NASA scientists have confirmed that a mysterious object shooting toward us through the solar system is an “interstellar object” — only the third of its kind ever seen. Experts have also given the cosmic interloper an official name, and revealed new information about its origins and trajectory. News of the extrasolar entity, initially dubbed A11pl3Z, … Read more
By disrupting a key gene, scientists made chicken feathers more dinosaur-like — but the results didn’t last. In a new study, researchers inhibited a gene during embryonic development to make chicken feathers more primitive, like the kind of simple tube-shaped proto-feathers that likely first emerged in the ancestors of dinosaurs in the Early Triassic 250 … Read more
A U.K. start-up has shocked the space exploration community after unveiling plans to use a novel nuclear fusion propulsion system to power an orbital fleet of reusable “alien-like” rockets, known as Sunbirds, which the company says could revolutionize how we explore the solar system — and beyond. The technology behind this ambitious project will begin … Read more
We live in places that will be flooded by rising sea levels. We have food production systems dependent on specific climates. And we have built economic structures, trade relationships and social dynamics contingent on certain temperatures. What’s more, we are not alone in this world, and the rapidly changing climate is a threat to the … Read more
A quartet of Earth-like worlds, each about 20% to 30% the size of our planet, circle one of our closest stellar neighbors, a new study reveals. The rocky alien worlds are close enough that future generations of humans may be able to visit them with futuristic rocket propulsion technology. However, it is unlikely that we … Read more
Punishing artificial intelligence for deceptive or harmful actions doesn’t stop it from misbehaving; it just makes it hide its deviousness, a new study by ChatGPT creator OpenAI has revealed. Since arriving in public in late 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) have repeatedly revealed their deceptive and outright sinister capabilities. These include actions … Read more
Without a doubt, since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revolutionized our view of the early universe, but its new findings could put astronomers in a spin. In fact, it could tell us something profound about the birth of the universe by possibly hinting that everything we see around us is sealed … Read more
For the first time, researchers have transformed light into a “‘supersolid” — a strange state of matter that is both solid and liquid at the same time. Although scientists have made supersolids out of atoms before, this is the first instance of coupling light and matter to create a supersolid and it opens new doors … Read more
Scientists have devised a way to store and read data from individual atoms embedded in tiny crystals only a few millimeters in size (where 1 mm is 0.04 inches). If scaled up, it could one day lead to ultra-high density storage systems capable of holding petabytes of data on a single disc — where 1 … Read more
Imagine you’re eating dinner. You try to pour some ranch dressing onto your plate to dip your veggies into. You tip the container upside down, but nothing comes out. Seems like a solid. So you shake the bottle up and down, and a big blob of dressing plops out and hits your plate. Seems like … Read more
