Jamie Condliffe

The Hidden Cargo Aboard the Jason and the Argonauts’ Ship Constellation

This is the constellation known as Argo Navis, said to represent the ship of the same name that Jason and the Argonauts used in the quest for the Golden Fleece. And as the ship likely did, it houses some secrets of its own. The constellation was first identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in his…

How One Company Plans to Launch Rockets Using Beams of Microwaves

More people than ever are joining the private space race, developing new ways to loft craft into the night sky. But the Colorado space startup Escape Dynamics has an unusual plan to achieve that goal, which will use beams of microwaves to power a rocket into space. Late last week, Escape Dynamics announced that it…

Just because nobody uses your public key doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea . It just means your friends don’t really care about security. [XKCD]

This Sea Sapphire Can Become Transparent in the Blink of an Eye

Now you see it, now you don’t. But the disappearing act performed by this small sea sapphire isn’t magic: it manage to flex its body to reflect frequencies of light that the human eye simply can’t see. As New Scientist reports, sea sapphires come in an array of different colors, including this electric blue. But…

Watson Can Now Identify the Attitude in Your Writing

Taking a break from treating cancer and making cocktails, IBM’s Watson is now turning its attention to how people write. The supercomputer has been trained to judge the tone in people’s written messages—and can even give feedback about how to change it. The IBM Watson Tone Analyzer sifts through passages of text to identify the…

This Super-Stiff Material Is Quite Literally Full of Holes

It might look like grey Swiss cheese, but this is in fact the first ever example of a new kind of material, which sandwiches a metal foam between two layers of carbon. The material, created by researchers from the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, is created in stages. First, the foam is made not by…

When you snooze an email in Google’s Inbox app, it will now work out the best time to remind you about it—so it might remind you of a restaurant booking an hour in advance, or about your flight the day before.

This Is the Other Side of the Sun

Usually you hear people talking about the other side of the Moon—but what about the Sun? Our orbit around the star means one side is out of view, but NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory Ahead spacecraft has been collecting images of the side we can’t see right now. This image was captured on July 15th…

How Early Astronomers Managed to Measure Cosmic Distances

The solar system, let alone the Universe, is too big to measure by any conventional means. So how the hell did early astronomers manage to do it without all the fancy kit scientists now have at their disposal? In this video, Crash Course describes how the Universe got measured—from the Ancient Greeks figuring out the…

How People Swear Across the U.S., Mapped

Everyone enjoys a good swear from time to time, whether it’s a polite “gosh” or an abrasive “fuck”. These maps shows the preference for different swear words across the country. Note: Somehow, we completely missed Gawker’s take on these maps, which includes some insights from their creator. Created by linguist Jack Grieve, they’re assembled from…

Why Does Asking Siri to Charge Your Phone Call the Cops?

Utter the words—and we don’t suggest you do—“charge my phone 100 percent” to Siri, and your iPhone will try and call the emergency services, after a five-second grace period in which you can cancel it. But why? It might be a bug. Or, as The Verge suggests, it could be a feature that allows you…

Intel’s 2016 Chip Line-Up Will Put Moore’s Law on Hold

Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every two years—a phenomenon that Intel has been upholding for decades. But with Intel’s announcement of its 2016 silicon, the law stutters. The dramatic increase in the number of transistors aboard integrated circuitry is made possible by shrinking them using new manufacturing…

3D White Graphene Could Make Tunable Fan-Free Cooling for Electronics

Fans, on numerous levels, suck: they’re noisy and use up power. But a 3D form of the material known as white graphene could help cool small electronic devices by itself. Researchers from Rice University have carried out simulations of heat flows through a 3D structure made of boron nitride, also known as white graphene. In…

Facebook’s Testing Online Shops Embedded Into Business Pages

Forget the Like button: Facebook wants you to hit the Buy button instead. Buzzfeed reports that Zuckerberg & C0. is testing new, miniature e-commerce sites that are embedded within the Facebook pages of retailers. While they’re currently in the testing phase, the idea is to conduct the entire shopping experience within Facebook. There, “buy” buttons…

Obama Announces New ConnectHome Plan to Get Poor Households Online

President Barack Obama has announced a new initiative that he hopes will take high-speed internet to all Americans—a plan that he hopes will “close the digital divide.” During a speech in Durant, Oklahoma, yesterday, the president explained that the new scheme, called ConnectHome, will take high speed broadband to families that currently go without. “In…

This Transistor’s Made From a Molecule and a Few Atoms

It might look like some kind of grade school abstract painting, but you’re actually looking at a microscopic transistor which is made up of a single molecule and a smattering of of atoms. An international team, including researchers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan, built this tiny…

Samsung Galaxy A8: Its Slimmest Phone Ever

Samsung has announced the latest in its A series of phones: the Galaxy A8. It isn’t the most powerful phone, but its all-metal body makes it Samsung’s thinnest ever—but sadly, you might not be able to buy one. The new phone measures just 5.9 millimeters in thickness and weighs 5.3 oz. In terms of specs,…

This Music Video Is Also an Amazing Lesson in Acoustics

Different places shape sound in unusual ways: a cathedral creates rich reverb, in wide open space your voice gets lost, and in an anechoic chamber very strange things happen indeed. This music video was shot in 15 different locations and it reveals how their acoustic characteristics vary so wildly. The song is performed by Joachim…

Google Accidentally Released Details of Right To Be Forgotten Requests

A year has passed since the EU ruled that people have the “right to be forgotten” online, and Google has been busy removing links when people ask it to. But now it’s accidentally revealed details about the requests—and it turns out the truth is less salacious than you may have hoped for. The Guardian stumbled…

Find Out What’s Really Warming the World With This Interactive Chart

Climate change is happening: global temperatures are rising. Unpicking why it’s happening is of course notoriously difficult, but this interactive chart correlates the observed temperature rises with the effects provided by various natural and man-made sources. The results are pretty damning. The chart was created by Bloomberg using data from NASA’s Goddard Institutes for Space…