the digest (Page 178)

Latest in the digest

Harvard's RoboBee X-Wing takes the RoboBee to the next level by sporting solar cells and an extra pair of wings for more stable flight.

This Minuscule Robotic Bee Only Uses Solar Energy to Fly

By Victor Tangermann

America, Russia, and China already frequently commit acts of "gray-area aggression" against each other in outer space as they toe the line of warfare.

Has a Space War Between US, China, Russia Already Started?

By Dan Robitzski

Israel-based startup SpaceIL has decided that April's failed Moon mission was actually a success — and that it's time to move on to the next challenge.

SpaceIL Kills Second Moon Landing Attempt, Teases New “Objective”

By Kristin Houser

A bizarre, futuristic contests invited space agencies and astronomers from around the world to find the best way to colonize the Milky Way.

Astronomers Model How Humanity Could Colonize the Milky Way

By Dan Robitzski

In a landmark move, San Francisco just became the first U.S. city to ban e-cigarettes last night. The bill could go into effect in 30 days.

Health & Medicine

San Francisco Moves to Ban Sale of E-Cigarettes

By Victor Tangermann

A team of French physicists claim to have created metallic hydrogen. Scientists say this experiment is more credible than past, overhyped attempts.

Scientists May Have Created Metallic Hydrogen—For Real this Time

By Dan Robitzski

Facebook will now help French courts identify users suspected of spreading hate speech on the platform, a deal it hasn't made with any other nation.

Facebook to Identify Hate Speech-Spouting Users for France

By Kristin Houser

Michael Manga, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, has a new theory as to what may be causing marsquakes.

Science & Energy

New Theory: Marsquakes Could be Caused by Frozen Groundwater

By Victor Tangermann

Sydney became the first major Australian city to declare a state of emergency to prevent the worst effects of climate change on Monday.

Sydney Is in a State of Emergency to Fight Climate Change

By Dan Robitzski

Israeli startup Eviation Aircraft made a big splash at the Paris Air Show last week with a prototype of their $4 million commercial electric airliner.

Advanced Transport

We’ve Never Been This Close to Making Electric Flight a Reality

By Victor Tangermann

Eating Crap as a Teen Can Permanently Affect Men’s Fertility

Health & Medicine

Eating Crap as a Teen Can Permanently Affect Men’s Fertility

By Kristin Houser

Someone — likely Chinese state actors — hacked over ten cell service companies around the world and monitored people's activity for seven years.

Science & Energy

Someone Hacked Global Telecom Companies. Experts Blame China.

By Dan Robitzski

By analyzing the oldest known minerals from Mars, researchers think they've discovered a 700 million year period during which Martian life could've thrived.

Science & Energy

Mars Had a Chance to Grow Life 4.4 Billion Years Ago, Study Shows

By Kristin Houser

An MIT postdoctoral student has a strange new suggestion for finding extraterrestrial life: scan the skies for phosphine, a foul-smelling, toxic gas.

Weird New Theory: Aliens Could Be Using Toxic Gas as Defense

By Victor Tangermann

Facebook's pivot to blockchain and its new Libra cryptocurrency could sow the seeds of the company's destruction, argues fintech expert Marc-David Seidel.

Fintech Expert: Libra Could Be Facebook’s Downfall

By Dan Robitzski

A team of German scientists have figured out a way to grow tobacco plants that contain 99.7 percent less nicotine. It could help millions of smokers quit.

Health & Medicine

Gene-Edited, Less Addictive Tobacco Could Help You Quit Smoking

By Victor Tangermann

Later this week, NATO officials are expected to announce the a strategy for militarizing outer space as individual nations ramp up weapons programs.

NATO Plans to Launch Its Strategy for Militarizing Space This Week

By Dan Robitzski

Dutch startup Lightyear has unveiled the Lightyear One prototype, a solar car it claims has a longer single-charge range than any other car on the market.

Advanced Transport

Startup Unveils World’s First Long-Range “Solar Car”

By Kristin Houser

New computer simulations upend our understanding of how distant space rocks called trans-Neptunian objects formed during the solar system's earliest days.

Space Rocks Near Neptune Could Reveal the Solar System’s Origins

By Dan Robitzski

A physicist came up with models that support the idea that a 2D universe could still feasibly support life, poking holes in the anthropic argument.

New Theory: A 2D Universe Could Host Living Creatures

By Dan Robitzski

The practice called "surveillance scoring" of changing how much retailers are charging consumers based on algorithms and collected data might be illegal.

