In this illustration, several dust rings circle the Sun. These rings form when planets’ gravities tug dust grains into orbit around the Sun. Recently, scientists have detected a dust ring at Mercury’s orbit. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith Dust turns up everywhere — on bookshelves, under the sofa, and now, apparently, in rings […]
A highly stylized rendition of our solar system NASA/JPL If someone asked which planet was closest to Earth, you’d be pretty certain — it’s Venus. We measure distances in the solar system in terms of Astronomical Units (AU), where 1 AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun. So, with a orbit distance of […]
The 8.2m Subaru Telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) An enormous camera mounted to the massive 8.2m Subaru Telescope in Hawaii has captured evidence of supermassive black holes forming in the ancient universe. Astronomers have discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes from billions of […]
A team of researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering believe they have become the first to create an AI-controlled robotic limb driven by animal-like tendons that can even be tripped up and then recover within the time of the next footfall, a task for which the robot was never explicitly programmed to do. […]
[embedded content] When Unimate, the world’s first industrial robot arm, showed off its skills by assembling a breakfast of buttered toast, coffee and champagne half a century ago, it seemed that robots were on the cusp of being able to carry out virtually any task we could perform with our hands. But things haven’t turned […]
Almost anything you buy these days can be loaded with sensors, LEDs, and Wi-Fi, and then labeled “smart.” Light bulbs? Check. Door locks? Yep. Sprinklers? Of course. But as manufacturers rush to “smartify” everything, we wonder if all these new inventions are really necessary. We get bombarded with pitches for dubious smart gadgets all day […]
It sounds like the ultimate tongue-in-cheek sales pitch to target millenials: An environmentally friendly streaming music service that pays artists in Bitcoin, and plants trees in exchange for streams from customers. All you need are references to vaping and craft ale, and you’d have a comprehensive 20-something hipster bingo card. In fact, it’s a serious […]
The original Onewheel was released back in 2015, and ever since then, the company behind it (a California-based upstart called Future Motion) has kept its nose to the grindstone. A couple years later it released the Onewheel Plus, a smoother, more refined version of the first generation. Roughly a year after that, it dropped the […]
[embedded content] Drone racing has been a thing for a few years now, and like any new sport, it’s continuing to look for ways to grow its audience. Following earlier deals with the likes of ESPN and Sky, the sport appears to be turning away from pay-TV channels to offer the fun for free. From […]
Getting your teeth whitened by your dentist can cost hundreds. And over-the-counter teeth whitening products like whitening strips and whitening toothpaste are not always the most effective. Coffee, wine, and tobacco can leave your teeth with stains that regular brushing can’t remove. If you’ve been searching for a teeth whitening product that actually works, Snow […]
XTIM SARL A French inventor took to Kickstarter last week to raise funds for an insect-inspired winged drone called MetaFly. It generated quite a bit of buzz. At the time this article was published, more than 1,850 people had pledged more than $ 187,500 to bring the drone to market. Unlike traditional commercial drones, which […]
[embedded content] The U.S. Air Force last week completed the first test flight of its new stealth fighter drone, the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The Valkyrie lifted off at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona on March 5 and was in the air for 76 minutes. Though the Air Force is often secretive about its emerging technology, it […]
Hillary Grigonis / Digital Trends For a long time scientists believed there was no liquid water on the Moon and there were only small pockets of ice near its poles. But around 10 years ago they discovered there is in fact water on the Moon’s surface, mixed into the lunar soil (called the regolith). Now […]
Hubble’s famous image of the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. NASA/ESA Where are all the aliens? The famous Fermi paradox asks why, given how vast the universe is, no other civilizations have arisen elsewhere and contacted us here on Earth. Some thinkers have argued the issue is the vast distances between stars, which means it […]
NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies, shown in this image was taken using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al. Galaxies aren’t stationary — they are constantly on the move, pulled around by the gravity of other galaxies in an intricate intergalactic […]