Beyond Infinity

Mark Sirangelo, Special Assistant to the NASA Administrator, was hired to get America back to the Moon in 2024. He resigned just 6 weeks into the job, after Congress knocked back extra funding for the effort. A 21st century manned lunar landing continues to recede into the distant future due to political infighting, budget constraints and confusion over long-term plans for American human spaceflight.

10,000 computers operated by City Hall continue to be locked up in a ransomware scandal that has exposed just how unprepared Baltimore is to cyber attack. Parking fines can't be processed, houses can't be sold, bills remain unpaid and public services have been curtailed. There is no data back up, no insurance and no budget to even pay the ransom.

Early investors in blockchain start-up Block.One stand to make 6,500% in 3 years care of a buyback. But some are hanging in there, believing "the success story is just beginning". The company boasts its technology will put ownership of data back in the hands of users and it will soon announce a social media product.

Researchers at Washington State University have invented an environmentally-friendly foam made from nanocrystals of cellulose that is a better insulator than polystyrene.

Adobe has warned Creative Cloud users they're no longer licensed to use older versions of the popular software and could be sued if they do so.

Physicist Dr. Tony Heyes offers his thoughts on the now famous image obtained of the super massive black hole at the centre of neighbouring galaxy M87. It was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope, a planet-wide array of eight ground-based radio telescopes and released in April 2019.

The wireless technology is incredibly useful and integrated into a host of devices, but the underlying specifications run to 3000 pages and are almost unintelligible. There are security vulnerabilities, especially for business and corporations. And the advice for everyday users: turn Bluetooth off when not in use.

Josiah Zayner live streamed injecting himself with gene editing compound CRISR at a biotech conference. He sells DIY CRISPR and other biohacking paraphernalia on his website The Odin. Now he's being investigated by Consumer Affairs in California for practicing medicine without a license.

We chat with physicist Dr.Tony Heyes about new Hubble Space Telescope data which seem to suggest that dark energy is somehow involved in speeding up and slowing down the expansion of the universe.

In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev formulated his periodic table which revolutionised how we see the world by ordering elements according to their atomic weight. Retired scientist Dr. Tony Heyes offers his thoughts on this vital scientific landmark.

Two developers offered a warning to others at this year's Game Developers Conference: making a buck out of gaming apps shouldn't just be a race to the bottom (even though they made money with minimal effort).

The US government wants to send people back to the Moon by 2024 and Jeff Bezos welcomes the plan. His rocket company Blue Origin could help with the task and has a big lunar lander called Blue Moon under development.

US Senator Josh Hawley wants to ban the sale of loot boxes in games targeted at children under the age of 18. He considers addictive games to be manipulative and exploitative, "siphoning kids attention from the real world".

In the future, AI may decide if you are really you at passport control. AI, facial recognition, iris and fingerprint scans and other biometric data will be used to streamline immigration processing. At least until the system crashes or is hacked.

If you were after a log of a phone with ultra long battery life, Energizer's 18,000 mAh battery-with-a-phone-in-it isn't made for you, after failing miserably with its Indiegogo crowd funding attempt.

Search engine DuckDuckGo proposes a new law which would compel big internet companies like Google and Facebook to honour your browser preferences with regard to tracking. If you select "do not track", then this will actually happen, rather than being ignored.

Three containers of sealed moon rocks will soon be opened 50 years after they were collected by Apollo astronauts. Scientists are hoping that modern lab analysis will yield new information about the early history of the Earth-Moon system.

After a 2 year international investigation, the dark net's biggest drug marketplace has been closed. The sophisticated operation was being run out of New Jersey by three men. When their property was raided, police made the largest pill seizure in New Jersey history.

Prolific Chinese Android App developer DO Global has been banned from the Google Play store after being caught out committing ad fraud and violating other Google policies. This is a serious embarrassment for Google, which has suffered reputational damage to the core of its advertising-based business model.

China and others are rapidly expanding their presence in Antarctica - not just for scientific purposes. There are now 80 international bases with several new ones under construction. Will the 1959 Antarctic Treaty continue to restrict activity in the world's last pristine wilderness? And is Australia's 42% sovereign claim to the continent at risk?