US Navy drone swarms, and inside animals’ minds

The US Navy is engaged on methods to construct, deploy, and management 1000’s of small drones which can be capable of flock collectively to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses with sheer numbers, funds paperwork reveal.

The battle in Ukraine has proved the price of small drones, which have carried out reconnaissance, guided artillery hearth, and destroyed tanks. Such drones are at the moment restricted by the truth that every one wants its personal operator. In a swarm, nevertheless, tons of or 1000’s of drones are managed as a single unit.

Many countries are engaged on such swarms, together with China, Russia, India, the UK, Turkey, and Israel, which in 2021 turned the primary nation to make use of swarming drones in fight. However the US Navy has at all times been a frontrunner on this area, and the funds paperwork that MIT Know-how Overview has learn reveal bold plans for swarms vastly larger than something but seen. Learn the complete story.

—David Hambling

Contained in the enigmatic minds of animals

Greater than ever, we really feel an obligation and need to increase empathy to our nonhuman neighbors. Within the final three years, greater than 30 international locations have formally acknowledged different animals—together with gorillas, lobsters, crows, and octopuses—as sentient beings.

A trio of recent books from Ed Yong, Jackie Higgins, and Philip Ball, element creatures’ wealthy inside worlds and seize what has led to those developments: a booming area of experimental analysis difficult the long-standing view that animals are neither acutely aware nor cognitively complicated.

However although all three assemble troves of fascinating analysis that gives home windows into the lives of animals, we’re left asking how shut we actually are to bridging the species divide. Learn the complete story.

—Matthew Ponsford

This piece is from our forthcoming mortality-themed subject, launching this Wednesday. If you wish to learn it when it comes out, you’ll be able to subscribe to MIT Know-how Overview for as little as $80 a yr.