A ‘CT scan’ of the Universe across more than 5 billion light-years. (D. Schlegel/Berkeley Lab/DESI data The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), currently pointed skyward from its home in the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, is tasked with tracking the expansion of space, to study dark energy and…
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Comets are a frequent and gorgeous occurrence in outer space, and a study recently outlined plans for how scientists could watch them be created in real-time. As it’s been proven time and time again, the mysteries of space are continually fascinating. Planets in our Solar System have many stories to tell, faraway galaxies hold countless other secrets, and…
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It’s not too often that astronomers are at a loss for words when making a space-related discovery, but the above image from NASA‘s Hubble telescope managed to do precisely that. Of all the tools at our disposal for exploring outer space, Hubble has repeatedly proven to be one of the best. The 31-year-old telescope has made…
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One of the consequences of rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere is that levels also rise proportionately in the ocean, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems. Heimdal is a startup working to pull that CO2 back out at scale using renewable energy and producing carbon-negative industrial materials, including limestone for making concrete, in the process, and…
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Rocket Lab is one step closer to going to Mars with NASA’s approval of the company’s Photon spacecraft for an upcoming science mission. If all continues according to plan the two craft will launch in 2024 and arrive on the Red Planet 11 months later to study its magnetosphere. The mission is known as the…
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As AI has grown from a menagerie of research projects to include a handful of titanic, industry-powering models like GPT-3, there is a need for the sector to evolve — or so thinks Dario Amodei, former VP of research at OpenAI, who struck out on his own to create a new company a few months…
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While modern machine learning systems act with a semblance of artificial intelligence, the truth is they don’t “understand” any of the data they work with — which in turn means they tend to store even trivial items forever. Facebook researchers have proposed structured forgetfulness as a way for AI to clear the decks a bit,…
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While the concept of “deepfakes,” or AI-generated synthetic imagery, has been decried primarily in connection with involuntary depictions of people, the technology is dangerous (and interesting) in other ways as well. For instance, researchers have shown that it can be used to manipulate satellite imagery to produce real-looking — but totally fake — overhead maps…
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We all know these constant video calls are doing something to our brains. How else could we get tired and frazzled from sitting around in our own home all day? Well, now Microsoft has done a little brain science and found out that yeah, constant video calls do increase your stress and brain noise. Tell…
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NASA has marked a major milestone in its extraterrestrial exploration program, with the first powered flight of an aircraft on Mars. The flight occurred very early this morning, and NASA received telemetry confirming that the ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter it sent to Mars with its Perseverance rover. This is a major achievement, in no small part because…
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