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This week's magazine

5 October 2024

Issue 3511

New Scientist issue 3511 cover
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Editor's picks

Alice Roberts at NSL

New Scientist Live

A note from the editor about New Scientist Live

News
Why we avoid effort even though it can improve our well-being

Mind

Why we avoid effort even though it can improve our well-being

Features
How to rebuild democracy to truly harness the power of the people

Society

How to rebuild democracy to truly harness the power of the people

Features
The astrophysicist unravelling the origins of supermassive black holes

Space

The astrophysicist unravelling the origins of supermassive black holes

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

Alice Roberts at NSL

New Scientist Live

A note from the editor about New Scientist Live

With just one week to go until the world's greatest festival of ideas and discoveries, New Scientist editor Catherine de Lange reveals what you can expect from the show this year

News

News

Two versions of the same picture, one altered by AI

Technology

AI tweaks to photos and videos can alter our memories

It has become trivially easy to use artificial intelligence to edit images or generate video to remove unwanted objects or beautify scenes, but doing so leads to people misremembering what they have seen

News

Life

Octopuses and fish hunt as a team to catch more prey

News

Environment

Forests became less diverse when ancient people started herding pigs

News

Space

Planet in the 'forbidden zone' of dead star could reveal Earth's fate

News

Humans

AI discovers hundreds of ancient Nazca drawings in Peruvian desert

News

Life

Axolotls seem to pause their biological clocks and stop ageing

News

Space

Search for alien transmissions in promising star system draws a blank

News

Technology

Smart TVs take snapshots of what you watch multiple times per second

News

Environment

Jet contrails may cool the planet by day and warm it by night

News

Health

Pain relief from the placebo effect may not actually involve dopamine

News

Chemistry

Chemists discovered the first new chemical bond in more than a decade

News

Technology

What voice assistants like Alexa know about you – and how they use it

News

Technology

AIs get worse at answering simple questions as they get bigger

News

Environment

Camellia oil could be the greenest cooking oil – and the healthiest

News

Humans

World's oldest cheese found on 3500-year-old Chinese mummies

News

Environment

Jet stream shifts are linked to fires, failed harvests and the plague

News

Health

How much should we worry about the health effects of microplastics?

News

Society

We now know who was cannibalised on the doomed Franklin expedition

News

Health

Map of the immune system changing with age may help optimise vaccines

News

Earth

How 'river piracy' made Mount Everest grow even taller

News

Health

Radioactive ion beam could target tumours more precisely

News

Analysis

Technology

Useful quantum computers are edging closer with recent milestones

Google, Microsoft and others have taken big steps towards error-free devices, hinting that quantum computers that solve real problems aren’t far away

News

Aperture

A dramatic return from space in Kazakhstan

Space

A dramatic return from space in Kazakhstan

Andrew McConnell's otherworldly photograph captures a Russian cosmonaut in front of the just-landed Soyuz MS spacecraft in Kazakhstan's remote grasslands

Regulars

Features

Why we avoid effort even though it can improve our well-being

Mind

Why we avoid effort even though it can improve our well-being

Understanding the “effort paradox” can help you reshape your relationship to exertion so that you commit to those hard but truly meaningful activities

Features

Space

The astrophysicist unravelling the origins of supermassive black holes

Features

Society

How to rebuild democracy to truly harness the power of the people

Features

Culture

Cloud and trees reflections on river Wye with Black mountains background.

Life

It's time to celebrate a renaissance in English nature writing

Musing on John Lewis-Stempel's latest book, England: A natural history, James McConnachie marks the flowering of other, more diverse voices in nature writing

Culture

Space

New Scientist recommends astronomy exhibition Borrowed Light in Berlin

Culture

Technology

Bill Gates's Netflix series offers some dubious ideas about the future

Culture

More

F6M33H RELEASE DATE: Dec 18, 2007. ORIGINAL MOVIE TITLE: Blade Runner: The Final Cut. STUDIO: World Artists. PLOT: Twenty-five years after the initial release of BLADE RUNNER, director Ridley Scott uses archival footage to re-create his original vision for the sci-fi classic. Based on a story by Philip K. Dick, the film is set in Los Angeles in 2019. Earth has become a polluted and miserable dystopia, and many people have fled to live 'Off World' on other planets. This dreary vision of the future features replicants: lifelike robots built as slaves for human use. When a replicant escapes his owner, a

Society

Why we need to fight back against sexy Asian lady robots

Techno-Orientalism is a strand of futurism that condemns and erases Asian cultural power. We need to eradicate it, says Annalee Newitz

Comment

Mind

I am in a rut. Is there a way to regain my zest for life?

Regulars

BrainTwister #40: There are four lights

Regulars

Technology

It's parents who are anxious about smartphones, not their children

Comment

Tom Gauld: Remember this day when my genius blazes across the world

Regulars

Twisteddoodles brings that seasonal feeling to the lab

Regulars

Regulars

Do chickens blush? And if they do, what makes them blush the most?

Do chickens blush? And if they do, what makes them blush the most?

Feedback is pleased to find that researchers are finally exploring if skin redness is a good indication of "the affective state of hens"

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

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