Not everything is knowable. In a world where it seems like artificial intelligence and machine learning can figure out just about anything, that might seem like heresy – but it’s true. At least, that’s the case according to a new international study by a team of mathematicians and AI researchers, who discovered that despite the

Deeps in mines, at the bottom of lakes, and even in your own gut, bacteria are hard at work producing electricity in order to survive in environments low in oxygen. These potent little power producers have been used in speculative experiments and one day may power everything from batteries to “biohomes“. There are many types

Worms may not have spines, but they’re doing some back-breaking sewer work in more than 4,000 toilets across India. Since 2015, a creative new type of toilet called the Tiger Toilet has been popping up outside homes and schools around the country. From the outside, this toilet looks like any other pit latrine. But it

Science fiction introduces us to elaborate, futuristic worlds that often sound like nothing more than a dream. But humanity has made incredible technological advancements over the past 100 years, and many of the ideas predicted in science fiction have now become reality. Some predictions, like self-driving cars, are still in the early stages, but scientists

An apparent hit-and-run in Las Vegas caught on video seems to show what could be a first-of-its-kind traffic fatality: an autonomous robot struck and allegedly ‘killed’ by a self-driving Tesla. As brutal as it sounds, it’s also suspected to be part of an elaborate PR stunt set up to promote the now-‘deceased’ robot in question

For many years, quantum computers have only been within the confines of the research lab. On Tuesday, though, IBM unveiled the IBM Q System One, billed as the first-ever quantum computer designed for businesses to put to their own use – though the company is clear that this is only the first step towards a

Forget the trial and error – mathematics has proved where the best spot to place your router is. Physicist Jason Cole has figured out a formula that can work out the best place to position your wireless router, and it ultimately depends on your house’s floor plan. Cole started investigating the science behind router placement in

Think your New Year’s resolution to hit the gym is daunting? Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wants to change an entire nation’s energy policy in 2019. On Saturday, the billionaire philanthropist released a letter detailing what he learned in 2018 and what he hopes to accomplish in 2019. One of his goals for the next year

A Chinese navy warship armed with what looks like a mounted electromagnetic railgun has apparently set sail, possibly for testing in the open ocean. The Type 072II Yuting-class tank landing ship Haiyangshan and its weapon were spotted along the Yangtze River at the Wuchang Shipyard in Wuhan earlier this year. The latest photos of the

Neuroscientists have successfully hooked up a three-way brain connection to allow three people share their thoughts – and in this case, play a Tetris-style game. The team thinks this wild experiment could be scaled up to connect whole networks of people, and yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. It works through a combination of

Researchers in 2018 achieved a new kind of chimeric first, producing sheep-human hybrid embryos that could one day represent the future of organ donation – by using body parts grown inside unnatural, engineered animals. With that end goal in mind, scientists created the first interspecies sheep-human chimera in February, introducing human stem cells into sheep

Data breaches, widespread malware attacks and microtargeted personalized advertising were lowlights of digital life in 2018. As technologies change, so does the advice security experts give for how to best stay safe. As 2019 begins, I’ve pulled together a short list of suggestions for keeping your digital life secure and free of manipulative disinformation. 1.

Mining corporation Rio Tinto says that an autonomous rail system called AutoHaul that it’s been developing in the remote Pilbara region of Australia for several years is now entirely operational — an accomplishment the company says makes the system the “world’s largest robot.” “It’s been a challenging journey to automate a rail network of this size and scale in

A Danish startup called Organic Basics claims its underwear will remain fresh through weeks of wear, eliminating the need for frequent washing. And this could be a boon for the environment – if it’s actually true. When your sweat meets your clothing, it creates an ideal environment for bacteria. It’s this bacteria that actually produces

Electric car maker Tesla will expand its network of Superchargers to provide service for all of Europe by the end of 2019, CEO Elon Musk tweeted Wednesday. If the plans come to fruition, the vast expansion will represent not just a coup for Tesla but also for the growing global infrastructure that supports practical transportation

Facebook is getting into the crypto business. That’s according to new reporting by Bloomberg. Sources familiar with the project told the business magazine that the social media giant is working to develop a money transfer system for its WhatsApp chat app that uses a stablecoin – a form of blockchain-based cryptocurrency that is pegged to

