Hollywood has broken two very different records this holiday season. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has become the first movie to reach US$1bn in gross sales in just 12 days. This beats the previous record set by Jurassic World, which had the added benefit
Author: The Conversation
On 21 December, SpaceX made history by successfully launching a rocket and returning it to a safe landing on Earth. It’s also the day that SpaceX founder Elon Musk was nominated for a Luddite Award. The nomination came as part of a campaign by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
“The end of television” is a headline that’s been liberally thrown around for the past 15 years. Indeed, the past year saw audiences becoming more and more amenable to adopting new ways to watch TV shows, with live audiences for broadcast and cable programmes declining sharply
It has been a busy year for Solar System exploration – and particularly our galactic neighbourhood’s small icy bodies. Comets, asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects and planetary satellites have all been in the news – from stunning
The world has gone mad for robots with articles talking almost every day about the coming of the robot revolution. But is all the hype, excitement and sometimes fear justified? Is the robot revolution
Digital cryptocurrencies like bitcoin may have failed to unseat their more traditional rivals, but the technology that underpins bitcoin may yet bring about a revolution in finance and other industries. This technology is called the “blockhain”. The blockchain acts as a public
It would be something of a miracle if you’d got this far without realising the JJ Abrams-directed Star Wars film The Force Awakens (2015) is just around the corner, with opening night on 16 December
In 2008, someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto posted a paper describing the workings of what would become the world’s most important digital cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Two months later, he posted the code for the first version of the software that would allow people to create and
How can a person see around a blind corner? One answer is to develop X-ray vision. A more mundane approach is to use a mirror. But if neither are an option, a group of scientists led by Genevieve Gariepy has developed a state-of-the-art detector which, with some
Most people who have heard the term think that the “blockchain” is only something to do with cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, litecoin, doguecoin and others. It’s the technology that underpins digital currencies and ensures that all transactions are properly conducted and