2006 is a special year for New 杏吧原创: the magazine鈥檚 50th year in existence. On 22 November 1956 The New 杏吧原创 launched in London, billed as 鈥渢he first and only magazine to make plain the most vital force in your life today 鈥� SCIENCE!鈥�
In the intervening years, New 杏吧原创 has grown dramatically. It began with a staff of eight. Today it is kept running by more than 100 people, including probably the world鈥檚 largest network of science and technology journalists. In its first year, The New 杏吧原创 enjoyed a readership of 50,000 a week. Today that figure is closer to 700,000, with another 1.7 million people a month visiting newscientist.com and . There are now three separate editions each week, including ones for Australasia and North America, plus all the trappings of a magazine in the internet age, including online daily news, RSS feeds, discussion forums and our own podcast.
To celebrate our golden anniversary, we will be running a series of special issues throughout the year. And every week we will feature a column recalling how New 杏吧原创 covered events and ideas from the past five decades; the first appears on 鈥淭his week 47 years ago鈥�.
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Go back to the first year of New 杏吧原创, and it is striking how so much of what we now take for granted is new or non-existent. Transistors are just starting to displace bulky, fragile vacuum tubes or valves in electronic equipment. Office computers are the size of small cars and capable of manipulating only numbers; word processing is an unknown concept. Industrial chemistry is lauded, not treated with disdain, with polypropylene seen as 鈥渁 plastic with a future鈥�.
By contrast biology is something of a backwater, and genes are still a hazy concept: 鈥渟ome go so far as to say that genes are made of DNA鈥�. Natural history appears in abundance, but forays to the cutting edge are rare. On these occasions, the research is mostly biochemical 鈥� into such things as synthetic hormones and the mysterious substance 5-HT.
Environmental science is conspicuous by its absence: clearing peat bogs is seen as a good thing. There are, however, early reports of a new instrument that will 鈥渦nmask鈥� stratospheric ozone, and that 鈥渨ell-informed physicists鈥� reckon rising atmospheric carbon dioxide 鈥渕ay have far-reaching effects鈥�.
The lion鈥檚 share of coverage is in physical sciences 鈥� and very positive it is. Radio astronomy is in its infancy, and rocket science is high on the agenda, along with the race to launch the first satellite. One lesson is how dangerous it can be to make predictions: the week the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, a New 杏吧原创 pundit forecast that it would be generations before humans visited the moon.
But perhaps most striking is excitement in the late 1950s over nuclear power. The first issue of New 杏吧原创 coincided with the firing up of the world鈥檚 first commercial nuclear power plant, Calder Hall, at Windscale (now Sellafield) in north-west England. The following year saw breathless coverage about the potential of this new technology: radioactive waste would be snapped up by industry for processing chemicals and irradiating food, and the atom would fuel everything from planes to wristwatches.
The world in 1956 is in the grip of an oil crisis caused by Egypt鈥檚 blockade of the Suez Canal. Governments have decisions to make, and in 1957 the UK opts to treble its nuclear output. Nowhere does anyone suggest that radioactive waste might be a problem. And only at the end of 1957, when an old reactor at Windscale goes up in flames, are the issues of safety and public health raised. It takes decades for the UK to discover that nuclear power has not lived up to the prediction of being 鈥渢oo cheap to meter鈥�.
Policy-makers of the 21st century would do well to reflect on what we now recognise as the naivety of two generations ago. The reasoning is different, but once again the US, the UK and other European countries are thinking of building more nuclear plants. Before we go down this route, there are crucial questions to answer. How will we dispose of high-level radioactive waste and the 50-year backlog? What are the real costs of nuclear power? How much carbon dioxide will reactors displace, and could this reduction be better achieved by speeding up development of renewables or carbon sequestration? In 1956 we had our eyes shut to many issues about nuclear power. Today we must have them wide open.