Human or robot? Google's speech generator makes it hard to tell
28 December 2017
Instead of stitching together short human sound bites to create words and sentences, Google’s latest system generates vocals from the text alone
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Premium
Plants use sand armour to break teeth of attacking caterpillars
28 December 2017
Some plants are coated in sand, and it seems the sand grains act like medieval armour that protects these “psammophorous” plants from munching caterpillars
Our lust for tastier chocolate has transformed the cocoa tree
27 December 2017
Ever since we domesticated the cocoa tree over 3000 years ago, we have been breeding them to make tastier chocolate – but in the process we have made them vulnerable
Love at first sight is really just lust or even false memory
27 December 2017
One in three people say they’ve felt love at first sight, but experiments suggest the phenomenon is actually just physical attraction or distorted memories
The universe may be full of ex-moons flung from their home worlds
26 December 2017
Moons in other stellar systems may be hurled away from their planets up to 90 per cent of the time, leaving up to 100 former moons per star in the Milky Way
China tackles climate change with world's largest carbon market
22 December 2017
The Chinese state hopes to use market forces to encourage energy-hungry firms to seek cleaner alternatives, but simply telling them what to do may be more effective
Odd fossils hint first complex life hung on long after its time
22 December 2017
The strange Ediacarans were some of the earliest complex organisms on Earth. They are thought to have died out 540 million years ago but eight odd fossils suggest they survived far longer
Earth was smashed by a rock the size of Mars to make the moon
21 December 2017
4.5 billion years ago, a rock called Theia crashed into Earth and formed the moon. Now we know that it was probably only about a tenth the mass of our planet
3D-printed implant mends broken legs by turning into real bone
20 December 2017
Metal plates and pins for broken bones could be a thing of the past, with porous 3D implants as strong as the real thing used instead
Hardy Antarctic tardigrades may be threatened by climate change
20 December 2017
Tardigrades can famously survive almost anything, including being sent into space, but the Antarctic species could face problems as a result of climate change
