Subscribe now

This week's magazine

7 June 2025

Issue 3546

New Scientist issue 3546 cover
Previous issue
arrow
Subscribe
Access our magazine content direct via our website, app or print magazine
arrow
View in the app
Check out this magazine in our easy-to-navigate mobile app
arrow
Buy this issue in print
You can purchase our magazines on back-issue from the last 4 months
arrow
Find a previous edition online
Search through our digital archive of over 30 years of magazines

Editor's picks

AYMTTG A man looks at a display in the Hall of Biodiversity American Museum of Natural History

Life

Why avoiding a sixth mass extinction is easier than it sounds

Comment
Discovering the marvels of mucus is inspiring amazing new medicines

Health

Discovering the marvels of mucus is inspiring amazing new medicines

Features
There’s growing evidence the big five mass extinctions never happened

Life

There’s growing evidence the big five mass extinctions never happened

Features
A woman in a green top surveys some supermarket ailes

Health

Do corporations actually have more control over your health than you?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

AYMTTG A man looks at a display in the Hall of Biodiversity American Museum of Natural History

Life

Why avoiding a sixth mass extinction is easier than it sounds

Putting an end to a mass extinction sounds like an impossible task, but some researchers argue that doing so would be setting our ambitions too low

Comment

News

Physics

Do we have free will? Quantum experiments may soon reveal the answer

Whether or not we have partial free will could soon be resolved by experiments in quantum physics, with potential consequences for everything from religion to quantum computers

News

Humans

Medieval woman was executed and displayed on London riverbank

News

Life

Fossils show puzzling lack of evolution during last ice age peak

News

Environment

Test of AI weather forecasts shows they miss extreme storms

News

Health

How fast you age is dictated by your sex, ethnicity and education

News

Humans

Humans were crafting tools from whale bones 20,000 years ago

News

Humans

We’re about to unlock the secrets of ancient human brains

News

Space

Was Planet Nine exiled from the solar system as a baby?

News

Life

We’re getting close to recreating the first step in evolution of life

News

Technology

Qubit breakthrough could make it easier to build quantum computers

News

Mathematics

You can make fair dice from any shape you like

News

Life

First evidence of ancient birds nesting above the Arctic circle

News

Humans

Before the Great Wall, Chinese rulers built a shallow ditch

News

Environment

Hurricanes aren't cooling off future storms as much as they once did

News

Space

Amazing images reveal new details in the sun's atmosphere

News

Health

PTSD in 9/11 responders didn’t start improving for nearly a decade

News

Technology

Any wall can be turned into a camera to see around corners

News

Space

Peer into the early universe as light bends around huge galaxy cluster

News

Analysis

Health

Cord blood banking is not living up to its promise

Banking a baby’s umbilical cord blood was once seen as a reasonable way to protect their future health, but much of that potential has turned out to be mere hype

News

Environment

At this rate, carbon dioxide removal will never matter for the climate

News

Space

Will SpaceX’s Starship rocket ever work – and what if it doesn’t?

News

Aperture

Clare Hewitt: Everything in the forest is the forest Oak leaf lumen prints exposed to the sun on the forest floor

Life

Dazzling oak leaf prints merge science and nature

Artist Clare Hewitt uses fallen oak leaves and sunlight to create her works of art before returning the leaves to the forest

Regulars

Features

A woman in a green top surveys some supermarket ailes

Health

Do corporations actually have more control over your health than you?

From the food on supermarket shelves to the air we breathe, large companies exert a greater impact on our health than we might realise, argues health scientist Tracey Woodruff

Features

Life

There’s growing evidence the big five mass extinctions never happened

Features

Health

Discovering the marvels of mucus is inspiring amazing new medicines

Features

Culture

Dane physicist Niels Bohr, pictured in his laboratory, received the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the structure of atoms.

Physics

Ambitious book on quantum physics still fails to be accessible

A new book on quantum physics is pleasingly full of cutting-edge topics. Yet it isn't the accessible work it promised to be

Culture

Mathematics

Why exploring "equality" in a new maths book may help the real world

Culture

Humans

New Scientist recommends Tutankhamun: The immersive exhibition

Culture

Space

Life of first US woman in space Sally Ride makes a moving documentary

Culture

More

Sentinel-5 seafloor scene

Environment

Could undersea living be the future as sea levels rise?

In this latest instalment of Future Chronicles, an imagined history of future inventions, we journey to 2035, when undersea living became a reality. Rowan Hooper tells us how it happened

Comment

Health

What is the best workout to lower your blood pressure?

Regulars

BrainTwister #76: Tromino trials

Regulars

Health

Why nobody is neurodiverse and nobody is neurotypical

Comment

Tom Gauld: Learn to read with Physics – lesson one

Regulars

Twisteddoodles on why we left the ocean

Regulars

Regulars

Could a race between microscopic competitors be the next big thing?

Comment

Could a race between microscopic competitors be the next big thing?

Feedback is amazed to see sperm racing touted as a new track sport, but it’s going to take a lot of CGI and other fakery to help it take off

Regulars

Regulars

Letters

Regulars

The last word

Browse past issues

View all
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop