A US-based aerospace and defense developer is looking to become the first company in the world to use quantum computing technology as part of its commercial business ventures. According to Quentin Hardy of the New York Times, Lockheed Martin is planning to use one of
The Zero, decimal system, Indian numerals, astronomy, astrology, trigonometry, ayurveda, chemistry, everything even dream-analysis are some of the numerous contributions of scholars from India. Unfortunately, the bias has always been against giving no credit whatsoever to the Indian mind. For
The possibility of someday recording all the neurons firing in a living creature’s central nervous system has inspired generations of neuroscientists. Now a group of researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has finally achieved the feat. The scientists studied
Brain implants may allow paralyzed people and amputees to use mind-controlledadvanced prosthetics sooner than we think, with a very specific kind of “telekinesis” aided by a wireless brain-computer interface. The National Institutes of Health has announced that a compact sensor has successfully recorded and transmitted brain activity data wirelessly
Human beings are not only the funniest monkeys: they are the sexiest ones as well. In many ways we are a species singularly devoted to sex. We talk, write, read, joke and argue about it; we dress and undress for
Imagine for a moment that you could choose any superpower you wanted. If you’re the demonstrative sort, you might be tempted by something dramatic, such as Hulk-like strength or the ability to fly. Or perhaps you’d prefer something a little
Last month, researchers created an electronic link between the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles. This was just another reminder that technology will one day make us telepaths. But how far will this transformation go? And how long
If ideas are currency in a knowledge-driven industry such as scientific research, why is intellectual property (IP) so often taken without consent? The majority of ideas generated through scientific endeavour are not protected by copyright or patenting, and an essential
A newly deciphered Egyptian text, dating back almost 1,200 years, tells part of the crucifixion story of Jesus with apocryphal plot twists, some of which have never been seen before. Written in the Coptic language, the ancient text tells of Pontius
An ancient Egyptian pigment — apparently humanity’s first artificial pigment — could soon find new life-enabling modern high-tech applications such as telecommunications networks and state-of-the-art biomedical imaging, according to researchers. Known as Egyptian blue, the pigment first appeared roughly 5,000
Tom Johnson was one of those extraordinary characters that history throws up in times of crisis. Born in 1772 to Irish parents, he made the most of the opportunities that presented themselves and was earning his own living as a
A rough, whitish block recovered from an Elizabethan shipwreck may be a sunstone, the fabled crystal believed by some to have helped Vikings and other medieval seafarers navigate the high seas, researchers say. In a paper published earlier this week,
Columbus, credited with the discovery of Americas, may not have been the first to set foot on the continent, says a British explorer, claiming that Phoenicians actually beat him by 2,000 years. Christopher Columbus, the poster boy Renaissance explorer found
Nathaniel Kleitman, known as the “father of modern sleep research,” was born in 1895 in Bessarabia—now Moldova—and spent much of his youth on the run. First, pogroms drove him to Palestine; then the First World War chased him to the
Physiologically speaking, you’re neither asleep nor awake during a daydream but, rather, in a peculiar in-between state where your thoughts are lucid but you’re still at serious risk of drooling. Psychoanalysts often refer to this state as La-La Land when
Not all that far above your head is a particle accelerator that would put the Large Hadron Collider to shame. There, charged particles, some carried in by the solar wind, some created by cosmic rays, whiz along in a complicated dance, trapped
On a Sunday morning early in January, about two dozen prominent physicists gathered behind closed doors at the California Institute of Technology to ponder the state of their craft. American physicists were not exactly sitting on the sidelines last July
Scientists have long been dreaming about building a computer that would work like a brain. This is because a brain is far more energy-saving than a computer, it can learn by itself, and it doesn’t need any programming. Privatdozent [senior
At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 — the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated.
British singer Peter Gabriel performs during the first day of the Hop Farm music festival in Paddock Wood, Kent, on June 29, 2012. Gabriel joined big thinkers and one of the Internet’s founding fathers Friday in launching an “Interspecies Internet”
The sun shafts down on a group of cocktail drinkers, as a woman in a white dress laughs at something her camel-coated companion has said and a bartender stands at ease, wearing a faint smile. Behind the revelers, a rolling
Picture a telescope orbiting in space, and your mind probably flies to the Hubble Space Telescope. At roughly 43 feet long and weighing 25,000 pounds, its footprint is the size of a small house and it’s just a little shy of the weight
Of all the chambers in the Great Pyramid, the subterranean chamber is the largest, as well as the most mysterious. It is 46 feet long, 27 feet wide, hewn into the limestone bedrock, and difficult to describe. The descending passageway’s
