Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? is the latest compilation of readers' answers to the questions in the 'Last Word' column of New Scientist, the world's best-selling science weekly. Following the phenomenal success of Does Anything Eat Wasps? - the Christmas 2005 surprise bestseller - this new collection includes recent answers never before published in book form, and also old favourites from the column's early days. Yet again, many seemingly simple questions turn out to have complex answers. And some that seem difficult have a very simple explanation. New Scientist's 'Last Word' is regularly voted the magazine's most popular section as it celebrates all questions - the trivial, idiosyncratic, baffling and strange. This new selection of the best is popular science at its most entertaining and enlightening.

How fat do you have to be to become bulletproof? Why do people have eyebrows? Why do pineapples have spines? How much does a head weigh? What affects the color of earwax? How quickly could I turn into a fossil? Have you ever thought up a question so completely off-the-wall, so seemingly ridiculous, that you couldn't even find the courage to ask it? Maybe at the sports bar you were transported by the beauty of your beer to wonder, "How long could I live on beer alone?" Or, cycling through the park, you mused, "Did nature invent any wheels?" Or looking up at the night sky, you had a moment of angst, "What would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared -- if it were vaporized or stolen by aliens?" Full of fun factlets, Does Anything Eat Wasps? is a runaway bestseller around the world. It celebrates the weird and wacky questions -- some trivial, some baffling, all unique -- and their multiple answers culled from "The Last Word," a long-running column in the internationally popular science magazine, New Scientist. Tackling the imponderables of everyday life, sparkling with humor, and bursting with delightful erudition, Does Anything Eat Wasps? is irresistibly entertaining and utterly engrossing. So, go on. Put away your lab coat and your pencil -- science is fun again.

A "remarkable memoir" (Nature) of life with an emperor penguin colony, gorgeously illustrated with 32 pages of exclusive photography For 337 days, award-winning wildlife cameraman Lindsay McCrae intimately followed 11,000 emperor penguins amid the singular beauty of Antarctica. This is his masterful chronicle of one penguin colony’s astonishing journey of life, death, and rebirth—and of the extraordinary human experience of living amongst them in the planet’s harshest environment. A miracle occurs each winter in Antarctica. As temperatures plummet 60° below zero and the sea around the remote southern continent freezes, emperors—the largest of all penguins—begin marching up to 100 miles over solid ice to reach their breeding grounds. They are the only animals to breed in the depths of this, the worst winter on the planet; and in an unusual role reversal, the males incubate the eggs, fasting for over 100 days to ensure they introduce their chicks safely into their new frozen world. My Penguin Year recounts McCrae's remarkable adventure to the end of the Earth. He observed every aspect of a breeding emperor's life, facing the inevitable sacrifices that came with living his childhood dream, and grappling with the personal obstacles that, being over 15,000km away from the comforts of home, almost proved too much. Out of that experience, he has written an unprecedented portrait of Antarctica’s most extraordinary residents.

Big or small, there's an answer to every question, and sometimes there are even a few! How long is "now"? The short answer is "somewhere between 2 and 3 seconds." The long answer involves an incredible journey through neuroscience, our subconscious and the time-bending power of meditation. Living in the present may never feel the same. Ready for some more? Okay. Why isn't Pluto a planet? Why are dogs' noses wet? Why do hens cluck more loudly after laying an egg? What happens when one black hole swallows another? Do our fingerprints change as we get older? How young can you die of old age? And what is at the very edge of the universe? Life is full of mind-bending questions, and, as books like What If? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? have shown, the route to find each answer can take us on the weirdest and most wonderful journeys. How Long is Now? is a fascinating new collection of questions you never thought to ask, along with answers that will change the way you see everything.

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? is the third compilation of readers' answers to the questions in the 'Last Word' column of New Scientist, the world's best-selling science weekly. Following the phenomenal success of Does Anything Eat Wasps? (2005) and the even more spectacularly successful Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze? (2006), Do Polar Bears Get Lonely? includes a bumper crop of wise and wonderful questions and answers such as: Why does garlic make your breath smell? How toothpaste makers get the stripes in toothpaste? Why do we get 'pins and needles'? Why are some people left-handed and other people right-handed? Can insects get fat? Do elephants sneeze? And do fish get thirsty? What causes cells to stick together in the human body rather than simply fall apart? And why are pears pear-shaped (and not apple-shaped)? This eagerly awaited selection of the best once again presents popular science at its most entertaining and enlightening.

An emperor penguin lays an egg on the Antarctic ice. In the bitter cold, miles away from the only source of food, how can the chick survive?

Outrageously entertaining and educational experiments from the team behind the phenomenal international bestseller Does Anything Eat Wasps? How can you measure the speed of light with a bar of chocolate and a microwave oven? To keep a banana from decaying, are you better off rubbing it with lemon juice or refrigerating it? How can you figure out how much your head weighs? Mick O'Hare, who created the New Scientist's popular science sensations Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?, has the answers. In this fascinating and irresistible new book, O'Hare and the New Scientist team guide you through one hundred intriguing experiments that show essential scientific principles (and human curiosity) in action. Explaining everything from the unusual chemical reaction between Mentos and cola that provokes a geyser to the geological conditions necessary to preserve a family pet for eternity, How to Fossilize Your Hamster is fun, hands-on science that everyone will want to try at home.