Believe it or not, the unofficial start of summer's finally (almost) here again. That means

Electric-vehicle sales are poised to more than double by 2026 but eliminating emissions from road transportation by the

New findings have revealed that time ran five times slower in the early universe, after scientists published new research into quasars. A quasar is a luminous active galactic nucleus and studying them has allowed scientists to measure time. The variation in brightness of quasars from the early universe has been measured to determine time dilation back to a billion years after the Big Bang. Experts have found that there was an era in which clocks moved five times slower than they do in the present day. The findings come as a relief to many cosmologists who have been perplexed by previous results that have come from studying quasars. The discovery that the universe is expanding led to the theorisation of “time dilation” – the idea that time moved slower the smaller the universe was. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Professor Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, the lead author of a new study, said in a statement: “Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower.” He continued, explaining: “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.” To measure the extent of time dilation, scientists turned to quasars, as they are able to measure their change in brightness over a period they can estimate. The most distant quasar that is visible is 13 billion back in time and can still be seen despite its far distance. Their brightness varies due to turbulence and lumpiness in their accretion disks. Lewis explained the phenomenon as being “a bit like the stock market”. He said: “Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen there is a statistical pattern to the variation, with timescales related to how bright a quasar is and the wavelength of its light.” 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.

Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan will meet with employees later this month to discuss his clean

MUNICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 28, 2023--

Linda Yaccarino, CEO of social media platform X, said Thursday that the company formerly known as Twitter is "close" to breaking even and is hiring to beef up a...

An algorithm has spotted a nearly 600-foot, potentially hazardous asteroid near Earth. The tool is intended to find dangerous objects in Earth’s vicinity, to allow scientists to better track them and understand any threat they might pose. The new discovery is the system’s first detection of a “potentially hazardous” asteroid, a term that is used for those rocks that are near enough and possibly threatening enough to cause a danger to Earth. An asteroid gets the designation if it is within about 5 million miles of Earth’s orbit. The asteroid, known as 2022 SF289, does not pose any threat to Earth for the foreseeable future. Its closest approach brings it 140,000 miles from Earth – closer to us than the Moon, but still far enough away to be safe. But the creators of the algorithm said that it showed that the system could be used to detect others in the future – some of which may pose a threat to life on Earth. “By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to look for thousands of yet-unknown potentially hazardous asteroids, the discovery of 2022 SF289 makes us all safer,” said scientist Ari Heinze, the principal developer of the algorithm, known as HelioLinc3D. Astronomers are looking forward to switching on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, in Chile, in 2025. It will allow for a much more detailed view of the night sky. They hope that it can be used to spot more potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs. But the extra detail will also make more work for those poring through the data to find them, and so algorithms will be important to helping that work. HelioLinc3D is one such algorithm, and was built specifically to find asteroids within the Rubin observatory’s dataset. Though the equipment is not yet switched on, its creators looked to test whether it would successfully be able to find asteroids when it is looking through that data. The discovery of 2022 SF289 suggests that it will be. It was found in data from the ATLAS survey, based in Hawaii. ATLAS had actually seen the object three times on four separate nights, but an asteroid has to be seen four times on one night to be identified as a near-Earth object. “Any survey will have difficulty discovering objects like 2022 SF289 that are near its sensitivity limit, but HelioLinc3D shows that it is possible to recover these faint objects as long as they are visible over several nights,” said Denneau. “This in effect gives us a ‘bigger, better’ telescope.” Until now it had also been missed because it was passing in front of the busy and bright stars of the Milky Way. But scientists were able to confirm the existence of the object by looking back through data when they knew where to look. Scientists are aware of 2,350 PHAs already, but expect there are 3,000 out there waiting to be found. “This is just a small taste of what to expect with the Rubin Observatory in less than two years, when HelioLinc3D will be discovering an object like this every night,” said Rubin scientist Mario Jurić, director of the DiRAC Institute, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and leader of the team behind HelioLinc3D. “But more broadly, it’s a preview of the coming era of data-intensive astronomy. From HelioLinc3D to AI-assisted codes, the next decade of discovery will be a story of advancement in algorithms as much as in new, large, telescopes.” Read More Reddit closes Place after obscene protests Kenya suspends eyeball-scanning crypto worldcoin Google warns Gmail users they could be about to lose their account Reddit closes Place after obscene protests Kenya suspends eyeball-scanning crypto worldcoin Google warns Gmail users they could be about to lose their account

King Felipe VI of Spain and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands attended the ceremony.

Andrew Tate claimed reading is 'brain masturbation' for 'middle-brain losers' in a highly problematic tweet

Elon Musk has shared instructions for how to turn coca leaves into cocaine in a bid to promote his company’s new “rebellious” AI chatbot Grok. The Tesla and X boss unveiled the new artificial intelligence over the weekend, claiming that its access to real-time data from his social media platform makes it superior to rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard. “Grok has real-time access to info via the X platform, which is a massive advantage over other models,” Mr Musk said. “It’s also based and loves sarcasm. I have no idea who could have guided it this way,” he added, together with a shrug emoji and a crying laughing emoji. The tech billionaire shared a screenshot of Grok offering a “humorous” step-by-step guide to making cocaine, which included instructions like “start cooking and hope you don’t blow yourself up or get arrested”. He followed it up with a separate screenshot offering more detailed instructions on how to produce the Class A drug from its raw materials. Mr Musk released the chatbot, which was developed by his new AI company xAI, just six months after signing an open letter calling on companies to pause development of artificial intelligence systems for six months. “I signed on to that letter knowing it was futile,” he wrote on X on Sunday. “I just wanted to be on record as recommending a pause.” Its unveiling also comes just days after Mr Musk warned that AI is “one of the biggest threats to humanity” at a global AI safety summit in Bletchley Park, hosted by Rishi Sunak. Grok is currently only available to paying subscribers to X Premium, though Mr Musk said that a standalone app for the xAI chatbot will be released in the future. XAI claimed in a blog post that its bot is more powerful than freely available rivals like ChatGPT and Bard, however admitted that it lags behind premium versions of the technology like OpenAI’s GPT-4. “We hand-graded our model on the 2023 Hungarian national high school finals in mathematics,” the blog post noted. “Grok passed the exam with a C (59 per cent), while... GPT-4 got a B with 68 per cent.” Read More How Elon Musk’s ‘spicy’ Grok compares to ‘woke’ ChatGPT Musk shares cocaine recipe in effort to prove Grok AI is ‘rebellious’ How Elon Musk’s ‘spicy’ Grok compares to ‘woke’ ChatGPT Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans 'in less than five years'

Warzone Season 6 likely ends on Wednesday, Dec. 6 at 12 p.m. ET, marking the final season in the Modern Warfare 2 era.

CAIRO Gulf Air said its data was breached on Friday but its operations and vital systems were not