Get water in your lungs, and you’re in for a very bad time. But when water enters a new type of “lung” created by researchers at Stanford University, the result is hydrogen fuel – a clean source of energy that could one day power everything from our cars to our smartphones. Though this isn’t the

Your home is likely a hotbed of toxins, with everything from formaldehyde to chloroform finding its way into the air you breathe daily. It’s common knowledge that houseplants can remove some of those toxins from the air, but not in dramatic amounts. Experts estimate you’d likely need two large houseplants per every 100 square feet

Quantum internet promises ultra-secure, next-generation communications, but is it actually feasible on a global scale? Absolutely, according to a new experiment carried out between satellites in orbit and a station on the ground. The team of scientists was able to exchange several carefully managed photons in pulses of infrared light, carried between Russian GLONASS satellites

It’s not been a great year for Facebook, with security breaches and privacy scandals aplenty, but it turns out many of us still put a high price on the cost of quitting the social network – a price of around $1,000 in fact. In a study in which over a thousand participants were asked how

A new nanotech breakthrough comes courtesy of a material you’d likely find in any nursery. A team from MIT has figured out a way to quickly and inexpensively shrink objects to the nanoscale. It calls the process implosion fabrication, and it all starts with polyacrylate — the super-absorbent polymer typically found in baby diapers. Size Matters

A 13-year-old scientist from California has won US$25,000 for inventing a solar-panel system that can determine where the Sun is at any given time. Georgia Hutchinson, from Woodside, California, took the top prize at the Broadcom Masters nationwide STEM competition for middle-school students. She placed first in a pool of 30 finalists, who received a

Acoustic levitation – using the pressure generated by sound waves to levitate a single tiny particle – has been around a long time. Manipulating the particle and moving it through space is only a relatively recent development. But now a pair of researchers from Spain and the UK have achieved a huge breakthrough: an acoustic

A delivery robot burst into flames at the University of California, Berkeley, and students were said to be so devastated, they held a candlelit vigil to mark its demise. The incident took place on Friday, when a Kiwi delivery robot caught fire after its battery malfunctioned, the company said in a Medium blog on Sunday.

Anybody can win the presidency of the United States. But you really know you’ve broken through when you make it onto the list of the worst passwords people use on the internet. So Donald Trump can feel justifiably smug that ‘donald’ just made its official debut on a list of the 100 most commonly used

An initiative called Breakthrough Starshot wants to explore another star system using ultra-powerful laser beams and wafer-thin spaceships. It’s a goal that sounds so fantastic, you’d be forgiven for dismissing it as science fiction. But it’s no joke, and the project’s chief engineer says millions of dollars’ worth of work is moving along without any

When your computer stores data, it has to pause while the information moves from one piece of hardware to another. But that may soon stop being the case, as scientists from MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design uncovered a new manufacturing trick that should let them build computers that don’t have those

What internet users Down Under say online will no longer be kept on the down low. On Thursday, Australia’s Parliament passed the Assistance and Access Bill. The legislation will force tech companies to help Australian authorities decrypt users’ online communications — and it could represent a major blow to data privacy elsewhere in the world.

The promise of quantum computing brings with it some mind-blowing potential, but it also carries a new set of risks, scientists are warning. Specifically, the enormous power of the tech could be used to crack the best cyber security we currently have in place. A new report on the “progress and prospects” of quantum computing

There are a few things we should demand from a decent power supply. Not least, it shouldn’t require oven-like temperatures to function. That’s just a given. For decades, fluoride has sat on the sidelines as a potential competitor for lithium-ion batteries. If not for its need to bake at more than 150 degrees Celsius (300

Britain’s Parliament has just given the world an unprecedented look at the ruthless tactics of Facebook’s executive team. On Wednesday, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published leaked emails from the Silicon Valley tech giant’s leadership team that had been obtained by Six4Three, an app developer that’s locked in a legal battle with Facebook

