A record-breaking, huge comet has been spotted heading towards Earth, but don’t worry, it will stop before reaching our planet. NASA, who made the discovery, says its icy nucleus is bigger than any ever seen – measuring around 80 miles across, and 50 times bigger than the heart of most known comets. A major producer of Apple's iPhone has become the latest manufacturer to halt operations in Shanghai, China’s ‘Earth 2.0’ spacecraft could finally find life on alien worlds and NASA are to test a cat...
Apr 13, 2022•6 min
We speak to Twitter’s Crypto Engineering Lead on the future of Web3. Tess Rinearson tells us how she thinks blockchain tech will change and adapt plus the challenges of working in such a new emerging field. Nasa is to resume its moon rocket test with modifications today, Meta is to start testing its money-making tools for its metaverse and Apple could be about to reveal its first hints of its augmented reality headset. A study suggests that a psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms can ope...
Apr 12, 2022•7 min
Elon Musk has made a U-turn decision not to join Twitter’s board and the social media company’s CEO says “it’s for the best”. It comes after Musk makes numerous suggests for Twitter Blue. Moondust collected by Neil Armstrong after he walked on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, will be auctioned off this week in New York. We hear from the technology, science and space specialist at Bonham’s, who is facilitating the sale of the sample. The CEO of a tech firm tells us why experiencing real-lif...
Apr 11, 2022•7 min
Researchers have found a way to reverse the ageing of human cells by 30 years. They tried a new technique on human skin cells, and managed to partly restore the function of older cells, while renewing their biological age at the same time. London Zoo is using jumping spiders to try to help people overcome their arachnophobia. The neon-coloured spiders can leap six-times their body length. Plus, Activision Blizzard is giving a thousand game testers full-time jobs, a dinosaur specialist explains t...
Apr 08, 2022•6 min
Scientists reckon they’ve found a fossil of a dinosaur that was killed by the asteroid which sent the species into extinction. It was found at a fossil site in North Dakota - and experts believe the dinosaur was killed and its leg preserved on the actual day the asteroid struck, 66 million years ago. As the UK Government has announced plans to regulate stablecoins, an expert believes it will hugely benefit businesses. Teana Baker Taylor, director at Crypto UK, said using them to send money abroa...
Apr 07, 2022•7 min
Police have issued a warning about cannabis sweets after a 23-year-old who consumed sweets suspected to be laced with the drug died in London. Law student Damilola Grace Olakanmi bought the “gummies” via a messaging app. She and a 21-year-old friend immediately fell ill after having the sweets, which came in packaging branded with “Trrlli Peachie O’s”. A new 3D-printed fingertip that has a sense of touch like human skin has been created by researchers at Bristol University. It’s been made to pro...
Apr 06, 2022•7 min
UN scientists have announced we are in a ‘now or never’ situation to fix climate change. We spoke with Ian Bateman, professor of environmental economics at the University of Exeter about the IPCC report, and why wind and solar power might be better than nuclear. Plus - two notebooks owned by Charles Darwin that went missing in 2001, have been anonymously returned to the Cambridge University Library . We spoke with a Cambridge University librarian about how significant the notebooks are. Also in ...
Apr 05, 2022•6 min
Elon Musk has bought a stake in Twitter worth $2.9 billion. The Tesla boss now has a 9.2% stake in the social media platform. He’s well known for his tweets, and has more than 80million followers. Plus - a pair of composers who created ‘the unofficial Bridgerton musical’ album using TikTok, have won a Grammy for it. Emily Bear and Abigail Barlow won the Grammy for best musical theatre album. Also in this episode: Oxitec’s genetically modified Fall Armyworms designed to save crops (1.10) Russia t...
Apr 04, 2022•7 min
She’s worked on global hits including Shrek, and now the woman leading tech communications at DreamWorks Animation discusses the importance of data for wowing cinema audiences. Kate Swanborg, senior vice-president of technology communications and strategic alliances at the US movie giant founded by Steven Spielberg, says there has been a “leap forward” in computer graphics capabilities since the 2001 fairytale hit starring Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. Now, similar films contain so much data that...
Apr 01, 2022•9 min
Blockchain network Ronin is investigating how over $600 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from its virtual coffers - making it one of history’s biggest virtual heists. Britney Spears and Justin Bieber’s choreographer is suing Fortnite’s maker Epic Games over character "emotes" in the popular title. Artificial intelligence art start-up Nebula 41 says anyone can now paint like a digital Picasso, and mint their efforts as an NFT. Most distant single star detected by the Hubble Space Telesc...
