List of All Articles with Tag 'science and tech'

Many of us look to the stars for answers to life’s most complex questions. But actually, some of the greatest mysteries lie beneath our very feet. One might think we’d know the Earth pretty well by now but, in fact, our planet’s core remains shrouded in enigma. Indeed, there are two gigantic blobs located beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean that occupy around six per cent of the world’s entire volume. And yet, we’re still not entirely sure what they’re made of or where they came from. There are a number of hypotheses, including that they are piles of oceanic crust that have accumulated over billions of years. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But a more interesting theory is that they are huge chunks of an ancient planet that hit the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago. To give an indication of just how massive these things are, the structure under Africa – an area known as Tuzo – is thought to be around 800km (497 miles) tall – the equivalent of some 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of one another, as IFLScience notes. The problem with determining the origin of these monster formations is that there are no direct ways of observing the Earth’s core. The deepest hole humans have ever dug – branded the "entrance to hell" – reached a pretty staggering 12,263m (40,230ft), but that doesn’t even come close to breaking through the crust to the layers beneath. Our most effective tool for analysing what lies beneath the ground is a technique called seismic tomography, which looks at how waves of energy travel when earthquakes occur. Since rocks and liquids have different densities, the waves move through them at different speeds. By measuring the tremors from different points on the surface, geologists can determine what kind of material the waves are travelling through and, in so doing, map out the Earth’s interior. It was by using this technique that the two unusual structures – known as large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) – were found. Waves travel more slowly in these areas – fondly known as “blobs” – than through the surrounding lower mantle, indicating that they’re made of something different. We can’t tell what this material is based on seismic tomography data alone, but some scientists like to believe that they are the remnants of an ancient planet called Theia – an idea known as the “giant impact hypothesis”. According to this hypothesis, around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth. This impact not only created the planet we call home today, but also threw off enough rock to form the moon that lights up our night skies. Some scientists suggest that some of Theia’s leftovers also sunk to the bottom of the planet, probably settling somewhere above the core – thereby forming at least one of the two LLSVPs. More Updates About Strange Blob Structures Inside Planet Earth youtu.be Experts have been investigating the area for decades but there’s still no way of knowing for sure just what these two giant blobs are. Still, studies into Theia have offered important insights into how the possible collision might have kickstarted key plate tectonic and mantle motion inside our planet – crucial processes for establishing the world on which we live. It’s also a useful reminder that we still have so much to learn about our planet and where we came from. 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.

Energy drinks could be the secret to a long life - here's why. The drinks contain a substance called taurine, a naturally occurring amino acid that scientists have been testing on mice and worms and working out that it is increasing their life spans. The study saw some mice at around middle-age given taurine, whereas others weren’t. Mice of both sexes saw increased life span by around 10 to 12 per cent, whereas life expectancy at 28 months was 18 to 25 per cent higher. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They also had healthier bone, muscle, immune system, fat, pancreas, brain, and gut functioning. In the journal Science, the team wrote: "Taurine abundance decreases during aging. "A reversal of this decline through taurine supplementation increases health span and life span in mice and worms and health span in monkeys. “This identifies taurine deficiency as a driver of aging in these species." They added: "Given that taurine has no known toxic effects in humans (though rarely used in concentrations used here), can be administered orally, and affects all the major hallmarks of aging, human trials are warranted to examine whether taurine supplementation increases healthy life span in humans." However, scientists aren’t advising anyone to change their taurine intake, as research is still in its early days, and energy drinks have other ingredients that may not be as positive. Prof Henning Wackerhage, from the University of Munich, said: "What we really need now is a human intervention study. “We are raring to go." 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.

