This week's magazine
27 February 2016
Issue 3062
On the cover
Editor's picks
Table of contents
News
Facebook’s VR future and mass-scale mapping revealed
Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance at a Samsung event, as Facebook outlined its vision for virtual reality and mapping at the Mobile World Congress
News
Health
Doctors claim legalising some genital mutilation may help girls
News
Space
Virgin Galactic claims new ‘Unity’ spaceship fixes safety issues
News
Earth
Record global temperatures bring strongest ever cyclone to Fiji
News
Health
60 Seconds
News
Health
Ebola outbreak caused twice as many deaths as we thought
News
Earth
Mystery wind drought that cut US wind power in 2015 is back
News
Space
India set to join hunt for gravitational waves with its own LIGO
News
Physics
Quantum weirdness may hide an orderly reality after all
News
Health
Ketogenic diet’s reputed anticancer credentials put to test
News
Physics
Source of cosmic radio blast tracked down for the first time
News
Environment
Bonobos know when others are being treated unfairly – and react
News
Earth
Carbon emission cuts could save 300,000 US lives by 2030
News
Humans
‘Torture’ study redo shows people feel less agency under orders
News
Earth
‘Follow the salt’ may be best strategy to find Martian microbes
News
Health
Vaccine halves cancer-causing HPV infections in US teen girls
News
Health
Astronauts may respond faster to warning voices than alarm tones
News
Environment
Plants have evolved forgetfulness to wipe out memory of stress
News
Environment
Sea butterflies fly underwater just like insects do in the air
News
Physics
LIGO’s black holes may have lived and died inside a huge star
News
Health
Boost your mental muscle with 20 minutes of exercise
News
Environment
A crab, shrimp and fish leave their shared home doing the conga
News
Humans
Body fluids disgust us less if from someone who is ‘one of us’
News
Physics
Binary stars burned off cosmic fog and made universe transparent
News
Technology
Apple vs FBI: Who will win this struggle for power?
News
Technology
One Per Cent
News
Technology
Ransomware threat highlighted by Los Angeles hospital payout
News
Health
AI reads doctors’ notes to find hidden links in cancer cases
News
Opinion
Environment
Underwater drones may make hiding a nuclear missile sub harder
Will a rise in anti-submarine drones mean it's game over for Earth’s best hiding place for a nuclear deterrent as critics claim, wonders David Hambling
Opinion
Earth
How Brexit could lead the UK to a dirtier future
Opinion
Health
Tumor is the most important book I’ve ever written
Opinion
Humans
Why I think genitals reveal the universe’s biological diversity
Opinion
Features
Humans
A new kind of logic: How to upgrade the way we think
A lot of problems in today’s world are too big for our brains. An algorithm that identifies how cause and effect are linked could lead us to better solutions
Features
Physics
Beyond experiment: Why the scientific method may be old hat
Features
Health
The crying game: How tears can work for you
Features
Culture
Regulars
Physics
Feedback: Where we’re going, we don’t need fundamental physics
Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Gravitational waves
This Week’s Letters
Letters
Pinkies
Last Word
Just lion around
Last Word
Windblown
Last Word