Technology

By Rafi Letzter A team of chemists has created a substance that can change its color and stiffness, which they’re comparing to chameleon skin. The stretchy material is made up of strands of copolymers — complex, self-assembling large molecules that in this case are shaped like long dumbbells, with spherical bulges on each end. The way those copolymers react …

By Daniel Clery Thanks to NASA’s pioneering Kepler probe, we know our galaxy is teeming with exoplanets. Now, a new generation of exoplanet hunters is set to home in on rocky worlds closer to home. Over 9 years in space, Kepler has found more than 2600 confirmed exoplanets, implying hundreds of billions in the Milky …

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. Here’s a tip for the planners among us: If you have dinner reservations or theater tickets for Sept. 22, 2135 (it’s a Thursday), now might be a good time to scuttle them. Sometime the day before, scientists say, there is a small chance that an asteroid the size of the Empire …

By Amy Maxmen Dexter Hadley thinks that artificial intelligence (AI) could do a far better job at detecting breast cancer than doctors do — if screening algorithms could be trained on millions of mammograms. The problem is getting access to such massive quantities of data. Because of privacy laws in many countries, sensitive medical information remains …

By Mike Wall The next time a hazardous asteroid lines Earth up in its crosshairs, we may be ready for the threat. Scientists and engineers with the U.S. government have drawn up plans for a spacecraft that could knock big, incoming space rocks off course via blunt-force impact or blow them to bits with a nuclear warhead, BuzzFeed …

By David Cyranoski A 60-metre-high chimney stands among a sea of high-rise buildings in one of China’s most polluted cities. But instead of adding to Xian’s smog, this chimney is helping to clear the air. The outdoor air-purifying system, powered by the Sun, filters out noxious particles and billows clean air into the skies. Chinese scientists …

By Jeff Tollefson The United States filled a crucial gap in its weather-forecasting arsenal when it launched its latest geostationary satellite on 1 March. The craft will enable meteorologists to track hurricanes, snow storms and other threats as they develop. It will also beam down data that researchers can use to measure air temperature and humidity …

By Jeanna Bryner Humans will make contact with aliens by the end of the century, theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku told Redditers last week. However, Kaku said he wasn’t sure whether we’d be able to communicate directly with this unknown extraterrestrial society — one that could run the gamut from hostile to pacifist, according to …

By Davide Castelvecchi Victor Buso was eager to use the new camera on his telescope. But the amateur astronomer didn’t want to disturb his neighbours with the loud noise of opening his rooftop observatory, so he pointed his telescope through a gap in the enclosure on the night of 20 September 2016. He trained it on …

By Owen Jarus Though slightly lopsided, the towering, Great Pyramid of Giza is an ancient feat of engineering, and now an archaeologist has figured out how the Egyptians may have aligned the monument almost perfectly along the cardinal points, north-south-east-west — they may have used the fall equinox. The fall equinox occurs halfway between the summer and winter solstices, when …

By Rafi Letzter An ultra-precise atomic clock the size of a four-slice toaster is set to zip into outer space this summer, NASA said. This isn’t your average timekeeper. The so-called Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) is far smaller than Earth-bound atomic clocks, far more precise than the handful of other space-bound atomic clocks, and more …

By Lee Billings Earlier today, our sun gained a new satellite, courtesy of SpaceX’s first test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket: A cherry-red Tesla Roadster once driven by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, blasting tunes from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with a spacesuit-clad “Starman” dummy strapped in the driver’s seat. On the dashboard …