It takes a bold person to declare that interstellar travel is now within our grasp. Physicist Stephen Hawking has shown that he is just that, taking part in the Breakthrough Starshot initiative. The project has announced a US$100m research programme to investigate the technology
Author: The Conversation
It’s an ambitious plan to launch a series of micro-spaceships to our stellar neighbours, but that’s what Russian billionaire Yuri Miller has announced this week. The US$100m Breakthrough Starshot project aims to send the probes out at speeds up to about one fifth the speed of
Tesla Motors has already established its electric cars as fast, well-sized and capable of competing with petrol cars in how far they can go without needing a recharge. Now, the US firm run by South African-born billionaire Elon Musk appears to have countered
The world is fighting a hidden war thanks to a massive shift in the technologies countries can use to attack each other. Much like the Cold War, the conflict is being fought indirectly rather than through open declarations of hostility. It has so far been fought without casualties
The ANC has gone through episodic crises in its century of existence. Right now, the media and commentators are seized with debate about whether or not it is in a crisis and whether it is as serious as any other. The party has survived tumultuous times, including
Fibre optics allow for the communication of data at the speed of light. But the amount of data that can be sent along any optic fibre is limited by how much information you can encode into the light wave travelling through it. Currently, optic-fibre technology uses
If you put water on the stove and heat it up, it will at first just get hotter and hotter. You may then conclude that heating water results only in hotter water. But at some point everything changes – the water starts to boil, turning from hot liquid into steam. Physicists
One consequence of the Apple vs FBI drama has been to shine a spotlight on the security of smartphone lock screens. The fact that the FBI managed to hack the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter without Apple’s help raises questions about whether Pin
With the Panama Papers exposé perhaps we can now say the fortress walls of offshore secrecy are finally cracking. Such havens allow corruption and tax avoidance to take place on a massive international scale by some of the richest and most powerful
The accountability of public governance in South Africa has come a long way since 1994. When the transitional constitution was hammered out in negotiations in 1993, the primary consideration was to establish an unshakeable commitment to government under