Technology

A ‘ring of fire’ is set to be visible over the UAE skies today, a spectacle that hasn’t occurred in the country since 1847, reports Khaleej Times. The event is called an annular solar eclipse and occurs when the moon covers majority of the sun, except its outer edges – creating a bright solar ring around the moon, often called ...

Astronomers have discovered six exoplanets, which may lead to better understanding of planets outside the Solar System, the Open University in UK announced on Monday. Led by researchers from the university, the team used the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a high-precision planet finding spectrograph, on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla in Chile, to ...

There has been no shortage of big news over the last decade. Spanning the globe, some stories were expected while others caught the world off guard. Some were so massive they were visible from space, captured through state-of-the-art imaging satellites belonging to technology company and imagery provider Maxar Technologies. Together, The Associated Press and Maxar assembled a selection of the ...

Photo: In this long exposure photo, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Boeing Starliner crew capsule lifts off on an orbital flight test to the International Space Station from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force station, Friday, Dec. 20, 2019, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Boeing aimed to bring its Starliner crew capsule back to ...

A Ukrainian security researcher reported finding a database with the names, phone numbers and unique user IDs of more than 267 million Facebook users — nearly all U.S.-based — on the open internet. That data was likely harvested by criminals,  said researcher Bob Diachenko, an independent security consultant in  Kyiv. The database, which Diachenko discovered with a search engine, was ...

NASA’s Mars 2020 rover has successfully passed its first driving test, according to a release of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday. A preliminary assessment of the rover’s activities on Tuesday showed that it checked all the necessary boxes as it rolled forward and backward and pirouetted in a clean room at JPL. The next time ...

Britain’s competition watchdog said Tuesday it launched a formal inquiry into Google’s takeover of cloud data analytics company Looker Data Sciences, as it intensifies scrutiny of technology deals. The Competition and Markets Authority said it had notified the two companies on Monday that it was opening an initial inquiry and would decide on Feb. 13 whether to escalate it to ...

NASA’s Juno mission spotted a new cyclone the size of Texas during a close flyby of Jupiter in November. The gas giant is already home to several giant cyclones, and this newly discovered storm will offer even more insight into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Juno’s cameras spied giant cyclones gathered at Jupiter’s poles soon after its arrival in July 2016 — nine ...

North Korea said Saturday it successfully performed another “crucial test” at its long-range rocket launch site that would further strengthen its “reliable strategic nuclear deterrent.” The announcement comes as North Korea continues to pressure the Trump administration over an end-of-year deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations. North Korea’s Academy of Defense Science did not ...

China reported accelerating shipments of 5G handsets in November as smartphone makers race to tap the emerging market. A total of 5.074 million 5G smartphones were shipped last month, exceeding the combined shipments of the previous 10 months, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed. China’s 5G smartphone shipments reached 8.355 million sets in the ...