Technology

With a main mirror 39 metres in diameter, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), is going to be, as its name suggests, enormous. Unlike any other before it, ELT is also designed to be an adaptive telescope and has the ability to correct atmospheric turbulence, taking telescope engineering to another level.

Scientists have made some incredible new discoveries on how our minds can literally affect our biology, especially through the study of epigenetics, the branch of science that looks at how inherited changes of phenotype (appearance) or gene expression are caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence. Instead of looking at DNA as the only factor controlling our biology, scientists are also looking at what’s actually controlling the DNA, which includes our thoughts.

With this new synthetic leaf created by Wyatt Pontius and Liam Wallace, oxygen levels could exponentially increase by launching the leaves into the world so that the levels could reach whatever is necessary for the rapidly increasing population. More oxygen could mean cleaner air too, although this would have to be coupled with decreased carbon output.

Musk has discussed how humans are becoming semi-cyborgs with small chips, artificial eyes and many other biotechnological advancements being installed into their bodies. In one recent interview, Musk suggested we’re linked to everything that has an on and off switch, restricting the human interference in these boundaries by having to touch things.

University of Texas Professor John Goodenough along with Maria Helena Braga, a senior researcher from his department, have come up with a cheap, long-lasting, and powerful battery that is made of non-combustible components — meaning that your cell phone won’t explode in your pocket with this new battery.

In the 1980s scientist, Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment. He ‘discovered’ that what seems to be free will or the conscious choice to do or not do something is really just the observance of something that has already happened. This completely rocked the foundations of what most thought of as a prerequisite for being human and the long-held religious view that free will must always be honored.

Saul Cunningham at the Australian National University in Canberra says that using drones to pollinate flowers is an intriguing idea but may not be economically feasible. “If you think about the almond industry, for example, you have orchards that stretch for kilometres and each individual tree can support 50,000 flowers,” he says. “So the scale on which you would have to operate your robotic pollinators is mind-boggling.”

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants his automated grocery store to feature a ground level where shoppers can touch and physically select items — typical food products that people like to touch, beer, fruit, etc. On the second floor, a small army of robots toils away, where they furiously bag items for the customers browsing below. This is another example of how automation’s already rapid encroachment on the human job market has gone into overdrive.