We can add suggesting and proving mathematical theorems to the long list of what artificial intelligence is capable of: Mathematicians and AI experts have teamed up to demonstrate how machine learning can open up new avenues to explore in the field. While mathematicians have been using computers to discover patterns for decades, the increasing
Scientific ingenuity means cameras keep on getting smaller and smaller, and the latest to appear is not only incredibly tiny – the same size as a grain of salt – it’s also able to produce images of much better quality than a lot of other ultra-compact cameras. Using a technology known as a metasurface,
What’s the mass of a neutrino? This problem has vexed physicists for decades. It’s tiny, no doubt, but by virtue of one of the particle’s most fundamental features, it can’t be zero. This still leaves plenty of room for guesswork. Like most riddles, the solution might be found by thinking outside of the box.
A major milestone has been breached in the quest for fusion energy. For the first time, a fusion reaction has achieved a record 1.3 megajoule energy output – and for the first time, exceeding energy absorbed by the fuel used to trigger it. Although there’s still some way to go, the result represents a
Are you in the market for a loophole in the laws that forbid perpetual motion? Knowing you’ve got yourself an authentic time crystal takes more than a keen eye for high-quality gems. In a new study, an international team of researchers used Google’s Sycamore quantum computing hardware to double-check their theoretical vision of a time crystal,
Scientists have engineered what they say are the first self-replicating ‘robots’ ever made from living cells. At first, these freaky-looking ‘xenobots’ might seem notable for their superficial resemblance to Pac-Man, but their likeness to the video game character is probably the least strange thing about them. These unusual robotic creatures are a spin-off of
Scientists have developed an entirely new soft-yet-strong, squishy material that’s able to regain its original shape after being run over by a car – or to use a more natural example, after being walked over by an elephant. Made up of 80 percent water, the parts of the material that aren’t water enable it
With its large crater lake of turquoise water, plumes of smoke and sulfurous bubbling of mud and gases, the Krafla volcano is one of Iceland’s most awe-inspiring natural wonders. Here, in the country’s northeast, a team of international researchers is preparing to drill two kilometers (1.2 miles) into the heart of the volcano, a
Between music, podcasts, gaming, and the unlimited supply of online content, most people spend hours a week wearing headphones. Perhaps you are considering a new pair for the holidays, but with so many options on the market, it can be hard to know what to choose. I am a professional musician and a professor
Barely a year after the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) broke one record for fusion, it’s smashed it again, this time holding onto a churning whirlpool of 100 million degree plasma for a whole 30 seconds. Though it’s well short of the 101 seconds set by the Chinese Academy of Sciences earlier this
Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t ‘exist’ outside the minds of the people who use it. But the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece held a different view. Its
A weird quantum effect that was predicted decades ago has finally been demonstrated – if you make a cloud of gas cold and dense enough, you can make it invisible. Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used lasers to squeeze and cool lithium gas to densities and temperatures low enough that it scattered less light. If they can
Physically speaking, our Universe seems uncannily perfect. It stands to reason that if it wasn’t, life as we know it – and planets, atoms, everything else really – wouldn’t exist. Now, three physicists from the US, France, and Korea have put forward a new explanation for why life, the Universe, and everything in it
Here’s another reminder of the precarious position that the world’s climate and ecosystems are in: a new study estimates that global warming could push the Antarctic ice sheet past a tipping point in as little as 10 years. In other words, the point of no return in terms of ice sheet loss is arriving
Outbreaks of invasive moth caterpillars, Lymantria dispar dispar, and forest tent caterpillar moths, Malacasoma disstria, occur at least every five years in temperate forests. The insects munch through so many leaves that our research has found the resulting decrease in leaf-fall and increase in caterpillar poop hugely alter the way nutrients, particularly carbon and nitrogen,
Humans are notoriously woeful lie detectors, even when staring liars straight in the face. A machine learning tool trained to detect tell-tale signs of lying has been found to do better than the average person, using little more than data from wearable sensors that pick up teensy flickers in facial muscles. Developed by researchers
