Two students have made a pair of smart glasses with facial recognition technology to discover the private information of strangers. In a video demonstration, one of the Harvard students is shown using the technology to quickly discover details about the woman sitting near him at a train station in Boston. “Wait, are you Betsy?” he asks her. Betsy is a ...
It was a grim day for a send-off. Rain poured down the giant cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant in Nottinghamshire as the last wisps of steam floated away from them – the fading warmth of the furnaces shut down the night before bleeding into the low cloud above. A slow end to the UK’s 142-year reliance on coal for ...
Fears are growing of a serious disruption to the global semiconductor industry, after Hurricane Helene knocked out a facility that provides a critical ingredient for the manufacture of the silicon wafers that are turned into the chips inside all the world’s computers. Sky News has been told that Sibelco, the world’s biggest provider of high-purity quartz, has sent “force majeure” ...
A comet that was last seen when Neanderthals roamed the Earth is about to make an appearance again, as it swings through orbit towards us. The A3 comet is described as “the most impressive comet of the year” by the Royal Greenwich Observatory and should be visible to the naked eye if the conditions are right. The comet, also known ...
Turbines at the UK’s last coal-fired power station have turned for the last time – a milestone in Britain’s transition to zero-carbon power and the end of Britain’s 142-year history of burning coal for electricity. The closure of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant outside Nottingham makes the UK the first major economy, and first G7 member, to completely phase out coal – ...
Mount Everest has grown by around 15 to 50 metres in the last 89,000 years, and it’s increasing every year. Now, scientists say that’s because the mountain’s water system captured a river. When the Arun River joined with another nearby river, the new path created the deep Arun Gorge near Everest. Now, the river network about 46 miles from the ...
NASA’s Mars rover has suffered “abuse” while it has been roaming the red planet, according to the space agency. The Curiosity Rover has been exploring Mars since 2012, sending back crucial information about the planet as it rolls around the rocky terrain near the Gale Crater where it landed. Sharing a picture of one of the Curiosity rover’s battered wheels, ...
X owner Elon Musk is removing bold text from posts appearing on people’s timelines because his “eyes are bleeding”, according to a new post. “Due to immediate and excessive use of bold font on X, it will be removed from view in the main timeline,” he wrote in a post on Tuesday. Users will have to “click on post details” ...
A breakthrough in miniaturising a type of scanner that uses laser light, rather than harmful X-rays, to see beneath our skin in unprecedented detail may help revolutionise medical imaging, according to a team of researchers in the UK. The device, developed by scientists at University College London (UCL), is particularly effective at imaging blood vessels, making it a fundamentally new ...
SpaceX has commenced its rescue mission to retrieve the two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station (ISS). Pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams and Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore were onboard a test flight to the ISS on Boeing’s newest spacecraft on 5 June. They were meant to stay in orbit for eight days – however, issues with Starliner’s propulsion system meant ...