Author: The Conversation

Looking at its achievements over the past decade, nobody would doubt China is aiming to win the new space race. Not only has it been the only country to land on the Moon in about 40 years, and the first to soft land on its far side, it has also planted a flag on lunar soil and brought samples back to Earth. The race between several nations and private companies, however, is far from over. China is now approaching Mars with its Tianwen-1 mission, due to arrive on February 10. A successful insertion into orbit – the rover won’t land until May — will mark another crucial milestone for more than…

While people tend to contribute more to a virtual public good if they see others doing the same, this effect reverses if they become aware too many people are participating, according to research that I conducted over the summer. Public goods are things that many people share. They can be physical, such as highways, clean air and blood banks, or virtual, like free online encyclopedia Wikipedia or mobile traffic app Waze. Combining methods from geography, urban planning and big-data analysis, my co-authors and I studied millions of postings by users of a mobile navigation app called Waze, in which users voluntarily post…

Imagine that you’re a typical middle school student having dinner with your family. Your mother takes your smartphone away and puts it in a lock-box that won’t open for an hour. Would you: (a) go ahead and eat dinner with your family? (b) try to pry open the box? or (c) smash the box with a heavy tool when your family is sufficiently distracted? As depicted in Netflix’s popular documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” the answer is first (b) – if that doesn’t work, then (c). Apparently, for youth, being connected online is akin to an addictive substance: “There are only…

It’s been suggested that an advance party of robots will be needed if humans are ever to settle on other planets. Sent ahead to create conditions favourable for humankind, these robots will need to be tough, adaptable and recyclable if they’re to survive within the inhospitable cosmic climates that await them. Collaborating with roboticists and computer scientists, my team and I have been working on just such a set of robots. Produced via 3D printer – and assembled autonomously – the robots we’re creating continually evolve in order to rapidly optimise for the conditions they find themselves in. Our work…

One of the most difficult problems in finance right now is figuring out the fundamental economic value of cryptocurrencies. And the past week has complicated this further. For many cryptocurrency investors, the value of Bitcoin is based on the fact it is artificially scarce. A hard cap on “minting” new coins means there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin in existence. And unlike national currencies such as the Australian dollar, the rate of release for new Bitcoin is slowing down over time. Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was popular several years…

There’s a new kid on the social media block, and it is making big waves. It is less than a year old, yet is already valued at US$1 billion, and has venture capitalists scrambling to invest. The newcomer is Clubhouse, a social platform built around “drop-in audio chat”. Featuring ephemeral real-time voice conversations that any user can listen to and nobody can record, the invite-only app has gathered a legion of high-profile fans and some two million users. The coronavirus pandemic may have created the ideal conditions for Clubhouse to thrive: hordes of people isolated by lockdowns or safety concerns, desperate for…

No-one has visited the Moon since 1972. But with the advent of commercial human spaceflight, the urge to return is resurgent and generating a new space race. Nasa has selected the private company SpaceX to be part of its commercial spaceflight operations, but the firm is also pursuing its own space exploration agenda. To enable flights to the Moon and beyond, both Nasa and SpaceX are developing new heavy lift rockets: SpaceX’s Starship and Nasa’s Space Launch System. But how do they differ and which one is more powerful? Starship Rockets go through multiple stages to get into orbit. By discarding spent fuel tanks while…

Artificial intelligence has been making waves in recent years, enabling us to solve problems faster than traditional computing could ever allow. Recently, for example, Google’s artificial intelligence subsidiary DeepMind developed AlphaFold2, a program which solved the protein-folding problem. This is a problem which has had baffled scientists for 50 years. Advances in AI have allowed us to make progress in all kinds of disciplines – and these are not limited to applications on this planet. From designing missions to clearing Earth’s orbit of junk, here are a few ways artificial intelligence can help us venture further in space. Astronaut assistants Do you…

Israeli company StoreDot recently announced it can now mass produce electric vehicle batteries that can be fully charged in just five minutes. “The bottleneck to extra-fast charging is no longer the battery,” claimed the firm’s chief executive. But is this fast-charging battery really a gamechanger? And if so: exactly how? Electric vehicle charging speeds are a minefield and can be tough to understand. The latest models claim peak charging rates of over 900 miles in an hour, but the average rate when charging from 10% to 80% of battery capacity is typically about half that. The last bit of the battery is…

During a walking tour of Queensland’s Daintree rainforest in Australia, a talented guide regularly pointed out creatures that were well camouflaged into their surroundings. At one point, he directed our attention to a tree trunk, where a large grasshopper was camouflaged. The guide’s observations and stories wove together the connections between biology, geology and colonialism, helping explain how big and small changes could transform life in this ecosystem. Our society has been altered by the rapid proliferation of new technologies and devices that produce digital data. Nested within and feeding on this data ecosystem, artificial intelligence (AI) executes cognitive tasks…