Nuclear fusion is one step closer with new AI breakthrough

The green energy revolution promised by nuclear fusion is now a step closer, thanks to the first successful use of a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system to shape the superheated hydrogen plasmas inside a fusion reactor. The successful trial indicates that the use of AI could be a breakthrough in the long-running search for electricity generated from nuclear fusion — bringing its … Read more

How a 19th-Century Breakthrough Could Revolutionize COVID-19 Diagnosis

It sounds simple, but to treat someone you suspect has COVID, you need to confirm they are actually infected with the coronavirus. In the UK, it is easy to take this for granted – we’ve had a reliable detection method for diagnosing infected patients widely available since early on in the pandemic. This allowed for … Read more

Physics Breakthrough as AI Successfully Controls Plasma in Nuclear Fusion Experiment

Successfully achieving nuclear fusion holds the promise of delivering a limitless, sustainable source of clean energy, but we can only realize this incredible dream if we can master the complex physics taking place inside the reactor.   For decades, scientists have been taking incremental steps towards this goal, but many challenges remain. One of the … Read more

New Breakthrough Could Bring Time Crystals Out of The Lab And Into The Real World

We’ve just taken another step closer to time crystals that can be used for practical applications. New experimental work has yielded a room-temperature time crystal in a system that is not isolated from its ambient surroundings.   This, the researchers say, paves the way for chip-scale time crystals that can be used in real-world settings, … Read more

AI Breakthrough Means The World’s Best Gran Turismo Driver Is Not Human

Sony’s Gran Turismo is one of the biggest racing game series of all time, having sold over 80 million copies globally. But none of those millions of players is the fastest. In a new breakthrough, a team led by Sony AI – the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) research division – developed an entirely artificial player … Read more

Fix the Planet newsletter: Why planes need a battery breakthrough

By Adam Vaughan This is Fix the Planet, the weekly climate change newsletter that reminds you there are reasons for hope in science and technology around the world. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Judging from recent conversations I’ve been having, many people soon plan to fly for the first time since … Read more

Fix the Planet newsletter: Why planes needs a battery breakthrough

By Adam Vaughan This is Fix the Planet, the weekly climate change newsletter that reminds you there are reasons for hope in science and technology around the world. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here. Judging from recent conversations I’ve been having, many people soon plan to fly for the first time since … Read more

New Breakthrough Lets Scientists Track Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts in Real-Time

Located in the Okanagan Valley outside of Penticton, British Columbia, there is a massive radio observatory dedicated to observing cosmic radio phenomena. It’s called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a cylindrical parabolic radio telescope that looks like what snowboarders would call a “half-pipe”. This array is part of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory … Read more

Science’s 2021 Breakthrough of the Year: AI brings protein structures to all | Science

In his 1972 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, American biochemist Christian Anfinsen laid out a vision: One day it would be possible, he said, to predict the 3D structure of any protein merely from its sequence of amino acid building blocks. With hundreds of thousands of proteins in the human body alone, such an advance would … Read more

Missed shots: Science revisits its 2020 Breakthrough of the Year | Science

When Science crowned the development of effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccines the scientific Breakthrough of the Year in December 2020, it was a moment of celebration. “This breakthrough is a triumph for all of science,” Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp wrote in an editorial. “There will be plenty of time for an exegesis of what went wrong. But for … Read more