Fixing Fleeting Reflections: open science, 19th centry style

Did you know that photography was an early open science project? On 19 August 1839, the French government made the secret of making daguerrotypes “free to the world” as a gift. Daguerrotypes are specially-treated metal plates that can store an image it’s exposed to. Treating the plates with developing chemicals reveals the picture. Their name comes from their inventor, Monsieur Louis Daguerre. In the early daguerrotype days, you’d need to say cheese for around 10 minutes to give enough time for the image to burn onto the plates so it could be developed, perhaps why Louis looks a little bemused in … More

Dolphins can secretly use your phone to order 3,000 cans of tuna!

cartoon dolphin trying to eat a tin of tuna

Do you have a smart device or smart assistant on your phone? If you also have a pet dolphin, you might need to keep an eye on your shopping lists. Since some dolphin chatter is inaudible, Flippy may have been ordering tuna without you noticing. Researchers at the SSSLab in China have worked out how to use completely inaudible voice commands to activate smart devices and assistants. The commands are inaudible to humans because they are very high frequency sounds. Humans can hear stuff in the range between 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but we are especially attuned to sounds … More