China is building a new digital marketplace where ordinary people can license their faces to artificial intelligence

For decades, astronomers have searched for radio signals from planets outside our Solar System. The idea sounds simple, but there has always been a fundamental problem: when a telescope detects radio emission coming from a distant planetary system, how can scientists know whether the signal is actually coming from the planet rather than from its star?

A tiny wild cat in Bolivia has just been recognized as a species new to science. Meet Leopardus tilcayo — an elusive Yungas tiger cat whose lineage dates back around 1.4 million years. 🐆 Discover how scientists finally uncovered its hidden identity.

A tiny yellow Pokémon has already travelled farther than most of us ever will. Pikachu spent 67 days aboard the International Space Station, floating hundreds of kilometres above Earth. Meanwhile, down on the ground, Europe is quietly transforming the way millions of people cross its borders. The new Entry/Exit System is replacing passport stamps with digital records, facial images and fingerprints.

Google DeepMind’s AlphaGenome Atlas predicts the molecular effects of 9 billion possible DNA changes. Here is what it means for genetics, disease research and the future of medicine.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed 84 mysterious hypersoft X-ray sources in six galaxies. Scientists believe they could solve major mysteries about supernovae and galactic evolution.

The internet has never been more connected, personalized, or powerful — yet many people are starting to miss the way it used to feel. Before endless scrolling and algorithm-driven feeds, the web was a collection of forums, blogs, personal websites, chat rooms, and small communities where discovery happened naturally. Today, growing concerns about social media algorithms, digital overload, AI-generated content, and the constant pressure to stay engaged are bringing old ideas back into the conversation. Chronological feeds, independent websites, newsletters, niche communities, and user-controlled experiences are becoming increasingly attractive. But do people really want the old internet back? Probably not literally. They want something the old web represented: freedom, authenticity, serendipity, and control. The future of the internet may not be about abandoning algorithms, but about giving people the choice to use them — or turn them off.

Europe is entering a new era of border travel. The EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) is replacing traditional passport stamps with digital records, facial recognition and fingerprint checks for many non-EU travellers. As the system becomes fully enforced, airports and border crossings are facing new challenges, including longer queues and increased pressure on infrastructure and staff. But EES is about more than today’s travel delays. It is part of a much bigger transformation that could make European borders increasingly automated, biometric and digital. This article explores how EES works, who it affects, the concerns surrounding privacy and congestion, and what the future of travelling across Europe could look like.

The Himalayas have always been a landscape of extremes. The world's highest mountains are shaped by earthquakes, landslides, avalanches, glaciers, monsoon rains and rivers that can change from relatively calm streams into enormous torrents within minutes. For centuries, people living in the Himalayan valleys have learned to live with these dangers. But something is changing.

There are discoveries in astronomy that expand our knowledge of the Universe. And then there are discoveries that feel almost impossible to comprehend. Astronomers have now identified a star racing around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way at roughly 25,000 kilometers per second — more than eight percent of the speed of light. Its name is S301.

The Cold War had two superpowers. The world of 2026 has something much more complicated: several centers of power, overlapping alliances, strategic partnerships, economic dependencies and countries that increasingly refuse to choose just one side.

For generations, the traditional holiday was built around one simple idea: travel should be long enough to feel like a real escape. A week at the seaside. Ten days in another country. Two weeks somewhere warm. For many people, the annual summer holiday was the biggest travel event of the year — something planned months in advance, carefully budgeted, and protected from everything else on the calendar. But that model is changing.