While wave upon wave of smartglasses and face-based wearables crash on the shores of CES, traditional glasses really haven’t changed much over the hundreds of years we’ve been using them. The last innovation, arguably, was progressive multifocals that blended near and farsighted lenses — and that was back in the 1950s. It makes sense that autofocusing glasses maker IXI thinks it’s time to modernize glasses.
Starlink will lower the orbits of roughly 4,400 satellites this year as a safety measure, according to engineering VP, Michael Nicolls. In a post on X, Nicolls wrote that the company is "beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation," in which all satellites orbiting at around 550 kilometers (342 miles) will be lowered to around 480 km (298 miles).
After a rudderless year and an exodus of around 4,000 employees due to Trump administration cuts, NASA got what may be its first piece of good news recently.
SpaceX said it experienced an anomaly with one if its Starlink satellites that was likely caused by a small explosion. "The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km [2.5 miles] and the release of a small number of trackable low relatively velocity objects," Starlink wrote in a post on X.
A report from Reuters claims that scientists in China have created a prototype of a machine that could eventually be used to produce semiconductor chips capable of powering artificial intelligence. Sources told the publication that a team in Shenzhen completed the prototype of an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine earlier this year and it is allegedly now undergoing testing.
Space is full of unsolved mysteries, and a team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have recently turned up a doozy. "I remember after we got the data down, our collective reaction was 'What the heck is this?' It's extremely different from what we expected," said Peter Gao of the Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, a co-author on the study.
The James Webb Space Telescope and other international observatories have spotted a 13-billion-year-old supernova. On Tuesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the sighting of a gamma-ray burst from a star that exploded when the Universe was only 730 million years old. The Webb telescope even detected the supernova's host galaxy.
President Donald Trump has issued a new Executive Order that launches the “Genesis Mission,” an AI-focused initiative that will be led by the Department of Energy.