On October 19, 2017, astronomers at the University of Hawaii spotted a strange object travelling through our solar system, which they later described as “a red and extremely elongated asteroid.” It was the first interstellar object to be detected within our solar system; the scientists named it ‘Oumuamua, the Hawaiian word for a scout or messenger. The following October, Avi Loeb, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, co-wrote a paper (with a Harvard postdoctoral fellow, Shmuel Bi...

A bus driver in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been honoured for saving a toddler wandering alone in freezing conditions. Irena Ivic, who works for the Milwaukee County Transit System, spotted the child running along an overpass in December.

No one has walked on the moon in almost 50 years, but NASA says the long dry spell will come to an end by 2028. And if things go according to plan, astronauts will do more than leave flags and footprints. Working with commercial partners and the space agencies of other nations, NASA is planning on building a moon-orbiting space station as well as a permanent lunar base.

The first time I see ravens, I flush them out of an alpine meadow carpeted with wildflowers. I pause to watch the flock fly off towards the distant, snow-capped peaks, trailed by their echoing croaks, when a man riding by on horseback bumps into me. Irritated, I shoot the man dead, and take his hat. So it goes in "Red Dead Redemption 2."

For those men who suffer from it, erectile dysfunction can cause exceptional mental angst, can ruin relationships, and can also be a red flag that indicates other serious underlying health conditions such as circulation or blood pressure problems. Our new study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics has shown that erectile dysfunction (ED) has a genetic component. We found strong evidence for a link between a particular part of our DNA and the capacity to develop and maintain an ere...

After receiving a flogging from privacy critics, Facebook is scrambling to make its smart display video chat screen Portal more attractive to buyers. Today Facebook is announcing the addition of a web browser, plus some of Messenger’s Instant Games like Battleship, Draw Something, Sudoku and Words With Friends. ABC News and CNN are adding content to Portal, which now also has a manual zoom mode for its auto-zooming smart camera so you can zero in on a particular thing in view.

A cafe staffed by robot waiters controlled remotely by paralysed people has opened in Tokyo, Japan. A total of 10 people with a variety of conditions that restrict their movement have helped control robots in the Dawn Ver cafe. The robot's controllers earned 1,000 yen (£7) per hour - the standard rate of pay for waiting staff in Japan.

The passenger registers the stop sign and feels a sudden surge of panic as the car he’s sitting in speeds up. He opens his mouth to shout to the driver in the front, remembering – as he spots the train tearing towards them on the tracks ahead – that there is none. The train hits at 125mph, crushing the autonomous vehicle and instantly killing its occupant.

Federal Communications Chairman (FCC) Ajit Pai said it was a “fact” that there was Russian interference in the public comments ahead of its controversial net neutrality vote last year, amid sparring between another commissioner about a lawsuit the agency is in the midst of. The admittance was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, who requested access to records surrounding the public comments that they argued would “shed light to the extent to which Russian nationals...

A new value for the Hubble constant – the expansion rate of the universe — has been calculated by an international group of astrophysicists. The team used primordial distance scales to study more than 200 supernovae observed by telescopes in Chile and Australia. The new result agrees well with previous values of the constant obtained using a specific model of cosmic expansion, while disagreeing with more direct observations from the nearby universe – so exacerbating a long-running disagree...

It was going to happen sooner or later. A group of scientists in China claims that they have helped bring to life two genetically-edited babies. The goal was to modify the twin girls’ genes in order to prevent HIV infection and avoid AIDS. The scientists claim they were successful in this effort, according to reports in Associated Press and MIT Tech Review. The claims haven’t yet been independently verified. But if the researchers have really gone against internationally recognized voluntary...

Eviation’s Alice is an all-electric, nine-person aircraft that may help replace fossil fuel-burning commuter planes.

When was the last time you saw a creepy ad on Facebook, which seemed to know about a product you were discussing with a coworker? Or when was the last time you noticed that your Google search had been modified to suit variables like your current location and personal interests? These micro-events happen on a daily basis for most of us, and are reminders of how valuable and how ubiquitous our data really is.

Facebook has apologized for hiring Washington D.C. hit firm Definers Public Relations as part of a smear campaign against its critics in the wake of the Russia scandal. In a statement published Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving — Facebook admitted that it asked Definers to explore potential connections between its critics and billionaire philanthropist George Soros. One of those critics is a group called Freedom From Facebook, founded in March by David Magerman, a philanthropist and te...

Apple is said to be thinking about introducing a new, low-cost Apple TV that would take the form of a dongle, rather than a set-top-box, according to a new report. Apple is said to have held discussions about the product, a device that would plug straight into a TV’s HDMI port in a similar way to Amazon’s Fire TV Stick.

Welcome Amazonians. It is always Day 1. Are you ready to make a difference? It was my first day as a seasonal Amazon worker, hired just prior to peak season. Our site operations manager was like many Amazon managers: an ex-military white male, in his late 40s and wearing straight-fit jeans and a T-shirt with “Amazon Military” emblazoned on the front. He drew a line alongside an inverted pyramid, writing “least important” on the bottom and “most important” higher up, with the word “...

Unsurprisingly, over 58 percent of the participants on our polls across the website, Twitter, and YouTube voted that they would rather have a smartphone with larger bezels like those on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 than have a notched display. Despite being an innovative approach to hiding the front-facing sensors, only a quarter of the voters were interested in manual or automatic slider mechanisms. While the design might seem incredibly cool, many people appear to fear that the moving parts will ...