Author: The Conversation

Nearly three decades of close collaboration in space between Russia and the western world seems to be coming to an end. With increasing tensions over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has arguably threatened to crash the International Space Station and refuse to launch satellites for western countries. A few months ago, Russia blew up one of its own defunct satellites, creating space junk that threatened the safety of astronauts at the ISS. So how is the war likely to impact on operations in space going forward, and what are the consequences? Aggression in space could directly affect boots on the grounds. Imagery…

As the inhabitants of an ancient Middle Eastern city now called Tall el-Hammam went about their daily business one day about 3,600 years ago, they had no idea an unseen icy space rock was speeding toward them at about 38,000 mph (61,000 kph). Flashing through the atmosphere, the rock exploded in a massive fireball about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) above the ground. The blast was around 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly. Air temperatures rapidly rose above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius). Clothing and wood…

In February this year, reports surfaced on Twitter and Facebook that the Ukrainian government was undertaking a mass genocide of civilians. Around the same time, conspiracy theorists began saying Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was an agent of the “New World Order”. These claims have been thoroughly debunked, but not before attracting millions of views and offering a purported justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More recently, Russian and Chinese officials have claimed the United States has funded bioweapons research in Ukraine. Read more: Russia’s false claims about biological weapons in Ukraine demonstrate the dangers of disinformation and how hard it is to counter – 4 essential reads…

On Feb. 19, 2022, an Antares rocket took off with the Cygnus cargo capsule to resupply the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) currently crewed by American, Russian and German astronauts. The rocket is partly Ukrainian-built and partly American-built, and powered by engines made in Russia. The Cygnus cargo capsule is manufactured with components from all over Europe. Like many space missions, this one shows that countries can come together and co-operate to accomplish great advancements in the exploration and use of outer space. Five days after the launch of Antares, Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine, which the United Nations General Assembly…

One year ago, an artwork was sold for US$69 million (R1.4 billion) by the prestigious auction house Christie’s. This was no lost Matisse or rarely seen Van Gogh. Instead, it was a composite collection of digital art by the then relatively unknown artist Beeple. What makes this piece, Everydays: the First 5000 Days, truly remarkable, is that it was sold as a non-fungible token (NFT). In the year since that sale, NFTs have gone from a relatively obscure tech-world phenomenon to the mainstream. NFTs are tokens that exist on a secure record-keeping system called a blockchain. These tokens are akin to…

Dating apps are the new reality, but do they really make dating easier? My study suggests they complicate it further. Questions about trust and online dating regularly crop up along with headlines about unpleasant online approaches, scams and even physical assaults when dates move offline. Still, dating apps like Tinder remain hugely popular, downloaded and used mostly on cellphones to meet new people. In fact, they have received increasing traffic globally in recent years despite these bleak stories and spurred by COVID-induced lockdowns. My ethnographic research in Cape Town, South Africa, shows that Tinder dating is riddled with contradictory feelings. As an anthropology scholar who is curious about…

Exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, are found at distances very far from Earth. For example, the closest exoplanet to us, Proxima Centauri b, is 4.2 light years away, or 265,000 times the distance between the Earth and the sun. To the naked eye, the planets in the solar system appear as bright spots. However, using a telescope, these dots stand out from the stars and reveal structures such as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s rings, or the ice caps of Mars. Although the presence of such phenomena is expected on exoplanets, their distance from the Earth prevents…

Shortly before access to the BBC News website was reportedly blocked in Russia a few days ago, the BBC announced that it was resuming the broadcasting of the BBC World Service via shortwave radio for four hours per day. It said that this was to ensure that people in parts of Russia and Ukraine can access its news service. You can listen for updates on the Russia-Ukraine war on BBC World Service live online 📱 https://t.co/ZpQiRUoNHP And the map shows our shortwave radio reach in #Ukraine 📻 15735 kHz 16:00 – 18:00 GMT +2 📻 5875 kHz 22:00 – 00:00 GMT +2 pic.twitter.com/q1wa2o3j4g —…

Many animals form groups. Living in a group can protect individuals from predators, reducing risk; it also helps them to find more food, increasing rewards. However, the presence of cities can alter these patterns of risk and reward. When wildlife enters urban space, there’s the potential that the way individuals behave in groups – their “collective behaviour” – can be drastically altered. Until recently, scientists have known little about the collective behaviour of wild animals because it’s difficult to observe many individuals at once. Even less is known about wild animals’ collective behaviour in human-changed environments because the physical structure…

“Look away now if you don’t want to know the score”, they say on the news before reporting the football results. But imagine if your television knew which teams you follow, which results to hold back – or knew to bypass football altogether and tell you about something else. With media personalisation, which we’re working on with the BBC, that sort of thing is becoming possible. Significant challenges remain for adapting live production, but there are other aspects to media personalisation which are closer. Indeed, media personalisation already exists to an extent. It’s like your BBC iPlayer or Netflix suggesting content…