Aedan O'Brien

The data from all those Instagram pictures you’re posting needs to be stored somewhere, and the increasing amount of digital information we’re all producing means we also need an increasing amount of energy just to store it all.   Now scientists have come up with a working example of what’s known as universal memory, a

When it comes to supersonic aircraft, engineers aren’t afraid to go with a weird design if it will get them a faster plane. In the latest instalment of such feats, NASA’s X-59 QueSST has taken the shape of a pencil with wings.   The aircraft’s shape brings with it some interesting questions. For example, if the

It’s official, Facebook’s making its own currency. The social network on Tuesday unveiled Libra, the secretive cryptocurrency it’s been working on for more than a year. The currency is being backed by investment from big payment companies like Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, as well as tech giants including Uber and Spotify.   Facebook has high

The reminder to not believe everything we see has never been more relevant than now. In the latest video manipulation advance, researchers have worked out how to turn written text into a realistic video of someone saying those very words.   We’ve seen this sort of deepfake trickery before, where clips of famous people are

Earth’s temperatures are on track to blow past the objectives set in the Paris climate agreement. Last year was the fourth warmest on record for surface temperatures and the hottest ever for oceans.   A recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that nations around the globe must implement

Smartphone addiction does not seem like a questionable thing to believe in. It exists. Surely it does, doesn’t it? After all, there’s a Wikipedia page on it. The New York Times writes about it. There are even claims it’s killing us, that smartphones are destroying an entire generation.   But while nobody is saying we should be

Scientists have demonstrated a lightweight type of foam made of hollow metallic spheres that can withstand the incredible impact of .50 calibre rounds: the kinds of bullets fired by heavy machine guns and sniper rifles.   While weighing only about half as much as conventional steel armour, this engineered material – called composite metal foam

Electric car motors, iPhones, military jet engines, batteries, and satellites all have something in common: They require rare-earth elements to function. Rare-earth elements are a group of 17 metals that – as their name suggests – form under the Earth’s surface and are difficult to find and extract.   But they are crucial to the

The Dutch airline KLM is funding the development of a V-shaped aeroplane designed to seat passengers in its wings to make it more fuel-efficient, the company announced Monday. Its futuristic shape will make the “Flying V” lighter and more aerodynamic, KLM said. Its designers say it will need 20 percent less fuel than an Airbus

Solar panels are fantastic pieces of technology, but we need to work out how to make them even more efficient – and scientists just solved a 40-year-old mystery around one of the key obstacles to increased efficiency.   A new study outlines a material defect in silicon used to produce solar cells that has previously

Twitter, used by 126 million people daily and now ubiquitous in some industries, has vowed to reform itself after being enlisted as a tool of misinformation and hate. But new evidence shows that the platform may be inflicting harm at an even more basic level. It could be making its users, well, a bit witless.

A new artificial intelligence created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pulls off a staggering feat: by analyzing only a short audio clip of a person’s voice, it reconstructs what they might look like in real life.   The AI’s results aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good – a remarkable and somewhat terrifying

You wouldn’t ordinarily want to seek out a computer with viruses installed, but that’s exactly what the winner of a US$1.345 million auction just did – picking up a laptop crammed with the deadliest malware of our time in return for their cash.   The buyer remains anonymous but we know much more about the

A newly revealed patent application filed by Amazon is raising privacy concerns over an envisaged upgrade to the company’s smart speaker systems. This change would mean that, by default, the devices end up listening to and recording everything you say in their presence.   Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant system that runs on the company’s Echo

An Australian teenager and self-proclaimed Apple fanboy – who can’t be identified for legal reasons – has been found guilty of hacking into Apple’s systems in 2015 and 2017. The 17-year-old teen from Adelaide in South Australia, along with another teenager, hacked into the tech giant’s mainframe for the first time when he was 13

Our deepfake problem is about to get worse: Samsung engineers have now developed realistic talking heads that can be generated from a single image, so AI can even put words in the mouth of the Mona Lisa.   The new algorithms, developed by a team from the Samsung AI Center and the Skolkovo Institute of

Scientists have developed a new way of achieving artificial photosynthesis, producing high-energy hydrocarbons by leveraging electron-rich gold nanoparticles as a catalyst. In photosynthesis, plants convert energy from sunlight into glucose by rearranging molecules of water and carbon dioxide. The new process mimics this natural ability via chemical manipulations that create liquid fuel, without requiring chlorophyll.

The city of Baltimore is under attack, but not by someone armed with guns or bombs. Two weeks ago, cybercriminals used ransomware known as RobinHood to seize control of about 10,000 of the city’s computers, saying they won’t relinquish access unless Baltimore hands over about US$100,000 worth of bitcoin.   Baltimore is refusing the meet