Mar 31, 2022•6 min
Chunky Dyson headphones + mask to combat air and noise pollution - but are you brave enough to wear them in public? Russian hackers ‘scanning US energy giants’ for cyber weakness, says FBI. Nasa astronaut returns to Earth after record-breaking year living on ISS. Invisibility Shield: We speak with the British inventor behind the most curious invention of 2022. Plus, Sony's PlayStation Plus subscription has launched. A board game version of the hit horror title Dead by Daylight is now crowdfundin...
Mar 30, 2022•6 min
Ukrtelecom says as an immediate result of the breach it throttled customers usage to focus on internet access for critical infrastructure and the military. FBI names Russians wanted over hacking of nuclear plants. Sensory hats to probe astronauts’ brain waves on International Space Station. Elden Ring: speedrunner completes game in 20 minutes (with 15 hours practice). Why the human body’s cells contain ‘tentacles’. Could deal to halt global destruction of nature be close? Type 2 diabetes: new li...
Mar 29, 2022•7 min
First the latest from the Oscars: The reboot of the sci-fi epic Dune’s wins include best visual effects, and with SFX supervisor Paul Lambert previously working on Blade Runner 2049, First Man and Tron: Legacy. Apple TV + Film became the first streaming service to win Best Picture at the Oscars with CODA. Warn kids about social media risks at young age, parents urged. Covid latest: 200,000 more children off school from virus and free testing row. Hubble Space Telescope snaps spectacular spiral g...
Mar 28, 2022•5 min
The UK and its allies say Russian spies are behind ‘calculated and dangerous’ cyber attacks happening around the world. Microplastics have been found in human blood for the first time and research has found we naturally switch between social identities - like ‘work mode’ or ‘home mode’ - much quicker than we can switch between different tasks. Europe agrees to a new law designed to curb Big Tech’s dominance and Samsung might be releasing another foldable or possibly even ‘rollable’ phone. Plus, ...
Mar 25, 2022•6 min
Male contraceptive pill 99% effective A contraceptive pill for males has been found to be 99% effective in preventing pregnancy through tests in mice. The hope is that the breakthrough medication could bring balance to the contraceptive burden. British tech firm ‘Nothing’ launches the first UK smartphone in five years, hoping to challenge global tech giants. The MoD is pressing YouTube to remove ‘Russian state’ hoax videos of the UK Defence Secretary and paleontologists finally have an answer as...
Mar 24, 2022•6 min
An independent think tank has accused UK ministers of ‘government by Whatsapp’. It comes as the High Court has been hearing claims that ministers are breaching the law by deleting messages and using private accounts for government business. US securities regulators warn that someone really needs to monitor Elon Musk’s tweets. We hear about the science behind a new DNA guessing game TV show, a British startup says it created an actual ‘invisibility shield’ and PS5/ PS4 system software updates are...
Mar 23, 2022•6 min
US comedian Pete Davidson’s replacement for the upcoming Blue Origin NS-20 space flight will be the New Shepard chief architect, Gary Lai. Lai has been with the space tourism company for 18 years and holds several patents related to the New Shepard rocket's design. We find out why dinosaurs were “just really unlucky” that sulphur gases and climate cooling sped up their extinction. President Joe Biden says Russia is ‘exploring’ US cyber-attacks. We speak to a scientist in Utah who is getting clim...
Mar 22, 2022•7 min
Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2 is finally here. Epic Games has taken the game offline for the new season titled 'Resistance'. It centres around the battle between the IO and The Seven. The spring Covid booster vaccine launches for over-75s in England. A taxi driver files a lawsuit against Tesla after a fatal crash in Paris. The UN Secretary General says the rush to use fossil fuels because of the war in Ukraine is threatening global climate targets and the CEO of Cellular Goods speaks out against ...
Mar 21, 2022•6 min
A mission to Mars planned between the European Space Agency and Russian Space Agency has been suspended. A British built rover was due to be blasted into space this year, but the ESA said cooperation with Russia is ‘impossible’ because of the invasion of Ukraine. Plus, divers are heading to the Titanic shipwreck to collect environmental DNA from the site, and find out what lives there. Marine biologists are hoping to learn about the biodiversity of the wreck, and how the ship has impacted the li...
Mar 18, 2022•6 min
Game developer 11Bit Games has raised $850,000 for the Ukraine Red Cross, in just 9 days. It raised the cash purely through sales of its game This War Of Mine, an anti-war title all about surviving conflict. We hear from Pawel Miechowski who called the fundraiser a ‘phenomenon’. Plus, a crypto compliance firm has suggested sanctioned Russian oligarchs have been using crypto to protect their funds. Elliptic said it is actively investigating crypto-asset wallets believed to be linked to sanctioned...
