Blog

Astronomers Detect Radio Signals Originating From an Exoplanet

Catwell

An April 2010 VLT image showing Beta Pictoris b located 6.5 AU from its star. (Image Credit: ESO) A gas giant called Beta Pictoris b, located about 63 light-years from Earth, has been emitting strongly circularly polarized bursts. Astronomers recent...
- 8 Oct 2026
NASA Moves PRIMA Into Phase B Development

Catwell

Artist’s illustration of the PRIMA observatory. (Image Credit: NASA/JPC-Caltech) NASA recently chose the Probe Far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) to move from Phase A to Phase B, the next development stage. This brings PRIMA c...
- 2 Oct 2026
Audio-Technica U841A Microphone Teardown

shabaz

It’s not everyday I take apart a (reasonably pricey) microphone! But, I was curious, and taking things apart is sometimes how one learns. A long time ago I took apart an Echo Dot, which contains very different microphone technology (MEMS d...
- 23 Sep 2026
Harvard Researchers Discover That Lab-Grown Organoids Can Retain Developmental Stages

Catwell

Harvard’s lab-grown organoids. (Image Credit: Carlos Sanchez/Harvard FAS Staff Photographer) It takes years for the human brain to develop. And this makes it difficult to experimentally study some maturation stages. Harvard University researc...
- 23 Sep 2026
Underwater Drone Deployed in The Baltic Sea

Catwell

Seaber’s YUCO-PHYSCICO underwater drone. (Image Credit: Seaber) Water layers in the Baltic Sea don’t always stay in the same place. In August, researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) used an u...
- 22 Sep 2026
Anello Photonics Introduces New Technology for Navigation

Catwell

Small SiPhOG chip. (Image Credit: Anello Photonics) Today’s navigation systems must be accurate, especially when GPS signals aren’t available or reliable. Although jamming blocks those signals, spoofing can send false positioning data to...
- 11 Sep 2026
An AI System Set Course to Our Nearest Star System

Catwell

Alpha Centauri. (Image Credit: European Southern Observatory/Digitized Sky Survey 2; Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin/Mahdi Zamani) By the end of 2029, the nonprofit Fermi Explorer Mission is aiming to launch an interstellar spacecraft to Alpha Cent...
- 11 Sep 2026
Love Birds and Artwork? Try Out Fugleramme!

Catwell

The Fugleramme device captures bird songs and draws an illustration of the species on an e-ink display. (Image Credit: arnegiacomo/GitHub) I love love love this. It’s one of those project where you lean back and say, why didn’t I think o...
- 10 Sep 2026
Sensor Array Discovers an Underground Reservoir at Old Faithful

Catwell

(Image Credit JillWellington/pixabay) The Old Faithful geyser has a secret. And University of Utah scientists uncovered it. Beneath the area around the geyser lies a network of fractures and pores that forms part of its hydrothermal system. This con...
- 4 Sep 2026
Voyager 1 Signal Detected by Amateurs

Catwell

Artist’s rendering of Voyager traveling through space. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) In late 2024, skilled radio amateurs with CAMRAS used the Dwingeloo Observatory to detect the carrier signal of Voyager 1 from over 15.5 billion miles away...
- 27 Aug 2026
Engineers Develop Living Circuit Boards Using Bacteria That Work Like Transistors

Catwell

MIT has engineered bacteria to function like transistors for living circuit boards. (Image Credit: MIT) Transistors are used in circuitry to control electrical signal flow. But now there is a bio-inspired one. MIT engineers modified bacteria that ca...
- 25 Aug 2026
Human Neurons to Power Data Centers in Australia and Scientists Create Virtual Fly

Catwell

(Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist/pixabay) Something about these developments makes me think we’re living in a dystopian science fiction timeline. Really unsettling. How much brain matter is needed for consciousness? Cortical Labs, an Austr...
- 21 Aug 2026
Apollo 11’s Software Was Woven by Hand

