This new robot from MIT can politely navigate through crowds
If we’re going to have robots acting as tour guides and delivering pizzas then they need to be able to navigate through busy pedestrian environments, and that’s exactly what a…
How to kill fruit flies, according to a scientist
As a researcher who works on fruit flies, I often get asked how to get them out of someone’s kitchen. This happens to fly researchers often enough that we sit…
A vast reserve of pristine Amazon rainforest has just been saved from mining operations
Environmentalists are celebrating after a Brazilian court blocked an attempt by the country’s president to allow mining in a massive protected reserve in the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian president Michel Temer…
Physicists just caught sight of electrons entangled in a completely new state
Physicists have finally observed a quantum interaction between a group of four entangled electrons. Until now, this interaction was purely theoretical, but now it’s been caught in action by cleverly…
We finally know how humans are able to echolocate, just like bats and whales
We’re used to seeing bats and whales use echolocation to find their way around. And for a while now we’ve known that, with practise, humans can also visualise their surroundings…
Spring-loaded ant jaws snap shut on prey 700 times faster than you can blink
A prey-killing mechanism so imperceptibly deadly it evolved at least five times in different kinds of ants has been caught on camera by scientists – just barely. Myrmoteras, a rarely…
Black holes once cleared the way for light in our universe, say astronomers
In the beginning, there was darkness. And then, after hundreds of millions of years, light from primitive suns spilled freely across the Universe. What caused the lifting of this veil,…
Astronomers just solved a 580-year-old mystery of a massive stellar explosion
What seemed to be a new star blazed into existence on March 11, 1437. The galactic newcomer was witnessed by Korean royal astronomers, among the few people taking notes about…
We just picked up an intense burst of 15 weird signals from a distant galaxy
In the early hours of Saturday morning, researchers searching the Universe for signs of alien life detected 15 explosive radio signals in the space of just five hours, all coming…
Narcissists actually don’t like looking at themselves, says new study
Highly narcissistic men feel emotional distress rather than delight when viewing pictures of themselves, according to new research, which may help us understand how narcissism works in our social media…
We finally know why the Caspian Sea is evaporating off the face of the planet
Like a puddle under hot sunshine, the world’s largest inland body of water is shrinking in the face of heat – in this case, a scorching climate the modern world…
We’re about to cross the ‘quantum supremacy’ limit in computing
The 4th International Conference on Quantum Technologies held in Moscow last month was supposed to put the spotlight on Google, who were preparing to give a lecture on a 49-qubit…