ISSUE ONE
THE
BIG QU EST IONS
REALITY E X I ST E NCE G OD CONSCIOUSN E SS LIFE TIME SE L F SL E E P
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THE COLLECTION
Big questions, bold answers ISSUE ONE
THE BIG QUESTIONS NEW SCIENTIST THE COLLECTION Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS +44 (0)20 7611 1202
[email protected] Editor Graham Lawton Art editor Craig Mackie Picture editor Adam Goff Subeditor Richard Lim Graphics Nigel Hawtin Production editor Mick O’Hare Project manager Henry Gomm Publisher John MacFarlane © 2014 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist The Collection is published four times per year by Reed Business Information Ltd ISSN 2054-6386 Printed in England by Polestar (Bicester) and distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd +44(0)20 3148 3333 Display advertising +44(0)20 7611 1291
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NE of the most profound moments in life is when, as a child, we first utter that small but powerful word, “why?” This is arguably what defines us a species. We are not so much Homo sapiens as Homo curiosum. It is not hard to imagine our earliest ancestor looking up at the stars, watching the seasons change, or holding a newborn child and wondering: why? Our curiosity knows no bounds and it has taken us a long way, from the savannahs of east Africa to world domination and beyond. Most of this progress has come in the past 300 years thanks to the invention of a systematic way of asking questions and answering them. That method is called science, and it has produced the greatest knowledge bounty ever. But we still yearn to know why. There is much that we don’t understand, and every new discovery opens up new questions. This first issue of New Scientist: The Collection is dedicated to the wonders of human curiosity. A compilation of classic articles published in New Scientist, it explores the profound questions we ask of ourselves and the universe around us. In Chapter 1 we ask perhaps the most fundamental question of all: what is reality? Looking at the world around you, the answer might seem obvious – until you dig deep, when reality reveals itself to be a slippery customer. Chapter 2 takes a more personal and reflective turn, asking what the discoveries of modern science mean for our own existence, from the search for aliens to the bizarre possibility that you are a hologram. Chapter 3 casts a new perspective on one of the oldest answers in the book: that everything can be explained by the existence of an all-powerful supernatural being. We are now largely dissatisfied with that answer, but God continues to fascinate.
Chapter 4 returns to personal experience, specifically the granite-hard problem of the nature of consciousness, how something so incredible can be produced by 1500 grams or so of brain tissue, and why you cannot be sure that everybody else is not a zombie. Chapter 5 is dedicated to a phenomenon that, as far as we know, is confined to a tiny corner of the universe: life itself. We know it got going on Earth almost as soon as the planet was habitable – but why did it take so long to give rise to complex creatures? And does it have a future? In Chapter 6, we probe one of the universe’s most puzzling dimensions: time. The everyday ticking of a clock might seem the most natural thing in the world, but it masks a very peculiar phenomenon. Chapter 7 focuses inwards again, dismantling the entity we call the self, which seems so solid and enduring to each of us and yet doesn’t appear to actually exist. In Chapter 8 we explore the familiar yet stra