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.

Misty Williams checks into the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from time to time for treatment of debilitating pain from sickle cell disease, which causes red blood cells to stiffen and block the flow of blood. After pain medication and hydration are ordered, the 41-year-old Los Angeles resident makes an unusual request: access to a virtual reality headset with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that can carry on a dialogue with her. With the headset on, Williams finds herself in a virtual garden, butterflies drifting around her. A humanoid robot greets her with a soothing female voice. My name is Xaia, and I'm your mental health ally," it says. After a session, Williams' pain eases and her mind is calmer. "Mentally and physically, I feel more at peace," Williams said. Xaia (pronounced ZAI-uh) is just one of many ways that artificial intelligence technology is barreling its way into the burgeoning sector known as digital health.

The moment that Black Mirror fans have been waiting for finally arrived last night, as Netflix released the highly anticipated trailer for Season 7. However, it was a'mind-expanding' brain chip that really caught fans' attention. In the trailer, several characters can be seen sporting a small, white chip on the side of their faces. 'They call it mind expanding. It alters your neuronal structure,' Peter Capaldi's character ominously explains.

'Let's just say this is a very significant redesign of society,' said Mo Gawdat, the former chief business officer at Google's secretive R&D wing, Google X. The convergence of these technologies, as Gawdat explained on a recent podcast interview, may lead to sex dolls that seem'alive' or dating apps filled with AI'avatars.' 'If we think a few years further and think of Neuralink and other ways of connecting directly to your nervous system,' Gawdat speculated, 'why would you need another being in the first place?' Speaking on the YouTube channel for the show Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, Gawdat pointed out that technologists, policymakers and society at large often focus too tightly on philosophical questions that big business interests will not. 'We get lost in those conversations of'Are they alive?

From a Furby to the'world's most advanced' humanoid robot, ChatGPT has already been hooked up to a range of bizarre things. But the latest use for the AI chatbot is arguably the strangest yet, as Lovense has announced that it has integrated ChatGPT in a sex toy, dubbed the ChatGPT Pleasure Companion. Users can divulge their sexual fantasies to the sex toy, before it uses ChatGPT to write a story. 'The higher the intensity of the story, the stronger and faster the toy's reaction will be,' Lovense explained. The system is currently in beta, and has been described as a way to'explore your sexuality and boundaries completely independently.'

The inventor of the PlayStation has said he "can't see the point" of the metaverse. "Being in the real world is very important, but the metaverse is about making quasi-real in the virtual world, and I can't see the point of doing it," Ken Kutaragi told Bloomberg News. "You would rather be a polished avatar instead of your real self? Mr Kutaragi is currently the head of Ascent Robotics, an artificial intelligence startup that aims to build robots for use in retail and logistics. It is also developing a system to transform real-world objects into data that can be read by a computer.

Meta aims to make realistic avatars for its metaverse and plans to do so by tacking users' every move with customized technologies. The company recently filed a trove of patents for these innovations that monitor facial expressions, eye movements and body poses of players. The patents describe a device that sits around user's waist to track their body poses, sensor-packed gloves to monitor hand gestures and glasses to immerse players in the digital world. Another application shows images of an'avatar personalization engine' that creates 3-D avatars based on a user's photos using tools such as a so-called skin replicator. Meta aims to make realistic avatars for its metaverse and plans to do so by watching users' every move with customized technologies.

When you sit back and think about the changes that have been made in technology over the past few years, it is quite amazing. It was not that long ago that home phones were more common than mobile phones. However, now almost everyone has a mobile phone and many people do not have a landline. The same can be said for newer technologies such as Google Nest Audio or Amazon Alexa. Households that own a smart speaker state that using it has become an essential part of their day.

Facebook has developed a model to tell when a video is using a deepfake – and can even tell which algorithm was used to create it. The term "deepfake" refers to a video where artificial intelligence and deep learning – an algorithmic learning method used to train computers – has been used to make a person appear to say something they have not. Notable examples of deepfakes include a manipulated video of Richard Nixon's Apollo 11 presidential address and Barack Obama insulting Donald Trump – and although they are relatively benign now, experts suggest that they could be the most dangerous crime of the future. Detecting a deepfake relies on telling whether an image is real or not, but the amount of information available to researchers to do so can be limited – relying on potential input-output pairs or rely on hardware information that might not be available in the real world. Facebook's new process relies in detecting the unique patterns behind an artificially-intelligent model that could generate a deepfake.

Carrying out regular'pen-and-paper' exercises can reduce nausea during travel by more than 50 per cent, UK scientists claim. Cognitive training tasks, including identifying how patterns would appear on transparent paper when folded, help'train the brain' to reduce feelings of nausea in-transit, they say. Motion sickness, which creates a sensation of wooziness, can occur during car travel, at sea or even while using a virtual reality headset. But it's also an issue for passengers in self-driving cars, who are free to read, watch films and play video games thanks to the autonomous technology. Engaging in tasks before a journey was found to be effective at reducing motion sickness for passengers in both a driving simulator and on-the-road experiments, the experts found.