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This week's magazine

30 September 2023

Issue 3458

New Scientist issue 3458 cover
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Editor's picks

Delicious Donuts in the Coffee Shop

Scientists tackling the question of free will must take great care

News
file_thumbview_approve.php?size=1&id=18071242

Health

Can we finally reverse balding with these new experimental treatments?

Features
ORDOS, CHINA - JULY 7, 2023 - Citizens use photovoltaic energy from the roof of a shed to charge an electric vehicle at a public parking lot in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, July 7, 2023. Ordos City vigorously promotes the construction of photovoltaic power generation projects on the roofs of administrative institutions, government agencies, schools and public parking sheds. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Environment

How to reach net zero five times faster

Features
Free will

Mind

Free will: Can neuroscience reveal if your choices are yours to make?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Delicious Donuts in the Coffee Shop

Scientists tackling the question of free will must take great care

Biologists join a long line of thinkers and scientists who have investigated free will. They must be wary of a common pitfall: the temptation to seek out evidence that supports pre-existing moral views

News

News

Health

AI could diagnose sleep apnoea by watching you slumber at home

Diagnosing obstructive sleep apnoea generally requires an overnight hospital stay, but an AI model could spot signs of the condition while people sleep at home

News

Health

Vaccine that erases immune memory may help treat multiple sclerosis

News

Technology

Silkworms genetically engineered to produce pure spider silk

News

Mind

Theory of consciousness branded 'pseudoscience' by neuroscientists

News

Life

Young seabird couples get 'divorced' with little immediate benefit

News

Humans

Earliest evidence of buildings made from wood is 476,000 years old

News

Space

NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal asteroid may reveal how Earth formed

News

Technology

Corkscrew-shaped microbot could use sound to spiral through human body

News

Space

We can only predict star motion in the Milky Way’s heart for 462 years

News

Life

Jellyfish can learn from experience even though they lack a brain

News

Mind

Brain damage linked to schizophrenia may spread as condition develops

News

Humans

Prehistoric people in Spain may have made tools from human bones

News

Space

Europa’s underground ocean seems to have the carbon necessary for life

News

Physics

Squeezing loofah sponges creates enough electricity to power LEDs

News

Life

Armour-plated mollusc fluoresces brilliant red-pink

News

Mind

Man who sees upside down provides clues on how we process faces

News

Space

OSIRIS-REx is about to fling samples of the asteroid Bennu at Earth

News

Health

Surgeons perform the second ever pig-to-human heart transplant

News

Space

Samples from asteroid Bennu brought back to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx

News

Space

This is the best place to build a moon base

News

Earth

Nearly all mammals will go extinct in 250 million years as Earth warms

News

Mind

Therapy dogs in classrooms may improve children's well-being

News

Analysis

Environment

Net zero delay won't help when UK is already behind on climate targets

Cutting carbon emissions means replacing the heating systems in homes, transforming transport and greening steel production. All of these will take time, but the UK prime minister has instead chosen to delay the transition

News

Health

Covid boosters: Why are US and UK vaccine policies so different?

News

Technology

How artificial intelligence is helping keep Indigenous languages alive

Comment

Environment

The rules protecting UK wildlife still allow horrifying practices

News

Aperture

Plant microverse. Roots of Arabidopsis thaliana under the fluorescence microscope.

Life

Remarkable images show the intricacy and beauty of common plants

Familiar plants are revealed in exquisite, microscopic detail in these shots from biologist Jan Martinek

Regulars

Features

ORDOS, CHINA - JULY 7, 2023 - Citizens use photovoltaic energy from the roof of a shed to charge an electric vehicle at a public parking lot in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, July 7, 2023. Ordos City vigorously promotes the construction of photovoltaic power generation projects on the roofs of administrative institutions, government agencies, schools and public parking sheds. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Environment

How to reach net zero five times faster

Outdated economic theories and a poor grasp of worst-case scenarios are behind our failure to curb carbon emissions, says climate policy expert Simon Sharpe – but it isn't too late to change tack

Features

Health

Can we finally reverse balding with these new experimental treatments?

Features

Mind

Free will: Can neuroscience reveal if your choices are yours to make?

Features

Culture

Camilla Nord

Health

Camilla Nord interview: A personalised approach to mental health

Neuroscientist Camilla Nord, who has just published her first book The Balanced Brain, tells Liz Else why mental health science is increasingly about what works for individuals – from psychedelic therapy to exercise regimes

Culture

Comment

Life and Language Beyond Earth review: How aliens might communicate

Culture

Comment

New Scientist recommends The Retrievals and Ben Smith's Traffic

Culture

Comment

Still Up review: Insomnia rom com is worth staying up for

Culture

More

JHPTR7 Bumblebee on Cornflower 'Blue Diadem'.

Environment

Gardening with 'native' plants isn't always better for the environment

The idea that native plants are better than “non-natives” has more to do with cultural bias than scientific evidence, says James Wong

Regulars

Puzzle #241: Help Prince Golightly escape, and win our puzzle book

Regulars

Tom Gauld on the best way to ask a supercomputer for help

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on Lab Life, a magazine for the break room

Regulars

Regulars

A non-standard approach to celebrating World Standards Day

A non-standard approach to celebrating World Standards Day

Feedback ponders the logic behind the choice to mark World Standards Day on different occasions, depending on where you live, as well as looking into sheep counting, and the workings of the middle ear muscle

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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