Retailers Are Judging Consumers By Using Secret “Surveillance Scores”

By Victor Tangermann

Toyota's basketball robot CUE3 just set the Guinness World Record for "most consecutive basketball free throws by a humanoid robot (assisted)."

Watch Toyota’s Basketball-Playing Robot Set a World Record

By Kristin Houser

SpaceX's groundbreaking Heavy Falcon rocket launched successfully from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:30 am ET. Almost everything went according to plan.

SpaceX Aces Falcon Heavy Launch, Despite Booster Explosion

By Victor Tangermann

The FBI is investigating the billing practices of biomed startup uBiome. The company may have been billing insurers for more services than it provided.

Health & Medicine

FBI Investigating uBiome’s Billing Practices

By Dan Robitzski

On Monday night, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch 24 experimental satellites into orbit. CEO Elon Musk calls it the company's "most difficult launch."

Elon Musk: This Is SpaceX’s “Most Difficult Launch” Ever

By Dan Robitzski

The Tibet Air Shower Array has detected extremely high-energy photons from the Crab Nebula, which is some 6,500 light-years away from Earth.

Crab Nebula Has Hit Earth with Highest-Energy Light Ever Recorded

By Kristin Houser

Amazon just won exclusive rights to the ".amazon" internet domain after a seven-year-long dispute wiith eight South American governments.

Amazon Beats South American Nations in Fight Over .amazon Domain

By Dan Robitzski

Alphabet-owned subsidiary Sidewalk Labs just released a massive 1,524 page document outlining its plans for a $1.3 billion 190 acre smart city in Toronto.

Alphabet-Owned Company Unveils Plans for Smart City

By Victor Tangermann

Thanks to a popularity boost from Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, the value of Bitcoin recently surged to over $11,000.

Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency Just Resuscitated Bitcoin

By Dan Robitzski

CBD could prove to be a useful antibiotic, according to a study in which the cannabis compound effectively killed several strains of bacteria.

Health & Medicine

Cannabis Compound Could Be Latest Weapon in War Against Superbugs

By Kristin Houser

Ocean waves are slamming plastic pollution against an island's coastline, causing a potentially dangerous plastic crust to form on the rocks.

Why Is a Strange Plastic Crust Spreading on This Island’s Coast?

By Kristin Houser

US Presidential Candidate Plans to End Fossil Fuel Industry

US Presidential Candidate Plans to End Fossil Fuel Industry

By Dan Robitzski

A new study found that frozen sperm samples survived in microgravity, suggesting reproducing in space with sperm sent from Earth could be possible.

Study: Sperm Banks in Space Could Make Colonizing Mars Possible

By Victor Tangermann

Science leaders tell STAT there's nothing they can do to stop a Russian scientist's plan to create more CRISPR babies from progressing.

Prosthetics and Devices

Science Leaders: We Can’t Stop Russian’s Plan for CRISPR Babies

By Kristin Houser

NASA's Curiosity Rover just found methane readings at a Martian site to be three times as high as the previously record level — posssibly a sign of life.

Science & Energy

New NASA Rover Discovery Hints at Signs of Life on Mars

By Victor Tangermann

Scientists recreated the extreme conditions of salty mud puddles on Mars in order to see whether microbial life could feasibly survive there.

Extraterrestrial Life Could Feasibly Live in Salty Puddles on Mars

By Dan Robitzski

That drone that Iran shot down was a super-spy behemoth that carries up to $90 million worth of surveillance equipment while flying for 34 hours at a time.

Before Iran Shot It Down, the US’s $130M Drone Spied on the World

By Dan Robitzski

Waymo, the Alphabet-owned company that develops autonomous cars, just joined an international partnership in hopes of reaching more global markets.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Waymo’s Bizarre Plan to Bring Autonomous Cars to France and Japan

By Dan Robitzski

Americans think monitoring asteroids and comets that could hit the Earth is way more imporant than crewed missions to Mars, according to a new poll.

Americans Don’t Really Care About Reaching Mars, Says Poll

By Kristin Houser

Russia's defense minister recently announced that the country has begun combat tests for both lasers and hypersonic weaponry.

Russian Military Actively Testing Lasers, Hypersonic Weapons

By Dan Robitzski

Elon Musk took to Twitter to warn about an impending collapse in global population, arguing that demographics will look like an upside-down pyramid.

Elon Musk: Civilization Could Collapse in 30 Years

By Dan Robitzski

Prototypes of killer robots are already in development and could be ready for action within two years, according to a new Vox story.

Artificial Intelligence

Experts: It’d Be “Relatively Easy” to Deploy Killer Robots by 2021

By Kristin Houser

The European Space Agency just tested out a device that's meant to assist in astronaut rescue missions on the surface of the Moon.

