New Scientist survey shows science jobs are long and fulfilling

Advertising

Humans

Make kimchi at home by cultivating a friendly microbial ecosystem

Regulars

New Scientist puzzle #48: Seeing red

Regulars

Tom Gauld is forever trying to draw a stone being pushed up a hill

Regulars

Twisteddoodles plots the graphs that appear in the news

Regulars

Humans

How I went from selling MDMA to researching the science of its effects

Regulars

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.

Sneaking a cryptic crossword clue into a headline

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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