New Scientist

Introduction by Professor Stephen Hawking. When Edwin Hubble looked into his telescope in the 1920s, he was shocked to find that nearly all of the galaxies he could see were flying away from one another. If these galaxies had always been travelling, he reasoned, then they must, at some point, have been on top of one another. This discovery transformed...

Sometime in the future, the intelligence of machines will exceed that of human brain power. So, are we on the edge of an AI-pocalypse with superintelligent devices superseding humanity, as predicted by Stephen Hawking? Or will this herald a kind of Utopia, with machines doing a far better job at complex tasks than us? You might not realise it, but...

Introduced by Jim Al-Khalili Could you surf down an erupting volcano? Why do zebras have stripes? Are you breathing the same air as Leonardo da Vinci? Are there any green mammals? Why do pineapples have spikes? Why do songs get stuck in your head? What happens when black holes collide? Can you extract your DNA? New Scientist has been a...

How did we get here? All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things, exist because of the action of evolution on the first simple life form and its descendants. We now know that it has taken 3.8 billion years of work by the...

Think of a number between one and ten. No, hang on, let's make this interesting. Between zero and infinity. Even if you stick to the whole numbers, there are a lot to choose from - an infinite number in fact. Throw in decimal fractions and infinity suddenly gets an awful lot bigger (is that even possible?) And then there are...

If you thought you knew who you were, THINK AGAIN. Did you know that half your DNA isn't human? That somebody, somewhere has exactly the same face? Or that most of your memories are fiction? What about the fact that you are as hairy as a chimpanzee, various parts of your body don't belong to you, or that you can...

Ever wondered what's going on inside your head? You are your brain. Everything that makes you you, and all your experiences of the world, are somehow conjured up by 1.4 kilograms of grey matter inside your skull. That might seem impossible, but science has advanced so much that we now understand not just its structures and inner workings but also...

CAN YOU BOOST YOUR IQ? WHAT IF YOU COULDN'T FORGET ANYTHING? WHAT HAPPENS IN YOUR BRAIN WHEN YOU GET AN IDEA? COULD YOU BE A PSYCHOPATH? . . . New Scientist HAS ALL THE ANSWERS From the strange ways to distort what we think of as 'reality' to the brain hacks that can improve memory, The Brain takes you on...

Forget everything you thought you knew about reality. The world is a seriously bizarre place. Things can exist in two places at once and travel backwards and forwards in time. Waves and particles are one and the same, and objects change their behaviour according to whether they are being watched. This is not some alternative universe but the realm of...

What's the nature of reality? Does the universe ever end? What is time and does it even exist? These are the biggest imagination-stretching, brain-staggering questions in the universe - and here are their fascinating answers. From quantum weirdness to freaky cosmology (like white holes - which spew out matter instead of sucking it in), This Book Will Blow Your Mind...

From the phenomenal New Scientist series, with over 2,500,000 copies sold. The second compilation of readers' answers to the questions in the "Last Word" column of New Scientist, the world's best-selling science weekly. Following the phenomenal success of Does Anything Eat Wasps? – the Christmas 2005 surprise bestseller – Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? includes answers to the most fascinating,...

Congratulations! You're the proud owner of the most complex information processing device in the known universe. The human brain comes equipped with all sorts of useful design features, but also many bugs and weaknesses. Problem is, you don't get an owner's manual. You have to just plug and play. As a result, most of us never properly understand how our...

What is this strange mental world that seems so essential to being human? The conscious mind brings together sensations, perceptions, thoughts and memories to generate the seamless movie of a person's life. It makes us aware of the world around us and our own self. How all this emerges from a kilogram of brain cells is one of the greatest...

Where did we come from? Where are we going? Homo sapiens is the most successful, most widespread, and most influential species ever to walk the Earth. In the blink of an evolutionary eye, we have spread around the globe, taken control of Earth's biological and mineral resources, transformed the environment, discovered the secrets of the universe, and travelled into space....

As you read this, billions of neutrinos from the sun are passing through your body, antimatter is sprouting from your dinner, and the core of your being is a chaotic mess of particles known only as quarks and gluons. If the recent discovery of the Higgs boson piqued your interest, then Why the Universe Exists will take you deeper into...