Aedan O'Brien

Last month, SpaceX became the operator of the world’s largest active satellite constellation. As of the end of January, the company had 242 satellites orbiting the planet with plans to launch 42,000 over the next decade.   This is part of its ambitious project to provide internet access across the globe. The race to put

An Australian fusion startup called HB11, a spin-off from the University of New South Wales, claims to have found a way to revolutionize current nuclear fusion technology, potentially laying the groundwork for a new era of power generation — without running the risk of a nuclear meltdown.   The startup’s leadership doesn’t mince words. “We

Randomness is not always as random as you think. It’s actually very challenging for computers to generate true randomness, because algorithms introduce subtle patterns that can be detected, meaning the numbers they come up with are pseudorandom, and not ultimately unpredictable.   Which is not to say machines can’t play a part. What if we

They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange “sediment organism” that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria.   This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with

Solar panels are fantastic pieces of technology, but we need to work out how to make them even more efficient – and last year, scientists solved a 40-year-old mystery around one of the key obstacles to increased efficiency.   The 2019 study outlined a material defect in silicon used to produce solar cells that has

In the half-century since the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969, computer technology has evolved in some pretty giant leaps itself. So much so, that even simple devices today are more powerful, in terms of raw processing power, than the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) was – a machine that helped us to pull off

Have you ever used a public charging station to charge your mobile phone when it runs out of battery? If so, watch out for “juice jacking”. Cybercriminals are on the prowl to infect your mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers and access your personal data, or install malware while you charge them.  

Tapping into the water cycle and generating electricity from rainy days could be one way to grow our renewable energy use. Until now, scientists have been unable to get water droplets to produce a significant amount of power – but we may finally have a breakthrough.   While we’re still a long way from umbrellas

Released in 1896, L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat is one of the earliest examples of movie-making we have – the 50-second silent short, which shows a mail train pulling into La Ciotat station, seems humdrum by today’s standards, but would have wowed 19th century crowds seeing moving pictures for the first time.

A team of researchers at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux have grown yarn from human skin cells that they call a “human textile” – and they say it could be used by surgeons to close wounds or assemble implantable skin grafts.   “These human textiles offer a unique level

As beneficial as current solar panel technology has been in our quest to switch to renewable energy, such panels can’t generate electricity at night. Now, new research suggests it could be possible to design panels that can operate around the clock.   Under optimum conditions, at night these specially designed photovoltaic cells could generate a

Scientists have developed a new type of smart bandage that can signal the type of bacterial infection it’s protecting, just like a traffic light, as well as release the right type of drugs on demand.   The researchers behind the design hope it could help to fight back against antibiotic resistance, as well as heal

Scientists continue to push the boundaries of what cameras are capable of – like a newly developed phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography (pCUP) device, which is capable of snapping an impressive one trillion frames every second.   That’s mind-boggling, but it’s not a record, because some of the same researchers developed a camera that can take

Could a massive barrier erected in the ocean shield New York from the devastation of superstorm surges like Hurricane Sandy in 2012? The truth is, nobody knows for sure, but a giant sea wall is nonetheless one serious proposal being looked at in a long-term research project designed to prevent a repeat of the deaths

Scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder have created what The New York Times calls a “living concrete”, teeming with photosynthetic bacteria, that can grow itself and regenerate itself – much like a living organism.   The concrete is a mixture of gelatin, sand, and cyanobacteria that cools similarly to Jell-O, the Times reports. The resulting structure was able to regenerate itself

In another lifetime, if they had been allowed to follow their natural development, the stem cells taken from embryonic frogs would have turned into skin and heart tissue within living, breathing animals.   Instead, in configurations designed by algorithms and constructed by humans, those cells have been assembled into something new: the first-ever robots constructed

Scientists may have solved one of the great Leonardo da Vinci painting mysteries – why the glass orb in the Salvator Mundi painting (dated to around 1500 CE) shows no signs of the refraction and reflection of light that might be expected.   The answer, according to computer models run by a team from the

To protect its hosts, Airbnb is now using an AI-powered tool to scan the internet for clues that a guest might not be a reliable customer. According to patent documents reviewed by the Evening Standard, the tool takes into account everything from a user’s criminal record to their social media posts to rate their likelihood