Agriculture’s impact on the planet is massive and relentless. Roughly 40 per cent of the Earth’s surface is used for cropland and grazing. The number of domestic animals far outweighs remaining wild populations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is learning more about how to work with (and on) humans. A recent study has shown how AI can learn to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and use them to influence human decision-making.

When I was asked to calculate the total volume of SARS-CoV-2 in the world for the BBC Radio 4 show More or Less, I will admit I had no idea what the answer would be.

At the heart of the development of AI appears to be a search for perfection. And it could be just as dangerous to humanity as the one that came from philosophical and pseudoscientific ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries

Every year vendors such as Apple and Google add to their list of vintage devices that no longer get operating system or security updates.

Usually, a lack of proper spiritual education and moral guidance in a society is a powerful factor that allows the dark shadows easy entrance into clouded human hearts. Many people, from all professions, are so cynical that they have given up the dream of a perfect society. These people have no true vision...

Several technologies have matured that allow people to recycle waste plastic directly by 3D-printing it into valuable products, at a fraction of their normal cost.

The most likely reason smoke detectors go off unexpectedly is that people aren’t changing the batteries in them often enough. In most sensors you might think of, the strength of the signal goes up when they detect what they’re supposed to.

There appears to have been a significant rise in virtual reality (VR) offerings in 2020, aiming to deliver safe, accessible experiences during the pandemic. A number of visitor attractions have started to offer immersive...

Imagine opening the weekend paper and looking through the puzzle pages for the Sudoku. You spend your morning working through this logic puzzle, only to realise by the last few squares there’s no consistent way to finish it.

If ever there was a year to toast drawing to an end, it’s 2020. Over the festive period, people around the world will be raising a glass to better times ahead.

In the northern sky in December is a beautiful cluster of stars known as the Pleiades, or the “seven sisters”. Look carefully and you will probably count six stars. So why do we say there are seven of them?

A vaccine is now available. So are other therapies necessary or valuable? And what exactly is a monoclonal antibody?

In 2013, my student and I at Penn State built a bot to write a Wikipedia article on Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s play “Chitra.”

Surveys show that nearly half of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth, either in the ancient past or recently. That percentage has been increasing.

In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data.

Twitter over the weekend “tagged” as manipulated a video showing US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden supposedly forgetting which state he’s in while addressing a crowd.

Americans who seek political insight and information on Twitter should know how much of what they are seeing is the result of automated propaganda campaigns.

Have you ever been in more than one place at the same time? If you’re much bigger than an atom, the answer will be no.

Like many inventions, the discovery of Teflon happened by accident. In 1938, chemists from Dupont (now Chemours) were studying refrigerant gases when, much to their surprise, one concoction solidified.

An investigative journalist receives a video from an anonymous whistleblower. It shows a candidate for president admitting to illegal activity.

A lot can go wrong when hurricanes stall. Their destructive winds last longer. The storm surge can stay high. And the rain keeps falling.

A larger population does make it harder to treat the environment in the right way. Fortunately, in new research we found that using 60% less energy than today, decent living standards could be provided to a global population of 10 billion by 2050.