Category: Technology

Moss grows slowly and absorbs air pollution. Herzstaub/Shutterstock Across Europe, many banks alongside motorways are planted with grass to stabilise soil and keep roadside landscapes tidy. But there may be a better solution. Already some countries are experimenting with using moss in built-up areas to absorb air pollution. As countries search for nature-based solutions to […]

Erich von Däniken proposed that monumental structures such as the pyramids could have been built with help from aliens. Stefan Baumann Could ancient humans really have built the pyramids without extraterrestrial help? Or do such questions reveal more about modern anxieties than the past itself? The idea that aliens assisted the builders of ancient monuments […]

The US-Israel war on Iran has been described as “the first AI war”. But recent deployments of artificial intelligence are, in fact, the latest in a long history of technological developments that prize a need for speed in the military “kill chain”. “Sixty seconds – that’s all it took,” claimed a former Israeli Mossad agent […]

Roomanald/Shutterstock For centuries, unusual animal behaviour before earthquakes has been reported worldwide. Livestock becoming restless, wildlife disappearing and snakes emerging from hibernation in the middle of winter. For a long time, scientists dismissed such observations as folklore. In recent years, however, systematic research has begun to explore whether animals genuinely respond to environmental changes preceding […]

NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory/AURA/B. Quint Science in the modern era is increasingly reliant on enormous datasets and automated analysis. In astronomy, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) – a ten-year survey covering the entire southern sky almost a thousand times over the next decade – will test the limits of […]

Around 70% of Saudi Arabia’s drinking water comes from desalination plants. In Kuwait and Oman the figure is 90%. Stanislav71/Shutterstock The Gulf region has been defined by oil for decades. Tankers, pipelines and refineries have long been seen as the region’s most critical – and vulnerable – assets. In the past few days, US-Israeli strikes […]

Imagine looking up at the night sky and seeing a star suddenly burst into a blaze of light brighter than anything nearby. A flash so bright that it briefly outshines an entire galaxy before fading forever. This violent fate is rare: fewer than about 1% of stars are big enough to end their lives this […]

Radiology team analysing a scan. Do they think AI could do better? DC Studio /Shutterstock Since the 2010s, breakthroughs in AI have prompted discussion about their implications for work, including a possible “workless” future. Those forecasted to face replacement are no longer only the lower-skilled, but also professionals, once viewed as impervious to technological automation. […]

In biology and palaeontology (the study of extinct organisms) there are a few ways to estimate the age of an animal’s skeleton. One is the extent of fusion of sutures in the skeleton – how much the plates of bone have joined together as the animal matured. Another is the texture of the bone surfaces. […]

Self-driving cars are very much a reality and no longer a vision from science fiction. In the UK, automated vehicles (AVs) such as self-driving shuttles are already being tested on public roads. Self-driving taxi services are expected to launch in 2026, and the Automated Vehicles Act is scheduled for implementation in 2027. This act establishes […]