Muons are everywhere. Unbeknownst to you, several hundred strike your head every second. These subatomic particles – created when cosmic rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere – are harmless and quickly decay into clusters of lighter particles. The particles penetrate objects like X-rays do, which make them useful to scientists, who used muons to uncover
Above 193 °C (379 °F) something almost magical happens to water in a pan. Called the Leidenfrost effect, when you sprinkle water onto a hot surface, the drops float above the surface on a layer of vapor. They stick around for a moment or two longer than they would at a lower (but still above
The world is warming at an “extraordinary” pace unlike anything seen over the past 24,000 years, according to a new study that has amassed hundreds of temperature records from around the globe to map past climate change. Reconstructing past temperatures from marine sediments dating back to the peak of the last ice age, the
Thousands of kilometers under Earth’s surface, under crushing pressures and scorching temperatures, the core of the planet can be found. There, an inner core consisting of a solid ball of nickel and iron is super-rotating inside the outer core, where the iron and nickel are fluid. The conditions of this outer core have now
Just as with planetary or molecular systems, mathematical laws can be found that accurately describe and allow for predictions in chaotically dynamic ecosystems too – at least, if we zoom out enough. But as humans are now having such a destructive impact on the life we share our planet with, we’re throwing even these
During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 28,000 tons (25,000 metric tons) of pandemic-related plastic waste, such as masks and gloves, have ended up in the ocean, according to a new study. That’s more than 2,000 double-decker buses worth of waste, The Guardian reported. And within a few years, a portion of those plastic gloves and
We can’t afford to delay the switch over to renewable energy sources, and while there’s much debate about how to achieve this, more and more research along with growing real-world evidence suggest that it’s absolutely a viable, practical option. Now, a new study from an international team of researchers will hopefully help settle this for
A man paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury he sustained in 2007 has shown he can communicate his thoughts, thanks to a brain implant system that translates his imagined handwriting into actual text. The device – part of a longstanding research collaboration called BrainGate – is a brain-computer interface
Smartphone technology has improved rapidly in recent years, giving us more battery life, better performance, and improved photo-taking capabilities – but they still come with screens that have a tendency to crack after being knocked or dropped. Scientists have made encouraging progress in developing lead halide perovskite (LHP) screens that offer top-quality brightness and
The idea of artificial intelligence overthrowing humankind has been talked about for many decades, and in January 2021, scientists delivered their verdict on whether we’d be able to control a high-level computer super-intelligence. The answer? Almost definitely not. The catch is that controlling a super-intelligence far beyond human comprehension would require a simulation of
The clock tracks global emissions and temperature data, and uses the most recent five-year emissions trend to estimate how much time is left until global warming reaches the 1.5ºC threshold. The new estimate of 2021 emissions removes almost a year from the countdown, which means that we are now only a little more than 10
If fossil fuel emissions do not dramatically decrease and soon, a new study suggests the various ecosystems of life on our planet will be rapidly transformed, especially in the tropics and polar regions. Instead of predicting the future of a single species or a specific habitat under climate change, the current research categorizes Earth
The United Nations Secretary-General has called 2021 “the make it or break it year” for climate action. 2021 is not over yet, but a provisional report on the state of the planet suggests we are leaning heavily towards breaking it. Experts at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently calculated the last seven years
The United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) begins on Sunday 31 October in Glasgow, and the outcome may determine whether the world moves closer to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. The climate conference will bring together delegates from around the world to discuss their plans for reducing emissions and limiting climate
An astonishing 82 percent decrease in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy since 2010 has given the world a fighting chance to build a zero-emissions energy system which might be less costly than the fossil-fueled system it replaces. The International Energy Agency projects that PV solar generating capacity must grow ten-fold by 2040
Venture close enough to a black hole and you’ll quickly learn how the force of gravity warps the very fabric of reality. Here on Earth, gravity’s time-bending effect is nowhere near as strong. It is, however, still measurable. What’s more, physicists have set a new record in describing our planet’s influence on the Universe’s ‘fabric’
