Humans have shared stories about giants for thousands of years, from the cyclopes of Greek mythology to the biblical Goliath. But are these just tall tales, or have giant humans really walked this Earth? If you consider a nearly 9-foot-tall human a giant, then yes. Robert Wadlow, the tallest person on record, grew to 8 … Read more
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems could devour all of the internet’s free knowledge as soon as 2026, a new study has warned. AI models such as GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, or Claude 3 Opus rely on the many trillions of words shared online to get smarter, but new projections suggest they will exhaust the supply of … Read more
Five artificial intelligence (AI) models, one each adopting the role of Aristotle, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Cleopatra and Genghis Khan, are sitting inside the compartment of a moving train. But one is secretly human, and it’s their collective task to guess the imposter. That’s the setup of a viral video that pitted a range of … Read more
Scientists have developed an imaging chip that could equip future smartphones with “Superman-inspired” X-ray vision — albeit operating within a much more limited range than the caped Kryptonian superhero. The experimental chip consists of an array of three sensor pixels that emit and receive high-frequency radio signals in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band of the electromagnetic … Read more
The sun is on the verge of a significant event: a magnetic field reversal. This phenomenon happens roughly every 11 years and marks an important stage in the solar cycle. The shift in polarity indicates the halfway point of solar maximum, the height of solar activity, and the beginning of the shift toward solar minimum. … Read more
What it is: Also known as the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, this fragment of a baked clay tablet contains cuneiform inscriptions describing an epic flood that swept through Babylon. It is considered one of the oldest pieces of literature in the world. Where it was found: Nineveh (also known as Kouyunjik), an … Read more
We are interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) online not only more than ever — but more than we realize — so researchers asked people to converse with four agents, including one human and three different kinds of AI models, to see whether they could tell the difference. The “Turing test,” first proposed as “the imitation … Read more
Scientists believe Earth may have briefly lost protection from the sun around two million years ago, left to endure the extreme environment of interstellar space as the solar system passed through a dense cloud of gas and dust between stars. At that time, early human ancestors shared our planet with prehistoric animals like mastodons and … Read more
So-called “zombie fires” in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smoulder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in early May, way ahead of the usual fire season in the far north, and can reignite for … Read more
The “Eye of the Sahara” — also known as the “Eye of Africa” or the Richat structure — is a giant rock dome, carved with concentric rings, that looks like a giant bullseye when seen from above. The eye is visible from space and has been known to astronauts and scientists since the earliest crewed … Read more
