The black and yellow robot, meant to resemble a large dog, stood waiting for directions. When they came, the instructions weren’t in code but instead in plain English: “Visit the wooden desk exactly two times; in addition, don’t go to the wooden desk before the bookshelf.”

Four metallic legs whirred into action. The robot went from where it stood in the room to a nearby bookshelf, and then, after a brief pause, shuffled to the designated wooden desk before leaving and returning for a second visit to satisfy the command.

Until recently, such an exercise would have been nearly impossible for navigation robots like this one t...

New images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have helped Australian astronomers unlock secrets of how infant galaxies started an explosion of star formation in the very early universe.

Some early galaxies were abundant with a gas that glowed so bright it outshone emerging stars. In research published today, astronomers have now discovered just how prevalent these bright galaxies were some 12 billion years ago.

Images from the JWST have shown that almost 90% of the galaxies in the early universe had this glowing gas, producing so-called “extreme emission line features.”

“The stars in these young galaxies were remarkable, producing just the right amount of radiation to excite the surrounding gas...

New materials developed at the University of Surrey could pave the way for a new generation of flexible X-ray detectors, with potential applications ranging from cancer treatment to better airport scanners.

Traditionally, X-ray detectors are made of heavy, rigid material such as silicon or germanium. New, flexible detectors are cheaper and can be shaped around the objects that need to be scanned, improving accuracy when screening patients and reducing risk when imaging tumors and administering radiotherapy.

Dr. Prabodhi Nanayakkara, who led the research at the University of Surrey, said, “This new material is flexible, low-cost, and sensitive. But what’s exciting is that this material is tissue equivalent...

Artistic illustration of the thick dust torus thought to surround supermassive black holes and their accretion disks. [ESA / V. Beckmann (NASA-GSFC)] Credit: Durham University

A new study reveals that supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, known as quasars, can sometimes be obscured by dense clouds of gas and dust in their host galaxies.

Artistic illustration of the thick dust torus thought to surround supermassive black holes and their accretion disks. [ESA / V. Beckmann (NASA-GSFC)] Credit: Durham University

This challenges the prevailing idea that quasars are only obscured by donut-shaped rings of dust in the close vicinity of the black hole.

Quasars are extremely bright objects powered by black holes gorging on surrounding material...