Even when there’s not a cloud in the sky, there’s always water circulating in the atmosphere. Compared to all the H20 on Earth, there isn’t much up there – only about 0.001 percent – but in areas of high humidity, even that small amount of moisture could be enough to provide safe drinking water for a billion
Shooting a drop of water with one of the world’s most powerful lasers might not be an obvious way to make an ice cube. But it is one way, at least if you want the kind of ice you might find deep inside planetary giants. Scientists have known about exotic forms of ice for
A talking CGI dinosaur just gave an impassioned speech about climate change to world leaders in a new UN video. Will they take it seriously? The dinosaur, named Frankie according to its Twitter page, bears a strong resemblance to the velociraptors from the film Jurassic World and is voiced by multiple celebrities in different languages, including film star and musician Jack
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached record levels last year, the United Nations said Monday, in a stark warning as Britain’s Boris Johnson admitted being “very worried” about the COP26 summit going awry. The UN’s blunt report on rising global warming comes as Prime Minister Johnson, the COP26 host, said it was “very,
Almost 20 years after researchers first predicted electron quadruplets, evidence of their existence has been shown to occur in experimental setups, representing a brand new state of matter that opens up a whole new field of possibilities in physics. Technically what we’re talking about here is fermionic quadrupling, referring to the type of particles
For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe. By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in
If you’re wondering just how much scientific consensus there is that humans have caused the climate of our planet to change, we can now put a number on it: 99.9 percent. That doesn’t leave much room for doubt. To get to that figure, researchers looked in detail at a total of 3,000 peer-reviewed studies randomly
Microplastics are turning up everywhere. We’ve found them in rivers, lakes, and oceans; in soil, snow and ice; in fish, whales, and us. In recent years, we’ve even started to measure these tiny particles in the very air we breathe. We still don’t know what, if anything, that’s doing to human health, but researchers
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sparked worldwide excitement in March as particle physicists reported tantalizing evidence for new physics – potentially a new force of nature. Now, our new result, yet to be peer reviewed, from CERN’s gargantuan particle collider seems to be adding further support to the idea. Our current best theory of
In attempts to understand the very nature of our reality, physicists sure have some mind-bending theories. Like what if information is a tangible and fundamental aspect of physical reality itself – alongside matter and energy? Or, alternatively, what if information is the fifth state of matter? Information is, after all, something all matter and
The Arctic may no longer be the refuge it once was for migrating animals. Scientists now fear that climate change and environmental degradation have turned the yearly journey of numerous species, including birds, butterflies and ungulates, into an ecological trap. Upon reaching their destination, many animals are likely starving, being hunted or dying of
If Earth’s temperature rises by a significant enough margin, we could see a major restructuring of the plankton species living in our oceans. Not only would the diversity of species radically change, but warming oceans could see plankton migrating from the tropics towards the poles, away from waters growing too warm for habitability. In
The standard white cane is an essential aid for getting out and about for many visually impaired people, but to date, it hasn’t offered much in the way of affordable modern updates – which is something that a group of researchers wants to change. Borrowing technology designed for autonomous vehicles, the team has come
The aviation industry is necessary for the world we live in today, but it places a strain on the environment, thanks to emissions from petroleum-based fossil fuel. According to a new study, we could reduce these emissions by up to 68 percent – by switching to a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) derived from plants. Specifically,
The patterns of activity produced by our brains are unique. They’re so unique that we can use brain connectivity maps to identify individuals just as reliably as fingerprints. “An individual’s functional brain connectivity profile is both unique and reliable, similar to a fingerprint, and it is possible, with near-perfect accuracy in many cases, to identify
The fossil of a jaw bone could prove that domesticated dogs lived in Central America as far back as 12,000 years ago, according to a study by Latin American scientists. The dogs, and their masters, potentially lived alongside giant animals, researchers say. A 1978 dig in Nacaome, northeast Costa Rica, found bone remains from
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