This week was an exciting one for the AI community, as Apple joined Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and others in the long-running competition to find an icon that even remotely suggests AI to users. And like everyone else, Apple has punted. Apple Intelligence is represented by a circular shape consisting of seven loops. Or is … Read more
For some in New Jersey, sea level rise is never far from their minds. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is offering readers an interactive tool to see what future rising temperatures could mean for ice melting and, by extension, rising ocean levels along the Jersey Shore and beyond. “The increased CO2 emissions increase warming … Read more
Could there be an invisible planet lurking on the edge of our planet? solar system? Can black holes ricochet through space like intergalactic billiard balls? Did our own galaxy’s black hole ‘wake up’ with a bang millions of years ago – and could it do so again? These may not be the questions that first … Read more
Some experts believe the discovery of the elusive ‘Planet Nine’ could be just a few years away – or the hypothetical world’s existence ruled out for good. But if we find it, how long would it be before we can send a spacecraft to the distant world? And could humans ever make the journey? Planet … Read more
A ‘hot Neptune’ exoplanet It has been discovered that there is sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere – an atmosphere that also spews into space as the planet orbits its star in a steeply inclined orbit every three and a third days. The existence of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, named GJ 3470b … Read more
One hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, much of northeastern Australia was underwater. The inland Eromanga Sea was home to a host of marine animals, from turtles and dolphin-like ichthyosaurs to the bus-sized predator. Kronosaurus queenslandicus and other plesiosaurs. The forested edge of the sea was home to dinosaurs and the sky above … Read more
A new explanation for why we haven’t found dark matter suggests it doesn’t exist. Instead, the author thinks we have misunderstood gravity. He is not the first to suggest this, but the new proposal, of gravity without mass, created by topological defects in space-time, is particularly novel. Dark matter was first proposed in 1932, based … Read more
The Find My Device app on Android has taken on a new meaning with the launch of a network that allows you to find smartphones, trackers and other objects. One glaring omission so far though is the use of UWB, but it looks like the Find My Device app is working on it. About APK … Read more
Last year, Jaume Pellicer led a team of fellow scientists to a forest on Grande Terre, an island east of Australia. They were looking for a fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. Being only a few centimeters in size, it was not easy to find on the forest floor. “It’s not noticeable,” says Dr. Pellicer, who works … Read more
STEVE, a strange ribbon of purple and green haze discovered by citizen scientists in 2016, just got weirder. While sifting through archival data, a team of scientists discovered that the aurora-like phenomenon has a secret twin that moves in the opposite direction. Evil’s Michael Emerson on working opposite a giant, hairy demon with five eyes … Read more