The purple-striped Jellyfish (Chrysaora colorata) Lukas Gojda/Shutterstock Ding! The courier hands me an unassuming brown box with “live animals” plastered on the side. I begin carefully unboxing. The cardboard exterior gives way to a white polystyrene clamshell, cloistering a pearly sphere-shaped, water-filled bag. Lightly pulsing, I spot them: three cannonballContinue Reading
Zuzha/Shutterstock Sometimes we see faces that aren’t really there. You may be looking at the front of a car or a burnt piece of toast when you notice a face-like pattern. This is called face pareidolia and is a mistake made by the brain’s face detection system. But it’s anContinue Reading
ArtemisDiana / Shutterstock The world has witnessed breathtaking advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI), with ChatGPT being one of the best known examples. To prevent harm and misuse of the technology, politicians are now considering regulating AI. Yet they face an overlooked barrier: AI may have a right to freeContinue Reading
Tero Vesalainen / Shutterstock The UK’s long-debated online safety bill (OSB) has been approved by the House of Lords, clearing the way for it to become law. But it has pitted the government, which proposed the bill, against tech companies that provide secure messaging services. Critics say it will allowContinue Reading
Nasa/GSFC Around 15 years ago, I was on a European Space Agency (Esa) committee, looking at Esa’s strategy for proposed forthcoming space missions. Under consideration was a mission to an asteroid. Over dinner, one of the committee members, an astrophysicist, quizzed me on why we needed to visit one ofContinue Reading
The blue duck (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) is a species endemic to New Zealand. Graham Martin, CC BY-NC-SA Each year, millions of birds fly into power lines, wind turbines and the other man-made structures that litter the open air space. These collisions frequently result in the death of birds and, if powerContinue Reading
Amorn Suriyan / Shutterstock The UK has just rejoined the EU’s flagship research funding programmes, Horizon Europe and Copernicus. This is great news for science, the EU and the UK. The reasons are simple: science progresses through the individual efforts of scholars and through international cooperative research. The latter processContinue Reading
Raggedstone / Shutterstock As reports continue flying in about what were traditionally called UFOs (unidentified flying objects), Nasa is taking the topic very seriously. In fact, following the publication of a report from an independent committee of experts in fields including astronomy and aviation safety, the agency has even appointedContinue Reading
When I watched the members of the US far-right group the Proud Boys from afar before and during the Capitol riots of January 6 2021, I thought their name was quite apt. They always seemed proud – arrogant, even – and entitled. For observers, the watershed moment in the developmentContinue Reading
Shutterstock After many years of designing and selling a variety of different cables to power and charge its devices, Apple has slowly switched to USB-C chargers for all of its products. The last device to swap is the iPhone, and it happened against Apple’s will. In October last year, theContinue Reading
