Toggle light / dark theme

Astrophysicist Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney in Australia recently authored a study about time dilation and said that Doctor Who’s description of time travel is accurate, as we truly don’t yet understand the limitations of time (via Reuters).

Sci-fi shows like Doctor Who can usually rely on the audience’s suspension of disbelief when diving into heady concepts, and the science doesn’t always have to be accurate — though it is much cooler when a show gets the science right. Apparently, the long-running BBC series can take pride in the fact that the Doctor’s description of time as ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, is co-opted by real-life astrophysicists.

In other words, theoretical concepts like time travel and warp drives could be possible, or they may not be. Maybe a Time Lord out there uses a British police box to travel through time. Okay, so Doctor Who probably isn’t right about that part, but there technically is still a chance that it is!

EPFL researchers have developed a 100% effective, ultra-thin active noise cancelling system that uses an ionized air plasma propulsion system instead of speakers. A 17-mm-thick (0.6-in) layer can block 20 Hz noise as well as a 4-m-thick (13-ft) wall.

If you know how active noise cancellation works, then skip ahead. Essentially, the sound waves we hear are pressure waves in the air around us. Speaker cones are big, lightweight membranes designed to push air around in precise patterns to create those pressure waves, either in the form of pleasant music, or whatever it is the kids are listening to these days.

Active noise cancellation (ANC) is the idea of measuring those pressure waves with a microphone, then generating the exact same pressure waves in reverse, and playing them through a speaker. Pressure is taken away from the positive pressure peaks, and added to the negative pressure troughs, and the new wave more or less scrubs the old wave out of existence.

We live in an era of renewed space exploration, where multiple agencies are planning to send astronauts to the Moon in the coming years. This will be followed in the next decade with crewed missions to Mars by NASA and China, who may be joined by other nations before long.

These and other missions that will take astronauts beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and the Earth-Moon system require new technologies, ranging from life support and radiation shielding to power and propulsion.

And when it comes to the latter, Nuclear Thermal and Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NTP/NEP) is a top contender!

There has been a lot of buzz about all the ways that Artificial Intelligence could change the world, from the workplace to schools and day-to-day life as a whole, but the recent advancements in the field could spell the end of the traditional school classroom. In an interview with the British media outlet, The Guardian, reported on Friday (July 7) one of the world’s leading experts on AI made the prediction that for better or worse, AI might change classrooms.

How would things change?

Speaking about how AI could potentially change traditional school classrooms, a British computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Stuart Russell told The Guardian, “Education is the biggest benefit that we can look for in the next few years.”

Researchers at NCMM have demonstrated the mechanisms behind the activation of Aurora B, a central conductor of cell division. Their findings, now published in eLife, can lay the foundations for developing new cancer drugs.

Cell division is a fundamental process for all living things, where one cell divides into two cells. It allows for a human being to grow from a single fertilized egg cell, for wounds to heal, and for dead cells within your body to be replenished with new cells.

By the time you have read this sentence, millions of cells throughout your body have divided.