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Tech News
Researchers report evidence that Earth underwent a major geological transition around 2.7 billion years ago, altering the composition and behavior of its crust. The change is described as a turning point that set the planet on a distinct developmental path compared with other bodies in the solar system.
Caltech's ASTRA robot, a roughly one-cubic-meter device with a gantry arm, motorized dispensers and 11 cameras, has assembled part of an antenna frame while in low Earth orbit by pulling composite tubes and aluminum joints from onboard dispensers. The full antenna requires 11 sections spanning 1.4 meters, but only three are complete so far, with the mission ending in December before the frame is finished.
Prime Video launched season three of its Tolkien adaptation 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' with a supersized rollout of four episodes at once. The season continues the Middle-earth storyline following the first two seasons of the big-budget series.
Researchers identified rock formations in northern China estimated to be 3.9 billion years old, placing them among the oldest known rock samples on Earth. The find offers a rare physical record from the planet's earliest geological period, known as the Hadean to early Archean eon.
Nature Futures has published a comedic short story structured as a classified government FAQ document, titled 'How to avoid aliens and live.' The piece, framed as guidance from a fictional 'Unified Earth Government, Office of Cosmic Silence,' offers tongue-in-cheek advice for surviving encounters with alien life after fictional disasters such as 'The Cascade Incident' and 'The Cake Problem.'
Researchers exposed the methane-producing microbe to perchlorates, toxic salts known to exist on Mars, along with oxygen-free, carbon-rich, low-pressure and highly saline conditions meant to mimic the Martian environment. Despite these harsh stressors, the organism continued to grow and reproduce in laboratory tests.
A hobbyist built an ambient 'Daylight Clock,' a 24-hour analog display that lights the circumference to show the current daylight span based on a set latitude and longitude. A companion control box lets users step through weeks to see seasonal daylight shifts, override brightness, select latitude via a slider aligned to an Equal Earth map, and toggle 'relative longitude' to simulate the west, center, or east edge of a time zone. The creator credits a friend's earlier daylight-aware clock project as the inspiration.
Google has updated the Google Earth app icon on its Play Store listing to a more colorful, gradient-heavy design, replacing the old all-blue wavy-line logo with one blending lavender-blue and bright blue tones. The new icon currently appears only on the Play Store and the Google Earth Engine website, while the Google Earth website and the installed app still show the old icon.
Kugelblitz is a new Mac application that renders Earth as a navigable 3D globe and atlas, layering satellite imagery, road maps and topographic data onto real terrain. It draws on freely available open geodata, including OpenStreetMap served via a dedicated Kugelblitz tile server, and runs without requiring a user account.
NASA says the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, launched in 2004 to study gamma-ray bursts, is expected to fall to Earth next week after 22 years in orbit. A $30 million rescue attempt in July 2026 using a robotic craft called LINK to boost Swift's orbit failed due to control-system problems, and increased solar activity since 2024 had already accelerated the satellite's descent by thickening the upper atmosphere. As of October 26, NASA reported Swift was orbiting less than 170 miles above Earth's surface.
Seoul Viosys has begun mass producing a white light-emitting chip, called WICOP 3, that uses gallium nitride instead of rare-earth materials like YAG. The chip can be made as small as 10 micrometres and the company says it costs roughly half as much to produce as conventional white LEDs, which currently rely on rare-earth coatings over blue LED chips.
Seoul Biosys announced on October 28 that it has begun mass-producing white micro LEDs built on its third-generation WICOP technology, which skips rare earth phosphors and conventional packaging. The initial product is a 25µm x 10µm chip delivering 0.015 lumens at roughly 100 lm/W efficiency, with a target of 200 lm/W within two years. The company says cutting rare earth materials and packaging components like silicone resin and lead frames could halve production costs.