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This week's magazine

3 July 2021

Issue 3341

New Scientist issue 3341 cover
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Editor's picks

New fossil finds show we are far from understanding how humans evolved

Humans

New fossil finds show we are far from understanding how humans evolved

News
The 7 primes of life: Why each decade comes with its own superpowers

Humans

The 7 primes of life: Why each decade comes with its own superpowers

Features
Engineered immunity: Redesigning antibodies to better fight disease

Health

Engineered immunity: Redesigning antibodies to better fight disease

Features
Can a new collider reveal the last secrets of the Higgs boson?

Physics

Can a new collider reveal the last secrets of the Higgs boson?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

New fossil finds show we are far from understanding how humans evolved

Humans

New fossil finds show we are far from understanding how humans evolved

LAST week saw the announcement of not one but two groups of ancient humans, both new to science, and there is no reason to think the discoveries will stop any time soon. In Israel, a team of researchers discovered bones from a member of a population that apparently lived in the area between 420,000 and …

News

News

Aliens orbiting 1402 stars near Earth could be looking at us right now

Space

Aliens orbiting 1402 stars near Earth could be looking at us right now

Is anyone out there discovering Earth right now? Aliens could be watching us. A survey of the star systems within about 325 light years of Earth has found that 1715 of them have been or will be in the right position to spot our planet with the same techniques we use to find exoplanets, and 75 …

News

Life

We may finally know how migrating birds sense Earth's magnetic field

News

Health

Early dementia more likely to impact Black and Hispanic people in US

News

Life

Dinosaurs lived in the Arctic around 70 million years ago

News

Space

We finally know when the first stars in the universe switched on

News

Technology

GPS cyberattack falsely placed UK warship near Russian naval base

News

Environment

Controversial geoengineering scheme will dump iron in the sea

News

Space

The clouds of Venus are too dry to support life as we know it

News

Technology

AI clears up images of fingerprints to help with identification

News

Space

Clays found in Martian crater hint that the planet was once habitable

News

Technology

AIs don't understand simple physics like a ball rolling down a hill

News

Health

New form of liver dialysis could help people with failed organ recover

News

Health

Inflatable implant injected into the spine could relieve chronic pain

News

Life

Male birds’ feathers become duller when wildfires burn their habitats

News

Health

How do covid-19 vaccines affect your periods? Here's what we know

News

Space

Jupiter's strange atmosphere may have formed in a gigantic shadow

News

Health

Delta variant on track to become dominant cause of covid-19 globally

News

Environment

Meerkats in zoos don’t put as much effort into social niceties

News

Physics

Steel foil coated with nanowires does backflips out of water

News

Space

Rare supernova could help us understand the Milky Way’s ancient halo

News

Health

Brain changes from covid-19 may impact consciousness and cognition

News

Analysis

The hunt for extraterrestrial life is about to enter a new era

Space

The hunt for extraterrestrial life is about to enter a new era

IT IS only human to look up at the night sky and wonder if we are alone . Is our planet the lucky one in a trillion that has life? Or is the cosmos filled with other lifeforms? Although we have been looking for signs of extraterrestrial life for years, the search is soon going …

News

Environment

The dream of a greener post-pandemic society seems to be fizzling out

News

Aperture

Amazing surfing sharks image shows how currents help them save energy

Life

Amazing surfing sharks image shows how currents help them save energy

Photographer Laurent Ballesta THE grey reef sharks in this shot seem to be just hanging in the water in a behaviour never reported before in these animals. Working in an international team of researchers, Laurent Ballesta at Andromede Oceanology in France snapped this cohort of grey reef sharks ( Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos ) in the South …

Regulars

Features

Engineered immunity: Redesigning antibodies to better fight disease

Health

Engineered immunity: Redesigning antibodies to better fight disease

Antibodies are a vital weapon in our immune system's arsenal. Now we can redesign them like never before to boost our ability to fight cancer and viruses like HIV, says immunologist Daniel M. Davis

Features

Physics

Can a new collider reveal the last secrets of the Higgs boson?

Features

Humans

The 7 primes of life: Why each decade comes with its own superpowers

Features

Culture

Jungle review: How tropical forests helped shape human evolution

Humans

Jungle review: How tropical forests helped shape human evolution

Humans have lived in tropical forests for thousands of years Jungle: How tropical forests shaped the world – and us Patrick Roberts Viking FOR many of the people reading this, tropical forests are remote places. A few may have visited the Amazon on holiday, or ventured into the Bornean rainforests to see orangutans, but for …

Culture

Technology

Bakelite made the 20th century, but the plastic's legacy is sobering

Culture

Humans

Don't Miss: Biohackers returns to Netflix for season 2

Culture

Humans

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is joyful sci-fi reading

Culture

More

Puzzle #120: Will Ann or Bob win this unusual game of Catch up?

Puzzle #120: Will Ann or Bob win this unusual game of Catch up?

You may remember "Catch up" (9 January), played with a set of toy brick stacks. In "Catch up 4", the stacks are 1, 2, 3, and 4 bricks high. Players Ann and Bob begin with no stacks. Ann starts by choosing a stack, which becomes her tower. Then Bob, picks a stack or stacks and …

Regulars

How to make the world’s best barbecue this summer

Regulars

Tom Gauld: 'How are you getting on with de-liquefication?'

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on if babies wrote scientific articles

Regulars

Regulars

The missing link: rise of the PR agent with a smattering of hypertext

The missing link: rise of the PR agent with a smattering of hypertext

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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