Rumours of a global internet outage due to a severe solar storm have been swirling online, but how true are they? With plenty of us relying on internet access on a daily basis for our work, entertainment and communication needs, the rumour of an internet apocalypse has left many worried. Throughout June, the possibility that we could lose internet for months has been spreading. But, the very possibility first gained public attention back in 2021 when computer scientist Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi at the University of California Irvine warned that a catastrophic solar storm could occur within the next 10 years. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It seems the space agency NASA is taking the risk seriously and launched the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) which revealed clues about the sun’s atmosphere after successfully navigating through the powerful solar winds generated there. What is a solar storm and how could it cause an internet apocalypse? A solar storm refers to the atmospheric effects we experience on Earth that originate from the sun, typically caused by solar flares. During such storms, a stream of an electromagnetic field is directed towards Earth which causes the aurora borealis. NASA believes solar storms run on an 11-year cycle with their frequency varying. Their severity can also vary, with stronger geomagnetic storms causing interruptions to satellite, radio and internet functions. A 2011 geomagnetic storm interrupted radio signals in South China, meanwhile in 1859 a particularly intense storm caused auroras to appear in the skies all around the world. Should such an event strike today, there could be a worldwide blackout causing disruption for months, with its effects predicted to be 20 times that of a catastrophic hurricane due to its impact on the supply chain of essentials like foods and medication. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Divorced men with diabetes are at the highest risk of having some or all of their feet and legs amputated because of it, research has found. According to a study of almost 67,000 people with diabetes in Sweden, people with the condition who are divorced are 67 per cent more likely to have to undergo a lower limb amputation than those who are married. Meanwhile men are at 57 per cent greater risk than women. On average, 184 people a week in England have some part of a lower limb removed surgically to stop infection spreading and killing them. Lasantha Wijesinghe, a consultant vascular surgeon in England who performs lower limb amputations, said they were usually necessary because the person’s life was at risk because of sepsis. The authors of the study, which has not been peer-reviewed yet, said they could not be sure why divorcees of both sexes ran such a greater risk than married people, but speculated that this “may be due to a change in self-care and food habits observed in people when they divorce and are more likely to be living alone”. “Specifically with men, this is often related to more social isolation, with a secondary effect of low physical activity,” they added. Older people are also at higher risk of an amputation and patients who are on insulin treatment, have a pre-existing foot condition such as neuropathy or who smoke are also at higher risk. The study also concluded that obese people have a lower risk than those with a standard weight. The authors could not explain this finding but suggested it could be down to chance. Dr Faye Riley, the research communications manager at Diabetes UK, said: “This study identifies a range of factors that may be linked with a higher risk of amputation among people with diabetes, and raises interesting questions about how social support can influence our health behaviours and outcomes. By pinpointing which people with diabetes are most at risk, support can be targeted where it’s most needed.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Australia’s prime minister is likely to face some pointed questions over climate action and a nuclear submarine deal

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An artificial intelligence system has achieved a key milestone by winning multiple races against three world-class drone-racing champions, marking the first time AI has beat humans at a physical sport. The AI system called Swift, developed by researchers from the University of Zurich in Germany and Intel, could prove its mettle in first-person view (FPV) drone racing – a sport in which pilots fly quadcopters at speeds exceeding 100kmph. Until now AI systems have achieved a number of remarkable victories over humans in a range of strategy-based games, including IBM’s Deep Blue winning at chess against Gary Kasparov in 1996 and Google’s AlphaGo defeating top Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016. However, physical sports are more challenging for AI as they are less predictable than board or video games. “We don’t have a perfect knowledge of the drone and environment models, so the AI needs to learn them by interacting with the physical world,” Davide Scaramuzza, one of the authors of the study from the University of Zurich, explained. AI-driven autonomous drones have until now taken twice as long as those piloted by humans to fly through racetracks unless an external position-tracking system was used to precisely control their trajectories. But the new Swift AI drone, described in a new study in the journal Nature, has demonstrated that it can react in real-time to the data collected by an onboard camera, just like the one used by human racers in the sport. Sensors on the