AI has its limitations in a crisis. Shutterstock It should have been artificial intelligence’s moment in the sun. With billions of dollars of investment in recent years, AI has been touted as a solution to every conceivable problem. So when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, a multitude of AI models wereContinue Reading
Some species can do well in the face of extreme hardship. George Burba/Shutterstock Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid struck the Earth. The world was plunged into darkness, killing the dinosaurs and over 90% of all species alive. Today, every living thing descends from the handful of surviving species. ButContinue Reading
It's long been a mystery how fast the Earth's magnetic field changes. Andrey VP/Shutterstock The Earth’s magnetic field, generated 3,000km below our feet in the liquid iron core, is crucially important to life on our planet. It extends out into space, wrapping us in an electromagnetic blanket that shields theContinue Reading
Neowise seen from the International Space Station. NASA Neowise is the first bright comet to be visible with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere since the mid-1990s. Another thing that makes this comet interesting is that it has a relatively long orbital period, meaning it was only discovered aContinue Reading
_Schleitheimia_ (left) and _Plateosaurus_ (above right). University of Utrecht, Author provided Dinosaurs were the dominant group of animals on Earth for over 150 million years. Long-necked, plant-eating sauropods such as Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus are probably among the most famous dinosaurs, in part thanks to their huge size and strangeContinue Reading
Since the UK government began lifting pandemic lockdown restrictions, there have been warnings that going too fast would allow the coronavirus to start spreading again. And ever since, there have been reports about parts of the country that have seen the R number – a key measure of the spreadContinue Reading
Motortion Films/Shutterstock One of the conspiracy theories that have plagued attempts to keep people informed during the pandemic is the idea that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory. But the vast majority of scientists who have studied the virus agree that it evolved naturally and crossed into humans fromContinue Reading
The UK should change its COVID-19 strategy to try to eliminate COVID-19 even without a vaccine rather than simply managing the disease, according to Independent SAGE, a group of scientists set up as an alternative to the government’s advisory body. New Zealand has effectively managed to eliminate the virus, butContinue Reading
A tetraquark. CERN, CC BY-SA The LHCb collaboration at CERN has announced the discovery of a new exotic particle: a so-called “tetraquark”. The paper by more than 800 authors is yet to be evaluated by other scientists in a process called “peer review”, but has been presented at a seminar.Continue Reading
It didn’t take long after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported for conspiracy theories to begin circulating that the virus was a secret ploy by pharmaceutical companies to sell a vaccine. Other false theories quickly emerged, including one suggesting Bill Gates is creating a tracking device to be implantedContinue Reading
