Technology and News Today
Why the Tonga Eruption Was So Violent, and What to Expect Next Shane Cronin, The Conversation US The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The Kingdom of Tonga doesn’t often attract global attention, but a violent eruption of an underwater volcano on January 15 has…
What Is Spacetime Really Made Of? Adam Becker Natalie Paquette spends her time thinking about how to grow an extra dimension. Start with little circles, scattered across every point in space and time—a curlicue dimension, looped back onto itself. Then shrink those circles down, smaller and smaller, tightening the loop, until a curious transformation occurs:…
Windows 11 SE laptops arrive to take on Chromebooks in schools Tom Warren Microsoft’s Chrome OS competitor, Windows 11 SE, is making its way onto a handful of laptops. After detailing Windows 11 SE in November, Microsoft’s OEM partners are now starting to make devices available globally for schools and students. Acer, Asus, Dell, Dynabook,…
Big Questions about Space, Time, Neandertals, Psychedelics and Reality Laura Helmuth What are space and time? Where do they come from? Physicists have treated them as fundamental properties of the universe, but scientists are finding intriguing evidence that they could just be expressions of something even more fundamental. Author Adam Becker, in our cover story takes…
Sounds of Mosquitoes’ Mating Rituals Could Help Fight Malaria Joerg T Albert, Alex Alampounti, Marcos Georgiades, The Conversation US The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that almost half the world’s population was at risk of malaria,…
Hypersonic Weapons Can’t Hide from New Eyes in Space Jason Sherman China’s test flight of a long-range hypersonic glide vehicle late last year was described in the media as close to a “Sputnik moment” in the race to develop new ultrafast maneuvering weapons. But even as senior U.S. military officials publicly fretted about missiles that…
Logitech’s Pen is a durable stylus made for Chromebooks in the classroom Cameron Faulkner Logitech has announced a new stylus called Pen, and it’s aimed at being the best option available for classrooms full of Chromebooks. Unlike many rubber-tipped styli, the Pen is an active stylus that supports the Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) standard, effectively…
Samsung announces first mobile chip with AMD ray tracing GPU Sam Byford Samsung has announced the Exynos 2200, its new in-house mobile processor for smartphones. It’s the first mobile system-on-a-chip to include a GPU with AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture, enabling features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The collaboration with AMD has been long in the…
Google changed the Assistant’s white noise sound, and many aren’t happy about it Jay Peters Google offers many ambient sounds from the Google Assistant, including one for white noise that might help block out noise to make it easier to sleep or study. But the company seemingly changed its white noise sound last week, and…
In a First, an ‘Atomic Fountain’ Has Measured the Curvature of Spacetime Rahul Rao, SPACE.com In 1797, English scientist Henry Cavendish measured the strength of gravity with a contraption made of lead spheres, wooden rods and wire. In the 21st century, scientists are doing something very similar with rather more sophisticated tools: atoms. Gravity might…