[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about Einstein, who was right again, metals that heal, a new type of stellar object, a quantum drum, how conscious awareness comes about, maybe, a better way to tell apart alien signals from boring human signals, a hot spot on the moon, illegal trade of hazardous chemicals, and of course, the telephone will ring.
As many of you have pointed out, the video on electric vehicles which ran one week ago had several mistakes and omissions. I have been extremely unhappy with that and decided to take the video down and upload a revised version. I want to thank you all for your support here on Patreon because without that, I couldn't afford doing this.
[The below is the transcript with links to references.]
If you care about the environment, you leave the car at home. That’s a nice ide...
2023-07-25 05:39:27 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Are you extroverted, a social butterfly? Or more the introverted type who lingers around in a corner of the room? Are you agreeable? Or quick to argue? Do you like your routine? Or do you get easily bored? What’s your personality?
The internet is full of personality tests. Self-help gurus use them for dati...
World’s Biggest Telescope Half Completed
A webcam image, taken in late June 2023, of the construction site of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope at Cerro Armazones, in Chile's Atacama Desert. Credits: ESO
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) 2023-07-20 21:10:05 +0000 UTC
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[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll fly 13 billion years back in time, talk about dark stars, quantum payments, the efficiency of solar cells, rubber that counts, a biodiversity cycle, scientists who shoot lasers at lava, how to dissolve plastic, and of course, the telephone will ring.
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to deliver. It has already enriched us with befuddling new data about da...
2023-07-19 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about a new atomic nucleus, a map of a fruit fly brain, an explanation for the gravity hole in the Indian ocean, a better source of quantum light, how NASA is preparing for a trip to MARS, high resolution climate models, a new type of computer memory, faster data transfer, seaweed, and of course, the telephone will ring.
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According to the headlines, last year’s Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for showing that the universe is not locally real. Or for “sp...
2023-07-08 12:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostPhotoshopping is Yesterday, Today is Photodragging
The DragGan App on Hugging Face uses AI to create a 3D model of a photo and then allows you to drag it. At this point it’s not exactly user-friendly, but it isn’t hard to imagine how this will blow up once it hits the mass market. Check out the examples in
2023-07-05 22:00:26 +0000 UTC
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[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about the first evidence that time ran slower in the early universe, how to catch light, what astronomers think about the new starlink satellites, a breakthrough in quantum computing reported by Microsoft, what helps against tinnitus, better cooling for qubits, the Euclid Mission, laser scans of Ukrainian art, a metasuit, and of course the telephone will ring.
... 2023-07-05 15:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
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Artificial Intelligence. It seems like lately everyone talks about it, everywhere, all at once. But is artificial intelligence really intelligent? What do we even mean by intelligent? If it’s not yet intelligent, how would we find out if it were to become intelligent? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
Paul Graham, compu...
2023-07-01 12:00:12 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about quantum computers that are really good at guessing, room temperature superconductors, again, how we changed the tilt of Earth’s axis without noticing, the environmental impact of the metaverse, a computer chip that mimics the human eye, whether smart drugs actually make you smart, how carbon dioxide emissions look like, flying taxis, an announcement of an ...
2023-06-28 15:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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Remember COVID? That pandemic we had back then? It did more than making homemade bread fashionable, it also showed us just how easily global supply networks can be disrupted. The Covid pandemic affected nearly every sector of our economies, but the impacts were particularly severe in the microchip industry. For three years now, the world has seen a microchip shortage that has affected the production of many consumer electronics....
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Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about plants that use quantum mechanics, the first data from a new galaxy survey, quantum utility, online hate groups, photonic computing, the most sensitive power measurement ever, how to map a tunnel with muons, bad climate news that I don’t want to talk about, and you don’t want to hear, but that we need to talk about anyway. And of course, the telephone wi...
2023-06-21 15:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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Life needs order. This isn’t just what exhausted parents say, it’s a property of nature. Life requires structure. The human body for example isn’t just a bag of mixed atoms – the atoms are ordered, they’re in very specific places. Like, erm, organs and stuff. Look, what do I know, I’m a physicist, not a physician.
Physics doesn’t tell you much about life, but it tells you that entropy cannot decrease. And a...
The term “habitable” has traditionally been used to describe planets that could have liquid water on their surface. But this definition now seems overly simplistic given the diversity of exoplanets scientists have discovered. A new paper by researchers from France and the U.S. suggests a bette...
2023-06-14 19:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post
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Welcome everyone to this week’s science news! Today we’ll talk about evidence against dark matter that might also be evidence for dark matter, atoms that breathe, noise cancellation with plasma, wireless power transmission in space, just and safe limits for ecosystems, an update from NASA’s mission to the Asteroid Psyche, swarms of microbots, artificial molecules, moon time, and of course, the telephone will ring.
