When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commission. On July 23, 1999, NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched into space by five astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia as it flew over the Indonesian island chain. | Credit: NASA NASA’s flagship for the last 25 years Chandra… Read More »
SpaceX quickly launched three Falcon 9 rockets over the weekend, putting 67 Starlink satellites into orbit in three days after receiving approval to resume launches following a rare in-flight failure on July 11. SpaceX kicked off its return to flight early Saturday with the launch of 23 Starlink internet satellites from Kennedy Space Center, followed… Read More »
Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, Sign up for free here. Experimentation is fundamental to the scientific process and lies at the core of being human and questioning the world around us. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors made the first… Read More »
At the headquarters of Google DeepMind, the artificial intelligence lab in London, researchers have a long-standing ritual for announcing major results: They ring a large ceremonial gong. In 2016, the gong rang for AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence system that excelled at the game of Go. In 2017, the gong rang out when AlphaZero conquered chess.… Read More »
WASHINGTON (AP) — New blood tests could help doctors diagnose Alzheimer’s disease faster and more accurately, but some appear to work much better than others, researchers reported Sunday. It’s hard to tell if memory problems are caused by Alzheimer’s. That requires a hard-to-obtain brain scan or an uncomfortable spinal tap to confirm the buildup of… Read More »
Experts say decades of efforts to extinguish fires at the first sign of smoke combined with climate change are setting the stage for a massive wildfire in Northern California and scores of smaller ones in the western United States and Canada. These fires are spreading faster than in the past and are harder to fight.… Read More »
The rise of ChatGPT and similar AI systems has come alongside a sharp rise in concerns about AI. Over the past few months, executives and AI safety researchers have been making predictions about the likelihood of AI causing a large-scale disaster, dubbed “P(doom).” Concerns reached a peak in May 2023, when the nonprofit research and… Read More »
Curious Kids is a series for kids of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. What would the Earth look like a year from now if humans were gone? – Essie, age 11, Michigan Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if… Read More »
You probably know someone who ages slowly, aging years earlier than their birth date suggests. And you’ve probably seen the opposite—someone whose body and mind seem to be ravaged by time far more than others. Why do some people seem to glide through their golden years while others seem to struggle physiologically in middle age?… Read More »
BENI MELLAL, Morocco (AP) — In the relentless heat of Morocco’s Middle Atlas, people were sleeping in attics. Hanna Ouhbour needed shelter, too, but she was outside the hospital waiting for her cousin, a diabetic, in a room with no air conditioning. There were 21 heat-related deaths on Wednesday as temperatures rose to 48.3 degrees… Read More »