Checking in. Danny Lawson/PA Wire/PA Images During the first wave of COVID-19, researchers at Oxford University built a computer model that suggested if 56% of the the UK downloaded and used a contact-tracing app (alongside other control measures) it could end the epidemic in the country. With the English appContinue Reading
Nata Bene/Shutterstock During the first pandemic lockdowns at the start of 2020, social media was flooded with pictures of homemade banana bread as people turned to baking in lieu of socialising. Now with many places reintroducing or anticipating further restrictions as COVID-19 case numbers rise again, there’s a good chanceContinue Reading
aapsky/Shutterstock What will the future of public transport look like? The major projects being planned today, such as the UK’s HS2 high-speed rail network, aren’t fundamentally different to what’s been built over the last 30 years. Maglev trains are largely confined to niche projects in China. Hyperloop remains an unprovenContinue Reading
Illustration of a future Moon base by the European Space Agency, which hasn't signed the Artemis Accords. ESA; RegoLight, visualisation: Liquifer Systems Group, 2018, CC BY-SA Eight countries have signed the Artemis Accords, a set of guidelines surrounding the Artemis Program for crewed exploration of the Moon. The United Kingdom,Continue Reading
Media Whalestock/Shutterstock From self-driving cars, to digital assistants, artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming an integral technology in our lives today. But this same technology that can help to make our day-to-day life easier is also being incorporated into weapons for use in combat situations. Weaponised AI features heavily inContinue Reading
Shutterstock/MartaDM It’s widely believed that social media conspiracy theories are driven by malicious and anonymous “bots” set up by shadowy third parties. But my new research – which examined an extremely successful COVID-19 conspiracy theory – has shown that ordinary citizen accounts can be just as culpable when it comesContinue Reading
Photo of a nearly full Moon shining brightly on the Earth's atmosphere, taken from the International Space Station. NASA The habitability of a planet depends on many factors. One is the existence of a strong and long-lived magnetic field. These fields are generated thousands of kilometres below the planet’s surfaceContinue Reading
Mark Nazh/Shutterstock Virtual reality (VR) has the power to take us out of our surroundings and transport us to far-off lands. From a quick round of golf, to fighting monsters or going for a skydive, all of this can be achieved from the comfort of your home. But it’s notContinue Reading
Dance classes have been implicated as potential superspreading events. dorglao/Shutterstock The COVID-19 coronavirus is not your average virus. During the pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that averages do not apply in understanding the paths the virus takes or when or where it attacks. What some scientists and specialists inContinue Reading
Piccadilly Circus subway underground station is emptier than usual. Matteo Roma/Shutterstock To get through the COVID-19 pandemic, we need good information. One hugely important statistic is how many people have died from the disease in various countries. But it’s notoriously difficult to compare deaths in this way – each nationContinue Reading
