Author: The Conversation

Deep in the Earth beneath us lie two blobs the size of continents. One is under Africa, the other under the Pacific Ocean. The blobs have their roots 2,900km below the surface, almost halfway to the centre of the Earth. They are thought to be the birthplace of rising columns of hot rock called “deep mantle plumes” that reach Earth’s surface. When these plumes first reach the surface, giant volcanic eruptions occur – the kind that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. The blobs may also control the eruption of a kind of rock called…

Around the world, revolutionary changes are under way in transportation. More electric vehicles are on the road, people are taking advantage of sharing mobility services such as Uber and Lyft, and the rise in telework during the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way people think about commuting. Transportation is a growing source of the global greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, accounting for 23% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in 2019 and 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. The systemic changes under way in the transportation sector could begin lowering that emissions footprint. But will they reduce…

It was 1914 when the English explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton set sail on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aboard a ship called Endurance. It was an ill-fated journey: the ship got trapped in the ice and eventually crushed by pack ice in 1915. It sank to the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. (Shackleton and his entire crew survived the ordeal by escaping in smaller boats.) It was difficult to believe that the Endurance might ever be found. The icy Weddell Sea is inhospitable and the wreck lay in more than 3000 metres of water. But thanks to a South African vessel, the SA Agulhas II,…

Thousands of years ago, the blacksmith led a technological leap in sub-Saharan Africa. West Africa’s Nok culture, for example, switched from using stone tools to iron around 1500BC. Imagine an innovative artisan like this re-emerging in the 21st century equipped with digital technologies. This is not Wakanda science fiction. It is the story of a real promise that 3D printing holds for an industrial revolution on the African continent. 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is a fabrication process in which a three-dimensional object is built (printed) by adding layer upon layer of materials to a series of shapes. The material can be metal, alloys, plastics or concrete.…

Many would be familiar with Reddit as one of the largest social networking sites, with a large group of forums (“subreddits”) catering to almost any interest. Since the beginning of April, Reddit has played host to a massive collaborative art project called r/place that simultaneously shows us some of the best and worst attributes of cybercultures. Originally launched in 2017, r/place ran for 72 hours. The lifespan of the new r/place was also short – ultimately lasting for just five days. Beginning initially as a blank canvas, r/place allows users to place one coloured pixel every five minutes (or 20 minutes for unverified accounts)…

A report from the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom confirms children are avid social media users. Some 99% of children aged three to 17 used the internet in 2021. YouTube was the most popular platform, with 89% of children using it. Meanwhile, half of kids used TikTok, a popular site which allows users to watch and share short videos. Most social media platforms require users to be aged 13 or older. Nonetheless, the report found that a majority of children under 13 had their own profile on at least one social media app or site. One-third of parents of children aged five to seven…

Intel’s proposed US$30 billion (£23 billion) investment in semiconductor manufacturing capacity across Europe has the potential to significantly boost the continent’s struggling chip industry. The US giant is poised to invest an initial US$17 billion to build a cutting-edge semiconductor factory (known as a fab) in Germany, along with associated R&D facilities to develop new generations of chips in France, Ireland and Poland. It is also in negotiations with the Italian government to develop a manufacturing facility in that country. If such proposals come to fruition, the overall investment could top US$80 billion and create over 3,000 high-tech jobs and many more…

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has raised fears among the public about the use of nuclear weapons in Europe or against the United States. This level of concern has not been seen since the end of the Cold War. NATO countries have been taken aback by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implied threats to use nuclear weapons against “whoever interferes with us” in Ukraine, and his placement of additional nuclear officers on shifts under a “special regime of combat duty.” Both Russia and the U.S. have thousands of nuclear weapons, most of which are five or more times more powerful than the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima…

It takes expensive tools to learn about the universe, but projects like the Very Large Array for radio astronomy in New Mexico and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which orbits Earth, have pushed scientific knowledge forward in ways that would not have been possible without these instruments. Every 10 years, astronomers and astrophysicists outline priorities for the hardware they need in the decadal survey on astronomy and astrophysics. The newest version of the survey was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in late 2021, and debates about funding are in full swing for the next fiscal year. I’m a professor…

The rise in the use of smartphones and an increased adoption of mobile internet in Africa are fundamentally altering the media ecology for election campaigns. As mobile phones become commonplace, even in Africa’s poorest countries, the uptake of social media has become ubiquitous. Applications like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp and blogs form an integral part of today’s political communication landscape in much of the continent. These platforms are becoming a dominant factor in electoral processes, playing a tremendous role in the creation, dissemination and consumption of political content. Their influence and embedded power over political content invites further scrutiny, which informed my research. Is the rise…