Science

As much as we're excited by the ventures of Space X and Amazon in making travel into space and the transport of materials into orbit that much cheaper with their re-usable systems, they're not the only ones looking to revolutionise space travel. British company Reaction Engines has designed a new …

Although the U.S. and Russia were at each other's throats when it came to the 20th century space race, they did agree in 1967 that no state could claim ownership of celestial bodies. That hasn't stopped some commercial ventures from doing so of course, even without legal binding, but now …

Researchers at Sanford University have taken a big step in the further development of quantum networks, utilising photons to carry a message between entangled electronics over a mile apart for the first time in history. This has the potential to allow for the secure transmission of data over vast distances, …

Space X CEO Elon Musk has been talking space again on Twitter, but this time he's been using it to point out his own company's achievements in the wake of Amazon's successful Blue Origin launch. Although that was quite an achievement, he pointed out that Space X had been performing similar …

In a landmark moment in the history of space travel, a company has been selected to transport humans from the bounds of Earth, into the cosmos above, in its own capsule design. Space X, the company founded by Elon Musk in the early '00s has finally come of age and …

Polish doctors have become the first in the world to use virtual reality and a custom built application to help unblock a coronary artery. Instead of traditional catheter based percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) which uses 2D X-Ray images for guidance, surgeons were able to look at a 3D representation of the …

Although much of the history of space exploration has been driven by the minds and money of national organisations like NASA and the Soviet Space Program, commercial entities have been aiding their efforts for a long time. And that looks set to continue with Space X bidding on a contract …

A new type of smart dressing for wounds could allow doctors to be more selective with their doling out of antibiotics, something that is consistently preached as an important measure to avoid the growth of highly-resistive bacteria. It could have particular application we're told, for use with wounds on children, …

Google and the British Museum have announced a partnership to expand the current Google Cultural Institute's offerings of digital musceum exhibits to anyone around the world. This represents one of the biggest team ups in the history of the project, with some 5,000 objects scanned, photographed and put online for …

The space race was arguably the best thing to come out of the Cold War. It would be insensitive to suggest that all of the problems it wrought on the world were worth getting people to the moon, but the competition of major powers trying to outdo each other in …

When a new piece of hardware is introduced to a market that shakes things up, it's often termed disruptive. Elon Musk is himself, a disruptor of many industries, helping push the world towards electric cars, high-speed maglev hyperloop travel and indeed, cheaper and more efficient space transits. So much so …

There have been a number of distributed computing projects over the years, from SETI@Home to Folding@Home (for which KitGuru has a powerful, active team still running) but as much as the desktops of the world are more powerful than ever before, smartphones have seen the biggest explosion of performance hardware …

Although greenhouse gas emissions are seen as a major threat to the ecosystems of the world and in some ways the planet itself, air pollution is also another major side effect that needs warding off. In some countries, wearing face masks is not uncommon, but some people forego them as they …

Although there were a number of reasons for Google to give itself a new parent company – Alphabet – one of the effects of such a move we were told, was that some of the search giant's less profitable, more experimental strategies and developments would receive more focus. That appears …

Sound waves have long been postulated as a potential avenue for movie-like tractor beam technology, as it's been possible on a small scale to levitate objects or droplets of water using a pair of speakers or a single set and a reflector. Now though, scientists have been able to achieve …

Intel has announced that it has acquired Saffron Technologies in an effort to improve its machine learning efforts. Saffron Technologies has previously offered predictive analytical data to industries across the spectrum. For now, Intel intends to keep Saffron running as its own standalone business, though it will look in to …

Not content with turning our transportation electric and making space travel more affordable, Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk also has another pet project: the Hyperloop. A near-vacuum sealed tube-train design that could carry passengers across entire countries faster than airplane travel. The concept is still a long way …

One of the more eye catching stories in the world of science in the past week involved one researcher's suggestion that the dimming of a distant star known as KIC 8462852 in a strange pattern, could suggest giant “alien megastructures,” were orbiting it. The scientific study that prompted this idea didn't …

Of all of the ways humans have attempted to alter the muscle mass of themselves and animals over the past hundred or so years, from exercise, to steroids to growth hormones, nothing has quite had the same effect as myostatin inhibitors. Removing that particular protein from an animal increases their …

The search for alien life around the world has been ongoing for much of the past century, with various individuals and organisations pointing listening devices to the sky in the hopes of hearing a message from another people on another world. We also look for them too, with high powered …

Mars has long been thought to have once been a lush, green world with ancient oceans, lakes and rivers flowing across its surface. However those days are long gone and though there is evidence of ice, until recently the idea of flowing water on Mars was just a pipe dream. …

China has revealed new plans designed to push back against pollution, by setting limits on the greenhouse gas emissions of companies and then charging them for going over that limit. The hope is that by discouraging companies from excessively polluting the environment, overall carbon emission levels will halve by 2030. …

When you think of the cockpit of a Space Shuttle or rocket propelled crew capsule, what do you see? If you're like us, you see a cramped, button festooned, interior that has more dials and switches than any human could possibly understand. That's nothing like Space X's dragon capsule, which looks …

Although Germanium isn't a conflict metal and is therefore its usage isn't one of those moral hurdles we all have to leap when buying electronics, it still needs to be extracted from Zinc smelting and coal burning, which isn't particularly efficient. Like all natural resources, it's also finite, which is …

Although the consumer smartphone market may have largely moved on from the Megapixel race when it comes to improving camera image quality, there are some benefits to be found from maximising the number of pixels sucked in by a camera lens. Take the new prototype CMOS sensor that Canon has …

Unless you yourself are a hunter who regularly kills, cleans and cooks their own meat, chances are – like most of us – you are pretty removed from the process of readying your meat for consumption. You may cook it, but few of us are actively slaughtering the animals we …

United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space and Security, has successfully launched the fourth U.S. Navy's Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite into orbit around the Earth. This should greatly improve the tracking and navigation abilities of U.S. and allied military personnel …

Like many cities that have been around since before the popularisation of rail travel, New York has a number of abandoned and neglected stations, many of them under ground, leaving acres of land derelict in prime positions around the city. One project is looking to reclaim at least one of …

Going to the toilet in space isn't easy. Without gravity human bowels work slightly differently, and there's the ever present problem of what comes out floating around the cabin or space station, as happened during the Apollo 10 mission. There's also the problem of disposal, as we don't want any …

With all the excitement of Space X's recoverable launch attempts and the Philae lander telling us all about comets, we're almost spoilt when it comes to exciting advances in space. However it doesn't stop there, as in March next year, NASA is launching its InSight lander to Mars, where it …