If AI wasn't advancing at a rapid enough rate, there's now a robot dog art critic in existence - and warning, he judges with his tail. AICC (Artificially Intelligent Critical Canine) has the ability to look around a room as well as move, and he can quickly come up with comments about the pieces. The pooch operates on wheels, and once he's gathered his thoughts, he 'poops' out a piece of paper with his full review. Pretty impressive. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

A woman on TikTok claimed she lost her job to artificial intelligence, and has now applied for the role to train AI to do her job in a bizarre turn of events. Copywriter Emily (@emilyhanley69) took to the platform to share that her company laid her off and brought in AI as a cheaper alternative. She then explained how there was a job opening to train the software to copy write. "And I’m going to have to take it," she said. "I’m going to have to take it because I cannot afford my apartment." She continued: "I’m about to eat a can of garbanzo beans. I’m selling off my possessions. I’m in no place to turn down a job. No place." "It’s literally going to take away the prospect [of] me finding a job in the future. But I don’t have a way out. There’s no choice for me," she said. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter @emilyhanley69 Update: I didn’t get the job! #AI #work #copywriter While Emily later updated her followers that she did not get offered the job, fellow TikTokers took to the comments with their own takes on the situation. One person encouraged her to "Embrace it. Market yourself as a Ai consultant who trains Ai to write. Get the bag mama." Another highlighted how "short sighted" AI could potentially be across companies. "I just can't see how AI replaces writers well. it would give every company the same copy in a market basically," they wrote. A third focused on the positives, writing: "The flip side is, your next set of jobs could literally be being a consultant for marketing firms on using AI in their practice. You’ve got this!" Meanwhile, one fellow TikToker came up with a genius plan to "train AI to do the job wrong" as a form of revenge. 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Have you ever tried to swear over text, only to find that your intended expletive has been autocorrected to "ducking". Fear no more, because Apple has announced it will upgrade its autocorrect feature so people can swear away to their heart's content. “In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino on Monday. We'll leave you to work out what word people really want to say when they end up writing "ducking"... Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter TechCrunch reported that iOS 17, which will roll out to the general public by September, will feature an upgraded autocorrect powered by AI. Over time, the AI model will learn to predict words and phrases that the iPhone user repeats, including swear words. Meanwhile, it comes as the company announced it was making a new mixed-reality headset, which caused quite the stir on social media. Big times for iPhone users and people with potty mouths, then... 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.

Apple has unveiled its first-ever augmented reality headset, and it's giving people the creeps over how futuristic it is. The headset has a two-hour battery life, and will cost $3,499 (£2,849), when it's released next year. Functionality includes watching TV, being able to use your favourite apps in a 3D setting, FaceTime calls, and using a keyboard, with CEO Tim Cook saying it's the ultimate way to 'blend the digital and virtual' worlds. However, fans have been quick to point out it looks like the start of a Black Mirror episode. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

NASA has held its first public meeting on the long-awaited report into UFOs. Last year, this new study was launched to investigate reports of UAP (unexplained anomalous phenomena) and for the first time the space agency has made the latest findings public. There have been around 800 events collected over the past 27 years, the expert panel says, with some reports of unexplained metallic flying orbs - all within Earth’s airspace. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the US Department of Defence’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) noted on the findings: “We see these all over the world, and we see these making very interesting apparent maneuvers,” he said. “While we are still looking at it, I don’t have any more data other than that. Being able to come to some conclusion is going to take time, until we can get better-resolved data on similar objects that we can then do a larger analysis on." The Pentagon now receives between 50 and 100 monthly reports, Dr Kirkpatrick added, referring to a statistic from the report. Most sightings have some kind of explanation such as commercial aircraft or military drones, though there are still 2 to 5 per cent of those events which “display signatures that could be anomalous." Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Official NASA Broadcast) www.youtube.com About half of these include some kind of metallic looking orbs or round spheres that have been noticed by aircraft at high altitudes. However, is this is not enough evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life, says astrophysicist and chair of the study group, David Spergel. “To make the claim that we’ve seen something that is evidence of non-human intelligence, it would require extraordinary evidence,” he added. “And we have not seen that. I think that’s important to make clear.” Meanwhile, online harassment was also a topic at the meeting as trolls have been targeting NASA’s UAP study team which Dr Nicola Fox, NASA Science Mission Directorate associate administrator said is "hindering scientific progress." “It is really disheartening to hear of the harassment that our panelists have faced online all because they're studying this topic," she said. “Harassment only leads to further stigmatization of the UAP field significantly hindering scientific progress and discouraging others to study this important subject matter. Harassment also obstructs the public's right to knowledge." Watch the full public meeting on NASA's YouTube channel. 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.