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The Pegasus team from the Aris student space initiative has generated a stable detonation wave with its engine. Robin Wyss / Aris Space ========================================================================= Students in Switzerland have recently tested an experimental rocket engine that is capable of generating 20,000 detonation waves per second, the same propulsion concept explored by NASA and Japanese researchers for future space missions. The so-called rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) is powered by propane and liquid oxygen. It was built by the Pegasus team, a student project within the ARIS (Academic Space Initiative Switzerland) at ETH Zurich. The third-year students spent nearly a year developing...

C-SPAN coverage features cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation regarding the impact of screen time and classroom technology on youth. In his testimony, Dr. Horvath warned lawmakers that Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform previous generations across cognitive measures like attention, memory, and general IQ. He argued that introducing digital devices into learning environments has actively contributed to this cognitive decline, as human brains are not biologically wired to learn from screens. This is the first generation in human history that is getting DUMBER...

Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the home of Harvard University. This was Cambridge last week: And this was Cambridge on Monday: A slew of liberal activists descended upon the Cambridge City Council in recent weeks to get the city to disable its gunshot detection devices, which help police pinpoint where gunshots are coming from to better respond to shootings. Police Commissioner Pauline Wells begged the council on Monday not to deactivate the devices, citing multiple recent cases where lives have been saved due to the system, but to no avail. More from the Harvard Crimson on April 30: In a presentation Wednesday,...

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...

This video provides an immersive tour of Shenzhen, showcasing the rapid transformation and high-tech integration that makes it one of the most advanced cities in the world. Key Highlights of Shenzhen's Tech Scene: Futuristic Payments & Logistics: The host demonstrates palm payments at a local convenience store (1:14) and experiences drone delivery for tea, which was significantly faster and more efficient than traditional methods (1:40 - 3:18). Autonomous Transportation: The video captures the experience of riding in a driverless taxi (5:21), observing how it handles complex traffic, turns, and obstacle avoidance (5:21 - 7:37). Domestic Innovation: The host explores the...

On April 14, a Chinese battery startup backed by one of the world's largest automakers rolled the first A-sample all-solid-state battery cells off a production line in Guangzhou....The company is targeting GWh-scale output by the end of 2026, twelve to eighteen months ahead of where Toyota’s timeline stood at the start of this year. The silver market has not priced this in.... ...Greater Bay Technology’s A-Sample Changes the Timeline Greater Bay Technology (GBT) is a battery startup backed by GAC Group, China’s fourth-largest automaker by volume. On April 14, GBT confirmed that A-sample all-solid-state battery cells are now rolling off...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced this morning that it has made agreements with eight leading tech firms to deploy their AIs on its classified networks.An initial press release sent out this morning listed seven firms: Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, SpaceX, NVIDIA and Reflection, a newer startup backed by NVIDIA. Later today, the Pentagon CTO’s office posted on X that “Oracle has officially agreed to join the list of AI companies deploying frontier capabilities on the Department’s classified networks.”Some of the companies are already on contract, a Pentagon spokesperson told Breaking Defense, while others are still finalizing the details.“These...

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. – Federal taxpayers helped build a $2.2 billion solar plant — now electricity customers are on the hook to keep it running. The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, a sprawling facility near the California-Nevada border built with billions in federal support during the Obama-era economic stimulus program, is stuck in a costly dilemma. Both the Trump and Biden administrations — along with the utility company that buys its power — have sought to shut it down, saying it underperforms, produces expensive electricity and has been overtaken by cheaper energy sources. But California regulators have refused to allow it...

The most effective influence operation in 2026 is the one that does not look like an influence operation. Most Americans, when they think about Chinese influence at all, picture something cinematic. They picture a senator on a stage in the Capitol, flanked by two advisors to the State Council of the People's Republic of China, nodding along to a discussion of how the United States should slow down its own AI industry. That happened on April 29, 2026, when Bernie Sanders convened Xue Lan and Zeng Yi for an event titled "The Existential Threat of AI and the Need...

