Category: Technology

The question of when people first arrived in the land mass that now comprises much of Australasia has long been a source of scientific debate. Many Aboriginal people believe they have lived on the land since time immemorial. But until the advent of radiocarbon dating techniques, many western scholars thought they had arrived not long […]

South Africa is well known for its fossil heritage, a record of plants and animals that tells us what the world was like long ago. Over the past 15 years, our research group at the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University has studied some of these ancient species by examining the tracks […]

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, a spacecraft and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the body of an injured astronaut to remove a life-threatening blood clot from his brain. The Academy Award-winning movie – later developed into a novel by Isaac Asimov – seemed like pure fantasy at the time. […]

Donald Trump’s new “Genesis Mission” initiative promises to use artificial intelligence to reinvent how science is done, in a bid to move the dial on the hardest challenges in areas like robotics, biotech and nuclear fusion. It imagines a system in which AI designs experiments, executes them, learns from the results and continually proposes new […]

In most industries, maintenance is a waiting game. Things are fixed when they break. But in the 21st century, an age defined by data and automation, that approach no longer makes sense. The solution could be predictive maintenance. This is an approach that uses sensors and software to analyse equipment performance in real time and […]

Left: Bee-mimicking hoverfly (Eristalis intricarius) on a purple flower. Right: bumblebee, also on purple flower. L: Peter O'Connor/Wikipedia. R: Pixabay (CC0), CC BY-NC-SA Deception is everywhere in nature. Animals and plants routinely cheat, lie and manipulate for their own benefit. One example is mimicry, where one species (the mimic) has evolved to resemble another (the […]

While quantum computing promises breakthroughs in many areas, from medicine to finance, it also threatens to crack the encryption that currently protects everything from online banking to national security. Backed by £7 million of UK government funding, the new SpeQtre satellite will test quantum communication technologies from space that are so secure that any attempt […]

European nations approved a record €22.1 billion budget for the European Space Agency (ESA) on Thursday, a 30% jump from the prior €16.9 billion three-year allocation, to accelerate independence in launches, satellites, and defense amid intensifying global rivalry. Ministers from 23 member states met in Bremen, Germany, fully endorsing ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher’s request […]

Song_about_summer/Shutterstock In the middle of the ongoing cost of living crisis, exorbitant displays of wealth are back. Since the beginning of his term in January, US president Donald Trump has been literally bringing the gilded age back to the White House. In April, Katy Perry spent 11 minutes in space for an undisclosed price, reportedly […]

Earlier this year, a cyberattack on British retailer Marks & Spencer caused widespread disruption across its operations. Stock shortages, delayed deliveries, and logistical chaos rippled through the retailer’s network. In 2025 alone, several other UK food businesses, including Harrods and Co-op, have been targeted by cyber-attacks. The food sector is highly dependent on different links […]