Odysseus spacecraft comms from moon expected to halt on Wednesday

Odysseus spacecraft comms from moon expected to halt on Wednesday

Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, was expected to go dark on Wednesday, six days after an off-kilter touchdown that hindered its communications and solar-charging capability, NASA and the company that flew the vehicle said. Despite persistent difficulties in communicating with the lander and keeping it charged, … Read more

Canadian contribution to private lunar lander could lead to a telescope on the moon

Canadian contribution to private lunar lander could lead to a telescope on the moon

The first private spacecraft to softly land on the moon carries a Canadian instrument that will test the possibility of building an observatory at the Lunar south pole. The phone booth-sized lander by Intuitive Machines, named Odysseus, launched on Feb. 15 and touched down on Thursday near a small impact crater about 300 kilometers from the moon’s south … Read more

OpenAI unveils Sora, a tool that uses AI to generate videos from written prompts

OpenAI unveils Sora, a tool that uses AI to generate videos from written prompts

The maker of ChatGPT on Thursday unveiled its next leap into generative artificial intelligence with a tool that instantly makes short videos in response to written commands. San Francisco-based OpenAI’s new text-to-video generator, called Sora, isn’t the first of its kind. Google, Meta and the startup Runway are among the other companies to have demonstrated … Read more

Canadian astronaut unveils Indigenous-designed patch he will wear on upcoming moon mission

Canadian astronaut unveils Indigenous-designed patch he will wear on upcoming moon mission

Children gathered at First Nations University of Canada in Regina Thursday watched in awe as astronaut Jeremy Hansen unveiled the patch, designed by an Indigenous artist, that he will wear as the first Canadian to fly to the moon. Hansen, who is from London, Ont., is one of four crew members set to travel around the moon during … Read more

Canadian writer Mark Steyn ordered to pay climate scientist $1M US after defamation trial

Canadian writer Mark Steyn ordered to pay climate scientist M US after defamation trial

A jury on Thursday awarded $1 million US to climate scientist Michael Mann, who sued a pair of conservative writers 12 years ago after they compared his depictions of global warming to a convicted child molester. Mann, a professor of climate science at the University of Pennsylvania, rose to fame for a graph first published … Read more

How smart marketing, scarce supply and unique colours made the Stanley cup a must-have item

How smart marketing, scarce supply and unique colours made the Stanley cup a must-have item

The Stanley Quencher, pictured for sale on the company’s website, is an insulated stainless steel travel mug that’s become extremely popular on social media and among consumers. A dramatic rise in the company’s revenue is being attributed in part to the tumbler. (Stanley) The Stanley cup is so popular these days that even technology giants … Read more

Dress code: How a Winnipeg codebreaker cracked one of the ‘world’s top unsolved messages’

Dress code: How a Winnipeg codebreaker cracked one of the ‘world’s top unsolved messages’

University of Manitoba research computer analyst Wayne Chan holds a copy of the Silk Dress cryptogram. (Trevor Brine/CBC) “Bismark Omit leafage buck bank.” That seemingly random string of words appears in something called the Silk Dress cryptogram, 23 handwritten lines on two sheets of crinkled paper that were discovered in a hidden pocket of a Victorian-era dress … Read more

Volcano in Iceland erupts after weeks of activity, evacuation of town

Volcano in Iceland erupts after weeks of activity, evacuation of town

A volcanic eruption started Monday night on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, turning the sky orange and prompting the country’s civil defence to be on high alert. The eruption appears to have occurred about four kilometres from the town of Grindavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. Grainy webcam video showed the moment of the eruption as a flash of … Read more