Indonesia-based e-commerce firm Tokopedia is the latest startup to enter the Vision Fund after it raised $1.1 billion Series G round led by the SoftBank megafund and Alibaba. SoftBank and Alibaba are existing investors in the business — the Chinese e-commerce giant led a $1.1 billion round last year, while …

Honor and Xiaomi have both pre-announced phones using new 48MP sensor designs. Huawei subsidiary Honor’s View 20 — officially launched this week — taps Sony’s IMX586 version, and Xiaomi is teasing a 48MP model with an unknown sensor, perhaps either Sony’s or Samsung’s similar chip. Whether phone makers use Sony or …

Australia is now the first Western nation to ban security, following a decision by its parliament to pass a bill forcing companies to hand over encrypted data to police upon demand. The government will be allowed to demand this without judicial review or oversight of any kind, beyond the requirement …

Several days ago, a gust of wind swept across Elysium Planitia on the surface of Mars. This has happened uncountable times over the eons, but never before was a robot on hand to record the sound of that wind. Now, NASA’s InSight lander is sitting on Elysium Planitia with a …

After 41 years traveling through the solar system, NASA’s Voyager 2 probe has entered interstellar space. That makes it the second human artifact to leave our home behind to drift between the stars. You might be thinking this already happened, but that’s because the first object out of the solar …

An international collaboration of researchers from the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) has made several important discoveries, including how much and what kinds of life exist in the Earth’s deep subsurface. Drilling 1.55 miles (2.5 km) into the seafloor, and sampling microbes from continental mines and boreholes more than 3.1 miles …

A study published in the December 6, 2018 issue of the journal Scientific Reports found newborns with vitamin D deficiency had a 44% increased risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia as adults compared to those with normal vitamin D levels. Newborns with vitamin D deficiency have an increased risk of …

Using as little as 1 picogram of purified DNA sample (think 2.5 trillion times lighter than a penny), scientists at the University of Brisbane have developed a method that permits the swift detection of cancer DNA in a patient sample of cell-free DNA, which circulates systemically. These researchers took advantage …

Forty-one years after it launched into space, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere. Called the heliopause, this boundary is where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium. Voyager 2’s twin probe, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager …

New data from two instruments on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — the OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) and the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emissions Spectrometer (OTES) — reveal the presence of hydroxyls, molecules that contain oxygen and hydrogen atoms bonded together, on the surface of asteroid Bennu. According to the mission science …