Scientists continue to push the boundaries of what cameras are capable of – like a newly developed phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP) device, which is capable of snapping an impressive one trillion frames every second.   That’s mind-boggling, but it’s not a record, because some of the same researchers developed a camera that can take

Could a massive barrier erected in the ocean shield New York from the devastation of superstorm surges like Hurricane Sandy in 2012? The truth is, nobody knows for sure, but a giant sea wall is nonetheless one serious proposal being looked at in a long-term research project designed to prevent a repeat of the deaths

Scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder have created what The New York Times calls a “living concrete”, teeming with photosynthetic bacteria, that can grow itself and regenerate itself – much like a living organism.   The concrete is a mixture of gelatin, sand, and cyanobacteria that cools similarly to Jell-O, the Times reports. The resulting structure was able to regenerate itself

In another lifetime, if they had been allowed to follow their natural development, the stem cells taken from embryonic frogs would have turned into skin and heart tissue within living, breathing animals.   Instead, in configurations designed by algorithms and constructed by humans, those cells have been assembled into something new: the first-ever robots constructed

Scientists may have solved one of the great Leonardo da Vinci painting mysteries – why the glass orb in the Salvator Mundi painting (dated to around 1500 CE) shows no signs of the refraction and reflection of light that might be expected.   The answer, according to computer models run by a team from the

To protect its hosts, Airbnb is now using an AI-powered tool to scan the internet for clues that a guest might not be a reliable customer. According to patent documents reviewed by the Evening Standard, the tool takes into account everything from a user’s criminal record to their social media posts to rate their likelihood

Something strange has been happening in eastern Colorado at night. Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet (1.8 metres) across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30.   The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December

The future had arrived. There was only one problem: it was deafening. In the 1960s, the development of supersonic passenger aircraft promised to revolutionise the concept of international travel, teasing flights from New York to Paris in under 3.5 hours – less than half the duration of conventional subsonic jaunts.   With the famed Concorde,

In March, Chinese researchers predicted that the nation’s HL-2M tokamak – a device designed to replicate nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers the Sun – would be built before the end of 2019.   No word yet on whether that’s still the case, but in November, Duan Xuru, one of the scientists working on

The world’s first fully electric commercial aircraft took its inaugural test flight on Tuesday, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and offering hope that airlines may one day end their polluting emissions.   “This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work,” said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Seattle-based engineering firm magniX.

Scientists said Wednesday they have come up with an environmentally-friendly method that uses artificial sunlight to transform plastic into power-generating chemicals, as countries worldwide battle to reduce waste.   Huge quantities of plastic have piled up on land and been dumped in the sea across the world, with many nations facing criticism for failing to

Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionise the processing power at our fingertips, but for the moment a lot of it is just potential. Researchers have been uncertain on whether we’ll ever be able to harness quantum computing in a practical, affordable, realistic way. But we might have an exciting new lead.   Two new

Artificial flesh is growing ever closer to the real thing. Scientists in Australia have now created a new jelly-like material which they claim has the strength and durability of actual skin, ligaments, or even bone.   “With the special chemistry we’ve engineered in the hydrogel, it can repair itself after it has been broken like

Cyborg super soldiers enhanced by advancements in bioengineering and other research fields are coming, but the Department of Defence is not prepared for what that will mean for the warfighter, the military as a whole, and civilians.   “In the next 30 years, you’re going to need to have to deal with these legal and

Nearly 3,000 feet (900 metres) below the surface of Monterey Bay, a network of deep sea cables helps scientists to study marine life. Spanning 32 miles (51 kilometres) across the floor of the Pacific Ocean, the cables record sounds like the high-pitched squeal of a dolphin or the deep moans of a humpback whale. They

A long-awaited international deal governing how the world’s technology companies should roll out 5G technology poses serious risks to weather forecast accuracy, according to data from federal agencies and the World Meteorological Organization.   Negotiators from around the world announced a deal Friday at a meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for how to roll out

