Mini Games

Physics experts are working at Europe’s CERN lab to create a basic ventilator for mild coronavirus sufferers and recovering patients, the facility said on Wednesday. The Swiss-based lab says a model that could run on batteries should be ready for testing in hospitals within weeks and could eventually free up heavy-duty machines for use on

Researchers working for industrial development company Carbios have created a mutant bacterial enzyme that can break down plastic bottles for recycling in only a couple of hours, according to The Guardian.   The enyzme can break down PET plastic bottles into their individual chemical composites, which could later be reused to make brand new bottles. Conventional

A conspiracy theory claiming 5G can spread the coronavirus is making the rounds on social media. The myth supposedly gained traction when a Belgian doctor linked the “dangers” of 5G technology to the virus during an interview in January.   Closer to home, Facebook group Stop5G Australia (with more than 31,700 members) has various posts

“Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom.   With hundreds of millions around the world now reliant on the app for work, this unfortunate trend is becoming more common, often involving a bombardment of pornographic

Scientists have developed a prototype system that could hypothetically see data transfer rates hit 10 terabits per second – or many thousands of times faster than your average broadband speed, in other words.   This radical jump could be made possible by switching to an extremely high frequency for the data transfer, allowing for more

With #StayAtHome and social distancing now becoming a way of life, an increasing number of people are relying on the internet for work, education and entertainment. This has placed greater demand on our network infrastructure, reducing the bandwidth available for each user, and is leaving people frustrated at seemingly slow internet speeds.   While internet

Recently Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube committed to removing coronavirus-related misinformation from their platforms. COVID-19 is being described as the first major pandemic of the social media age. In troubling times, social media helps distribute vital knowledge to the masses. Unfortunately, this comes with myriad misinformation, much of which is spread through

The world is only just getting used to the power and sophistication of virtual assistants made by companies like Amazon and Google, which can decode our spoken speech with eerie precision compared to what the technology was capable of only a few short years ago.   In truth, however, a far more impressive and mind-boggling

With the right mechanical contraption attached, human running speeds could rival those of cyclists, according to new research – getting runners up to 20.9 metres per second, or more than 46 miles per hour.   It’s worth noting that these are theoretical calculations for now, and the team responsible is hoping to have their prototype

Electric cars absolutely do produce less CO2 than gas guzzlers, a new study has confirmed – countering claims that carbon emissions from the manufacture of electric cars and the production of electricity outweighed the savings on the road.   Crunching the numbers on data collected from 59 different regions in the world that represent 95

The zero-emissions option of hydrogen fuel holds a lot of promise for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels – if only we could find a way to produce it cheaply and without needing insane amounts of energy input. Now, scientists have found a way to efficiently produce hydrogen fuel by using rust and a light

We may not be as lucky as birds, but the human eye does pretty well when it comes to colour perception; typically, we can distinguish around 1 million colours. A new type of contact lens could now restore some of that range in people with colour blindness, whose colour perception is limited in some parts of

Recent reports from scientists pursuing a new kind of nuclear fusion technology are encouraging, but we are still some distance away from the “holy grail of clean energy”. The technology developed by Heinrich Hora and his colleagues at the University of NSW uses powerful lasers to fuse together hydrogen and boron atoms, releasing high-energy particles

The effect that fossil fuels are having on the climate emergency is driving an international push to use low-carbon sources of energy. At the moment, the best options for producing low-carbon energy on a large scale are wind and solar power.   But despite improvements over the last few years to both their performance and

To cram ever more computing power into your pocket, engineers need to come up with increasingly ingenious ways to add transistors to an already crowded space. Unfortunately there’s a limit to how small you can make a wire. But a twisted form of rare earth metal just might have what it takes to push the

Scientists have ‘puppeteered’ the movements of a jellyfish and made it even faster than the real thing. Taking artificial control with a microelectronic implant, researchers have increased the natural swimming speed of a live moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) by nearly threefold.   What’s more, they achieved this with only a little bit of external power

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