Th...
2023-06-14 15:44:46 +0000 UTC View Post
This is Jan. He had a chip implanted into his hand. Now he can use it to pay and check his account balance.
This is Neil. Neil had an antenna implanted into his skull bone. It allows him to feel and hear colours, including infrared and ultraviolet. He also has a button in a tooth that he can push with his tongue to activate Bluetooth devices.
This is John. John has a radio frequency sender under his skin. He implanted it himself, or “installed” it, as he puts it. He can use ...
2023-06-10 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
German start-up NVision wants to revolutionize Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) with its hyperpolarization technology (MRIs pick up on nuclear spins). The company creates and ships abnormally-strongly spin-polarized parahydrogen. Medical centers can use this to...
2023-06-07 21:59:50 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news! Today we’ll talk about a new search for dark matter, how to navigate with quantum effects, why amino acids are left-handed, medical tests in a cave, the Roman space telescope, a new record for optical fibres, a water plume on Saturn’s moon, forever chemicals, and of course, the telephone will ring.
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The future is determined by the past, except for random quantum jumps which no one can control. Causes have causes have causes, and they go back all the way to the big bang. Does that mean we have no free will? People often ask me that. I find the question stunningly uninteresting. Of course, we don’t have free will. Ok, then, how do we make decisions? Do we make decisions? Did the big bang make me do this video? That’s what ...
2023-06-03 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostNew High-Resolution Images from the Sun’s Surface
The world's most powerful ground-based solar telescope, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, has released eight new images of the Sun, showcasing its ability to capture unprecedented details of sunspots and quiet regions. The im...
2023-05-31 19:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post
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Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about a new study that sheds doubt on the big bounce model of the universe, quantum repeaters, a quantum simulation of curved space time, a snake-robot, metamaterials in space, underwater mining, how to compute with water, who’s to blame for climate change, and of course, the telephone will ring.
I’ve got several requests to comment on 2023-05-31 15:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
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A lot of birds have had the flu recently. You may have seen the headlines about it. This winter we’ve seen a severe outbreak of the bird flu, or avian flu. How much should we worry about that? I’ve tried to figure out what’s going on, and, well, let me just say I’ve learned a lot of really scary things that I don’t want to withhold from you. What’s the bird flu? Is it dangerous to humans? And if so, what can we do? Th...
2023-05-27 12:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Scientists from Linköping University and the KTH in Sweden have created the world's first wooden transistor. They used balsa wood and removed its lignin, a substance that makes wood hard and rigid. Then, they filled the wood with a conductive polymer called PEDOT:PSS that is semiconducting. The wood acts as a housing for the polymer, which ca...
2023-05-24 19:15:01 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is a transcript with links to references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about traces of your DNA in the air, a new telescope that will track down gravitational wave sources, a new quantum advantage claim, e-Fuels, a superconductor experiment that failed to replicate, nuclear fusion investments, image reconstruction from surfaces, EU regulations for artificial intelligence, and of course, the telephone will ring.
Many thanks to o...
2023-05-24 15:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
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In 2003, Simon Baron-Cohen, a clinical psychologist at the University of Cambridge, claimed that Albert Einstein had autism. Elon Musk has said he has Asperger’s syndrome. And if you ask Google, you’ll find many lists of famous people who supposedly have autis...
2023-05-20 12:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We look for signs of alien civilization elsewhere, but what if aliens are looking for us, too? Could they find us? Two new studies have now investigated the matter.
The first comes from researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley. They explored the possibility that civilizations around nearby stars intercept signals from N...
[This is a transcript with references.]
Welcome everyone to this week’s science news. Today we’ll talk about quantum computing, mother trees, diamonds, microscopy with entangled photons, a supernova that we saw 5 times, a telescope made of fluid, better glasses, a new alien search initiative, and of course, the telephone will ring.
A group of German and American physicists 2023-05-17 15:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
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The origin of life is without doubt one of the big open questions of science. We understand well how solar systems form and how planet Earth was created. We also understand how life evolved from the first microbes to bipedal mammals with opposing thumbs, though we’re still trying to figure out why the main use for those thumbs is hitting the poop emoji on a smartphone.
But somewhere in between the formation of our planet and th...
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart have created a jellyfish-like robot that can swim underwater and collect waste from the ocean floor. The robot is almost silent and can capture objects without touching them, making it suitable for sensitive environments like coral reefs. The rob...
2023-05-10 19:15:00 +0000 UTC View Post