There are eight planets in our solar system – plus poor old Pluto, which was demoted in 2006 – but what if there were more? Turns out that might be the case. Astronomers have calculated there is a 7 per cent chance that Earth has another neighbour hiding in the Oort cloud, a spherical region of ice chunks and rocks that is tens of thousands of times farther from the sun than we are. “It’s completely plausible for our solar system to have captured such an Oort cloud planet,” said Nathan Kaib, a co-author on the work and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hidden worlds like this are “a class of planets that should definitely exist but have received relatively little attention” until now, he said.. If a planet is hiding in the Oort cloud, it’s almost certainly an ice giant. Large planets like Jupiter and Saturn are generally born as twins. They have huge gravitational pulls of their own, however, and sometimes destabilise one another. That could have led to a planet to be nudged out of the solar system entirely – or exiled to its outer reaches, where the Oort cloud resides. “The survivor planets have eccentric orbits, which are like the scars from their violent pasts,” said lead author Sean Raymond, researcher at the University of Bordeaux’s Astrophysics Laboratory. That means that the Oort cloud planet could have a significantly elongated orbit, unlike the near-perfect circle Earth tracks around the sun. Trouble is, when things are that far away, they’re pretty difficult to spot. “It would be extremely hard to detect,” added Raymond. “If a Neptune-sized planet existed in our own Oort cloud, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have found it yet,” said Malena Rice, an astronomer at MIT not involved in this work. “Amazingly, it can sometimes be easier to spot planets hundreds of light-years away than those right in our own backyard.” Time to crack out the telescope. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Apple is preparing a new update that will bring a host of new features to the iPhone. Some of the tools were announced in June, when Apple first showed off its major iOS 17 update, such as the long-awaited Journal app. That uses machine learning to understand what people have done in a day, and encourages them to write about their activities to remember them. Some are unexpected. That includes new updates to the iPhone 15 Pro’s action button: now, users can press the button to bring up a translate option, which shows a window and lets people speak text to have it appear in another language. The action button was introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro last month, as a replacement for the mute switch that can be mapped to any activity. Apple did not say then that it was planning to introduce new actions for that button. The new update also lets people add stickers as reactions on messages, collaborate on Apple Music playlists, redesigns the Apple TV app and some widgets, and more. iOS 17.2 was released as a developer beta update this week. It will likely make its way to everyone’s phones in November or December, though it will be possible to get it earlier by signing up to Apple’s public beta channel. Those on the public updates received their own update this week, in the form iOS 17.1. But the changes introduced with that update are more limited, such as new settings for the StandBy mode that shows when a phone is placed on its side and an AirDrop feature that lets transfers continue over the internet when devices are separated. Read More The Apple Watch feature everyone has been waiting for has finally arrived Apple’s plans for the future of AirPods might just have been revealed Apple TV+ and other subscriptions are about to get a lot more expensive

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Scientists have discovered a way to test whether someone is diabetic by having them speak just a few sentences into their smartphone. A team from US-based Klick Labs created an AI model capable of distinguishing whether a person has Type 2 diabetes from six to 10 seconds of voice audio, with tests revealing an 89 per cent accuracy rate for women and 86 per cent for men. “Our research highlights significant vocal variations between individuals with and without Type 2 diabetes and could transform how the medical community screens for diabetes,” said Jaycee Kaufman, a research scientist at Klick Labs. “Current methods of detection can require a lot of time, travel and cost. Voice technology has the potential to remove these barriers entirely.” The study involved analysing 18,000 recordings in order to identify acoustic features that differentiated non diabetics from diabetics. Using signal processing, they were able to detect subtle changes in pitch and intensity that are imperceptible to the human ear. The tool could prove useful for the estimated 240 million adults around the world who are currently living with the condition without realising, according to figures from the International Diabetes Federation. The latest research demonstrates the ever-growing role AI plays in healthcare, with the convergence of machine learning models, data science helping to improve patient treatment and assisting medical discoveries. The researchers claim the artificial intelligence model, which requires basic health data from the subject in order to determine whether they are diabetic, could be expanded to diagnose other health conditions. “Our research underscores the tremendous potential of voice technology in identifying Type 2 diabetes and other health conditions,” said Yan Fossat, vice president of Klick Labs and leader of the research. “Voice technology could revolutionise healthcare practices as an accessible and affordable digital screening tool.” The technology was detailed in a study, titled ‘Acoustic analysis and prediction of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus using smartphone-recorded voice segments’, published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity

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YouTube has suspended the monetisation of Russell Brand’s channel for “violating” its “creator responsibility policy”. In a statement to the PA news agency, a spokesperson for the Google-owned company said: “If a creator’s off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community.” The news comes after the remaining shows of Brand’s Bipolarisation tour were postponed and the Metropolitan Police said it had received a report of an alleged sexual assault in the wake of media allegations about the comedian and actor. Brand’s YouTube account, which has 6.6 million subscribers, has been suspended from YouTube’s partner account “following serious allegations against the creator”, meaning the channel is no longer able to make money from advertising on the platform. The statement added: “This decision applies to all channels that may be owned or operated by Russell Brand.” The 48-year-old actor has been accused of rape, assault and emotional abuse between 2006 and 2013, when he was at the height of his fame and working for the BBC, Channel 4 and starring in Hollywood films, following a joint investigation by The Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches. He has strongly denied the allegations, which also include claims of controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

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