India’s consumer technology stocks are on a tear this year, handsomely beating their larger rivals in China and

In the vast woodlands that surround the Bavarian city of Augsburg, Eva Ritter looks across piles upon piles

The dinosaurs may have been extinct for more than 65 million years but scientists have suggested that they could still exist as aliens on other planets. Researched published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that dinosaurs might not only be on other planets but that we could also find them. The study suggests that if scientists researched compounds that are not currently on Earth but ones that were around during the age of the dinosaurs then it may yield some results. One key element that scientists believe could unlock what would be a groundbreaking discovery is oxygen. The levels of oxygen on Earth at the moment are around 21 per cent but during the time of dinosaurs it was higher at 30 per cent. This, in theory, allowed the dinosaurs to flourish and rule the planet for millions of years. The study suggests that if similar levels of oxygen can be discovered on faraway planets then the conditions could be right for alien like dinosaurs to exist. The study's co-author Lisa Kaltenegger said in a statement: "Modern Earth's light fingerprint has been our template for identifying potentially habitable planets, but there was a time when this fingerprint was even more pronounced — better at showing signs of life." She adds: "This gives us hope that it might be just a little bit easier to find signs of life — even large, complex life — elsewhere in the cosmos." One clue that could unlock this discovery which scientists are looking for are signs of a Phanerozoic stage on a planet which would allow creatures like dinosaurs to evolve. The study's lead author, Rebecca Payne of Cornell University, said: "The Phanerozoic is just the most recent 12 per cent or so of Earth's history, but it encompasses nearly all of the time in which life was more complex than microbes and sponges. These light fingerprints are what you'd search for elsewhere if you were looking for something more advanced than a single-celled organism." If they are successful in finding these conditions on other planets then Kaltenegger believes it could lead to the discovery of dinosaurs that have never been found on Earth. "Hopefully we'll find some planets that happen to have more oxygen than Earth right now because that will make the search for life just a little bit easier," she said. "And, who knows, maybe there are other dinosaurs waiting to be found." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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.

Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers highlighted the soaring cost of disaster management in his nation ahead of a potentially

WASHINGTON Twenty-two Republican lawmakers urged the Federal Trade Commission to drop its fight against Microsoft's deal to buy

Bitcoin mining requires as much water annually as all of the baths in Britain, according to a new analysis of the cryptocurrency’s environmental impact. Financial economist Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, estimated that roughly 1.6 trillion litres of water each year is required to cool the computers used to support the cryptocurrency’s network. Separate research from 2018 found that 1.6 trillion litres is how much bath water the British public sends down the plughole every year – enough to fill roughly 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The latest analysis, which was published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability on Wednesday, suggested that a single bitcoin transaction could use as much water as a backyard swimming pool. “Many parts of the world are experiencing droughts, and fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource,” said Mr de Vries. “If we continue to use this valuable resource for making useless computations, I think that reality is really painful.” The “useless computations” refer to the complex calculations required to mint new units of the cryptocurrency and verify transactions on the network. The use of water to cool the necessary hardware could be significantly reduced if miners shifted their operations underwater, with companies like Microsoft already placing some of their data centres in the ocean in order to cool them. Earlier this month, China announced that it had begun building the world’s largest underwater data centre in order to reduce electricity and water costs. Bitcoin has previously been criticised for its electricity consumption, with Mr de Vries’s Energy Consumption Index estimating that the cryptocurrency’s network uses roughly as much electricity as the country of Poland. Bitcoin advocates have refuted accusations relating to bitcoin’s electricity consumption, claiming that miners are increasingly turning to renewable energy sources as the costs of wind and solar drop. A recently published study suggests bitcoin mining could actually help speed up the transition to renewable energy, as solar and wind energy installations could earn hundreds of millions of dollars mining bitcoin during periods of excess electricity generation. ”These rewards can act as an incentive for miners to adopt clean energy sources, which can lead to combined positive effects on climate change mitigation, improved renewable power capacity, and additional profits during pre-commercial operation of wind and solar farms,” said Apoorv Lal, a doctoral student at Cornell University who was involved in the research. Read More Bitcoin mining could supercharge transition to renewables, study claims Bitcoin mining rate hits all-time high amid record-breaking prediction for 2024 Elon Musk scam ads appear on X as key advertisers depart Scientists find planets moving around in strange ‘rhythm’ Astronomers find unprecedented ‘disc’ around distant planet Scientists have cooked ‘alien haze’ that could help find life

From top-rated costumes to horror movies from Shout Factory, these last-minute Halloween deals on Amazon can help you save—and keep things spooky.

