Technology

Climate change caused the rise and fall of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, according to a new mathematical model of monsoon patterns. The civilisation existed in the basins of the Indus River – spanning modern day northeast Afghanistan, most of Pakistan and northwestern India – and was contemporaneous with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It lasted

Construction on HS2, the controversial high-speed railway, will get under way today, with a “shovels in the ground” moment. The government-owned company HS2 Ltd has not revealed the site of the event where breaking ground will take place, but it is understood Prime Minister Boris Johnson will attend. Mr Johnson said: “HS2 is at the

Hackers who hijacked the personal Twitter account of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi have told Sky News they did so after compromising his personal website. Tweets from Mr Modi’s account solicited cryptocurrency donations in both Bitcoin and Ethereum, although blockchain records suggest the attempted fraud was unsuccessful. It follows a similar cryptocurrency fraud on Twitter

Contact-tracing apps reduce transmissions and deaths even at very low levels of adoption, according to a new study from the University of Oxford and Google. The study provides reassurance regarding the value of coronavirus contact-tracing apps, which some had suggested would need to be used by 60% of the population to be effective. But the

Scientists have detected the most massive source of gravitational waves which has ever been recorded, and aren’t completely sure what caused it. Every previously observed gravitational wave signal has been detected from some kind of merger between two massive objects, whether black holes or neutron stars. “Although this event is consistent with being from an

A fake left-wing news organisation operated by the Russian agency accused of interfering in the US election in 2016 has been uncovered and banned by Facebook. The fake organisation – which said it was operated by people who didn’t really exist and whose images were artificially generated – was established this May, and was running

Men with larger waists or concentrations of fat around the belly are more likely to die of prostate cancer, new research has suggested. But the study of more than 200,000 men in the UK, carried out by researchers at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, at the University of Oxford found that there was no

Amazon’s drone delivery programme – which the company claimed would start “within months” more than a year ago – has won regulatory approval for trial flights in the US. The US Federal Aviation Administration has awarded the company a certification to trial commercial flights of its drones, although Amazon hasn’t confirmed precisely what tests will

We should expect more animal-to-human disease outbreaks to emerge in future, a leading scientist has warned. Professor Sarah Gilbert, who is heading the development of Oxford University’s coronavirus vaccine, says human activity is driving the rising threat of viruses and that the risk is unlikely to reduce as globalisation continues. “Greater population density, greater travel,

India and Russia have both been awarded gold at the Chess Olympiad after a major internet outage left two Indian players unable to compete in the finals. The Chess Olympiad takes place once every two years, featuring teams from across the world, and this year’s championship was held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The

A startup co-founded by Elon Musk has implanted new wireless technology into the brains of pigs with the aim of helping people with severe neurological conditions. The billionaire entrepreneur said that the company, Neuralink, had three pigs with two coin-sized implants each. He described them as “healthy, happy and indistinguishable from a normal pig”. Neuralink

A Tesla driver crashed into a police car after allegedly watching a film while his vehicle was on autopilot. A North Carolina state trooper and a Nash County deputy said it happened while they were responding to a previous crash on Highway 64. Devainder Goli’s car hit the deputy’s vehicle first, according to local media.

Amazon is launching a wearable wellness band and app it claims can read someone’s emotions using their voice. Unlike other health gadgets from the likes of Apple, Fitbit and Samsung, Amazon‘s Halo does not have a screen – which the tech giant says means it “won’t interrupt or distract you”, and is “comfortable, secure and

LG has announced a new battery-powered face mask, which the tech giant describes as a “wearable air purifier”. The device, called the PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier, allows the person wearing it to breathe in clean air both inside and outside. With a battery life of eight hours on a single charge, the design features two

An artificial intelligence algorithm has confirmed the existence of 50 new planets after it was used to analyse old NASA data. The algorithm, created by astronomers and scientists at the University of Warwick, was used to look at previous telescope missions. Data from NASA’s Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), missions investigating planets outside

A new guide to 5G has been published by the government, in an effort to dispel the growing conspiracy that the service harms people’s health. Some theories have emerged that suggest the emerging technology has links to the outbreak of the coronavirus, and that it can harm people by emitting dangerous levels of radiation –