Category: Technology

Supermassive black holes are some of the most impressive (and scary) objects in the universe – with masses around one billion times more than that of the Sun. And we know the’ve been around for a long time. In fact, astronomers have detected the extremely luminous compact sources that are located at the centres of […]

Oakhurst rock shelter is an archaeological site near the town of George on the southern coast of South Africa. It is set into a sandstone cliff above a stream in a valley forested by towering old yellowwood trees. Archaeologists first started excavating Oakhurst in the 1930s. What makes the site special is the record of […]

A maximum annular eclipse or “ring of fire” is due to be seen in Argentina and Chile on October 2 2024 at about 18:46 UTC. A partial annular eclipse will be seen in other parts of South America, the Pacific and Antarctica. The annular eclipse is the poorer, but arguably prettier, cousin to the total […]

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to permeate various sectors, LinkedIn has found itself in the midst of a legal quagmire concerning user privacy. The platform’s recent initiatives to leverage AI for enhanced user experiences have raised significant concerns about data privacy and the ethical implications of using personal information without explicit consent. In late 2023, […]

SpaceX has launched its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a “rescue mission” to bring back two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) since June. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams travelled to the space station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was on its first mission with a human crew. But several engines malfunctioned once in […]

For the last year, ChatGPT has been able to analyse images as well as text as a feature of its latest version – GPT-4V(ision). For instance, if you upload a photograph of the contents of your fridge, ChatGPT can describe what’s in the photo and then recommend potential meal ideas based on those ingredients, along […]

The projects will unlock the potential of existing heritage collections and provide access to untapped cultural assets to safeguard and grow the UK’s £29 billion heritage sector and kickstart economic growth. Additionally, new state-of-the-art facilities will drive innovations in other areas including sustainable building practices, bio-imaging, carbon-dating and materials analysis. Conserving world-renowned artwork at the […]

As is their tradition at this time of year, Apple announced a new line of iPhones last week. The promised centrepiece that would make us want to buy these new devices was AI – or Apple Intelligence, as they branded it. Yet the reaction from the collective world of consumer technology has been muted. The […]

Given how unfathomably large the universe is, it is perhaps understandable that we haven’t yet cracked all its secrets. But there are actually some pretty basic features, ones we used to think we could explain, that cosmologists are increasingly struggling to make sense of. Recent measurements of the distribution of matter in the universe (so-called […]

The Fyre music festival and its well-publicised failure are widely seen as a mixture of incompetence and fraud, embodied in Billy McFarland, its chief architect. People paid thousands of dollars for what was advertised as a luxury music festival but they were served simple cheese sandwiches and the entertainment was cancelled. McFarland spent almost four […]