List of All Articles with Tag 'science '

Scientists have created the world's first "breathing, sweating, shivering" robot in a major breakthrough. The technologically-advanced "thermal mannequin" known as ANDI has 35 controlled surfaces that allow the robot to produce sweat through 'pores'. Designed by US firm Thermetrics, there are just 10 ANDIs in the world. It was designed to gauge a better understanding of the health impacts of extreme temperatures on the body. "ANDI sweats, he generates heat, shivers, walks and breathes," explained Konrad Rykaczewski, principal investigator for the ASU research project. Rykaczewski continued: "There’s a lot of great work out there for extreme heat, but there’s also a lot missing. "We’re trying to develop a very good understanding of how heat impacts the human body so we can quantitatively design things to address it." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Some ANDIs are already being used by sports clothing companies to test garments. Meanwhile, ASU's version is the first that can be used outdoors. Jenni Vanos, associate professor in the School of Sustainability said: "You can’t put humans in dangerous extreme heat situations and test what would happen. "But there are situations we know of in the Valley where people are dying of heat and we still don't fully understand what happened. ANDI can help us figure that out." Later this year, ANDI will be paired with ASU's biometeorological heat robot to delve deeper into human sweating mechanisms. Ankit Joshi, an ASU research scientist leading the modelling and operating of ANDI, said: "We can move different BMI models, different age characteristics and different medical conditions (into ANDI),” "A diabetes patient has different thermal regulation from a healthy person. So we can account for all this modification with our customized models." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It’s the brightest explosion ever seen in the universe, but until now it’s been a mystery that couldn't be explained. Telescopes observed an enormous blast in October which was regarded as the biggest of all time. It was identified as a gamma-ray burst, named GRB 221009A, which came as a result of a massive star collapsing into a black hole. At the time it was a mystery as to why the explosion shone so brightly. Now, further research published in the journal Science Advances has uncovered the reason it was so bright is due to the fact it was facing directly at us and also pulled stellar material along with it. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hendrik Van Earthen from the University of Bath said: “The slow fade of the afterglow is not characteristic of a narrow jet of gas, and knowing this made us suspect there was an additional reason for the intensity of the explosion, and our mathematical models have borne this out. “Our work clearly shows that the GRB had a unique structure, with observations gradually revealing a narrow jet embedded within a wider gas outflow where an isolated jet would normally be expected.” The research into GRB 221009A has the potential to further the study of huge gamma-ray bursts, which can produce as much energy as the Sun will in its entire lifetime in the space of just a few seconds. “GRB 221009A represents a massive step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, and demonstrates that the most extreme explosions do not obey the standard physics assumed for garden variety gamma-ray bursts,” Brendan O’Connor, GW graduate student and lead study author, said. “GRB 221009A might be the equivalent Rosetta stone of long GRBs, forcing us to revise our standard theories of how relativistic outflows are formed in collapsing massive stars.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Footage of a strange-looking creature spotted swimming near a bridge in South Carolina has even left everyone perplexed as to what it could be. In the viral clip, it shows something clearly swimming in the waters near Pawleys Island but it is not clear exactly what species it is, though it looks like it does have a beak and wings or fins of some kind that keeps itself afloat but doesn't look like a typical outline of a bird. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources had no idea as to what it could be. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “The people in my office are mostly stumped, but we’re not the experts,” an official with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources told WCNC, NBC's Charlotte station in North Carolina. One law enforcement officer suggested that the creature could be a squid, though still remain unsure as to its identity. What is it? Mysterious creature spotted in Pawleys Island, South Carolina www.youtube.com So the video has been sent to The Marine Resources Research Institute in Charleston, and they are currently studying the footage in the hopes of providing an identification to end the mystery. Meanwhile, WCNC-TV's Meteorologist Brad Panovich shared his thoughts on what the creature could be. “At first, I thought it was a cuttlefish,” he said but now thinks it could be a sea hare or sea slug. “They can be pretty large, and they do swim in the water like that,” Panovich said. However, he did note that they're not typically found in South Carolina and are "more of a Florida and West Coast thing," in warmer waters. Elsewhere, AI has revealed what infamous 'Bigfoot' footage truly is and a suspected Russian 'spy’ whale has been spotted off the coast of Sweden. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ after capturing an image of a barred spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years away. The findings were made after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) gave a more in depth look at galaxy NGC 5068. The feature is found in the constellation of Virgo, and it’s thought that the discovery could lead scientists to discover more about barred spiral galaxies like our own. The observations are all part of a series of findings from the JWST, with the telescope having collected images of 19 galaxies to add to our understanding of star-birthing galaxies. The bars can be seen in the upper left-hand section of the image posted by NASA below and they’re made up of tightly clustered stars. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s thought that structures like these take as long as two billion years to form, which could mean they’re a lot older than other galaxies. “This image of the central, bright star-forming regions of the galaxy is part of a campaign to create an astronomical treasure trove, a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies,” Webb astronomers said, via sci.news. “These observations are particularly valuable to us for two reasons. The first is because star formation underpins so many fields in astronomy, from the physics of the tenuous plasma that lies between stars to the evolution of entire galaxies.” “By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, we hope to kick-start major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb.” It continued: “The second reason is that Webb’s observations build on other studies using telescopes including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories.” They went on to say: “With its ability to peer through the gas and dust enshrouding newborn stars, Webb is particularly well-suited to explore the processes governing star formation. “Stars and planetary systems are born amongst swirling clouds of gas and dust that are opaque to visible-light observatories like Hubble or VLT.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A lot of things in the chaos that is life have sparked comparisons to Netflix’s dark anthology series Black Mirror over the years. Its very first episode back in 2011 - “The National Anthem” – resurfaced in 2015 amid ‘Piggate’ and David Cameron, Apple’s Animojis drew parallels with the titular animated bear in “The Waldo Moment”, and just this week people thought Apple’s first AR headset looked particularly dystopian. Now, as both tech experts and political advisers warn of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI), and the AI chatbot ChatGPT continues to generate memes and news stories online, Black Mirror’s creator Charlie Brooker has revealed he’s had a go with the software – albeit with underwhelming results. He told Empire: “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***. “Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’” Shame – that would have been suitably meta. Brooker did, however, note some learnings from his experience with the chatbot, adding: “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’ So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.’ Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.” Although an AI-produced episode of Black Mirror is off the cards for now, fans of the show do have five new ones to look forward to when the hotly anticipated season six drops on Netflix on 15 June. Opening episode “Joan Is Awful” features a Netflix parody known as Streamberry in scenes akin to The Truman Show (and stars Scott Pilgrim actor Michael Cera and comedian Rob Delaney), episode two titled “Loch Henry” is reported to have elements of past episode “White Bear” in it, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul is up in space in “Beyond The Sea”. Meanwhile the penultimate episode “Mazey Day” appears to follow the scandal-hit celebrity in its title, and stage stars Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu round off the series with “Demon 76” – a story which is reportedly about a sales assistant forced to do awful things. Yeah, that sounds about right. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A clip from the launch event of Apple's Vision Pro AR headset heard the audience gasp when the price of the tech was unveiled. When the tech-lovers gasp, you know something is expensive. While the revolutionary piece of kit might sound like a lot of fun, if you want to get your hands on it you'll be forking out $3,499 (£2,813) for the pleasure. However, it does mean you'll be able to use apps, conduct calls, and even type just using your vision. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