Catwell

Launch of the Apollo 11 mission. (Image Credit: NASA) Before launching, the Apollo 11 software had to become physical. It wasn’t electronically written into its computer. After programmers wrote and verified the software, the binary instructi...
- 20 Aug 2026
Two Laser Pulses Steer an Electron Beam

Catwell

Illustrating showing two colored laser pulses moving an electron beam in different directions. (Image Credit: Yiming Gong/University of Michigan) University of Michigan engineers recently developed a device that uses laser light to control electron ...
- 13 Aug 2026
Wildlands Network is Tracking Pronghorn to See If Solar Projects Affect It

Catwell

A pronghorn. (Image: pixabay) Solar projects are spreading across landscapes, and researchers are investigating how wildlife adapts to them. Wildlands Network fitted 75 female pronghorns with GPS collars to understand how they move across areas with...
- 4 Aug 2026
Vision Restoration Implant Gains European Approval

Catwell

The tiny PRIMA implant helps restore lost vision. (Image Credit: Science Corporation) Brain-computer interfaces have come a long way. And now they’re being deployed in real-world healthcare, with new devices helping patients regain lost abilit...
- 28 Jul 2026
Venezuelan Residents Received an Alert When the Earthquakes Struck

Catwell

In 2020, Southern California experienced a 4.5-magnitude earthquake. Android phones were notified when the quake hit. (Image Credit: Google) Small earthquakes, which cause little to no damage, happen every day. Occasionally, stronger ones strike. Th...
- 15 Jul 2026
Last Year, Paradromics and the University of Michigan Implanted A BCI In a Research Participant

Catwell

The Connexus BCI recorded neural activity as soon as they fire. (Image Credit: University of Michigan) Elon Musk’s Neuralink has competition in the brain-computer interface (BCI) space. In collaboration with Paradromics, University of Michig...
- 10 Jul 2026
Commercial LiDAR Sensor Can Allow You to See Around Corners

Catwell

MIT researchers have turned a smartphone LiDAR sensor into a system that can see around corners. (Image Credit: Aaron Young/MIT Media Lab) One might think it’s impossible to see around corners without special equipment. But MIT researchers ha...
- 30 Jun 2026
Researchers Develop a Light-Based Chip That Processes Information

Catwell

Artist’s impression of a photonic valleytronic chip that processes information. (Image Credit: Chi Linn) Monash University researchers recently developed a tiny circuit that generates light signals, precisely routes them, and turns them into e...
- 25 Jun 2026
Monitoring Mains Current: Experimenting with the SCT013 Current Clamp

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction What Is It? Sensitivity Testbed ‘Scope Traces Example ADC Circuit Summary Introduction The SCT013 (sometimes called SCT-013) is popular in a lot of home automation projects, for monitoring the current consu...
- 17 Jun 2026
Can LEDs Influence Human Visual Performance?

Catwell

(Image Credit: BrianPenny/pixabay) University College London (UCL) researchers looked into whether LED lights limited spectral range negatively affects vision. They compared LED office lighting with broader-spectrum incandescent lighting, with infra...
- 5 Jun 2026
Researchers Develop Tiny Memory That Improves as it Shrinks

Catwell

Rendering of the 25-nanometer wide FTJ developed by Science Tokyo. (Image Credit: Yutaka Majima of the Royal Society of Chemistry) Engineers at Science Tokyo developed a 25-nanometer-wide ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) memory that improves perf...
- 12 May 2026
Maker Develops RAM In Backyard Shed

Catwell

RAM. (Image Credit: PublicDomainPictures/pixabay) I’d love to upgrade to DDR5 ram someday, I was just looking at those prices. I think we all know, RAM prices are crazy high due to the AI demand soaking up the memory supply. And there may not ...
- 29 Apr 2026
Electronics Engineer Builds a PLFM Open-Source Radar System

Catwell

Nawfal built an affordable and accessible radar system that operates at 10.5 GHz. (Image Credit: Nawfal Motii) Morocco-based electronics engineer Nawfal developed an affordable, open-source AERIS-10 radar system that combines SDR hardware with ...
- 22 Apr 2026