A University of Michigan astronomer and his team are suggesting a new way to expand the search for habitable planets that takes into account a zone not previously considered: the space between the star and what’s called soot-line in planet-forming disks. Worlds that form in this region—a disk of dust rotating around a central star from...
Philosophers and legal scholars have explored significant aspects of the moral and legal status of robots, with some advocating for giving robots rights. As robots assume more roles in the world, a new analysis reviewed research on robot rights, concluding that granting rights to robots is a bad idea. Instead, the article looks to Confucianism...
Precursors of the molecules needed for the origin of life may have been generated by chemical reactions promoted by iron-rich particles from meteors or volcanic eruptions on Earth approximately 4.4 billion years ago, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Previous research has suggested that the precursors of organic molecules — hydrocarbons, aldehydes and alcohols...
There is a massive, mineral-rich region in the Pacific Ocean—about twice the size of India—called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), which has already been divided up and assigned to companies for future deep-sea mining. To better understand what may be at risk once companies start mining, a team of biologists has built the first “CCZ checklist”...
While the integration of business processes and digitization always were fundamental aspects of Industry 4.0, the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the digital conversion of activities. However, while the benefits of digitization are apparent, it also poses new challenges to businesses. New digital tools and systems appear every day, and there is a constant need to integrate...
Scientists are often trained to seek out the absolute best solution to a given problem. On a chalk board, this might look something like drawing a graph to find a function’s minimum or maximum point. When designing a turbojet engine, it might mean tweaking the rotor blades’ angles a tiny degree to achieve a tenth...
A new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, led by researchers from Newcastle University, suggests that supermassive black holes that are hidden by dust are more likely to grow and emit huge amounts of energy when they are located inside galaxies that are on course to collide with another galaxy. Supermassive...
Hollywood screenwriters have gone on strike. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) seeks higher pay, upfront fees from streaming services, better working conditions and reassurance that studios won’t use artificial intelligence programs to generate scripts. The last WGA strike, 15 years ago, led to permanent changes in the entertainment landscape, such as the rise of...
It turns out that pop stars Drake and The Weeknd didn’t suddenly drop a new track that went viral on TikTok and YouTube in April 2023. The photograph that won an international photography competition that same month wasn’t a real photograph. And the image of Pope Francis sporting a Balenciaga jacket that appeared in March...
Sex in space is a real possibility with the expected growth in space tourism over the next decade, says Cranfield University-led paper Researchers say the expected motivations and behaviours of space tourists will differ from that of professional astronauts Green paper published today highlights the biological and commercial risk of human conception in space and...
