Engineering
How Do Submarines Rise and Sink?
Submarines dive by opening vents so seawater floods main ballast tanks, increasing the vessel’s average density and reducing buoyancy. They surface by forcing that…
Oct 10, 2026 • 13 min readTHE NEXT FRONTIER
Technology & AI
Explore technology and artificial intelligence, examining how systems work, where they are useful and what their limitations mean.
EDITOR’S PICK
How Artificial Intelligence Actually Learns
AI learns by adjusting parameters to reduce errors—not like a human mind. Explore data, loss, backpropagation, transformers, evaluation and bias.
Sep 16, 2026 • 7 min readRead the discovery →LATEST
Latest discoveries
New stories, explanations and research from Technology & AI.
Materials Technology
How Does Velcro Work?
Hook-and-loop fasteners work through two textile surfaces. One carries many tiny stiff hooks; the other carries soft loops. Pressing them together lets hooks enter…
Oct 10, 2026 • 13 min read
Digital Life
How Do Noise-Cancelling Headphones Work?
Active noise-cancelling headphones use microphones to measure surrounding sound, electronics to estimate the sound arriving at the ear and speakers to generate a matching…
Oct 9, 2026 • 13 min read
Digital Life
How Do Touchscreens Know Where You Touch?
Most modern phones use projected-capacitive touchscreens. A transparent pattern of conductive electrodes creates an electric field above the glass. A conductive finger changes the…
Oct 7, 2026 • 13 min read
Energy Technology
How Do Batteries Store and Release Energy?
A battery stores energy in chemicals capable of undergoing a redox reaction. Its two electrodes and electrolyte keep oxidation and reduction partly separated. When…
Oct 6, 2026 • 13 min read
Digital Life
How Transistors Switch and Amplify Electronic Signals
A transistor controls current in a circuit. The same broad ability supports digital switching and signal amplification, with the extra output energy supplied by…
Sep 29, 2026 • 3 min read
Future Technology
How Desalination Turns Seawater into Fresh Water
Desalination separates fresh water from dissolved salts using membranes or evaporation. Energy, pretreatment, post-treatment and concentrated brine all shape the result.
Sep 29, 2026 • 3 min read
Future Technology
How Do Solar Panels Generate Electricity?
Solar photovoltaic panels generate electricity when semiconductor cells absorb photons and free charge carriers. An internal electric field separates those charges, metal contacts collect…
Sep 29, 2026 • 13 min read
Digital Life
How Light Carries Internet Data Through Glass Fibres
Fibre-optic systems encode data onto light, confine it within exceptionally pure glass and recover the signal after it travels through cables, amplifiers and network…
Sep 28, 2026 • 12 min read
Digital Life
How Data Compression Makes Files Smaller
Compression represents information using fewer bits by removing statistical redundancy or discarding selected details, with different tradeoffs for text, images, audio and video.
Sep 26, 2026 • 12 min readWORTH KNOWING
Popular & evergreen
Digital Life
How Undersea Cables Carry the Global Internet
Hair-thin glass fibers inside armored ocean cables move most intercontinental data as pulses of light between landing stations.
Sep 18, 2026 • 13 min read
Future Technology
How Quantum Computers Detect and Correct Errors
Quantum information is fragile, yet researchers can detect mistakes without directly reading and destroying the state they want to protect.
Sep 14, 2026 • 8 min read
Digital Life
Why GPS Would Fail Without Einstein’s Relativity
Every GPS position depends on clocks orbiting Earth—and those clocks do not tick at the same rate as clocks on the ground.
Sep 14, 2026 • 8 min read
Robotics
How Robots Learn to Walk Without Step-by-Step Programming
Modern legged robots can practice millions of simulated attempts, optimize a control policy and transfer the result into machines that still have to survive…
Sep 14, 2026 • 4 min read