If you thought the video of the MIT Cheetah robot, that can run faster than the world's quickest human sprinters was creepy, take a peek at the new video from Google (soon to be Alphabet) owned Boston Dynamics, which has a six foot tall bipedal robot named Atlas, running through …
Read More »Google announces Project Sunroof, offers free solar data
Solar panel adoption is happening quicker today than it ever has before, which is why more than one per cent of the world's electricity is now delivered direct from the sun. However Google wants to help improve that even more, by taking data it has from its Google Earth imagery …
Read More »NASA’s Mars engine test firing video showcases its power
Although lovers of space have been calling for a manned trip to Mars for decades ,we still don't seem any closer to sending people to its far-flung surface. That doesn't mean steps aren't being taken though, with NASA last week testing the engine that will make up the core stage …
Read More »SpaceVR wants to turn us all into astronauts
Despite decades and decades of flinging things and ourselves into space, only 533 people have left the confines of our little blue marble and orbited around its expanse, truly experiencing what it's like to be in space. One company wants to change that however. Space VR is a Kickstarter campaign …
Read More »Someone else is claiming to have made a water powered motor
Every few years, a story appears that suggests some backroom inventor has created a prototype vehicle that runs only on water. While their claims are often fantastical, rarely do they pan out to be of real scientific significance, but perhaps this case will be different. Brazilian civil servant and home inventor, Ricardo …
Read More »Space X’s simulated manned trips to the ISS are going great
Although it may not be until 2017 that Space X is given the all clear to fly its Dragon V2 capsule filled with astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of testing to do before then. That's why over the past few …
Read More »NASA releases new dark side of the moon image
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCO) was launched earlier this year atop a Space X Falcon 9 rocket and it currently sits within a Lissajous orbit 930,000 miles from Earth. It's been sending back data on the ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere since and it's all been …
Read More »Forget graphene, stanene may be the wonder material of the future
As much as graphene has been seen as the darling of scientists and researchers since it was first created in the early '00s, it's not the only honeycomb, single-atom-thick structure to have fantastical properties. It sparked a gold rush to see what else could be latticed together at the atomic …
Read More »Rosetta and Philae data dump reveals lots about comets
The intrepid pair of exploratory spacecraft, Rosetta and Philae, made history last year when they enabled the first landing on a comet. Although it was a somewhat bumpy touchdown and we haven't heard much from Philae lately, it turns out we did learn a lot about the comet in the …
Read More »First results from higher-powered Large Hadron collisions released
Although the outward expansion of human knowledge into the Cosmos is ever growing thanks to the efforts of teams like the New Horizons, which recently flew past Pluto, our species is also looking inward to find out more about the building blocks of matter itself. That's where the Large Hadron …
Read More »NASA announces discovery of most Earth-like planet yet
The search for a planet that is as Earth-like as possible is an important one. Not only could it one day prove to be a second home for humanity when we stretch our influence outside of the confines of this solar system, but it could also potentially be a place …
Read More »Soyuz TMA-17M successfully docks with ISS, delivers crew
Even though supply runs to the International Space Station have been rather problematic as of late, that doesn't mean we've forgotten how to make it into low-earth-orbit. The Soyuz TMA-17M has successfully launched and docked with the ISS, delivering its ultra-precious cargo of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Japanese astronaut Kimiya …
Read More »Kerbalnaut Scott Manley explains Space X CRS7 launch failure
It's good that the New Horizons Pluto flyby went off (almost) without a hitch, as recent missions into the inky blackness of space haven't been quite so successful. The most recent failing was an explosion of Space X's CRS7 resupply mission to the ISS, which exploded during the first stage …
Read More »Pluto is much more active than scientists thought
Following the New Horizons flyby of Pluto last week, data has been trickling in and showing us things about the dwarf planet we never knew before and it turns out we wrong about a lot of things. So much so in-fact that scientists that studied the far flung object have …
Read More »New Horizons Pluto update, new images, more coming today
It's already been a few days since the New Horizons space craft made its historic flyby of the furthest flung planetary entity the human race has ever visited: Pluto. It took some awe inspiring images, the first of which we've begun to get our first look at, but there is …
Read More »New Horizons shows first close up image of Pluto’s ice mountains
