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Massive Flare Seen Close to Our Solar System: What It Means for Chances of...
The sun isn’t the only star to produce stellar flares. On April 21, 2021, a team of astronomers published new research describing the brightest...
23andMe’s Huge Covid-19 Study Draws Links Between the Virus and Our Genetics
Last spring, in a race against Covid-19, 23andMe launched an ambitious study to answer a question on everyone’s minds: who’s likely to get sick,...
‘Infinitely Recyclable’ Plastic Could Help Solve Our Waste Crisis
The world is drowning in plastic, and part of the reason is that it's incredibly hard to recycle most of the waste we create....
One Incredible Ocean Crossing May Have Made Human Evolution Possible
Humans evolved in Africa, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and monkeys. But primates themselves appear to have evolved elsewhere—likely in Asia—before colonizing Africa. At the...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 1)
ROBOTICS
The Robot Surgeon Will See You Now
Cade Metz | The New York Times
"Real scalpels, artificial intelligence—what could go wrong? ...The project is a...
This Powerful Tidal Turbine Will Power 2,000 Homes in the UK
Renewable energy is having its moment in the sun. And in the wind. And, lesser known but equally relevant, in the water.
Tidal turbines don’t...
Researchers Scoured Billions of Links and Found the Internet Is Both Expanding and Shrinking
The online world is continuously expanding—always aggregating more services, more users, and more activity. Last year, the number of websites registered on the “.com”...
What Would We Do If an Asteroid Hit Earth? NASA Is Simulating It This...
About a month ago, an asteroid that was estimated to be at least a quarter-mile wide zoomed past Earth at a speed of 77,000...
A New CRISPR Tool Flips Genes On and Off Like a Light Switch
CRISPR is revolutionary. It’s also a total brute.
The classic version of the gene editing wunderkind literally slices a gene to bits just to turn...
Advancing AI With a Supercomputer: A Blueprint for an Optoelectronic ‘Brain’
Building a computer that can support artificial intelligence at the scale and complexity of the human brain will be a colossal engineering effort. Now...
The World’s Biggest AI Chip Now Comes Stock With 2.6 Trillion Transistors
The world's biggest AI chip just doubled its specs—without adding an inch.
The Cerebras Systems Wafer Scale Engine is about the size of a big...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 24)
COMPUTING
Now for AI's Latest Trick: Writing Computer Code
Will Knight | Wired
"It can take years to learn how to write computer code well. SourceAI, a Paris startup,...
A Helicopter Flew on Mars for the First Time. A Space Physicist Explains Why...
On Monday of this week, the Ingenuity helicopter—which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February—took off from the Martian surface. More importantly,...
Scientist George Church Is Auctioning Off His Genome as an NFT
You’ve probably heard the acronym NFT over the last couple months. Non-fungible tokens have been all over the news, seeming to become a sensation—one...
Google Earth’s Amazing New Feature Is a 37-Year 3D Timelapse of the Entire...
Satellites are doing all kinds of amazing new things lately, from beaming high-speed internet to remote areas to capturing high-resolution images through clouds to...
Scientists Grew Human Cells in Monkey Embryos, and Yes, It’s an Ethical Minefield
Few things in science freak people out more than human-animal hybrids. Named chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature that’s an amalgam of different beasts,...
Honeywell Just Released Details About How Its Quantum Computer Works
Engineering giant Honeywell burst into the quantum computing race out of left field last year. Now the company has provided the first concrete details...
New Warp Drive Research Dashes Faster-Than-Light Travel Dreams—but Reveals Stranger Possibilities
In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a radical technology that would allow faster-than-light travel: the warp drive, a hypothetical way to skirt around the...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 17)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
15 Graphs You Need to See to Understand AI in 2021
Charles Q. Choi | IEEE Spectrum
"If you haven’t had time to read the AI...
A Huge New Kroger Warehouse Is Staffed by 1,000 Grocery-Picking Robots
With the pandemic at long last starting to wind down, many of us are beyond eager to get back to “the way things used...
First GMO Mosquitoes to Be Released in the Florida Keys
This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue...
Epic Games Raised $1 Billion to Fund Its Vision for Building the Metaverse
If you saw the 2018 movie Ready Player One, you may remember the Oasis: a glitzy, fast-paced metaverse with gleaming cities, beautiful people (or,...
A Massive New Gene Editing Project Is Out to Crush Alzheimer’s
When it comes to Alzheimer’s versus science, science is on the losing side.
Alzheimer’s is cruel in the most insidious way. The disorder creeps up...
Scientists Completed the First Human Trial of a Wireless High-Bandwidth Brain-Computer Interface
Brain-computer interface technology is advancing rapidly, but it currently relies on wires that seriously limit its use in everyday applications. That could soon change,...
This Robot Taught Itself to Walk in a Simulation—Then Went for a Stroll in...
Recently, in a Berkeley lab, a robot called Cassie taught itself to walk, a little like a toddler might. Through trial and error, it...
