A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this decade to 2040. The mission would be the first to try to return rock samples...
Over the next 25 years, as the world shifts away from fossil fuels, the oil and gas wells that have sustained the fossil fuel age will have to be plugged. No big deal, you might think, drilling those wells was the hard part. Plugging them should be no problem. But think again. The Norwegian Continental...
Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the...
Solar cars exist. The best place to see them is the World Solar Challenge, a race that’s held every two years in Australia. Competitors have to drive about 1,870 miles (3,000 kilometers), from Darwin on the country’s north coast to Adelaide on its south coast, using only energy from the Sun. Many cars that compete...
Have you ever wondered how an email sent from New York arrives in Sydney in mere seconds, or how you can video chat with someone on the other side of the globe with barely a hint of delay? Behind these everyday miracles lies an unseen, sprawling web of undersea cables, quietly powering the instant global...
The idea for Fawn Ngo’s latest research came from a television interview. Ngo, a University of South Florida criminologist, had spoken with a Vietnamese language network in California about her interest in better understanding how people become victims of cybercrime. Afterward, she began receiving phone calls from viewers recounting their own experiences of victimization. “Some...
TikTok developed a plan to address U.S. government national security concerns, but it was dismissed without serious consideration. Why? Fourteen months ago, in a conference room in TikTok’s Washington, D.C., office, TikTok CEO Shou Chew briefed a small group of think tank scholars, nongovernmental organization officials, and academics on a plan the company had developed...
With animal-free dairy products and convincing vegetarian meat substitutes already on the market, it’s easy to see how biotechnology can change the food industry. Advances in genetic engineering are allowing us to harness microorganisms to produce cruelty-free products that are healthy for consumers and healthier for the environment. One of the most promising sources of...
What are the potential risks associated with artificial intelligence? Might any of these be catastrophic or even existential? And as momentum builds toward boundless applications of this technology, how might humanity reduce AI risk and navigate an uncertain future? At a recent RAND event, a panel of five experts explored these emerging questions. While the gathering highlighted...
Does previous experience bias a person in future estimations? Yes, Osaka Metropolitan University researchers in Japan report, but only if the person engages higher processing powers by responding, as opposed to simply observing. They made their findings through experiments involving participants estimating the number of dots flashed on a screen. Participants either had to input...