It's been nine and a half long years since the original launch of the New Horizons, nearly fifteen years since its conception and almost 100 years since we originally discovered its target (dwarf) planet, Pluto. But finally, after so long in the murky depths of our imaginations, we're finally getting …
Read More »New Horizons confirms Pluto is bigger than we thought
Poor Pluto. Once part of the collective of nine planets that make up our solar system, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2005, after the discovery of the larger Eris – a trans-Neptunian object – forced scientists to consider the formal definition of “planet;” unfortunately for Pluto it …
Read More »New Horizons space probe on track for historic Pluto flyby
Despite having a hiccup when it temporarily switched to its backup computer just before the weekend, NASA has confirmed that the New Horizons space probe is said to be in good shape for its flyby of far-flung dwarf planet, Pluto over the next few days. Launched in 2006 and given …
Read More »Russian space craft restocks ISS after Space X failure
The International Space Station is arguably mankind's greatest technological achievement, so it's important that it remains operational throughout its intended life span and that means keeping the intrepid astronauts and cosmonauts aboard well fed and with plenty to do. Fortunately then, after several failures in 2015 a Russian capsule has docked …
Read More »NASA revives New Horizons probe after malfunction
Everyone excited to see what images the New Horizons probe is set to send back of Pluto, our erstwhile 8th planetary friend, can breathe a sigh of relief, as NASA scientists have managed to bring it back to life after a computer malfunction, just over a week out from its …
Read More »Rocket carrying HoloLenses blows up on the way to Space Station
The HoloLens is some pretty impressive and exciting tech. While Microsoft first showed off its augmented reality headset publicly back in January, what we didn't know is that NASA already had access to the devices and has been actively using the headsets as a communication tool for remote teams on …
Read More »Mars had liquid water as recent as 500,000 years ago
Although there is a lot of research and effort going into figuring out Mars' future and how we might fit into that, many people (and a few rovers) are trying to figure out its past as well. Something that's become apparent about it recently, is that it has large deposits …
Read More »UK Space Agency offering prizes for space related video games
In an effort to support the growth of interest in space travel at home, the UK Space Agency is offering prizes of up to £50,000, to anyone that can produce a piece of creative work related to micro-gravity and space flight most notably, video games. However it can also relate to visual …
Read More »Foxconn to help Japanese firm sell robots around the world
What guise will robots of the future take? Some see as them as faceless automatons, capable of performing basic tasks for us, whilst the Supermatrix predicts a future where they'll be actively concious but subdued through a dream within a dream. SoftBank Mobile however believes robots can be our friends …
Read More »Philae comet lander space probe wakes up
It's been seven long months since anyone has heard from the Philae lander, which was touched down on a comet, hundreds of millions of miles from earth, in a descent that was fraught with nail biting triumphs. After 60 hours though, its batteries ran dry, as it had managed to land in …
Read More »Whirlpool windmills offer wind power without blades
As much as wind power offers a simple and effective way of harvesting energy from ‘thin air,' it isn't without its drawbacks. The power generated isn't as cost effective as other solutions, it's dependant on something uncontrollable and the spinning blades from the turbines make a lot of noise and …
Read More »Biggest telescope ever gets the go ahead for construction
The wonder of telescopes, is that they let us look into the present, past and our potential future all in a single piece of hardware. They can be used to view objects that aren't far beyond our own atmosphere, peer back into the multi-billion year history of our universe by …
Read More »Large Hadron Collider breaks world record for high energy collisions
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has broken a lot of records in its day and it can now tick another one off of the list, by producing the highest-energy, human-made, particle collisions, breaching 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV). To put that into perspective, the movement of a mosquito is about one TeV …
Read More »Space X secures US military contract
Space X has increased its potential client base in a big way. While it may already have contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and eventual astronauts to the ISS, it's now secured a deal with the US military to provide launch vehicles for satellites that will have various functions, including those …
Read More »Space X releases pad abort test point of view video
Rocket launches are inherantly dangerous. While we may have come up with lots of clever ways to keep astronauts and expensive equipment safe during a launch, they are at the end of the day sat upon literal tonnes of highly explosive fuel, so sometimes things go wrong. That's why there …
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