AI Makes It Harder To Spot Bots On Social Media

Researchers at Copenhagen Business School conducted a study with 375 participants to find out how well they could distinguish fake social media accounts from real ones. To create fake accounts, they used AI-generated profile pictures and AI-generated tweets. They found that the participants identified fake accounts with a mean accuracy of 48.9%, which is pretty much as good (or bad) as a random guess. Paper here, press release here.

Astronomers Find New Comet That'll Become Visible in 2024

You can check out the newest Science News episode here.Today we’ll talk about a new comet, drone deliveries, how the hydrogen economy could actually make global warming worse, a better way to control spin qubits, modular robots that could work on the moon, soft crystals, how to turn a phone into a fluorescent microscope, and of course, the telephone will ring.

Newly-Spotted Asteroid Has Small Chance Of Hitting Earth In 2046 

NASA has identified an asteroid that has a 1-in-670 chance of hitting Earth on Feb 14, 2046. The asteroid has a size of about 50 metres. It wouldn’t be an extinction-level event, but would leave a pretty big crater about the size of a city. However, the current measurements have a high uncertainty and the most likely thing to happen next is that, as measurements improve, a collision with Earth can be ruled out. Fingers crossed. You can track the asteroid on the NASA website and find a great summary of the situation on Universe Today.

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Artificial Photosynthesis With Record Efficiency

A European Consortium coordinated by researchers at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia has developed a low-cost fuel cell that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water to fuels, such as ethanol. They report a record-breaking sunlight-to-fuel efficiency of 10%. Better still, the fuel cell does not rely on rare and costly elements for operation. I believe that the most plausible near-time replacement for fossil fuels are artificially-produced fuels and artificial photosynthesis is a promising way to go about it. Press release here, paper here.

In this week’s video, we survey the biggest and most interesting nuclear fusion startups hoping to make nuclear fusion commercially relevant. What are the different approaches, how far along are they, and what are the pros and cons? This video has been in the works for months and it's the longest video we've made so far (almost half an hour), so I hope you have a comfortable seat!

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