Consciousness is arguably the most important scientific topic there is. Without consciousness, there would after all be no science. But while we all know what it is like to be conscious—meaning that we have personal awareness and respond to the world around us—it has turned out to be near impossible to explain exactly how it…
We spend most of our lives in buildings but they are responsible for 40 per cent of the EU’s energy consumption and 36 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions. A LIFE Award-winning project has the keys to change this trend. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is critical to achieving the EU’s 2050 climate…
An EU-backed computer tech company has demonstrated quantum communications over optical fibres over 600 km long, bringing us a big step closer to a quantum internet. Toshiba Europe’s Cambridge Research Laboratory has achieved a milestone in long-distance quantum communication, demonstrated for the first time on optical fibres exceeding 600 km in length. Achieved with support…
As communism imploded in 1989, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama asked if liberal democracy was “the end of history”, being the form all societies were destined to take. The past decades have suggested not. Illiberal democracies and hybrid democratic-authoritarian regimes continue to emerge. Fukuyama foresaw this possibility. He felt that citizens dissatisfied with liberty…
We may have walked on the Moon and sent probes across the solar system, but we know very little about what’s going on inside other planets. Now, for the first time, we have been able to view the interior of one, thanks to Nasa’s Mars InSight probe. The probe, which landed in 2018, is equipped…