Weird exoplanetary system dances to the beat

If there's one thing to be said for the Kepler mission, it's certainly turning up some very strange new worlds.

The rise of artificial intelligence personal assistant

Soon each and every one of us will have a PA, even PAs themselves. Artificial Intelligence Assistants are at last making a proper entrance.

ALMA Opens Its Eyes. The most powerful millimetre/submillimetre-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image

Humanity's most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers. The first released image, from a telescope still under construction, reveals a view of the Universe that cannot be seen at all by visible-light and infrared telescopes. Thousands of scientists from around the world have competed to be among the first few researchers to explore some of the darkest, coldest, furthest, and most hidden secrets of the cosmos with this new astronomical tool.

The future of transportation on a planet with 7 billion people

Photo: Flickr, CC Take a Step Back and Look As we near the moment when our planet officially hosts 7 billion people (of course this is just a statistical guess - nobody's sure precisely how many humans are on Earth), we need to take some time to think

19 year old improves solar power capacity by 40%

The idea is such a simple one: rotate solar panels to follow the sun throughout the day so they capture the most of the sun's energy as possible. Solar power tracking systems have been around for some time, but a 19-year-old

New ‘FeTRAM’ memory uses 99 percent less energy than flash memory

A new type of nonvolatile computer memory that could be faster than the existing commercial memory and use far less power than flash memory devices is being

Smart clothing: memory-storing fiber could lead to smart fabrics and wearable electronics

Scientists at the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames Research Center have developed a new flexible memory fabric woven together from interlocking

China prepares to launch first space lab module this week

China in testing its first space laboratory module, the Tiangong-1, at the end of this week. The module will conduct docking experiments after entering

Linked quantum dots could create cheap, efficient solar cells

Researchers at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at TU Delft in the Netherlands have demonstrated that electrons can move freely in layers of linked

Scientists release most accurate simulation of the universe to date

The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, announced Thursday, is the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, giving physicists and

Was a giant planet ejected from the Solar system?

The "fifth planet" is a hypothesized giant world that was flung out of our solar system 4 billion years ago.

Cloaking magnetic fields -- the first antimagnet

Spanish researchers have designed what they believe to be a new type of magnetic cloak, which shields objects from external magnetic fields, while at the same time preventing any magnetic internal fields from leaking outside, making the cloak undetectable.

NASA to demonstrate communications via laser beam

It currently takes 90 minutes to transmit high-resolution images from Mars, but NASA would like to dramatically reduce that time to just minutes. A new optical communications system that NASA plans to demonstrate in 2016 will lead the way and even allow the streaming of high-definition video from distances beyond the Moon.

Could primordial black holes be dark matter?

(PhysOrg.com) -- “We know that about 25% of the matter in the universe is dark matter, but we don’t know what it is,” Michael Kesden tells PhysOrg.com. “There are a number of different theories about what dark matter could be, but we think one alternative might be very small primordial black holes.”