Physics
What kind of bang was the big bang?
Features
This week's magazine
30 June 2012
Issue 2871
Editor's picks
Table of contents
News
Earth
Lonesome George dies but his subspecies genes survive
The last Pinta Island tortoise, rarest animal in the world and Galápagos icon, has died – but genes remain
News
Health
Swine flu pandemic killed 15 times more than thought
News
Physics
Agent Higgs game turns real particle hunt on its head
News
Health
Obscure physics words get sign language equivalents
News
Banking outage gives tiny glimpse of cybergeddon
News
Both US coasts headed for extreme sea level rise
News
60 Seconds
News
Health
Scandal of an underfunded and undertreated cancer
News
Physics
Shaking metallic grains turns them into tunable laser
News
Physics
Evolution could generate new semiconducting structures
News
Earth
Earth Summit signals move to give nature a price tag
News
Eats bark, fruit and leaves: Diet of ancient human
News
Life
Giant living power cables let bacteria respire
News
Life
Genes reveal grain of truth to Queen of Sheba story
News
Physics
Want terabit internet? Get light to do the twist
News
Life
Is God’s mercy to blame for high crime rates?
News
Health
Cobwebs shield the human gut from unwanted invaders
News
Humans
Rubber hand shows brain can be fooled on skin colour
News
Killer fungi feed insects to plants
News
Mind-reading opens up brain’s thesaurus
News
Space
Astrophile: Exoplanetary bedfellows make odd couple
News
Space
Far side of the moon offers quiet place for telescopes
News
Technology
AI systems could fight cyberbullying
News
Technology
AI fantasy football manager picks a winning team
News
Technology
Patent trawler aims to predict next hot technologies
News
Opinion
Earth
Rio Summit? More like the absolute nadir
Rio +20 revealed a shocking deficit of political will, but there are reasons to cling on to optimism, says Fred Pearce
Opinion
The second coming of Arc
Opinion
Technology
Cyberwar’s eerie echoes of the A-bomb race
Opinion
Miracle buster: Why I traced holy water to leaky drain
Opinion
Space
SETI chief still waiting for ET to call
Opinion
Features
Physics
What kind of bang was the big bang?
There's trouble at the start of time: the theory of cosmic inflation has got way out of control. Can quantum theory and holograms tame it?
Features
Earth
Mission to the mantle: Drilling through Earth’s crust
Features
Health
Better than sunshine: See life in an improved light
Features
Culture
Plotting the body’s electricity grid
From fainting goats to paralysis, physiologist Frances Ashcroft explains how bioelectricity controls our every move, in The Spark of Life
Culture
How did humankind tame the wolf?
Culture
A carving studio in the wood
Culture
Good things come to those who procrastinate
Culture
Regulars
Feedback: Elephant obsessions
Stacking up elephantine units of pressure, what Namibian road signs say about their elephants, and more
This Week’s Letters
Letters
Controlled burn
Last Word
Wall-to-wall webbing
Last Word
Swirled, not stirred
Last Word
Write or wrong?
Last Word
Stream of consciousness
Last Word
