Tom Simonite, online technology editorLast week we challenged Twitter users to explain the big bang in a single tweet.
We saw more than 500 responses before we called time, although people are still tweeting away on the #sci140 tag.
Kat Austen, letters and comments editorSince the first posts in the summer of 2007, the comments section of
New Scientist has quickly become a vibrant community, with a great many people using the feature as a forum for the exchange of ideas about the scientific topics examined in our articles.
Many of our readers and commenters are experts in their fields, and have a wide-ranging knowledge. They add a great deal of additional information and insight, which we greatly appreciate. We think it adds to the quality of the site.
However, we have been receiving an increasing number of complaints about the repetitive exchanges on some topics. So, after careful consideration we have decided to adjust the house rules. We hope the new policies will encourage more lively and informative posts.
New Scientist has been receiving a growing number of complaints about off-topic comment threads on the site.
There has always been the facility to report comments as off topic, and it has always been the case that comment threads should relate to the content of the article under which they are posted. So that there is no confusion, we have made a minor change to the house rules (
see them here) in order to make this more explicit.
We are currently investigating different mechanisms for dealing with the comments so that our readers get the most out of NewScientist.com, and we'll keep you posted on any changes in policy.
Kat Austen, letters and comments editor
Roger Highfield, New Scientist editor
A meal at the best restaurant in the world is fascinating, expensive and, to say the least, hard to come by.
elBulli in Costa Brava, Spain, is only open from June to December, and then only for dinner. There's a small window of opportunity to book by email over a few days in October, prompting a flurry of obsequious reservation requests from millions of foodies to try delights such as gorgonzola moshi and floral candyfloss
If you win the gastro lottery, you end up in the nearby seaside resort of Roses and then, after a winding drive, in Ferran Adrià's gastronomic temple, overlooking a beautiful little bay. There's a quick introduction to the great man himself in his modernist kitchen - a stark, designer affair with clean, sharp lines.
There, a small army of chefs toils away. They make warm jellies from seaweed extracts. They adopt various industrial food processes, or use mass-market emulsifiers to make foams remain stiff. They vacuum-pack.They freeze-dry things. They use pipettes and distillers too to create Dali-esque dishes.
We've rounded up some of our favourite blog posts of the year - from a nano-sized Barack Obama to calls for a 'Gaian dictator' to save
the world. You can find them
over on the main New Scientist site.
A lot of the most informative and entertaining discussion triggered by New Scientist can be
found in the comments that you, our readers, leave below the articles. This year, you made us laugh about the LHC and talking robots, muse about God, music and the brain, and reconsider interstellar spam.
We've highlighted just a few of our favourite comments - after the jump.
New Scientist's website has a new design - showcasing what we believe is the
best of our content, alongside what is most read and most commented on by the most important audience we have - you.
After talking to thousands of our readers and users, we have made some major changes to our website.
These are intended to bring the sheer joy and delight of
New Scientist to even more people than ever before - with a clearer design, dual navigation by content type as well as
topic, and an
enhanced search function.