Mar 17, 2022•6 min
In this episode, we learn about Ukraine’s cyber-army, targeting Russia's Mars and nuclear projects. Jeff Carr, a US-based cybersecurity and digital warfare researcher describes who they are and what they are doing. Plus, Mark Zuckerberg says NFTs will soon be available on Instagram. He revealed they hope to bring them to the social network in the ‘near term’ at a conference in America. Also: Meta joins UK anti-scams initiative Oxitec's genetically modified mosquito project gets pilot approval Me...
Mar 16, 2022•6 min
This week we hear from journalist and Mozilla Fellow Odanga Madung who uncovered a paid disinformation campaign on Twitter in Kenya. He says social media firms mustn’t rely on AI to tackle the spread of false information online. Also, a brand new dinosaur has been discovered in China. Fossils show it’s in the same family as the Stegosaurus, with large armour plates and spines. Plus: Microsoft’s Direct-Storage API speeds up loading times (2.10) Ford launching 7 new EVs in Europe (2.42) Dronecoria...
Mar 15, 2022•6 min
In today’s episode: Ukraine invasion threatens “vital” climate research (0.16) Plans for ‘space power station’ and quicker Mars to Earth communication (0.56) Pete Davidson going to space on Blue Origin (1.32) Researchers warn of Amazon ‘tipping point’ (1.55) Fears US astronaut could be left in space (2.55) Scientists reverse ageing process in mice (3.39) Plus: Instagram finally lets moderators on live feeds Ford to ship and sell Explorer SUVs with missing chips Samsung to launch new mid-range sm...
Mar 14, 2022•6 min
In the final episode of our week celebrating leading women in tech and science, we hear from Justine Ezarik, aka iJustine, one of the most successful YouTubers of all time. iJustine launched 16 years ago and she truly was one of the original queens of the platform. Now, she has 6.98 million subscribers, created over 2000 uploads and has more than a billion views across her channel. Despite the critics in the early days, Justine persevered and she continues to adapt and evolve now, all because of...
Mar 11, 2022•8 min
Next up in our week of special episodes of Tech & Science Daily, we hear from Lucy Hawking, science educator and children’s writer. You’ll also likely be familiar with her father, the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. Lucy created the ‘George’ book series, a collection of fantasy adventure novels based on real science. She’s since gone on to publish many other children’s books but all of them have the same goal, to make science more understandable and entertaining. Lucy’s latest book ‘...
Mar 10, 2022•7 min
On Tech & Science Daily, we're carrying on our week of special episodes to mark International Women’s Day. Today we hear from Nobel Prize winner, Andrea Ghez, professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. Andrea is only the fourth woman to ever win the Nobel Prize in physics which she received for her part in providing evidence of a supermassive black hole, with the mass of four million suns, at the centre of our galaxy. Impressive, right? She explains the years and efforts that have gone into...
Mar 09, 2022•7 min
This week on Tech & Science Daily, to mark International Women’s Day, we’re speaking to some of the world-leading women in their fields. Today is the turn of computer programmer and network engineer, Radia Perlman. She is known by many as ‘the mother of the internet’ - although she’s been trying to shake that title for years. Radia invented the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) - an innovation that helped make today's Internet possible. Although, she believes it’s not just one person who is respo...
Mar 08, 2022•7 min
To mark International Women's Day, this week on Tech & Science Daily, we're hearing from some of the leading women in their fields. We're kicking things off with biochemist and Nobel prize winner, Dr Jennifer Doudna. She won a 2020 Nobel prize for her discovery, which is changing the game in the way we protect people, animals and plants from disease. While studying bacteria in 2012, Jennifer discovered a way of cutting into DNA, and providing it with new instructions to help fight against di...
Mar 07, 2022•7 min
Following Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, we hear from Malcolm Grimston, Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College London’s Centre for Energy Policy and Technology. He tells us why it wouldn’t cause a similar disaster to Chernobyl if it was used as a target. Ukraine is to sell NFTs to fund the war and Elon Musk has taunted Russia as the country stops selling rocket engines to the US. A discarded rocket part is due to hit the moon and Fitbit recalls 1.7million...
Mar 04, 2022•6 min
Ukraine’s vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has asked Xbox and PlayStation to block Russian and Belarusian players in response to the Ukraine crisis. The boss of Binance, the world’s largest crypto-exchange, has ruled out a Russian user ban while Elon Musk has been asked to “turn off” Teslas in the country. A survey finds that electric cars might not be as reliable as everyone thinks, Apple announced a ‘Peek Performance’ event and Twitter might be adding a new built-in podcasts tab. Plus, p...
Mar 03, 2022•5 min
