Author: The Conversation

Data centres are the backbone of our digital infrastructure, supporting everything from social media platforms to online shopping and streaming services. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and the internet of things, the amount of data generated and processed daily is extremely large, and the demand for data centres is constantly growing. Data centres, unfortunately, are massively energy hungry – among a host of other environmental drawbacks. One possible solution is to build them in space, and several companies are working on making this a reality. So how would this work, and is it really going to…

NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission is slated to return astronauts to the Moon no sooner than April 2026. Astronauts were last on the Moon in 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission. Artemis II will utilize NASA’s Space Launch System, which is an extremely powerful rocket that will enable human space exploration beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The crew of four will travel in an Orion spacecraft, which the agency launched around the Moon and successfully returned during the Artemis I mission. But before Artemis II, NASA will send two missions to scout the surface of the lunar south pole for resources that could sustain human space travel and…

In the grand scheme of things, 45 years is not a long time. Back in 1980, it would take me three weeks to run a computer program, written in the programming language Cobol, that worked using punched cards. Each card represented one line of code and it required multiple re-punches to correct errors. Eventually, I would have a working program that did something useful. How times have quickly changed in technology – now, my mobile phone has vast processing capability compared to the machine that processed that Cobol program. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, that same phone is…

American microchip giant Intel is looking for a new CEO following Pat Gelsinger’s shock resignation. This represents more than just a corporate shake-up. It’s the end of an era in which one company could totally control a strategically vital American technology. Under Intel’s roof is the entire process for making computer chips – from research to design to complex fabrication. For much of the late 20th century, this made the Californian company a paragon of American ingenuity. Gelsinger has been a lifer at Intel. He rose to chief technology officer in the 2000s before leaving for a decade to run Dell’s data…

Here’s one definition of science: it’s essentially an iterative process of building models with ever-greater explanatory power. A model is just an approximation or simplification of how we think the world works. In the past, these models could be very simple, as simple in fact as a mathematical formula. But over time, they have evolved and scientists have built increasingly sophisticated simulations of the world as new data has become available. A computer model of the Earth’s climate can show us temperatures will rise as we continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Models can also predict how infectious disease will spread in…

On 25 December 2024, we witnessed the nail-biting launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) three years ago, the largest and most powerful telescope humans have ever sent into space. It took 30 years to build, but in three short years of operation, JWST has already revolutionised our view of the cosmos. It’s explored our own Solar System, studied the atmospheres of distant planets in search of signs of life and probed the farthest depths to find the very first stars and galaxies formed in the universe. Here’s what JWST has taught us about the early universe since its…

A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”. On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test. Creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the stated goal of all the major AI research labs. At first glance, OpenAI appears to have at least made a significant step towards this goal. While scepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed.…

A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust. This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the universe. But it’s more than just another molecule for the collection. The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that complex organic molecules (with carbon and hydrogen) likely existed in the cold, dark gas cloud that gave rise to our Solar System. Furthermore, the molecules held together until after…

Modern computers are a triumph of technology. A single computer chip contains billions of nanometre-scaled transistors that operate extremely reliably and at a rate of millions of operations per second. However, this high speed and reliability comes at the cost of significant energy consumption: data centres and household IT appliances like computers and smartphones account for around 3% of global electricity demand, and the use of AI is likely to drive even more consumption. But what if we could redesign the way computers work so that they could perform computation tasks as quickly as today while using far less energy? Here, nature…

Optimistic advocates for AI say this environmentally costly technology will become more sustainable with time. We can use AI more efficiently, and explore less energy-intensive designs inspired by the human brain. We can build data centres more sustainably, using wood or low-carbon concrete and steel. The heat from the data centres can warm homes in the local area. Of course, if we start using AI systems too widely (including where we don’t really need them), the growth might outweigh any of these potential gains in efficiency. But recently, I’ve been hearing another argument: that AI itself is tackling climate change. AI can help to model wildfires, optimise energy consumption to stabilise the grid,…