Artificial intelligence, it seems, can figure out how to do just about anything. It can simulate the Universe, learn to solve a Rubik’s Cube with just one hand, and even find ghosts hidden in our past.   All these kinds of advancements are meant to be for our own good. But what about when they’re

The brain is the ultimate computing machine, so it’s no wonder researchers are keen to try and emulate it. Now, new research has taken an intriguing step in that direction – a device that’s able to ‘forget’ memories, just like our brains do.   It’s called a second-order memristor (a mix of “memory” and “resistor”). The

Tesla finally revealed its outrageous Blade Runner-style pickup truck, the “Cybertruck”, at an event in LA on Thursday evening. But an on-stage demonstration by Tesla CEO Elon Musk seemingly backfired, The Guardian reports: Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen lobed a hefty metal ball at the window — and smashed it.   “Oh my f**king

Having insults hurled our way is never going to do wonders for our self-esteem, but it turns out that disparaging remarks can cut us even when they’re delivered by a robot. You might think that critical comments from robots – droids only saying what they’ve been programmed to say, with no consciousness or feelings of

A new startup backed by Bill Gates says it has managed to harness solar energy to greater effect than ever before, generating enough heat from a field of mirrored panels to drive the production of cement, steel and glass – processes that are usually reliant on fossil fuels.   In keeping with our modern age,

When it comes to cutting water consumption to be kinder to the planet, changing the coating on your loo might not be the first step you think of – but a team of scientists has given this some very serious consideration indeed.   They’ve come up with a new type of coating that means a

It took just 2 1/2 hours for the Titanic to sink after it collided with an iceberg in 1912. Before the disaster, the ship was said to be unsinkable thanks to the design of its below-deck compartments. But the Titanic’s engineers hadn’t anticipated that a disaster would puncture six of those compartments.   More than

Next to the famous Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, is an abandoned coal mine protecting a different kind of resource against the end of the world: all of GitHub’s open source code.   Now, if the world ends, whatever survivors crawl out of the ashes will be able to access and use the software

Artificial intelligence is already making great strides forward, but taking it to the next level might require a more drastic approach. According to two researchers, we could try giving AI a sense of peril and the fragility of its own existence.   For now, the machines we code don’t have a sense of their own

You might take it for granted that you can load up Twitter or browse through Reddit whenever you like, but around half of the 7.7 billion people living on the planet right now aren’t yet able to get online.   And that’s a big problem, according to one researcher. Merten Reglitz, a philosopher and global

What is the deadliest weapon of the 20th century? Perhaps you think first of the atomic bomb, estimated to have killed as many as 200,000 people when the United States dropped two on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.   But another weapon is responsible for far more deaths – numbering up

Cupid was late this year. More than eight months late. Hundreds of people reported on social media that overnight on November 8 they had received texts from partners, employers and even dead family members that were originally meant to arrive in February. Many were sent on Valentine’s Day.   Alana Johnson, a children’s librarian at

There is no doubt that climate change is a very serious (and worsening) problem. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even if all the industrialized nations of the world became carbon neutral overnight, the problem would continue to get worse.   In short, it’s not enough to stop

Software detected the woman almost six seconds before Uber’s self-driving car struck her, investigators say, in the crash that would lead to her death and prompt the ride-share giant to slam the brakes on its autonomous vehicle testing.   But the SUV didn’t start to stop until about a second before impact. One big reason:

Electron microscopes are great at producing high-resolution images of a material’s atomic structure – if the material is hard, that is. Unfortunately, the devices’ electron beams can destroy softer materials, so scientists typically rely on X-rays, which can’t reach atomic resolution, to image those.   But scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National

When it comes to squeezing maximum amounts of energy out of the daylight hours, plants have a head start thanks to evolution. Now, engineers have designed solar panels that mimic the sunflower’s sun-chasing talent, through clever use of nanotechnology.   By moulding temperature-sensitive materials into thin, supportive structures, scientists have come up with tiny ‘stems’

