Category: Technology

Volcanoes were erupting on the Moon as recently as 120 million years ago, evidence collected by a Chinese spacecraft suggests. Until the last few years, scientists had thought volcanic activity ended on the Moon around 2 billion years ago. The findings, published in Science, come from analysis of lunar rock and soil delivered to Earth […]

Against the background of climate change, there’s a push to make offshore wind a much bigger part of the UK’s energy supply in coming years. But offshore wind farms are already being affected by cyberattacks, according to a recent report. And unless the vulnerabilities are addressed, cyberattacks could cause power outages, leading to critical services […]

On a Sunday morning in late August 2024 a nine-year-old girl named Eli-zé du Toit was sitting on her grandparents’ porch near a small town in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, when she heard a long rumble, then heard a rustling in a nearby fig tree. As she watched, a rock fell out of the […]

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle and Science Minister, Lord Patrick Vallance have appointed Professor Michele Dougherty as the new Executive Chair of STFC. Professor Dougherty is a Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She leads unmanned exploratory space missions to Saturn and Jupiter and was the Principal Investigator […]

A group of scientists, including people from the Royal Society of Chemistry, recently proposed that experiences such as licking an ice lolly should be part of the science curriculum. By licking a lolly and seeing how it melts – the idea goes – children would better learn about melting, and therefore about chemistry and physics. […]

Governments have a duty to protect their citizens. While they won’t go as far as telling us what we can and cannot put in our homes, we do expect them to ensure that the buildings we live in are safe from fire. The final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry confirms that this was not […]

Do aliens sleep? You may take sleep for granted, but research suggests many planets that could evolve life don’t have a day and night cycle. It’s hard to imagine, but there are organisms living in Earth’s lightless habitats, deep underground or at the bottom of the sea, that give us an idea what alien life […]

New phones are being launched with features enabled by artificial intelligence (AI). The latest of these was Google’s flagship Google Pixel 9 phone. Samsung’s Galaxy S24 phone, released at the beginning of 2024, also features a range of AI-enabled photo editing features. The hidden story behind devices like these is how companies have managed to […]

The idea that aliens may have visited the Earth is becoming increasingly popular. Around a fifth of UK citizens believe Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials, and an estimated 7% believe that they have seen a UFO. The figures are even higher in the US – and rising. The number of people who believe UFO […]

What’s the difference between an asteroid and a comet? A comet is basically a dirty iceball composed of rock and ice. The classic image is of a bright “star” in the night sky with a long curved tail extending into space. This is what happens when they approach the Sun and start emitting gases and […]