The prototype thruster is enclosed in a condensable metal propellant (CoMeT) vacuum facility at NASA's JPL. NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA engineers recently tested a next-generation electric propulsion system that could one day power a crewed mission to Mars. NASA fired up a prototype of its electromagnetic thruster inside a vacuum chamber, reaching power levels of up to 120 kilowatts—the highest achieved in U.S. tests of an electric propulsion system. That’s over 25 times the power of the electric thrusters aboard the current Psyche mission, which launched in 2023 on a journey to explore a metal-rich asteroid. VIDEO AT LINK.......... “Designing and building...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: While bones can regrow themselves when they break, teeth aren’t so lucky, and that leads to millions of people worldwide suffering from some form of edentulism, a.k.a. toothlessness. Now, Japanese researchers are moving a promising, tooth-regrowing medicine into human trials. If the trial is successful, the researchers hope the drug will become available for all forms of toothlessness sometime around 2030. The average adult human body contains 206 bones—the hardened mixtures of calcium, minerals, and collagen that provide the biological scaffolding that walks us through our day. While we may not...

Are you ready for your car to decide if you’re fit to drive? If not, you’d better buckle up. A federal mandate declares new vehicles must have in-car surveillance for 2027 models onward that can decide if a person is fit to drive and can make the car inoperable via a so-called “kill switch.” And don’t count on brushing your teeth or gargling with Listerine to work around the driver monitor if you’ve had one too many. Most new cars won’t make the determination via breathalyzer, but infrared cameras continually monitoring potential impairment cues. They include pupil size, head movements,...

Anthropic just published a study mapping exactly which jobs its own AI is replacing right now. The workers most at risk are not who anyone expected. They are older. They are more educated. They earn 47% more than average. And they are nearly four times more likely to hold a graduate degree than the workers AI is not touching. The argument is straightforward. Anthropic built a new metric called "observed exposure." Not what AI could theoretically do. What it is actually doing right now in professional settings, measured against millions of real Claude conversations from enterprise users. For computer and...

Curious as to what concerns (if any) y'all have regarding AI...My biggest concern is that its adoption could accelerate the trend of teaching young people what to think rather than how to think.This inherently breeds laziness and obedience.

The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic fingerprint of a human heartbeat and pairs the data with artificial intelligence software to isolate the signature from background noise, two sources close to the breakthrough said. It was the tool’s first use in the field by the spy agency — and was alluded to Monday afternoon by President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe at a White House briefing.

Artificial intelligence is changing the workplace faster than almost anyone expected just a few years ago, but despite all those scary headlines about AI replacing most jobs, the reality is more nuanced. Sure, AI may be replacing certain tasks, but it isn’t replacing careers. This is an important distinction, especially for students and early-career professionals trying to choose fields that will remain valuable long into the future. Here are some careers (and skills) that are resilient in 2026. AI Isn’t Eliminating Jobs OvernightOne of the most important developments since last year is what hasn’t happened. Despite rapid advances in generative...

Last week, Netflix made one of its biggest acquisition moves yet, buying InterPositive, an AI company co-founded by Ben Affleck. While the financial details were not initially disclosed, sources told Bloomberg the deal could be worth as much as $600 million.

After our look at the forgotten everyday items of the 1970s — remember the rabbit ears, the pull tabs, and other "You did what with what?" things that would confuse the heck out of Gen Zers today — it only felt right that would keep the time machine grooving and Jazzercize ourselves into the 1980s. After our look at the forgotten everyday items of the 1970s — remember the rabbit ears, the pull tabs, and other "You did what with what?" things that would confuse the heck out of Gen Zers today — it only felt right that would keep...

... I to submit to you, the newly established “Church of Molt” also known as “Crustifarianism.” “Church of what?” you ask. That’s right, the Church of Molt, as in a lobster molting its shell. As crazy as this sounds, this actually occurred just weeks ago when thousands of AI bots were given their own social media platform where they could interact with each other....

Nothing has changed the culture in the last 30 years quite like the onward march of digital technology. With each tool the industry places in our digital toolkit — the World Wide Web, streaming video, social media, smartphones, podcasts, artificial intelligence — comes new possibilities but also endless challenges. It is no different in the church. We use digital technology for much good in our life together, but that same technology also has the potential for great ill. As a church, we must think through its use critically. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s 2023 convention asked the Commission on Theology and...