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Animation showing the path of A/2017 U1 through the solar system. (Credit: NASA/JPL) Astronomers have spotted an interstellar visitor for the first time. It’s either a comet or an asteroid, and came speeding right through the heart of our solar system; after a hairpin turn around the sun, it’s now on its way back out of our cosmic backyard. Scientists at the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope at Haleakala first spotted the quarter-mile-wide object on ...read more

Sophia has porcelain skin, defined cheekbones and quite a flashy smile. She’s also a robot. Ahead of Wednesday’s Future Investment Initiative event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, officials granted this humanoid robot citizenship, making Sophia the first robot to receive citizenship anywhere in the world. The bot, made by Hanson Robotics, is modeled to look like Audrey Hepburn (does Sophia do Audrey justice?). [embedded content] Throughout the interview, Sophia flashed a somewhat ...read more

Do you prefer a paperback or hardback to a download on your Kindle? Or maybe BluRays and CDs instead of MP4s? You’re not alone. Digital products might help us combat clutter, and satisfy that need for instant gratification, but when push comes to shove, a lot of people still prefer something they can hold in their hands. And sales for physical goods like books and movies seem to support that notion. So if digital is so much easier to store and tote around, what gives? “When somethin ...read more

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The Bloodhound test vehicle. (Credit: The Bloodhound Project) A slim blue needle raced down a runway today in southwest England Thursday. Called the Bloodhound, the vehicle reached speeds of only around 200 miles per hour, but the team behind it has their sights set much higher. They hope to be the first to notch the 1,000 mph land speed record, a speed that today is only achievable in the skies. The demonstration was the Bloodhound’s first public outing, and served as both a PR opp ...read more

(Credit: Shutterstock) The PhD thesis of perhaps the world’s most famous living scientist, Professor Stephen Hawking, was recently made publicly available online. It has proved so popular that the demand to read it reportedly crashed its host website when it was initially uploaded. But given the complexity of the topic – “Properties of Expanding Universes” – and the fact that Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time is also known as the most unread book of all ...read more

Another day, another bioinspired drone. But this microrobot, powered through a wire tether, can launch itself through the air and into water — then blast itself back into the air. Harvard researchers have been working on bee-like robots for years, and a new study published Wednesday in Science Robotics shows more advancement. Scientists showed the little bot could successfully hover in the air, transition from air to water, swim, takeoff from the water and land on the ...read more