Threads, Instagram’s new Twitter rival, has now hit 70 million sign-ups, parent company Meta has said. The app is now easily the fastest-growing app in the world, and has seen the fastest growth of any app ever. That position was originally held by ChatGPT, but it took a couple of months for that app to reach 100 million users. It also means that Threads is well on its way to the size of Twitter, its rival. That app had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Elon Musk’s buyout latest last year. Meta revealed the latest sign-up numbers as it looked to highlight high-profile early adopters, including Selena Gomez, Khloe Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton. It did not reveal how many posts had been made on the site, though that is already likely to be in the hundreds of millions. Meta launched Threads – which uses Instagram branding and borrows accounts from the platform – late on Wednesday. Since then it has been growing quickly, with the number of users seemingly doubling every few hours. Dubbed as the “Twitter-Killer”, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and US on Thursday. Its arrival comes after Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Musk have traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas. “The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said. Twitter responded on Thursday by threatening to sue Meta, according to the publication Semafor, citing a letter delivered to Zuckerberg by a lawyer for Twitter. Twitter was not immediately available for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the Semafor report. Meta said no one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee. Numerous competitors to Twitter have sprung up following Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media platform last year, which was followed by a series of chaotic decisions that have alienated both users and advertisers. Musk’s latest move involved limiting the number of tweets users can read per day. Twitter’s stumbles make room for a well-funded competitor like Meta Platforms, analysts and experts said, particularly because of its access to Instagram users and its advertising strength. “Meta’s release of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a fighting chance to unseat Twitter,” said Niklas Myhr, professor of marketing at Chapman University, referring to the turmoil at Twitter after it limited the number of tweets users can see. “Threads will be off to a running start as it is built upon the Instagram platform with its massive user base and if users adopt Threads, advertisers will be following closely behind.” Other competitors have found limited success. Mastodon, another Twitter-like app, has 1.7 million monthly active users, according to its website, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky has about 265,000 users. Read More People are realising something really worrying about Threads Twitter threatens legal action against Meta over new ‘Threads’ app Meta responds to Musk’s threat as Threads becomes most rapidly downloaded app Musk, Zuckerberg and the chaotic fight to succeed Twitter Kim Kardashian, Rylan Clark and Dalai Lama among those joining new app Threads Threads is already more than three times bigger than every Twitter rival combined

There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee BENGALURU Encouraged by high-profile successes elsewhere, India wants its private space companies to increase their

Melting glaciers could raise sea levels more than previously thought because of the way polar ice behaves where

Apple is about to hold its biggest event of the year: the iPhone launch. This year, however, it will bring a whole host of new products, including Watches and AirPods too. And those products could be notable as much for their ports as much as any new features they will bring, as Apple is widely expected to finally make a long-rumoured change away from the classic Lightning connector. Here is everything Apple is expected to show at the event on 12 September, which it has called “Wonderlust”. iPhone 15 – four of them It is a long time since just one iPhone was introduced during the iPhone event, and these days Apple seems to have settled on a fairly reliable line-up of four. This year that means there should be an iPhone 15, an iPhone 15 Plus, an iPhone 15 Pro and an iPhone 15 Pro Max. The two larger phones generally are the same as their smaller counterparts, beyond the obvious difference in size, and those sizes should be the same 6.1 inches and 6.7 inches as the iPhone 14 line-up. This year however there will be a small distinction between the Pro and Pro Max. The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus will have much more modest upgrades, which mostly bring it in line with the existing iPhone 14 Pro. It will get the Dynamic Island and a faster chip, rumours suggest. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will get the more meaningful upgrades. They will include a new chip in the form of the A17, an action button instead of a mute switch, and camera improvements. The camera on the iPhone 15 Pro Max will get its own addition: a periscope camera. That technology has already come to some competitors and means that a long lens can be folded into a small space, allowing for extra zoom capabilities, though it will not fold so small that it will fit in the smaller-sized phone. And all of those iPhones will switch to USB-C rather than the Lightning port that has been on the phone for more than a decade. It remains to be seen whether that will add new capabilities straight away, and last time Apple switched connector it caused quite a stir given the requirement to buy new cables and peripherals. Apple Watch Series 9 The Apple Watch Series 9 is also expected to be a fairly small upgrade. It will get a new processor that will make it faster, but on the outside it will stay the same, in the same design. That upgrade could be the first substantial upgrade to the inside of the iPhone in years. As well as making the Watch run faster, it could also improve its battery life. Apple Watch Ultra The Apple Watch Ultra – first introduced last year – is also set to get its own upgrade. Those too are likely to be limited. It will get all the upgrades from the normal version of the Apple Watch, such as its improved processor. Rumours also suggest that it could be lighter and come in a new, darker colour. AirPods In recent days, rumours have suggested that Apple could be launching new AirPods Pro too. It’s unclear whether that’s just a change of ports to match the iPhone’s, or something more significant. It also remains to be seen whether Apple will offer that case on its own, or require people to buy a whole new set of AirPods to get it. The AirPods Pro case does have wireless charging, so even those stuck with the old version can theoretically power up their iPhone and earphones with the same charger. Other accessories The switch away from the Lightning port doesn’t only affect the iPhone and the AirPods. There are plenty of other devices that still use that port: the AirPods Max, Apple’s Mac peripherals like its keyboards and trackpads, and one of the iPads. Apple could use the event to announce that all of those will be making the switch too. Or it might wait until more relevant events: iPad launches for the tablet, for instance, and Mac launches for the keyboard and other accessories. Headset The headset was revealed in June at Apple’s last big event, its Worldwide Developers Conference. Since then Apple has been largely quiet about it – and the developers that have been using it since have been sworn to secrecy. The headset isn’t due until early next year. But Apple will almost certainly use the event to remind people that it’s coming, and perhaps give some updates. (A potential surprise for the iPhone would be if it can capture the three-dimensional images and videos that can be viewed in the headset, and were a key part of Apple’s demonstration of it. It certainly makes sense that it would be coming to some iPhone in the future.) Surprises? Apple is well-known for introducing surprises at the end of its events. But in fact, they are actually quite rare – especially these days, and especially at iPhone events where Apple wants to ensure the focus is on its biggest products. So there is of course some chance of a big surprise. But it seems unlikely, given how action packed the event already seems to be. Read More Apple announces major event to reveal new phone Apple says its new product is making people ‘audibly gasp’ The powerful technology hidden in every iPhone – and all around you iPhone 15 could bring two major changes to fix battery life iPhone owners to receive payouts from Apple iPhone 15: Global smartphone demand collapses as Apple aims to take top spot