Six planets line up for rare parade throughout February

Celestial spectacle will be at its most impressive on 28 February, when Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune will align across the sky Space enthusiasts are in for a treat at the end of this month as six planets will appear close together in the night sky. The phenomenon,...

Astronomers celebrate cancellation of $10bn Chile project that threatened clearest skies in the world

Astronomers had warned that proximity of INNA facility to telescopes would have irreparably damaged observation The scientific community is celebrating the cancellation of a project which would have threatened the clearest skies in the world in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The proposed $10bn, 3,000-hectare green hydrogen and ammonia production facility, known...

Light may outshine quantum for some of computing’s toughest optimization problems

Published in Nature, the study details the first large-scale demonstration of a photonic Ising machine operating without the cryogenic constraints typical of quantum computing systems. The device, developed by physicist Bhavin J. Shastri and collaborators at McGill University, builds on a concept rooted in early 20th-century magnetism and adapts it......

YUMI exFAT adds smarter drive prep options

YUMI remains a reliable pick for building multi-boot USB drives, especially if you like having control over how your media is set up. The latest release introduces a handy new preparation menu: users can now reserve unformatted space and choose the target filesystem upfront, making it easier to fine-tune a...

Octopus-inspired hydrogel reveals hidden image when exposed to temperature changes or solvents

The hydrogel behaves like a programmable canvas. Rather than using traditional pigments, researchers embedded data directly into its physical structure during printing. When the hydrogel warms or interacts with a different solvent, hidden information inside – ranging from letters to portraits – gradually comes into view. In one demonstration, the......