Morocco is testing a ‘sponge’ pavement that drains water and cools itself through evaporation. For decades, black asphalt has rolled on the roads but parts of Marrakech and Agadir are reportedly becoming testing grounds for this new surface that is deemed to be environmentally better.The idea will not only make roads feel less hot during…
A robotic submersible descended beneath 5 giant floating wind turbines off Scotland, moving around steel structures, cables and anchors that sit as much as 80 metres below the surface. Its high-definition camera recorded a surprisingly busy underwater community at the Hywind Scotland Pilot Park, about 25 kilometres east of Peterhead. Across 41 structures and associated…
Alan Turing (Image: AI Generated) Many years before the existence of artificial intelligence was discussed among people, Turing questioned the possibility of machines having the ability to think in the future. In an age where computing devices were huge, experimental gadgets mostly used for computations, he envisioned a world in which people would talk of…
When you look at wind turbines the blades look larger than life. Like permanent, monumental objects that will turn forever above the same field, long after you are gone and someone else is looking up at them similarly. In reality, most wind turbine blades last only 20 to 25 years and when they stop spinning,…
A spider web can look like a single delicate sheet of thread, but its construction is far more complicated. Different strands are made for different jobs, with some providing the strength needed to hold the web together and others stretching to trap prey. Orb-weaver spiders are particularly good examples of this division of labour. Their…
Harrison’s H4 chronometre. Image Credit: Jordiferrer/Wikipedia The first clockmaker did not have to guess what time it was. Long before gears, wheels and moving hands appeared, people had already learned to track the passage of a day by watching the Sun, Moon and stars. Sundials, water clocks and other simple devices gave earlier societies ways…
For more than a century, Yosemite’s mountain lakes became home to millions of trout that had never naturally reached those waters. Fish stocking began in 1877 and eventually put more than 33 million fish into the park, transforming habitats that had evolved without aquatic predators. The change came at a cost for the Sierra Nevada…
Plastic alternatives made from renewable materials often struggle to match the strength, heat resistance and processing ability of conventional plastics. A new bamboo-based bioplastic takes a different approach, reorganising cellulose at the molecular level to produce a material that is both strong and easier to shape. The researchers used a hydrated zinc chloride and formic…
A rainbow of light forms because different wavelengths travel through a prism or water droplets at different angles. Scientists have now shown that sound can be made to behave in a way that splits a broadband acoustic signal into separate frequency components that travel in different directions or come to rest at different positions within…
Romania has placed its energy sector under a nationwide 30-day state of alert after the Danube river levels fell to exceptionally low levels. This has forced Unit 1 at the Cernavodă nuclear plant offline and put Unit 2 under continuous review.Emergency river works have kept Unit 2 online for now, but the latest hydrological outlook…
