Mars rovers serve as scientists' eyes and ears from millions of miles away - here are the tools Perseverance used to spot a potential sign of ancient life NASA's search for evidence of past life on Mars just produced an exciting update. On Sept. 10, 2025, a team of scientists published a paper detailing the Perseverance rover's investigation of a distinctive rock outcrop called Bright Angel on the edge of Mars' Jezero Crater . This outcrop is notable for its light-toned rocks with striking mineral nodules and multicolored, leopard print-like splotches. By combining data from five scientific instruments, the team determined that these nodules formed through processes that could have involved microorganisms. While this finding is not direct evidence of life, it's a compelling discovery that planetary scientists hope to look into more closely.

Warning: Some readers may find some of the scenes described in this article disturbing. Kyiv, Ukraine – Ivan Ukraintsev, a stern-faced insurance broker turned director of a wartime charity providing crucial aid to Ukraine's military forces, is on a mission: to help Ukraine win the drone war. He is a polite but no-nonsense character, and he is here to talk about drones. "If we [Ukraine] had enough drones, we could end this war in two months," he says firmly. Ivan, who heads up the charity Starlife, had recently returned from overseeing a drone delivery to Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has become the focal point for months of bloody battles between Ukrainian and Russian forces. Trench warfare, pockmarked and corpse-ridden swathes of no man's land, and constant artillery bombardments have drawn comparisons to battlefield conditions during World War I.

With its uncanny ability to mimic human language and reasoning, ChatGPT seems to herald a revolution in artificial intelligence. The nimble chatbot can conjure poems and essays, share recipes, translate languages, dispense advice, and tell jokes, among the endless applications users have tested since the Silicon Valley research lab OpenAI released the natural language-processing tool in November. With the excitement comes some trepidation--that the technology could degrade authentic human writing and critical thinking, upend industries, and amplify our own prejudices and biases. Experts from across the university convene at 1 p.m. EST to discuss the latest developments in AI, including language learning programs such as ChatGPT, disinformation campaigns, and ethical concerns. To those working in artificial intelligence, ChatGPT is not merely an overnight sensation, but a mark of achievement after years of experimentation, says Johns Hopkins assistant computer science professor Daniel Khashabi, who specializes in language processing and has worked on similar tools.

Components of Robots were not used in literature until Karel Capek's play "Rossum's Universal Robots" in 1921. The first motion picture to include a robot that looked like a human was "Metropolis" in 1926. Robots are now a common sight in our daily lives. Components of Robots now work in our warehouses and manufacturing facilities; explore far-off planets; assist us in inspecting our infrastructure sites, and even help us build entirely new ones. But how do robots truly function?

'Robot dogs' are being tested by the US Space Force so they can carry out patrols of the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The $150,000 (£123,000) four-legged bots can be equipped with a wide variety of optical and acoustic sensors, allowing them to serve as the'eyes and ears' around sensitive areas of the base. They are being used for patrols'to save significant man hours', according to a statement from the Department of Defense. Space Launch Delta 45 – the unit responsible for all space launch operations from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral – used at least two Vision 60 unmanned ground vehicles (Q-UGVs), or'robot dogs', during the two-day test last month. Built by Ghost Robotics, the robots can be operated either autonomously or by a human controller.

"What is it like to be you?" This question may often be asked of your robot, but rarely is it asked of you. As humans, we generally do not ask what it is like to be a human because, by default, we assume that we know what is going on in their minds. Frequently, however, this assumption can cause us to misread and misunderstand each other by placing our unique experiences and interpreting the world through our black-and-white lens without seeing the rich spectrum of color others may experience. So what would change if, instead of only imagining the abstractions of those around us with their bodies and brains as they see with their eyes and ears, somebody decided to actually try experiencing those things firsthand? What if instead of asking what it would be like to be them, we told those people what it is like to be us?

Facebook has announced a research project that aims to push the "frontier of first-person perception", and in the process help you remember where you left your keys. The Ego4D project provides a huge collection of first-person video and related data, plus a set of challenges for researchers to teach computers to understand the data and gather useful information from it. In September, the social media giant launched a line of "smart glasses" called Ray-Ban Stories, which carry a digital camera and other features. Much like the Google Glass project, which met mixed reviews in 2013, this one has prompted complaints of privacy invasion. Tickets to TNW Conference 2022 are available now!

Over the last decade I've been asked many times whether I think blogging will die, or will it be replaced by something else. Every time I was asked this question I replied that I believe the only way it could change is if how we consume content changes. As long as we humans like to read, listen and watch, and we use our eyes and ears to do so, I couldn't imagine anything changing. Unless technology reaches the point where we can download content directly to our brains like in the Matrix movies… which I don't see happening anytime soon! While my basic thesis remains the same – we continue to use our eyes and ears to read and listen to content – for the first time in a long time there is something on the horizon that is going to cause a fundamental shift.

In the context of Europe, the UK is one of the leading places for AI adoption. "I would say it's the UK and then Germany and France," explains Ben Lorica, chief data scientist at O'Reilly Media. "If you were to look at the world as a whole, I think at this moment at least, because of the nature of the technology involved, the US and China are considered the leaders." This is because a lot of the emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, rely on massive amounts of data and computing to be successful. In these two markets (US and China), companies can scale up to many users right away, because of the availability of larger datasets and computational power.

Gierad Laput, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrates how his team's universal sensor picks up the sound from a handheld vacuum. Gierad Laput, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, demonstrates how his team's universal sensor picks up the sound from a handheld vacuum. John Essey and family live in a modest, two-story home on a tree-lined street in the suburbs north of Pittsburgh. From the outside, it looks like any other house in the neighborhood, but this house has a brain. Doors unlock, [it] kinda sets the mood for the rest of the house too, turns on lights, sets the thermostat accordingly," Essey says. Essey is an engineer at Uber and an early adopter of the Internet of things. He can control his lights with his Amazon Echo or an array of touchpad sensors he's installed throughout the home. Sensors tell him when there's water in the basement or a leak under the sink. While Essey's setup might sound a little like science fiction it's a prototype of the future. Some critics are worried these devices won't be secure and that companies will use them to spy on us to make money. Gierad Laput, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, says as the Internet of things becomes more engrained in our daily lives, there are a couple of ways people are turning ordinary homes into smart homes. "One way is basically to buy all the appliances, smart oven, smart dishwasher, smart microwave, smart toaster, all these things," Laput says. But that stuff is really expensive. Smart refrigerators can cost $3,000 or more. And Laput said those devices don't always talk to each other, especially if they're made by different manufacturers. The other way is to get sensors, and put them on everything you want to monitor. "But then those get really unwieldy and you've got all these things sticking around and they look ugly and socially obtrusive," Laput says. So Laput and his team wanted to see if they could build just one sensor that could monitor a whole range of activity in a room. The board senses about a dozen different facets of its environment: vibrations, sounds, light color and so on. The sensor communicates wirelessly with a computer, which interprets everything it picks up. Laput demonstrated how the sensor works by turning on a blender. Laput turned on a light, and the screen said, "light on." Laput says he imagines both domestic and commercial applications for such a sensor. It could tell you that you left your stove on or that you're almost out of paper towels in the bathroom at the restaurant you own. But critics say there's a catch. "Surveillance is now the business model of the Internet.