All eyes have been on Nasa's long-awaited UFO report, with around 800 events recorded over the past 27 years and unexplained metallic flying orbs within Earth's airspace. But now, one former US agent has claimed materials have been recovered that could support the existence of UFOs. David Charles Grusch, an ex-member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office, claimed the US government has a 'non-human origin' in-tact craft that they're keeping from the public. Speaking to NewsNation, Grusch said: "These are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it a spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed." Grusch was once the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s senior technical adviser for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) analysis with Top Secret/Secret Compartmented Information clearance, according to The Debrief. He also acted as a senior intelligence officer in the National Reconnaissance Office with a total of 14 years experience. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Grusch suggested he was denied access to a materials recovery programme which included evidence of such crafts. "I thought it was totally nuts and I thought at first I was being deceived, it was a ruse," he said. "People started to confide in me. Approach me. I have plenty of senior, former intelligence officers that came to me, many of which I knew almost my whole career, that confided in me that they were part of a program." He explained to The Debrief that he had prepared many briefs on UFOs for Congress but decided to provide hours of classified information and data about the materials recovery programme. Grusch claimed the materials recovery programme was hidden away from proper congressional oversight. An unclassified version of the document obtained by The Debrief, said that Grusch has knowledge that UAP-related information is being withheld or concealed from Congress, "to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate congressional oversight of the UAP program." The complaint suggested that he confidentially provided classified information to the Department of Defense Inspector General about the withheld information but Grusch believes his identity was disclosed. Grusch is now filing a whistleblower complaint, alleging that he suffered retaliation for disclosing the confidential information. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Scientists have figured out what the sun sound like - because yes, it makes a racket. By recording acoustical pressure waves in the sun, using an instrument called the Michelson Doppler Imager, solar physicists from Stanford University have determined the solar surface noise of the sun and it turns out it is pretty loud. If the sounds, which are apparently like 'screaming sirens' were able to pass through space, it would be 100 decibels by the time it reached us here on Earth, according to the American Academy of Audiology. This equals out to tens of thousands of watts of energy generated per metre on the sun, or 10x to the 100x the power of speakers at a rock concert.. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter However, humans on Earth are unable to hear any of this because the sound waves emit at frequencies that are too low for the human ear to detect. The sun creates noise due to the constant flow of hot material on the surface and the sinking of cooled material towards the centre. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The low-budget sci-fi slasher from James Cameron became a huge movie franchise. Here's how it all got started.

