Science

A panel of AI-enabled humanoid robots told a United Nations summit on Friday that they could eventually run the world better than humans. But the social robots said they felt humans should proceed with caution when embracing the rapidly-developing potential of artificial intelligence. And they admitted that they cannot – yet – get a proper

HELSINKI — Chinese private rocket firm Landspace achieved a global first late Tuesday by reaching orbit with a methane-fueled rocket. The 49.5-meter-long Zhuque-2 lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on July 11.  Landspace and Chinese state media announced that the second Zhuque-2 reached orbit, making it

Aquatic adaptations in mammals may be irreversible, according to a new study investigating the means by which more than 5,000 species transitioned from land to water. Although the evolutionary journey of animals like whales and seals can ultimately be traced back to marine tetrapods that left the ocean for a life on land, roaming terra

University of Colorado scientists have set the tightest constraints yet on the potential size of separation in electrical charges within an electron, or its electric dipole moment (EDM). While it doesn’t mean we know what that size is or if it even truly exists, it could help weed out ideas explaining why the Universe isn’t

Since the days of Aristotle, scientists and philosophers have debated whether silence is ever ‘heard’. A new series of experiments by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the US may just have settled the issue. The research made clever use of a well-known trick called the one-is-more illusion, which fools the brains of listeners into

Avi Loeb, a physicist from Harvard University in the US, has recovered 50 tiny spherical iron fragments from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that he claims may be material from an interstellar alien spaceship. Loeb is linking his finding with the passage of a fireball in January 2014. The meteor was observed by sensors

World daily temperature records have been smashed this week, according to preliminary data. The modeling tools that produced these estimates can provide an early warning of extreme heat events, even if they aren’t as precise as monthly and yearly reports produced by leading agencies, say experts. Who is producing the data? The University of Maine

SAN FRANCISCO – Plasmos, the Los Angeles-based startup developing rocket engines, is pivoting to become an artificial intelligence-driven venture capital firm. Plasmos officially changed its business model in late May after struggling to attract investors and strategic partners due in part to the background of Plasmos CEO Ali Baghchehsara. Born in Iran, Baghchehsara moved to

On a long walk in the summer of 1860, Charles Darwin first noticed a peculiar phenomenon among plants that still puzzles scientists to this day. On the English heathland, there was a common sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) with a whole bunch of insects stuck to its leaves. And that chance encounter started Darwin on a 16-year-long

Superconducting quantum technology has long promised to bridge the divide between existing electronic devices and the delicate quantum landscape beyond. Unfortunately progress in making critical processes stable has stagnated over the past decade. Now a significant step forward has finally been realized, with researchers from the University of Maryland making superconducting qubits that last 10

Extended periods of solitude can leave many of us climbing the walls for something to occupy our minds. Those who are creatively minded, however, relish the freedom to escape into their own mental universe. US psychologists from the Universities of Arizona, Arkansas, and Minnesota, surveyed over 2,000 volunteers to better understand how creativity kicks in

Ancient stars born during the Cosmic Dawn have been identified in the center of the Milky Way. As part of a survey to uncover some of the oldest known stars in the Universe, scientists conducted a comprehensive search for these ancient, but elusive, stars, and found that the measures they spin around the galactic center

Consuming over a third of Earth’s vertebrates, the more voracious predator our planet has ever known has a staggering ecological impact. New research finds this animal’s consumption creates a footprint 1,300 times larger than anything else we have records for. Yet only about half of what is being taken is for food. That predator is,

Everyone has a characteristic odor; a distinctive scent. Now scientists have found that with just a whiff of someone’s hand – and a fancy protein analysis machine – they can distinguish between sexes with darn-good accuracy. In the study of 60 people, consisting of 30 men and 30 women, a person’s sex could be correctly

It’s said nature abhors a vacuum. The same is true of leadership. In the global space community, a government body is almost always a leading component of a nation’s growing space ecosystem. But what if it wasn’t? In Ecuador today, there is growing momentum around space ecosystem development. To be sure, Ecuador has some history

More than a thousand Californian sea lions have been poisoned by a toxic algae bloom that can cause seizures, brain damage, and death. Across California’s beaches, sea lions have been exhibiting strange behaviors like swaying their heads back and forth, frothing at the mouth and being unusually violent when touched. Sea lions aren’t normally aggressive

When you turn on a lamp to brighten a room, you are experiencing light energy transmitted as photons, which are small, discrete quantum packets of energy. These photons must obey the sometimes strange laws of quantum mechanics, which, for instance, dictate that photons are indivisible, but at the same time, allow a photon to be

There are many ways we humans have unleashed devastation on each other – nuclear weapons, pollution, the spread of deadly pathogens, just to name a few. While it’s hard to say with certainty, by many accounts the deadliest day in human history was actually the result of a natural disaster. On the morning of 23

On one particular day in 2021, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS must have felt a pin-prick of fear and uncertainty. On November 15th of that year, Russia fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own defunct military satellites, Tselina-D. The target weighed about 1,750 kilograms, and when the missile struck its target, the

The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and highly exposed to the effects of climate change,

WASHINGTON — After completing an upgrade to the International Space Station’s power system in June, NASA is moving ahead with plans to add two more solar arrays to the station. Boeing and Redwire announced June 28 that they signed a contract for a fourth pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or IROSA, for the station.

In a pale world of ice and snow, the last color you expect to see on the horizon is red. In 1911, during a British expedition to Antarctica, researchers were shocked to notice a glacier ‘bleeding’ from its tongue onto an ice-covered lake. The crimson drool is known as Blood Falls, and it’s taken experts

Because of a peculiar effect velocity has on the appearance of the passage of time, our observations make it seem like time ran slower when the Universe was just a baby. At least, that’s how it appears to us, at a light travel time of nearly 13 billion years away. This is called time dilation,

A new study suggests a link between past climate changes and a drop in the size of the human brain – an adaptive response that emerges in an analysis of climate records and human remains over a 50,000-year period. The research by cognitive scientist Jeff Morgan Stibel from the Natural History Museum in California adds

A little more than 650 light-years from Earth, an old, red star lies dying. A fresh prognosis on Betelgeuse‘s condition based on its pulsations gives the celebrated supergiant just a few decades before it collapses in a final flash of glory. Researchers from Tohoku University in Japan and the University of Geneva in Switzerland have

Seaweed farming is the fastest-growing force in global food production today. But while giant marine algae can produce tons of fuel and sustenance, scientists have recently pointed out that its ability to offset the climate crisis is largely unknown. To sink just 1 gigaton of carbon emissions a year, recent simulations suggest massive seaweed farms

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A European mission to unravel some of the biggest mysteries in the universe is underway thanks to a launch from an American rocket. A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:12 a.m. Eastern July 1 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The rocket deployed its payload, the European Space Agency’s

Dolphins might not be the first animal you think of when it comes to putting together a battle-hardened team of warriors, but the Russian military is reportedly recruiting bottlenose dolphins to defend the Sevastopol naval base in the Black Sea. As per the UK Ministry of Defence, “trained marine mammals” are being kept in pens

A team of researchers has accurately measured power at a scale that’s a trillion times smaller than what’s possible with standard instruments. It means microwave radiation can be more precisely assessed in quantum physics experiments. Being able to measure power at ultra-low levels is helpful for scientists building quantum systems – systems that are incredibly

Printed circles that appear to move. Colors that seem different in spite of being identical. Everybody loves a good optical illusion, though precisely where the magic happens is still a mystery in many cases. A new study by University of Exeter visual ecologist Jolyon Troscianko, and neuroscientist Daniel Osorio from the University of Sussex in