Euro will fail in 10 years without reform Emmanuel Macron

French presidential candidate says currency amounts to a weak Deutsche Mark that has failed to unify EU states and stand up to the US dollar. The euro may not exist in 10 years time if Paris and Berlin fail to bolster the single currency union, French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has said, adding that the […]

Can this Al win a $200,000 poker battle?

An AI system named Libratus will go up against top poker players during matches later this month in Pittsburgh. Image: joe raedle/ Getty Images Artificial intelligence has already become a part of our everyday lives through AI-assisted services like Siri. But Al has its own hobbies too, including the mind-whirling game of poker. Scholars at […]

Vera Rubin obituary

Astronomer who found evidence of the existence of dark matter and became an inspiration for women in science. Vera Rubin once tweeted: “Dont let anyone tell you that you aren’t good enough. My science teacher once told me I wasn’t good enough for science and look at me now.” In the 1970s and early 80s […]

Will scientists ever prove the existence of dark matter?

Astronomers in the US are setting up an experiment which, if it fails as others have could mark the end of a 30-year-old theory. Deep underground, in a defunct gold mine in South Dakota, scientists are assembling an array of odd devices: a chamber for holding tonnes of xenon gas; hundreds of light detectors, each […]

Jonathan Raban: I felt pretty happy that I was still alive

The author on his recovery after a stroke and his fears for a dis-United States. On 11 June 2011, a few days before his 69th birthday, Jonathan Raban was sitting with his daughter Julia at home in Seattle. He’d felt foggy and out of sorts since waking. Having reheated a casserole, he looked down to […]