drone measure acceleration and speed while the AI system uses data from the camera to locate the drone in space and detect the gates along the racetrack. A control unit in the drone, also based on AI, a control unit, then chooses the best action to finish the race circuit as fast as possible. Researchers say the Swift drone trained itself to fly in a simulated environment by trial and error. Using simulations, scientists could avoid destroying multiple drones in the early stages of learning when the system often crashes. “To make sure that the consequences of actions in the simulator were as close as possible to the ones in the real world, we designed a method to optimise the simulator with real data,” study first author Elia Kaufmann said. During the testing phase, the drone flew autonomously using very precise positions provided by an external position-tracking system, while also recording data from its camera. By comparing the two data sets, Swift could learn to autocorrect errors it made in interpreting information from the onboard sensors, scientists say. The AI was soon ready to challenge some of the world’s top human drone pilots – the 2019 Drone Racing League champion Alex Vanover, the 2019 MultiGP Drone Racing champion Thomas Bitmatta, and three-time Swiss champion Marvin Schaepper. In races that took place between 5 and 13 June 2022, on a special track designed in a hangar of the Dübendorf Airport near Zurich, Swift achieved the fastest lap, with a half-second lead over the best lap by a human pilot. The special track – about 25 by 25 meters in dimension – was built with seven square gates that had to be passed in the right order to complete a lap. Drones had to execute challenging maneuvers to successfully finish the track, including an acrobatic “Split-S” feature that involves half-rolling the drone and executing a descending half-loop at full speed. While Swift could record the fastest lap, humans are more adaptable than the AI drone, which failed when the conditions were different from what it was trained for, scientists say. However, they add that the new breakthrough in AI flight is an important way beyond drone racing. “Drones have a limited battery capacity; they need most of their energy just to stay airborne. Thus, by flying faster we increase their utility,” Dr Scaramuzza said. The new research, according to scientists, may lead to better drones for forest monitoring or space exploration, and in cases where flying fast is important to cover large spaces in a limited time. They say fast AI drones could also be used for shooting action scenes in movies and may also “make a huge difference” for rescue drones sent inside a burning building. Read More Ukraine launches ‘massive’ drone strikes on six regions of Russia – destroying war planes Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv’s huge drone attack as Putin floods frontline with ‘poorly trained troops’ To stop wildfires, residents in some Greek suburbs put their own money toward early warning drones Google launches AI to go to meetings for you Behind the AI boom, the armies of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’ Nvidia sales hit record high as AI chip demand soars

Divers in Mexico have discovered Megalodon teeth in a flooded inland cave and the findings have confirmed scientific beliefs. Megalodons were absolutely gigantic prehistoric sharks that reached sizes of up to 50 feet long. They dominated the oceans before going extinct around 3.6 million years ago. Scientists are interested in studying fossils of the huge sea creature, with the animal's teeth proving the most abundant type of fossil to be found today. Teeth fossils were found in Mexico by speleologist (cave specialist) and photographer Kay Nicte Vilchis Zapata and fellow speleologist Erick Sosa Rodriguez while diving in a newly discovered sinkhole in Cholul in 2019. The cenote is 400 meters long and 28 meters deep and located inside were fifteen teeth fossils from various shark species. They also discovered human remains and a vertebrae fossil that potentially belongs to an ancient species. A total of 13 of the 15 teeth fossils belonged to three different species of shark – one being the megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon), while the other two species were the mackerel shark (Isurus oxyrinchus) and the sawshark (Pristiophoridae). Zapata told local media at the time: “We were looking at the wall and suddenly I saw a little something, I went closer and I saw that it was a tooth, that was the first and apparently it belonged to a sawshark.” Experts believe the geological timescale of the megalodon teeth lies anywhere between 2.5 million to 5 million years old. Speleologist Sosa Rodriguez said: “It is just proof of what scientists have already studied and written about; what kind of wildlife lived here millions of years ago when this was part of the sea.” Scientists have suggested that the megalodon’s warm body temperature may have been the reason for its extinction. There is some thought that the megalodon was able to maintain a body temperature around 7 degrees centigrade warmer than the water around it, but ultimately this may have been its downfall. Randy Flores, a UCLA doctoral student and fellow of the Centre for Diverse Leadership in Science, explained: “Maintaining an energy level that would allow for megalodon’s elevated body temperature would require a voracious appetite that may not have been sustainable in a time of changing marine ecosystem balances when it may have even had to compete against newcomers such as the great white shark.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.