Author: Nigel Pereira

Danish designer Bjorn Karmann has invented a camera that not only lacks a lens but doesn’t use light to create images. The vast majority of human beings probably haven’t used cameras without lenses since the first camera with a lens was invented in 1816. Before that, however, we had pinhole cameras which make use of the camera obscura effect dated back as far as 500 BCE. While there are still a lot of people who practice pinhole photography and there’s even a world pinhole photography day, a camera without a lens is basically useless to a photographer. Paragraphica camera. (Image…

Being able to actually remember, record, and dissect your own dreams could be an invaluable tool for everything from self-help to motivation, spirituality, and beyond. While this particular topic screams clickbait like no other, this writer assures you it is not. From lucid dreaming to astral travelling and the popularity of Season 1 of The Sandman on Netflix, as humans, we are obsessed with our dreams. If you are one of those people who have actually realised you were dreaming while you were dreaming, it is a feeling like none other and can only be compared to what it must…

Could the solution to this digital addiction be more technology? That’s what two ex-Apple employees Bethany Borgiono and Imran Chaudhri think. We are addicted to our phones, there’s no better way to say it. On average, we check our phones anywhere from 100 to about 350 times a day with an average screen time of close to 7 hours a day. That’s about 40% of our waking hours and it’s only getting worse. Image Credit: Freepik There used to be a time when people were aware of their surroundings while they walked around and would even greet each other at…

While human intuition is a key trait for survival, and cannot yet be duplicated by AI, it can get in the way of scientific research, according to Physicist Mario Krenn. AI seems to be all anyone is talking about of late, and you can’t blame them since we are pushing the boundaries of computation in an unprecedented manner. The amount of data that goes in and out of these machines is mind-boggling, not to mention the scary aspect that it is somehow making sense of all this data and even coming to conclusions based on it. While we now have…

Once you make a killer robot that can hunt and kill people on its own, you can’t put that genie back in the box – Nigel. If you missed our previous post on killer robots and the weaponization of AI you can catch it here. Where we left off, however, was a look at a number of upcoming projects like the robot tank from Russia that can outperform humans and the AI pilot from the United States that can similarly outperform its human counterparts. Image Credit: Rafael Jan Rorzyczka on Flickr A lot has happened since then and we now…

In addition to terrestrial, marine, aerial navigation, NavIC is also being used for military operations, disaster management, geodesy, resource monitoring and more. It’s been exactly 60 years since India started its journey into outer space. It was November 21st, 1963 when India launched its first rocket, an American rocket called The Nike Apache which was taken to its launch site on a bullock cart before being successfully launched 207 Kilometres into the atmosphere. Replica of Nike Apache. (Image Credit: Magerson Bilibio on Flickr) Fast forward to August 23rd, 2023, India becomes the first country to land a vehicle on the…

While the idea of getting bacteria to remove nutrients and generate electricity during the process sounds Utopian, it’s not unthinkable anymore! While most people associate Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria with severe diarrhea and stomach cramps, a recent study suggests this humble gut dweller could be the answer to a couple of important problems. Those problems being energy production and waste management. Low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria, magnified 10,000 times. Each individual bacterium is oblong shaped. (Image Credit: Wikipedia) That’s right, the answer to the energy crisis may just be a simple strain of bacteria…

Humans have been mesmerised by fire since the beginning of time and celebratory fireworks are a tradition that is literally centuries old. Fireworks are an integral part of so many cultures across the globe that it’s difficult to picture the world without them. That being said, however, fireworks have increasingly come under fire, no pun intended, for being unsustainable, polluting the environment, and even creating unhealthy and dangerous working conditions. While Diwali, Chinese New Year, or the 4th of July are all unimaginable without fireworks lighting up the skies, the recent incident with protestors in France using fireworks as weapons…

While many say a water-fueled car is impossible, the guy who built the first internal combustion engine thought otherwise. A car that runs on water would change the world, period. From an economy that practically runs on the petrodollar to the oil-rich countries that have grown wealthy beyond measure, a lot would change. That’s probably why many people believe the industrialists and oil tycoons of the world keep suppressing this invention every time it comes out. Stanley Meyer’s Water fuel cell concept. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons) The fact that Stanly Meyer, one of the first people to achieve fame by…

True brilliance is always found in the most unsuspecting places, like who would think a slime mould could design a railroad? The world of microbiology is like an entire other planet that exists alongside us but is just too small to see. If you’ve watched the Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi or the hit post-apocalyptic show The Last of Us, you know exactly how beneficial or deadly this world can be. Image Credit: Netflix We don’t often think about microorganisms when we talk about intelligent creatures, in fact, most of us don’t think about microorganisms at all. What’s interesting about this…