Tag: Science
Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban of killer robots
Open letter signed by Tesla chief and Googles Mustafa Suleyman urges UN to block use of lethal autonomous weapons to prevent third age of war. Some of the world’s leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers are calling on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots. Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s […]
This is the most dangerous time for our planet | Stephen Hawking
We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it. As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific […]
Tying loose ends? Gravitational waves could solve string theory, study claims
New paper suggests that the hotly contested physics thesis, which involves the existence of six extra dimensions, may be settled by cutting-edge laser detectors. String theory makes the grand promise of weaving together all of physics into a single sublime framework. The only downside is that scientists have yet to find any experimental proof that […]
Jennifer Doudna: I have to be true to who I am as a scientist
Crispr inventor Jennifer Doudna talks about discovering the gene-editing tool, the split with her collaborator and the complex ethics of genetic manipulation. Jennifer Doudna, 53, is an American biochemist based at the University of California, Berkeley. Together with the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier, she led the discovery of the revolutionary gene-editing tool, Crispr. The technology […]
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. In 2011, Claudio Aspesi, a senior investment analyst at Bernstein Research in London, made a bet that the dominant firm in one of the most lucrative […]