By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News
A space mission that will be critical to our understanding of climate change has launched from California.
The Jason-2 satellite will become the primary means of measuring the shape of the world’s oceans, taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm.
Its data will track not only sea level rise but [...]
The US military in Iraq has said four militants have been killed during operations against bombing networks run by al-Qaeda in Iraq.
One of those killed in a clash just north of Baghdad, is said to have been involved in weapons smuggling.
Earlier, the US military said 12 al-Qaeda members were arrested in continuing operations in [...]
Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the hallucinogenic drug LSD, has died of a heart attack at his home in Basel at the age of 102.
Mr Hofmann first produced LSD in 1938 while researching the medicinal uses of a crop fungus.
He accidentally ingested some of the drug and said later: “Everything I saw was [...]
Boston Dynamics released a new video of BigDog the other day. The improvements since last year’s demo are absolutely incredible. BigDog can now maneuver up and down rugged hills, balance on ice and jump. I’m not an avid fan of exclamation marks, but wow! In my honest opinion this quadruped is the most life-like robot [...]
Continue reading about Boston Dynamics Unveil BigDog Progress
By all likelihood you’ve heard of the vodka company’s Absolut campaigns. Recently they launched Absolut Machines, a new campaign that’ll be running for a year and centers around two artificial creativity projects; AI systems that compose music on accompanying mechanical instruments and can be watched & interacted with via live video feeds.
The Absolut Machines
By visiting [...]
Continue reading about Absolut Adopts Machines & Artificial Creativity
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was born on the 16th of December 1917 in Minehead, England. Perhaps best known for his contributions to science fiction, and his inventions, his achievements will certainly not be forgotten anytime soon.
Clarke served in the Royal Air Force as a radar instructor from 1941-1946. It was there where he invented & [...]
Continue reading about To the Passing of a Hero: Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
For more than 40 years the silicon industry has delivered ever faster, cheaper chips.
The advances have underpinned everything from the rise of mobile phones to digital photography and portable music players.
Chip-makers have been able to deliver many of these advances by shrinking the components on a chip.
By making [...]
Silicon electronics are a staple of the computing industry, but researchers are now exploring other techniques to deliver powerful computers.
A quantum computer is a theoretical device that would make use of the properties of quantum mechanics, the realm of physics that deals with energy and matter at atomic scales.
In a quantum computer data is not [...]
By Andrew Webb
Technology reporter, BBC News
Classic comic hero Dan Dare fired the imagination of young Britons in the 1950s and heralded the birth of hi-tech Britain, an exhibition at the London Science Museum reveals.
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A British-built nuclear bomb and a prototype of the BT Tower are on display as part of the show.
The museum says the [...]
New survey results show that only 29.5 percent in a sample of 1,015 adult Americans consider nanotech morally acceptable. Europe ranked significantly higher. The hypothesized reason? Religious beliefs.
The results of the survey were presented by Dietram Scheufele, professors of life sciences and communication, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of [...]
