Scientists have created a ring of plasma in mid air, the equivalent of capturing lightning in a bottle, using only a stream of high pressured water and a crystal plate, achieving what was once thought impossible.

Plasma is one of the four most common states of matter on Earth, and is comprised of highly ionized gas. Lightning is a form of plasma, as is the weather phenomenon Saint Elmo's fire, when glowing balls of light appear on pointed objects during storms. Fluorescent light bulbs and neon lights contain other forms of plasma.

Plasma doesn't usually have a defined shape, for instance lightning forms in a fork shape as it follows the path of least resistance through the air. Man-made plasmas have only ever been created in vacuum chambers or electromagnetic fields.

An age-defying mutation found in the genes of Amish people appears to be boosting their lifespan.

Individuals carrying a single non-functional copy of the gene SERPINE1 live an average of 10 years longer than other members of their communities, according to new research.

The study was carried out with the Old Order Amish of Indiana, who generally avoid the trappings of modern society, including electricity, cars and medicine.

"They don't take advantage of modern medicine in general, so the fact that the carriers have a median lifespan of nearly 85 is rather remarkable," said Dr Douglas Vaughan, a cardiovascular specialist at Northwestern University who co-authored the study, published in Science Advances.

Of the 177 people tested, 43 had the mutation.

Ageing is one of the most challenging biological processes to understand, so finding a single mutation that has such a dramatic effect is unusual.

"There's been an enormous challenge in identifying genetic predictors of a long lifespan," said Dr Vaughan.

Ageing comes with numerous symptoms. What is notable about this mutation is that it seems to address so many of those, with effects ranging from protection against diabetes to maintenance of cardiovascular elasticity.

"We're talking about something that appears to have an effect at molecular levels, at hormonal levels, at tissue levels, and plays out with people having a longer lifespan," said Dr Vaughan.

The mutation results in longer telomeres - caps at the end of DNA strands that protect the chromosomes. Shortening of telomeres has been implicated in the process of ageing, which may explain the mutation's life-enhancing effects.

Two copies of this non-functional gene, however, have quite the opposite effect. Instead of protecting individuals from disease, it is linked with excessive bleeding following injury.

As the peoples with two copies - so-called heterozygous individuals - are so healthy, it is unlikely their mutation would have been observed were it not for the homozygous individuals with two copies, who present with this obvious illness.

In the general population, Dr Vaughan said, similar mutations might occur at a rate of around one in 70,000 people.

The fact that Amish people tend to be more interrelated than the wider population owing to their insular communities might explain the relative prevalence of the SERPINE1 mutation.

In terms of learning about the genetics underlying complex processes like ageing, Dr Vaughan suggests that this provides an excellent example for future work.

"Looking at unique populations like this might be more informative than broad genetic studies in normal populations," he said.

The Earth, the Sun, Andromeda galaxy, they have all been around for as long as you can remember and as long as humanity has been around. So when a new light suddenly shows up in the distance, it's a weird occurrence. But a newly-detected explosion could be one of the weirdest - and it isn't the only one.

An international team of scientists is reporting a new kind of explosion that they can't quite explain, billions of light years away. Maybe it's a supernova. Or maybe it's a star being eaten by a black hole. Or maybe it's something entirely different.

"I'm a supernova person to start with so I got really thrilled that this could be the most energetic supernova ever," Peter Lundqvist from Stockholm University in Sweden told Gizmodo. "But I had second thoughts."

A new supersonic airliner faster than Concorde is boasted to revolutionise air travel when it is rolled out by the mid 2020s.

The Boom Supersonic will be able to take passengers from New York to London in little over two hours as she hurtles at 1,687mph across the Atlantic.

Flight firm Boom has promised the plane will make its first test flight new year - with a mini proof-of-concept jet called the XB-1.

Boom Supersonic is boasted to be nearly three times as fast as regular airliners, but seats will cost the same as normal flights.

This is unlike now-retired luxury airliner Concorde that charged a small fortune for seats.

Company founder Blake Scholl, who is also a pilot, claimed the plane will be both faster and quieter than its legendary predecessor.

For years, China has claimed the top spot on a list of the 500 fastest supercomputers. Now it dominates the overall list, too, pushing the United States into second place.

For the first time, China has the most systems on the Top500 list, 202, up from 159 six months ago. The US dropped from 169 to 144. And in terms of the total performance of those machines, China also overtook the US, the Top500 supercomputer list organizers said.

The news underscores the relentless ascent of China's supercomputing trajectory in recent years. It also marks a notable shift in the international balance of high-end computing power that's closely tied to industrial, academic and military abilities.

The movie portrays a brutal future. A military firm unveils a tiny drone that hunts and kills with ruthless efficiency. But when the technology falls into the wrong hands, no one is safe. Politicians are cut down in broad daylight. The machines descend on a lecture hall and spot activists, who are swiftly dispatched with an explosive to the head.

The short, disturbing film is the latest attempt by campaigners and concerned scientists to highlight the dangers of developing autonomous weapons that can find, track and fire on targets without human supervision. They warn that a preemptive ban on the technology is urgently needed to prevent terrible new weapons of mass destruction.


Stuart Russell, a leading AI scientist at the University of California in Berkeley, and others will show the film on Monday during an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. The manufacture and use of autonomous weapons, such as drones, tanks and automated machine guns, would be devastating for human security and freedom, and the window to halt their development is closing fast, Russell warned.

Geoengineering to cool the Earth's climate by imitating volcanic eruptions is a 'highly risky strategy' that may increase the frequency of cyclones and droughts in some parts of the world

A California man suffering from a rare disease has become the first person ever to undergo an attempt to edit genes inside the body - however it's not clear what side-effects could result from the groundbreaking procedure.

The experiment was carried out on Brian Madeux, a 44 year old with Hunter Syndrome, a metabolic disease that affects fewer than 10,000 people around the world.

Madeux receives expensive weekly treatment to replace missing enzymes essential for breaking down certain carbohydrates. While the experiment will not eradicate the disease, it's hoped that a successful test will mean he will no longer have to undergo these regular treatments which can cost between $100,000 to $400,000 a year.

You would be forgiven for thinking that your private conversations were just that, but Google's Voice Assistant could be recording everything you say.

The feature is designed to allow users to talk to enabled gadgets to search the web, launch apps and use other interactive functions.

As part of this process, Google keeps copies of clips made each time you activate it, but it has emerged that background chatter could be enough to trigger recording.

Living specimens of stromatolites - the oldest evidence of life on Earth - have been found deep within a remote, protected World Heritage Area in Tasmania, Australia.

Stromatolites date back some 3.7 billion years and are regarded as a crucial piece of the puzzle that make up Earth's geological history - thanks to their layers of cyanobacteria, which comprise biofilm. These trap sediment and minerals from the water and cement them in place. The stromatolite layers then painstakingly build up overtime to form rock structures.