A year ago today, Tesla’s big battery in South Australia began dispatching power to the state’s grid, one day ahead of schedule. By most accounts, the world’s largest lithium-ion battery has been a remarkable success. But there are some concerns that have so far escaped scrutiny. The big battery (or the Hornsdale Power Reserve, to

Bill Gates sees nuclear energy as a potential solution to lowering carbon-dioxide emissions around the world, and he has spent the past decade funding new ways to produce the energy in a safe, affordable way. About 10 years ago, Gates cofounded a company called TerraPower to build new kinds of nuclear reactors. TerraPower is developing

It happens all the time. You’re online, checking out products, maybe looking for a holiday, or researching home loans, when all of a sudden there’s a pop-up. “Live help is available! Chat now with a member of our friendly customer support team!” It’s easy to dismiss these chat dialogues, but it’s also easy to take

The price of Bitcoin has dropped by 75 percent in the past year, so anyone who invested heavily at the peak will have lost a lot of money. And now there’s more bad news for crypto-currency investors to worry about: they may not legally own the digital assets they have purchased. My colleagues and I

Humans are going places. NASA’s newest plan is to launch crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s, and we’ll need the most advanced and reliable space technology to help get us there safe and sound. That’s where HAL 9000 – the villainous, insane killbot from 2001: A Space Odyssey – comes in. Believe it or

A set of wings with wires for engines has established a landmark in aviation, becoming the first object to breeze through the air on the cusp of its own, self-generated ionic wind. At first glance, it looks like the kind of aircraft even the pioneering Wright brothers would have rejected as too ludicrous to fly. But

For a brief moment earlier this year, a small spot in China blazed with such heat, the Sun would have been staring down at Earth feeling mightily jealous. Scientists announced this week that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor in Hefei has finally achieved a temperature exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius, setting a new

If you’re eagerly awaiting the next generation of personal transport, we’ve got some good and bad news. The good news is you can now order your very own hoverbike for delivery in the first half of 2019; the bad news is it’ll cost you an estimated US$150,000. The Hoverbike S3 is manufactured by Californian company

We’re facing a deadly Catch 22. As the world grows hotter, people crank up the air con. As they crank the air con, the world grows hotter. And so on. And so on. If it seems like there’s no escape from this gloomy, no-win situation, take heart: a new technology developed by scientists from the

On Friday, Apple announced that two of its products – the iPhone X and the 13-inch MacBook Pro (non Touch Bar) – have known hardware issues. Bloomberg first reported on these issues after being posted on Apple’s support pages on Friday. Apple said that on some iPhone X devices, display screens are experiencing touch issues. Those issues include: The

One of the difficulties in developing quantum computers to their full potential – and there are quite a few – is cutting out interference. With technology as delicate as this, any kind of environmental noise or imperfection that affects the careful balance of a quantum computer could cause havoc with its calculations. To overcome this

According to a new study, the energy costs of mining Bitcoin alone could cause a 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures within 20 years. Bitcoin might be promising a brave new world of financial freedom, but it’s also responsible for a huge spike in electricity use, so the new study has attempted to put a number

This Halloween, the creepiest event to attend might be a mass online social experiment hosted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is famous for churning out some of the world’s top engineers, programmers, and scientists. But the university’s Media Laboratory is increasingly known for launching experimental projects in October that are designed

When you’re high above the clouds at cruising altitude in a giant passenger jet, probably the last thing on your mind is the threat of a mid-air collision with a drone. But at take-off and landing, that danger isn’t so distant. Last year, a drone did in fact collide with an in-flight US Army Black

We’ve all been guilty of ripping our USB Drive out of our computers instead of ejecting them properly, only to receive the judgemental pop up telling us we really shouldn’t have done that. But when everything on the USB works fine next time you plug it in, you can’t help but wonder: does it actually

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is having trouble keeping track of its trash. For the second time in the past year, rocket debris from a SpaceX launch has washed up on shore in North Carolina. The huge chunk of metal was discovered on an Outer Banks beach in the US state. The rocket component, which was three

Facebook has said 30 million accounts were compromised in a major hack. That’s down from the 50 million accounts the social network first estimated, but it’s still not great news. Though Facebook has taken steps to protect users in light of the attack, the company said hackers had access to millions of people’s personal information.