The “gateway to the underworld,” a huge crater in Siberia’s permafrost, is growing by 35 million cubic feet (1 million cubic meters) every year as the frozen ground melts, according to a new study. The crater, officially known as the Batagay (also spelled Batagaika) crater or megaslump, features a rounded cliff face that was first … Read more
We love outlandish ideas and companies that take risks — that, after all, is how science and technology progress. But with every success comes a dozen failures and that’s what this list celebrates. These are some ideas that could have been the next big thing: concepts that got backing but ultimately failed to take flight. … Read more
Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and is improving at an unprecedented pace. Now we are edging closer to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) — where AI is smarter than humans across multiple disciplines and can reason generally — which scientists and experts predict could happen as soon as the next few years. We … Read more
A rare sword nicknamed ”Excalibur” from the Spanish city of Valencia is 1,000 years old, meaning it was last wielded when much of Spain was controlled by Muslim rulers, new research reveals. The 18-inch-long (46 centimeters) iron sword was found in an upright position inside a grave in 1994, leading its finder to call it … Read more
Engineers have assembled an autonomous underwater drone that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to use for long-range missions in the ocean, pictures show. Dubbed “Manta Ray,” the drone is modeled after filter-feeding fish of the same name with diamond-shaped bodies and wing-like fins. The prototype, designed and built by the aerospace … Read more
It would appear that the so-called “great instability” event that wreaked chaos among the planets, sending the gas giants careening through space until they settled into the orbits we know today, occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system. This is the conclusion of some careful scientific detective work … Read more
You’re alone, and you suddenly have the sneaking suspicion that someone’s there. Maybe you watched a scary movie or read the latest thriller novel and wonder if there’s a killer lurking in your room. You look around and open the closet door, but no one’s there. So why does your mind make you feel as … Read more
Scientists from artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic have identified a potentially dangerous flaw in widely used large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s own Claude 3 chatbot. Dubbed “many shot jailbreaking,” the hack takes advantage of “in-context learning,” in which the chatbot learns from the information provided in a text prompt written out by … Read more
Astronomers have long believed that the ice giants Uranus and Neptune are rich in frozen water. However, a new study suggests they may also have tons of methane ice. The findings could help solve a puzzle about how these icy worlds formed. Much about Uranus and Neptune remains unknown. These ice giant worlds have had … Read more
NASA test drove the mini autonomous rovers that will soon fly to the moon and collectively map the lunar surface. The rovers are part of a technology demonstration called Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE), which is designed to show that a group of robotic spacecraft can work together without direct human control. NASA took … Read more