From dystopian nightmares to paranormal action thrillers, Netflix has got something to scratch every type of sci-fi fan's itch.

Think of a snail and you’ll most likely picture a dull, brown pest, feasting on your old neighbour’s lettuces or creeping lazily up your front door. Whereas, in actual fact, they are one of the deadliest animals to humans on earth. Obviously, not the kind you get in UK gardens, but freshwater snails. This is because they harbour dead parasites, most notably parasitic flatworms known as flukes. Indeed, a terrible disease transmitted by flukes, and known as “snail fever”, causes as many as 200,000 deaths a year, according to research published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter And yet, these freshwater menaces aren’t the only grim reapers of the mollusc family – cone snails can administer a venom that’s so toxic, it can kill up to 700 people. The problem is, it doesn’t look like your typical sea predator: no glistening set of razor-sharp teeth, and no tell-tale fin. Instead, its lethal sting is concealed within its sleek brown and white patterned shell, and shoots out like a harpoon when its prey is near. This means that to the unsuspecting onlooker, the cone is just a pretty little beach ornament. And this is precisely what one Reddit user's parents thought when they chanced upon one while on holiday. The Redditor shared a video to the platform, presumably sent to him by his mum and dad, which he captioned: “Parents wanted to show the cool snail they found while on a vacation to Egypt." Reddit - Dive into anything from OopsThatsDeadly Commentators were quick to point out the identity of the deceptively deadly creature. “I saw these in a nature doc once and they have forever haunted my dreams since,” one wrote. “I struggled to keep my eyes on the video because I thought for sure it would start sticking its barb out when they messed with it,” admitted another. “Very patient snail,” added a third. “They're even sticking their fingers in its house and everything. Could've ended them.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

An adviser to Rishi Sunak has made a worrying confession about AI, and its ability to kill people in the near future, during a new interview with Talk TV. Matt Clifford is currently leading the prime minister on the government's Foundation Model Taskforce, using the likes of ChatGPT. "You can use AI today to create new recipes for bio weapons or to launch large-scale cyber attacks. These are bad things", he said. "You can have really very dangerous threats to humans that could kill many humans – not all humans – simply from where we would expect models to be in two years’ time." Click here to sign up for our newsletters