This Bizarre Device Will Help Rescue Injured Astronauts on the Moon

By Victor Tangermann

SpaceX is targeting November 15th as a tentative date to launch its astronaut-ferrying Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS according to NASA.

NASA Sets Tentative Date For Launching Astronauts In SpaceX Ship

By Victor Tangermann

A new website illustrates how AI can now churn out believable blog posts, in this case focused on digital marketing strategies.

Artificial Intelligence

New AI Generates Infinite Horrible Marketing Sites

By Dan Robitzski

Spice manufacturer McCormick's new concept grill uses AI to create a soundtrack to the act of grilling, proving AI can't make everything better.

Artificial Intelligence

This Ridiculous Grill Proves We Don’t Need AI for Everything

By Kristin Houser

NASA has funded a project to develop robots capable of autonomously exploring and imaging Moon pits to determine their potential usefulness.

NASA Funds $2M Study to See if We Could Live in Moon Pits

By Kristin Houser

Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin just fired up its gigantic Moon lander engine for the first time at NSA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Blue Origin Test Fires Moon Lander Engine For the First Time

By Victor Tangermann

As the technology becomes cheaper and more common, surgeons may find themselves routinely practicing for an operation with 3D-printed organs.

Prepping for Surgery With 3D-Printed Organs May Become Commonplace

By Dan Robitzski

The ESA plans to launch a trio of space probes — a "mothership" and two interceptors — that will wait up in space for comets to pass nearby.

ESA Announces “Mothership” Mission to Intercept Comets

By Dan Robitzski

A second look at data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveals that the oceans of Saturns' moon, Eneceladus, could harbor ideal conditions for microbial life.

Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Has Nutrient-Rich Oceans

By Dan Robitzski

Hilton shares an imaginative vision for future hotels in which implants control a room's temperature and entertainment in a newly published a report.

Hilton: Future Hotels Will Talk to Visitors’ Microchip Implants

By Kristin Houser

Scientists developed an AI "vaccine" that can make algorithms more resistant to hackers who launch adversarial attacks to try and confuse the systems.

Artificial Intelligence

An AI “Vaccine” Can Block Adversarial Attacks

By Dan Robitzski

Smart electronics company Signifiy announced a new take on the internet of things: the Truelifi, a smart lightbulb that can beam data streams using light.

Internet Of Things

These New Smart Lightbulbs Can Beam Data Through Light

By Victor Tangermann

According to a new 82 page investigation by NASA's Office of Inspector General, hackers got away with 500 megabytes of mission critical data.

Hackers Stole Data from NASA’s Robotics Lab

By Victor Tangermann

Hackers hijacked critical computer networks in Riviera Beach, Florida. Without another option, the city paid a $600,000 ransom in Bitcoin.

Science & Energy

Florida City Pays Hackers $600,000 to Restore Hijacked Network

By Dan Robitzski

Three U.S. senators received a briefing yesterday behind closed doors about UFO sightings — another sign that Congress is taking the matter seriously.

US Senators Receive Classified Info on UFO Sightings

By Victor Tangermann

A newly-discovered exoplanet called Teegarden b is more similar to Earth than any other world scientists have spotted so far.

Scientists Find the Most Earth-Like Exoplanet Ever — and It’s Nearby

By Dan Robitzski

A new pizza AI out of MIT can look at a photo of pizza and determine the ingredients on it as well as the order in which they were added.

Artificial Intelligence

MIT’s New AI Can Look at a Pizza, and Tell You How to Make It

By Kristin Houser

The city of San Francisco is voting next week on a total ban of sales of e-cigarettes. It could become the first city in the U.S. to do so.

Health & Medicine

San Francisco is Voting to Ban Sale of E-Cigarettes Next Week

By Victor Tangermann

Young people are getting plastic surgery in the hopes of looking more like the heavily filtered photos of themselves they share on social media.

Health & Medicine

Doctors Say Selfies Are Pushing More Teens to Get Plastic Surgery

By Kristin Houser

Robot Fish Can Swim For 37 Hours With Blood-Powered Batteries

Robot Fish Can Swim For 37 Hours With Blood-Powered Batteries

By Dan Robitzski

Russian scientists want to study reproduction and fertility in space, but cosmonauts are refusing to provide some crucial biological samples.

Cosmonauts Refuse to Provide Semen Samples in Space

By Dan Robitzski

A British student was just convicted today by London police of manufacturing a firearm using a 3D printer, according to Agence France-Presse.

UK Student Convicted for 3D Printing Gun

By Victor Tangermann