Smart speakers have become a home addition for many, but the choice requires some vigilance over potential security breaches. Now, researchers have shown that hackers could get these small devices to do their bidding without making a single noise.   Devices running Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Siri were all shown to be vulnerable to

It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to real-life Transformers: robotic blocks that can travel independently, attach themselves to each other in predefined structures, follow paths and light sources, and more.   MIT researchers just released video footage of these new M-Blocks 2.0 cubes in action, and we can’t stop watching. They can shuffle themselves into

California has been caught in the midst of a fiery assault fueled by historically powerful winds, humidity levels stuck in the single digits, and the effects of long-term climate change.   Fierce, fast-moving wildfires exploded up and down the state during October, prompting utilities to shut off power to millions and forcing hundreds of thousands

It’s called ‘range anxiety’, and it’s often pointed to as one of the key reasons why consumer uptake of battery-powered electric vehicles still hasn’t really taken off. In a nutshell, range anxiety is the fear that an electric car’s battery won’t hold enough juice to get you where you need to be going – and

Video games were invented for humans, by humans. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re the best when it comes to playing them. In a new achievement that signifies just how far artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed, scientists have developed a learning algorithm that rose to the very top echelon of the esports powerhouse StarCraft II,

A team of scientists from the universities of Alberta and Toronto have laid out the blueprints for a “quantum battery” that never loses its charge. To be clear, this battery doesn’t exist yet — but if they figure out how to build it, it could be a revolutionary breakthrough in energy storage.   “The batteries

Hydrogen peroxide, water’s short-tempered sibling, has helped humans to fight infection since we discovered its antiseptic properties nearly two centuries ago. Unfortunately, it’s pretty unstable, making it tricky to transport where needed.   Now, researchers have found a rather simple way to generate the chemical out of water, air, and electricity, and it could be

A powerhouse team led by researchers from Google, NASA, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is officially claiming to have achieved the technological milestone of quantum supremacy.   In a new paper released this week, the scientists explain how they developed a quantum processor that could perform a complex computational task in a little over

We’ve made plenty of progress with sustainable energy in recent years, but there’s still a lot of work left to do. Now, there’s encouraging news on the development of an ‘artificial leaf’ that could lead to the production of truly ‘clean’ synthetic fuel.   In this case, the key step towards that achievement is the

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence development company co-founded by Elon Musk, just built an AI-powered robot hand that can solve a Rubik’s cube by itself. After years of practicing in simulations, the robot hand is finally nimble enough to solve the puzzle about 60 percent of the time, though that number drops to 20 percent when

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian

When the end of the world comes, how will you tweet? Thankfully for those of us who didn’t have a plan ready, Motherboard reports that software developer Virgil Dupras has built an operating system — Collapse OS — that can be run on parts salvaged from a post-apocalyptic hellscape.   The idea is to find

Those Knightscope security robots may not be so great at their jobs. When a woman in a park near Los Angeles saw people fighting and tried to summon help via a police robot patrolling nearby, the robot merely told her to “step out of the way” and continued along its pre-determined route, according to NBC

A new gel-like fluid that sticks to vegetation for months on end could be an ingenious new way to stop mother nature from burning. Devised by an engineer and a former fire-prevention forester, this sprayable retardant could one day be used to drastically reduce the number of forest fires experienced each year.   By coating

The bigger they come, the harder they fall, the old saying goes – or in this case, the more popular the game, the more user data is at risk, should hackers get access to it. That’s reportedly what’s happened with smash mobile hit Words With Friends. A hacker by the name of Gnosticplayers claims to

Tesla’s “Smart Summon” feature, which lets cars navigate themselves in parking lots, isn’t even out of beta yet. But Tesla owners are already using it in some mind-bogglingly stupid ways, Electrek reports.   In a video uploaded to YouTube account “Dirty Tesla”, a Model 3 owner tries to walk in front of his vehicle while