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This week's magazine

22 January 2022

Issue 3370

New Scientist issue 3370 cover
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On the cover

Culture
Station Eleven review: An uplifting vision of a post-pandemic world
Features
Leigh Fletcher interview: Why we urgently need a mission to Neptune
The happiness revolution: How to boost the well-being of society
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A West African writing system shows how letters evolve to get simpler
Astronomers may have found a huge moon around a Jupiter-like exoplanet
Robot piloted by a ball of algae is powered by photosynthesis
Edible straws made by bacteria are better than paper or plastic ones
First fully programmable quantum computer based on neutral atoms
Living with covid: How can the pandemic end and what will it be like?
Analysis
'Doomsday' shipwreck exposed by ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ finally being tackled
Toxic chemicals are everywhere in our daily lives – can we avoid them?
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Editor's picks

speech buble heart like sun and lamp with happy smile face with eyes narrowed on foggy window spattered with drops city, yellow red color, copyspace

Humans

Science is increasingly revealing how we can boost our happiness

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The happiness revolution: How to boost the well-being of society

Society

The happiness revolution: How to boost the well-being of society

Features
Leigh Fletcher interview: Why we urgently need a mission to Neptune

Space

Leigh Fletcher interview: Why we urgently need a mission to Neptune

Features
What really makes people happy – and can you learn to be happier?

Humans

What really makes people happy – and can you learn to be happier?

Features

Table of contents

Leaders

speech buble heart like sun and lamp with happy smile face with eyes narrowed on foggy window spattered with drops city, yellow red color, copyspace

Humans

Science is increasingly revealing how we can boost our happiness

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These are three unalienable rights emphasised by the US Declaration of Independence as being the duty of their leaders to protect and secure. The third one gives perhaps most pause for thought. What should governments – and all of us – be doing to maximise societal and personal …

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A West African writing system shows how letters evolve to get simpler

Humans

A West African writing system shows how letters evolve to get simpler

The characters used to write the Vai script, which was invented in Liberia in 1833, have become visually simpler over time, reflecting the evolutionary pressures acting on writing

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Technology

Overloaded memory chips generate truly random numbers for encryption

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Humans

Ancient Andean leaders may have mixed hallucinogen with their beer

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Space

Saturn’s small moon Mimas may be hiding an impossible ocean

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Space

Organic compounds on Mars were produced by water and rocks, not life

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Space

Huge gas bubble that contains the solar system mapped for first time

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Health

Strongest evidence yet that MS is caused by Epstein-Barr virus

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Health

Electric knee implants could help treat pain of osteoarthritis

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Environment

Can electric fields help plants grow? New claims met with caution

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Life

Largest ever fish colony hosts 100 billion eggs under Antarctic ice

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Space

Long-lasting radiation shields may make super-Earths friendly for life

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Space

Astronomers may have found a huge moon around a Jupiter-like exoplanet

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Robot piloted by a ball of algae is powered by photosynthesis

¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

Technology

Edible straws made by bacteria are better than paper or plastic ones

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Technology

Portable laser scanner creates colour 3D images of surfaces or objects

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Earth

Volcano eruption in Tonga was a once-in-a-millennium event

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Technology

First fully programmable quantum computer based on neutral atoms

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Health

Living with covid: How can the pandemic end and what will it be like?

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Analysis

SS Richard Montgomery

Technology

'Doomsday' shipwreck exposed by ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ finally being tackled

The masts of the shipwrecked SS Richard Montgomery Three masts sticking up above the waves near the coastal town of Sheerness in the UK mark the spot where a deadly wreck has been rusting for almost 80 years. They belong to the SS Richard Montgomery, a US second world war-era ship that ran aground in …

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Health

What endemic means - and why covid-19 is nowhere near it yet

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Environment

UK energy crisis: Why renewable subsidies will help avoid price shocks

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Health

Toxic chemicals are everywhere in our daily lives – can we avoid them?

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Physics

How does the sun shine? Here's why we are still a little in the dark

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Aperture

Fascinating objects illuminate the European Space Agency's history

Space

Fascinating objects illuminate the European Space Agency's history

Agency ESA/Remedia THIS selection of objects appears random, but it reflects the history, achievements and ambitions of the European Space Agency's key establishment, the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC). ESA ESTEC in 99 Objects is an online project that uses a diverse collection of items amassed from ESA missions and experiments to tell …

Regulars

Features

Leigh Fletcher interview: Why we urgently need a mission to Neptune

Space

Leigh Fletcher interview: Why we urgently need a mission to Neptune

To understand the secrets of the most common type of planet in our galaxy, we need to explore ice giants Neptune and Uranus. But we must act now or wait decades for another launch window, says planetary scientist Leigh Fletcher

Features

Humans

What really makes people happy – and can you learn to be happier?

Features

Society

The happiness revolution: How to boost the well-being of society

Features

Culture

Station Eleven review: An uplifting vision of a post-pandemic world

Humans

Station Eleven review: An uplifting vision of a post-pandemic world

Kirsten and her close friend August stick together to survive TV Station Eleven Created by Patrick Somerville EARLY in the covid-19 pandemic , as people struggled to make sense of the unfolding global crisis, many turned to stories almost as often as the latest news and science. In January 2020, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion entered the …

Culture

Humans

Otherlands review: A fascinating journey through Earth's history

Culture

Humans

Don't miss: Sci-fi The Orbital Children on Netflix

Culture

Humans

Hard to Be a God: An 80s classic shows modern sci-fi how it’s done

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.

Puzzle #151: The puzzling challenge of aliens with 16 fingers

#151 Alien fingers When the aliens landed in my back garden, my first thought was that they use the same number system as we do, because there was a two-digit number written in our Earthly digits on the side of their spaceship. But when the aliens emerged from the ship, I saw that they each …

Regulars

Humans

How to perfectly pickle your cucumbers

Regulars

Twisteddoodles: The youthful joys of scientific fieldwork

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Tom Gauld shows what happens when body donation goes surreally wrong

Regulars

Regulars

Is Pluto a planet? The Spanish government's tax portal says it is

Humans

Is Pluto a planet? The Spanish government's tax portal says it is

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

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Letters

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