Author: The Conversation

Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken centre stage in basic science. The five winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics shared a common thread: AI. Indeed, many scientists – including the Nobel committees – are celebrating AI as a force for transforming science. As one of the laureates put it, AI’s potential for accelerating scientific discovery makes it “one of the most transformative technologies in human history”. But what will this transformation really mean for science? AI promises to help scientists do more, faster, with less money. But it brings a host of new concerns, too – and if scientists rush…

A large communications satellite has broken up in orbit, affecting users in Europe, Central Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, and adding to the growing swarm of space junk clouding our planet’s neighbourhood. The Intelsat 33e satellite provided broadband communication from a point some 35,000km above the Indian Ocean, in a geostationary orbit around the equator. Initial reports on October 20 said Intelsat 33e had experienced a sudden power loss. Hours later, US Space Forces-Space confirmed the satellite appears to have broken up into at least 20 pieces. So what happened? And is this a sign of things to come as more and more…

The US Department of Justice may be on the verge of seeking a break-up of Google in a bid to make it less dominant. If the government goes ahead and is successful in the courts, it could mean the company being split into separate entities – a search engine, an advertising company, a video website, and a mapping app – which would not be allowed to share data with each other. While this is still a distant prospect, it is being considered in the wake of a series of rulings in the US and the EU which suggest that regulators are becoming increasingly…

Despite huge advances in cybersecurity, one weakness continues to overshadow all others: human error. Research has consistently shown human error is responsible for an overwhelming majority of successful cyber attacks. A recent report puts the figure at 68%. No matter how advanced our technological defences become, the human element is likely to remain the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. This weakness affects everyone using digital devices, yet traditional cyber education and awareness programs – and even new, forward-looking laws – fail to adequately address it. So, how can we deal with human-centric cybersecurity-related challenges? Understanding human error There are two types of human…

The walking, talking, dancing Optimus robots at the recent Tesla demonstration generated huge excitement. But this turned to disappointment as it became apparent that much of what was happening was actually being controlled remotely by humans. As much as this might still be a fascinating glimpse of the future, it’s not the first time that robots have turned out to be a little too good to be true. Take Sophia, for instance, the robot created by Texas-based Hanson Robotics back in 2016. She was presented by the company as essentially an intelligent being, prompting numerous tech specialists to call this out as well beyond our capabilities at the time. Similarly, we’ve…

Discovering extraterrestrial life would be one of the most profound scientific and philosophical revelations that our species has ever made. But such a big discovery won’t come easy. Our starting point is to first search other worlds for signs of habitability, that is, the potential for life to exist. NASA is doing just that: launching a spacecraft on October 10 to Europa, a moon of Jupiter holding twice the water of all Earth’s oceans combined. Europa’s ocean is between 60 and 150 kilometres deep and is hidden beneath an outer shell of ice that’s 15 to 25 kilometres thick. The evidence for an…

South Africa’s state-owned electricity company, Eskom, has applied to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa to approve a 36.1% electricity price hike from April 2025, an 11.8% price increase in 2026 and a 9.1% increase in 2027. Steven Mathetsa teaches and researches sustainable energy systems at the University of the Witwatersrand’s African Energy Leadership Centre. He explains some of the problems with the planned tariff increase. Why such a big hike? Eskom says the multi-year price increase is because of the need to move closer a cost-reflective tariff that reflects the actual costs of supplying electricity. However, Eskom’s electricity tariff increases have been exorbitant…

From the mind-bending reality warps of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) to the breathtaking alien vistas of Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), visual effects have transported us to worlds beyond imagination. Yet the future of visual effects (VFX) could hang in the balance as artificial intelligence is subsumed into screen production processes. Lionsgate’s recent partnership with AI startup Runway has sparked controversy in the visual effects industry. By allowing Runway to train AI on Lionsgate’s vast film and TV catalogue, the collaboration promises increased efficiency and financial savings – but at what cost? Growing apprehension among workers According to a research report published in…

In recent decades, we’ve learnt huge amounts about the universe and its history. The rapidly developing technology of telescopes – both on Earth and in space – has been a key part of this process, and those that are due to start operating over the next two decades should push the boundaries of our understanding of cosmology much further. All observatories have a list of science objectives before they switch on, but it is their unexpected discoveries that can have the biggest impact. Many surprise advances in cosmology were driven by new technology, and the next telescopes have powerful capabilities. Still, there are gaps,…

It’s now almost two years since Elon Musk concluded his takeover of Twitter (now called X) on 27 October 2022. Since then, the platform has become an increasingly polarised and divisive space. Musk promised to deal with some issues that had already frustrated users, particularly bots, abuse and misinformation. In 2023, he said there was less misinformation on the platform because of his efforts to tackle the bots. But others disagree, claiming that misinformation is still rife there. A potential reaction to this may be apparent in recent data highlighted by the Financial Times, which showed the number of UK users of the platform had…