Science

The US has succeeded in developing the world’s first ‘true’ exascale supercomputer, honoring a pledge made by President Obama almost seven years ago, and ushering the world into a new era of computational capability. Until now, the most speedy supercomputers in the world were still working in the petascale, achieving a quadrillion calculations per second.

From Talos, the giant bronze automaton who guarded the princess Europa in ancient Greek myths, to Cylons and Terminators, the idea of artificial humans has both fascinated and creeped us out for centuries.  Now, we’re closer than ever to making a robot look remarkably like a human, with the development of living robot skin. This icky-looking

Deep beneath the waves there’s a source of power quite unlike any other. To tap into it, Japanese engineers have constructed a true leviathan, a beast capable of withstanding the strongest of ocean currents to transform its flow into a virtually limitless supply of electricity. Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries – now known simply as IHI Corporation

HELSINKI — An orbital launch attempt by Chinese startup iSpace suffered failure early Friday, following on from two failures last year. The fourth Hyperbola-1, a four-stage solid rocket, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 3:09 a.m. Eastern May 13.  Apparent launch footage appeared on a Chinese social media

Octopuses are doomed to be orphans from a very young age. After a female octopus lays her eggs, she stops eating and begins self-mutilating, tearing off her skin and biting off the tips of her tentacles. By the time a young octopus wriggles out of its egg, its mother is already dead. A few months

Every time you take a step, space itself glows with a soft warmth. Called the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect (or sometimes just Unruh effect if you’re pushed for time), this eerie glow of radiation emerging from the vacuum is akin to the mysterious Hawking radiation that’s thought to surround black holes. Only in this case, it’s the

Researchers have taken advantage of a rare opportunity to study identical (aka monozygotic) twins who were separated early in life, before being raised in different countries by different families – and there are some surprising results to report. Whereas IQ has been shown to be up to 80 percent heritable – with twins usually scoring roughly

One of the most recent snaps beamed back from the Curiosity rover on Mars has revealed a rather interesting feature in the rocks: what looks to be a perfectly carved out doorway nestling in the Martian landscape. The doorway doppelgänger is so eerily convincing we’re almost tempted to start believing that it leads to a

There is an even chance that global temperatures will temporarily breach the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in one of the next five years, the United Nations warned Tuesday. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” 2 °C above levels measured between 1850

The human brain is said to be the most complex biological structure ever to have existed. And while science doesn’t fully understand the brain yet, researchers in the expanding field of neuroscience have been making progress. Neuroscientists have made substantial inroads towards mapping the complex functions of the brain’s 85 billion or so neurons and

The IG determined that the basing decision “complied with Federal Law and DoD policy and that the process was reasonable” WASHINGTON — After a year-long investigation, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General concluded that the January 2021 recommendation to relocate U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama, was reasonable and not

Over 80 percent of international trade is carried by sea. Much of what we use and consume everyday either has been or will be transported on huge vessels which plough the global ocean. The courses these container vessels take are fixed shipping routes known as marine highways, which are not unlike motorways on land. These highways,

We already have quantum computers of a sort, but at the moment they’re not practical or reliable or large-scale enough to fully realize the massive potential of the technology. To get closer to that end goal, scientists are working towards what they say could be the ideal building block for a quantum computer. These building

Prehistoric daggers long thought to be non-functional ceremonial objects interred in warriors’ graves were actually used to slaughter and butcher animals during the early fourth millennium BCE, a new study suggests. Numerous copper-alloy daggers have been unearthed in Bronze Age warriors’ graves across Europe, along with other weapons, and archaeologists previously speculated that the daggers

We might not be able to hear sound in space, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. In 2003, astronomers detected something truly astonishing: acoustic waves propagating through the gas surrounding a supermassive black hole, 250 million light-years away. We wouldn’t be able to hear them at their current pitch. Emanating from the supermassive black

Throughout our planet’s history, Earth has fluctuated between a hothouse and an icehouse. Today, our home is supposed to be in a period of global cooling, but human emissions of greenhouse gasses are reversing that natural trend at a rapid and unprecedented rate. One of the last times Earth went from an icehouse to a

WASHINGTON — Two federal agencies in a turf battle over commercial spaceflight investigations say they are now talking with each other to better define their roles and responsibilities. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) triggered the debate when it published a notice of proposed rulemaking in November 2021 to codify the role it would take

An expedition to a deep-sea ridge, just north of the Hawaiian Islands, has revealed an ancient dried-out lake bed paved with what looks like a yellow brick road. The eerie scene was chanced upon by the exploration vessel Nautilus, which is currently surveying the Liliʻuokalani ridge within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument (PMNM). PMNM is one

The definition of a second, the most fundamental unit of time in our current measurement system, hasn’t been updated in more than 70 years (give or take some billionths of a second). But in the next decade or so, that could change: Ultraprecise atomic optical clocks that rely on visible light are on track to set the

For 65,000 years, Bininj – the local Kundjeihmi word for Aboriginal people – have returned to Madjedbebe rock shelter on Mirarr Country in the Kakadu region (in the Northern Territory). Over this immense span of time, the environment around the rock shelter has changed dramatically. Our paper, published last week in Quaternary Science Reviews, uses

Flung into freefall for months on end, our bodies adjust in ways that makes for a long list of health concerns for space travelers. The latest evaluation of microgravity’s warping effect on our biology focuses on the spaces surrounding the blood vessels that weave through our brain, revealing concerning changes that remain with astronauts between

In a warmer world, rising sea levels could render many coastlines, beaches, and reef islands uninhabitable, or destroy them altogether. The 1.09℃ Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times has already heightened seas by 20 centimeters. But curiously, research shows some coastlines and even low-lying coral reef islands are actually growing rather than eroding in the

A swarm of 10 bright blue drones lifts off in a bamboo forest in China, then swerves its way between cluttered branches, bushes, and over uneven ground as it autonomously navigates the best flight path through the woods. The experiment, led by scientists at Zhejiang University, evokes scenes from science fiction – and the authors

WASHINGTON — Sierra Space says it is making good progress on its first Dream Chaser spaceplane as the company looks ahead to versions of the vehicle that can carry crews and perform national security missions. The company provided SpaceNews with images of the first Dream Chaser, named Tenacity, being assembled at its Colorado headquarters. The

Researchers have found the broken tooth of one of the largest carnivores ever to stalk the Earth. No, it isn’t T. rex. It isn’t even a dinosaur. Rather, the tooth belongs to a rare and mysterious species of giant ichthyosaur – a flesh-eating marine reptile that patrolled the world’s seas during the late Triassic period, about 205

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore – you can always go back and change it. But is time

The widely used anesthetic propofol has a dramatic effect on the oscillating waves circulating through the brain, a new primate study shows – important findings for understanding more about our bodies under anesthesia, and ensuring it remains safe to use. When we’re conscious, the brain is dominated by higher frequency waves (beta waves) – but

Early risers this month have been treated to an incredible and rare spectacle – the almost perfect alignment of four planets in the night sky. But it’s not over yet! In the early hours of 30 April 2022, we’ll have the chance to see Venus and Jupiter ‘nearly collide‘ as they appear to move incredibly

Most people have heard of a flash flood. ‘Flash droughts’, on the other hand, aren’t as familiar. Sadly, that may be about to change, as anomalous, sudden drought episodes are speeding up under the warmer conditions of climate change. A new analysis of flash droughts finds that droughts coming on suddenly seem to be striking

By exchanging a classical material for one with unique quantum properties, scientists have made a superconducting circuit that’s capable of feats long thought to be impossible. The discovery, made by researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, and the US, overturns a century of thought on the nature of superconducting circuits, and how their currents can be