Science

The US Department of Transportation said on Thursday it is investigating Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink over the potentially illegal movement of hazardous pathogens. A Department of Transportation spokesperson told Reuters about the probe after the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal-welfare advocacy group, wrote to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg earlier on Thursday

SpaceX plans to fire up all 33 engines powering its massive Starship launch system ahead of its first orbital launch, a key milestone in the company’s efforts to reach the moon and Mars. The so-called static fire is scheduled for Thursday, Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said Wednesday at an industry

Samsung Semiconductor India Research (SSIR) announced a new partnership with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to promote research and development in the field of on-chip Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection. The partnership seeks to build cutting-edge ESD device solutions to protect ultra-high-speed serial interfaces in advanced Integrated Circuits (ICs) and system-on-chip (SoC) products, a joint

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our solar system, which means new asteroids are discovered quite frequently. It also means close encounters between asteroids and Earth are fairly common. Some of these close encounters end up with the asteroid impacting Earth, occasionally with severe consequences. A recently discovered asteroid, named 2023 BU, has

Google is reportedly working on the ability to set up an Android phone via the company’s Fast Pair feature. The capability could reportedly debut on a smartphone with the Samsung Galaxy S23 series that is expected to be unveiled by the South Korean conglomerate at its Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event on February 1. The upcoming

Boston Dynamics has unveiled the latest version of its Atlas Robot that is capable of improved human-like movement and actions. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based robot firm, showed off the humanoid robot with grippers while displaying its capabilities via a video posted to YouTube. The robot is seen performing complex actions such as grabbing and throwing an

Astronomers have detected in the stellar halo that represents the Milky Way’s outer limits a group of stars more distant from Earth than any known within our own galaxy — almost halfway to a neighboring galaxy. The researchers said these 208 stars inhabit the most remote reaches of the Milky Way‘s halo, a spherical stellar cloud

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Microsoft on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to fuel the growth of space technology start-ups in India. The MoU seeks to empower space tech start-ups across the country with technology tools and platforms, go-to-market support and mentoring to help them scale and become enterprise-ready. This collaboration has

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is raising $750 million (roughly Rs. 6,200 crore) in a new round of funding that values the rocket and satellite company at $137 billion (roughly Rs. 11,33,800 crore) from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, CNBC reported late Monday. Reuters had reported in November that SpaceX was in talks about an offering of mostly

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will turn its focus on science experiments in 2023 with dedicated missions to the Sun — Aditya — and the moon — Chandrayaan-3 — even as the nascent start-up sector is set to soar in the space applications segment. The upcoming year will also witness a series of experiments on India’s maiden human space

NASA has formally retired its Mars InSight lander, the first robotic probe specially designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, four years after it arrived on the surface of the red planet, the US space agency announced on Wednesday. Mission controllers at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles determined the mission

After a pair of Islamist bombings rocked the south-central Indian city of Hyderabad in 2013, officials rushed to install 5,000 CCTV cameras to bolster security. Now there are nearly 700,000 in and around the metropolis. The most striking symbol of the city’s rise as a surveillance hotspot is the gleaming new Command and Control Center

Nuclear fusion holds huge promise as a source of clean, abundant energy that could power the world. Now, fusion researchers at a national laboratory in the US have achieved something physicists have been working towards for decades, a process known as “ignition”. This step involves getting more energy out from fusion reactions than is put

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based broadband internet system, could become much more accessible in the coming years. The Elon Musk-owned company has reportedly received the go-ahead to launch an additional 7,500 satellites, expanding the Starlink broadband to over 10,000 low-orbiting satellites over the next decade. The new Starlink satellites will help users connect to the satellite-based broadband

A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute. It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill. Dust devils have been known to

Oppo announced three new products at its annual technology event Oppo Inno Day 2022 held on Wednesday. The offerings include a pair of assisted reality (aR) glasses dubbed the Oppo Air Glass 2, the OHealth H1 family health monitor, and the MariSilicon Y SoC. The Chinese manufacturer, however, has not announced an official release date

NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the Moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby. The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures

US House Representatives Earl Francis Blumenauer and Adam Schiff want further US Department of Agriculture (USDA) scrutiny of Elon Musk’s Neuralink following a Reuters report that outlined mistakes in the brain chip company’s animal testing program, their offices said on Thursday. Reuters reported on Monday that the USDA’s inspector general is investigating Neuralink for potential

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. Neuralink is developing a brain implant it hopes will

Elon Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months. The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink