Tech

Nasa has increased the odds once again of ‘city killer’ asteroid YR4 whacking into Earth in 2032.

The chance of a direct hit is now around 1 in 38, a change from only 1 in 43 a few days ago.

It had been hoped that examining the space rock more closely would reassure us, however more we learn the more likely it seems, with the current assessment now standing at 2.6%, an increase from 2.3%.

At the beginning of February, the odds of this space rock striking us was only 1.33%, or about a one-in-53 chance.

While it is still much more likely to glide on by, the prospect of part of the planet getting a taste of the dinosaurs’ last days is causing concern.

Chris Hadfield told how the asteroid would essentially act like a giant grenade being hurled from the heavens if it came our way.

The retired astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station said this space rock could potentially strike with a force 500 times more powerful than the atomic bombs which ended World War Two.

‘Think of the destruction we wraught on each other during Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ he said. ‘This is 500 times more powerful, just because of the energy of it coming through the atmosphere, causing shockwaves, and because of the heating, exploding.

‘It’s like a grenade. A grenade is no bigger than your fist, but it can do damage over a wide area. This is a grenade that’s 60 metres across.’

The rock was like a ‘bullet zeroing in on Earth from deep space’, travelling at around 17 kilometres per second,’ he added while speaking with LBC.

So far, so terrifying – and if you hoped learning more about the asteorid would be reassuring, that’s not necessarily true.

Commander Hadfield said indications so far were that the asteroid was more likely to be ‘stony’ and could potentially reach the ground and make a crater, rather than break apart with a mid-air explosion.

It is thought to be up to 100m across, and could badly affect a ground area of 1,000 square miles if there was an air burst,

Of course, the likelihood is still that it will pass us by. Even if not, it’s more likely to splash down in the ocean than blast London or Manhattan apart.

Still though… a 2.3% chance means you’d be less likely to bump into a friend in town, or lose your luggage at the airport. It’s the kind of hairy statistic that means we’d probably like to take precautions just in case.

This weekend, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrass Tyson also hammered home the potential dangers (even with a lower chance of impact assessed at that time), saying: ‘At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years.

‘Now might be a bad time to reduce spending on Science. Just sayin’.

Last week, experts modelled what the possible impact of 2024 YR4 – equal to 15,000,000 tons of TNT – could look like.

The potential scale of this asteroid strike is causing such fear among experts it was given a hazard-measuring Torino scale of 3, which is is the second highest rating ever given.

Nasa’s James Webb telescope will look at it as closely as possible over the coming months, before it zips too far away from us again in April. This should give some indication about how worried we really need to be.

If it does seem like it will meet us on December 22, 2032, it will be a scramble to prepare a planetary defence mission – and it’s possible we’re already too late to do this with a tested method.

Slamming into the asteroid with a spaceship, like when the DART mission hit Dimorphos, might not alter its trajectory fast enough to get us into the safe zone.

Dr Robin George Andrews, author of How to Kill an Asteroid, told Metro last week that an emergency situation might come down to trying to blast the asteroid with a nuclear bomb in space, or simply getting out of the way.

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Vodafone customers have reported their apps going down, leaving them locked out of mobile banking.

Users attempting to log in to the app this morning were greeted with a message saying: ‘We’re currently experiencing issues with our Digital Services.’

It adds the company is ‘working hard to fix the issues’.

Outage tracker Down Detector is showing a spike in reports this morning beginning around 6.30am.

Metro has contacted Vodafone for comment.

It comes a day after broadband provider Community Fibre suffered a major outage.

The company, which has 300,000 customers mainly in London and surrounding areas, later apologised for the disruption.

Community Fibre did not specify what caused the issue.

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Chinese scientists have created a ‘super diamond’ 40% harder and far more durable than natural ones.

Experts say the creation could lead to breakthroughs across several key industries that rely on diamonds, including polishing and cutting tools.

Until now, the hardest diamonds have been found in asteroid and meteoroid impact craters, meaning they are rare and often very small.

Most natural and synthetic diamonds have a cubic structure, but ultra-hard diamonds such as those found in craters – known as lonsdaleite – have a hexagonal structure.

Lonsdaleite was first discovered in the Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona in 1967.

While applications of such hexagonal diamonds (HDs) have been largely underexplored due to the small size and low purity of samples obtained, a group of researchers has made a ‘well-crystallised, nearly pure HD’ by heating highly compressed graphite.

The researchers, led by Liu Bingbing and Yao Mingguang from China’s Jilin University, say the diamond’s excellent thermal stability and ultra-high hardness mean it could have ‘great potential for industrial applications’.

The ‘super diamond’ structure exhibits high thermal stability ‘up to 1,100°C and a very high hardness of 155 Giga Pascals (GPa)’, according to the research, published in the Nature Materials journal.

In comparison, natural diamonds have a hardness of around 100 GPa and a thermal stability up to around 700°C

Despite the diamond’s rare qualities, it would be no more expensive than natural ones sold at jewelry stores, Professor Oliver Williams, Chair
Condensed Matter and Photonics Group at Cardiff University, says.

‘A synthetic diamond could be as low as $300 from China.

‘It’s very cheap. For industrial application, they are going to have to be a lot cheaper than natural diamonds.

‘If you make a 40% harder one, there has to be a premium, but I can’t imagine that it’ll be much higher.

Ben Green, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics, also told Metro that the ‘super diamond’ would not be used at scale if it were costly.

‘There are significant challenges to overcome before this material can be used at scale, but if a method could be found to [for example] produce bulk quantities or coat other materials in it, then depending on price it might find industrial use.

‘The most obvious application is cutting (possibly including other diamonds!).’

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Broadband provider Community Fibre has restored service after a massive outage today.

The company, which has 300,000 customers mainly in London and surrounding areas, apologised for the disruption.

At around noon more than 10,000 users had reported that their broadband had cut off using Down Detector.

Many customers took to social media to complain, with Community Fibre replying that it was working on a ‘fix’ as a ‘top priority’.

‘The outage that affected many customers today has now been resolved,’spokesperson for the firm said on Monday evening.

‘We apologise to all the customers that suffered a loss of service this afternoon.’

Community Fibre did not specify what caused the issue.

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Gmail users have been warned of a new scam which could see hackers gain full access to their Google account.

The ‘devastating’ scam, first seen in May 2024, sees attackers using artificial intelligence to steal vital information, with some victims even having their identities stolen.

This newest tactic uses AI to create realistic phone calls claiming their Gmail has been compromised.

After the initial phone calls, ‘legitimate’ looking emails are then sent – appearing to be from Google – but not all is as it seems.

Gmail users are then sent suspicious links, which may look real to those without a discerning eye. From there, identity, financial and information theft occurs.

Victim Sam Mitrovic recalled his ordeal: ‘The scams are getting increasingly sophisticated, more convincing and are deployed at ever larger scale.

‘People are busy and this scam sounded and looked legitimate enough that I would give them an A for their effort. Many people are likely to fall for it.’

If you have any reason to be suspicious, always err on the side of caution.

To stay safe online, follow the tips below:

• Look carefully at the email address. Does it have numbers in it, or seem odd in any way? Does the phone number seem odd in some way?
• Zoom in or examine the logo closely and compare it to those used on the company’s official website. Do they match? Is it fuzzy?
• Are there any grammatical or spelling errors in the email or text message? It may look like it was rushed or the English might not be perfect.
• Hover your mouse over the link, or copy the link address into a Word Document, so you can see the URL without clicking on it. Does it match the official website address? If not do NOT click on it. Does the URL have any words squashed in between the main website name and the ‘.com’ section, ie: Microsoft.maliciousdomainname.com? If so, it’s fake.
• If you’ve replied to the initial email, and another one has arrived that mentions payment of some kind, this is almost definitely a phishing scam.

Last year, some people were sent photos of their homes on Google Maps in a bid to scare them into paying criminals.

The idea is to threaten victims by claiming this is not purely an empty online threat.

Details of the creepy new tactic were revealed by cybersecurity firm Barracuda, who said ‘sextortion’ is now a major problem making up 3% of targeted phishing attacks.

Criminals threaten to share explicit photos or videos unless they receive payment, usually in Bitcoin.

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WhatsApp is getting a makeover – though, unlike ‘The Princess Diaries,’ there is no eyebrow-plucking and hair-straightening involved.

One of the biggest changes to the Meta-owned app is being introduced in the coming weeks, set to change everything.

The new ‘Chat Theme’ feature was unveiled in a blog post on Friday as part of the latest effort to boost personal customisation.

This means more than 3 billion users across the world will be able to swap the colour of the chat bubbles and background.

Rather than the generic green and white, people can choose from a large selection of colours including purple, blue, orange and pink.

WhatsApp is also adding 30 new wallpaper options to the app for an extra bit of flair.

Alternatively, people can still upload a background from their camera roll to make them completely unique.

‘You can apply the same theme to all your chats, or make each one extra special with different themes,’ the post on the WhatsApp website read.

‘Either way, your chat themes are only visible to you. You can also change the theme of your channels.’

These features have already started to roll out and will be available globally over the coming weeks.

This comes after a terrifying glitch allowed users to see WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ photos multiple times earlier in February.

The feature is meant to let users send images which delete automatically after they are seen, without the option to take a screenshot.

But in a worrying error for security, they could actually still be seen in the app’s settings, which includes chat history.

While the flaw – which only affected iPhone users, has since been fixed – it was a big oversight for the privacy feature.

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We all know that the Moon is made of Swiss cheese – but you might mistake it for Red Leicester in a couple of months.

Lowly Earthlings are about to get their first chance this year of seeing a lunar eclipse – including in London.

North, South America and Europe will all see the rare astronomical event which causes a ‘Blood Moon’ next month.

But depending on where on the planet you are will decide what kind of eclipse you see.

What is a blood moon?

Lunar eclipses are the elaborate, delicate dance between the Earth, Sun and Moon.

The Earth has two shadows. The darkest, central shadow is called the umbra, while scientists know the outer shadow as the penumbral.

Because the Earth is larger than the Moon, the blue marble’s shadow can envelop the entire lunar surface.

A penumbral lunar eclipse is the first phase of a lunar eclipse and is when our nighttime neighbour passes the Earth’s penumbra.

Then a partial lunar eclipse will follow as the Earth’s shadow slowly gobbles up the Moon.

A total lunar eclipse sees the Moon swallowed up by the umbra whole. As the Moon drifts away, a second partial and penumbral lunar eclipse will follow.

A Blood Moon happens because a tiny streak of sunlight skims the Earth’s atmosphere during this, projecting the colours of the sunset like a movie projector onto a white sheet.

So instead of the usual pale look, the Moon is splattered with colours like pale red or burnt orange.

When is the Blood Moon?

Depending on where you live, either March 13 or 14 (the day of the Full Moon).

The eclipse will start as a penumbral one before going into partial and then full across the course of about six hours. Totality – when the Moon is blood red and in the deepest shadow – will last just over an hour.

So, if you poke your head out the window and see nothing happening, don’t worry. You just need to be a little patient.

North and South America will see the entire eclipse, Europe the beginning of the penumbral and partial phases while Asia will catch the tail-end.

Only one in 10 people worldwide will see the entire eclipse from beginning to end, according to Time and Date.

Instead, you might have to settle with the Moon turning a little dusky pink before the Sun rises and you can’t see it at all.

For eclipse hunters in the UK, you won’t see the totality but will be able to see the penumbral phase.

You’ll need to set an early alarm to see the eerie copper-red moon, though, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.

The Moon will first slide into Earth’s penumbra at 3.57am EST on March 14.

Londoners will have their best shot at seeing the blood-red moon at 6.19am a few minutes after sunrise and the working day begins.

This is because the eclipse’s peak is at 6.58am when the Moon will have sadly set below the horizon.

In Europe, only the western UK, Ireland, Portugal, central Spain, and northwestern France will see the totality.

Western and Central Europe will be able to see the partial eclipse just before the Moon sets and the Sun rises for about 75 minutes.

How can I see the Blood Moon?

Pretty easily, actually. Depending on your vantage point and the amount of dust, clouds and pollution in the atmosphere, you should be able to see this otherworldly light show with the naked eye.

Since the Earth’s shadow removes the Moon’s glare, our cosmic companion will be easier to look at than normal.

You likely won’t need a telescope, binoculars or eclipse glasses. But observational equipment can be used if you want to see the subtleties of the Moon’s colour change – seeing the grey craters, valleys, and mountains go scarlet.

If you live in a city, the skies might be an orange glow most days but because of the not-as-cosmically-fun light pollution.

City observers can use maps like this one to see what the darkest location near them is.

If you can’t catch the lunar eclipse, many space agencies, observatories and stargazer websites host live streams you can tune into.

When will the next lunar eclipse be?

A second total lunar eclipse will occur on September 7-8, this one best seen from Asia.

People in the US will miss out on this cosmic song and dance altogether, but Britons should be able to see it during moonrise.

A version of this article was originally published on January 14, 2025.

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Mobile network provider EE has warned customers about a rise in scammers targeting online daters.

Although most people on dating sites will be legitimate, EE says an increasing number of scam artists are joining up and convincing people to hand over money, or using their personal information to target them other ways.

They might, for example, ask for the person’s phone number then text the individual posing as a bank and convincing them to share their bank details.

Scammers have also used dating sites to steal people’s identities in order to carry out impersonation fraud.

EE recently carried out a survey in which they asked 2,000 consumers aged 18 and over about their online dating habits.

The research found 93% of Brits have shared personal data over text message, chat apps or social media, while communicating with love interests.

Of the 93%, 65% admitting sharing their phone number, 51% their location and 35%their social media profile.

‘Online dating has opened exciting new options for singles, but also a novel channel for criminals hunting for new ways to defraud their victims,’ EE said.

‘One in ten (11 percent) people on the dating scene today now report that they have been targeted by a coordinated romance scam, with one in five losing an average of £2,500 as a result.’

Of those surveyed, 34% said they have experienced suspicious behaviour when messaging with love interest and 15% percent have even been directly asked for money.

Last year EE blocked 12 million scam texts in February alone, well above the monthly average of 8.9 million, which, it says, could be down to Valentine’s day being a popular time to target people.

Richard Wainer, Regulatory Affairs Director at EE said: ‘The threat of scams is an unhappy part of life in 2025, and we’re all increasingly familiar with the traditional calling cards of a scam.

‘However, in a dating context, we’re more vulnerable to social engineering and attempts to defraud can be harder to spot

‘That’s why it’s so important people practice ‘safe texts’. We recommend keeping your sensitive information like your address, email address and security question answers closely guarded and do not share these via text.

‘Always verify someone’s identity with a video call or meeting before getting too personal and never send money or gifts to someone you’ve just met online.’

The network provider has issued a list of red flags phone users should look out for, based on the results of the survey.

1. Asking for money or gifts (64 percent)

2. Using urgent or emotional language (49 percent)

3. Avoiding video calls or in-person meetings (41 percent)

4. Telling a sob story to evoke pity (31 percent)

5. Giving inconsistent answers (24 percent)

6. Dodging personal questions (20 percent)

7. Showing off, or promising the world (12 percent)

8. Asking overly personal questions (11 percent)

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In place of cows farting in fields, there will be bubbling tanks of bacteria.

Supermarkets will have aisles full of foods for the elderly, as well as the usual baby pouches and snacks. Your chocolate won’t come from cocoa at all, but from broad bean plants.

These are some of the possibilities for food in 2050, and most of them are already under development.

This year alone, a dog treat will go on sale in the UK made from microorganisms. Pet brand Tuggs, which already sells food made from insects, is sizing down a species to use bacteria too.

They buy their powdered microorganisms from MicroHarvest, a company which believes the smallest creatures are ‘tiny heroes’ that could solve global food shortages.

Founder and CEO Katelijne Bekers told Metro that bacteria don’t have the ‘ick’ factor that puts many off eating insects, because we already eat it all the time with fermented food like yoghurt, sourdough, and beer.

Some may question that, given Salmonella and E.Coli have given them a bad rep, but a growing group of biotech startups are betting that bacteria will soon be the main course.

An aging and ever larger global population with a growing taste for meat is going to mean even more demand for protein in future, but the planet is already struggling to keep up.

Katelijne said her team can convert sugars to protein in 24 hours. After they multiply in a soupy tank called a bioreactor, the bacteria are harvested and inactivated to form a powder, which can be sold on as an ingredient for things like baked goods, protein shakes, or even fake meats.

‘We can already produce one tonne per day,’ she said.

Although she was tight-lipped about exactly which little species went into the mix, said they are the same as those already used in fermentation.

Some companies are even creating food from ‘thin air’ with bacteria which feed on carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Novonutrients is one of them, expressing its bold ambition to become ‘a new pillar of the food system, decoupled from agriculture’.

It says nutritionally, bacteria are on par with beef, ‘and superior to all plant based alternative proteins at greatly reduced costs’.

Both companies are on display at a new exhibition at The Mills Fabrica in London’s King’s Cross, which Metro checked out for its opening today.

It shows some of the latest innovations in farming and food, such as ‘beanless’ coffee and chocolate, and lots of focus on what to do with the parts of crops we currently think of as waste.

Kyomei had a display explaining its business model using crop leaves typically thrown away when fruit or veg is harvested.

Chief of staff Morgan Zaidel told Metro the company with a base in Cambridge is already buying greens from farmers in the UK, and in future these ‘biofactories’ could be worth more than the crop itself.

Plants it could work with include tomato, lettuce, alfalpha and sugar beet.

Explaining the pitch to farmers, she said: ‘The leaves would just get left on the soil and go to waste. We’re saying, “We’ll buy your leaves that currently have zero value to you.’

They extract a protein called rubisco, and compare this process to turning waste into gold.

‘It’s the most abundant plant protein on the planet and it has incredible nutritional properties, equivalent to meat, eggs, and dairy,’ Morgan said.

‘The only reason it hasn’t been commercialised to date is that it hasn’t been effective cost-wise to actually extract it out of all this biomass.’

As well, they are also looking at genetically modifying plants to contain even more useful proteins in the leaves,.

Potential uses for the leaf protein include replacing some of of the ingredients used in commercial kitchens which have been vilified as ultraprocessed and unnatural, such as xanthan gum and methylcellulose.

The ‘future of food’ is a big topic.

Climate change, population growth, and changing tastes of the existing population will all force a rethink of our current system, and many think there are big opportunites there.

In November last year, the inaugural Future of Food competition was held in London where companies vied for a £10,000, and recognition that their product is revolutionary.

Among those on display were runner-ups Dogtooth, who make fruit-picking robots as dexterous as a human worker.

Elsewhere, there were companies using AI to reduce food waste, plastic-free dishwashing sponge company Seep, vertical farms growing salad year-round, and winners Nice Rice which reduces the envinromental impact of rice.

Barney Mauleverer, a food entrepreneur who launched and hosted the contest, told Metro that immediate trends brands are trying to tackle include concerns over ultraprocessed or very sugary foods, as well as environmental concerns like finding a substitue for palm oil.

One trend which may be more overlooked is that by 2050, there will be ten million more people over the age of 65 than there are in the UK today. This means there will be a workforce issue, but it also means there’s a gap in the market for brands catering specifically to this growing demographic.

‘Older people perhaps need more bespoke nutrition,’ he said. ‘Or it could be foods easier to eat or ingest.’

He said that massive shifts in how we produce our food are coming, even if supermarket buyers still tend to think short-term.

‘The obvious one is climate change, but we’ve also got AI coming,’ he said. We’ve got aging and shifting populations. We’ve got space tourism around the corner. We will be going to space, and what does that mean for the population at large?’

‘I think the food industry needs to look up and accept these things are coming, and adapt quite quickly’ he said.

‘Taste of Tomorrow: What will the world be eating in 2050?‘ will be showing at The Mills Fabrica until July 31.

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A former chief executive of Google has warned about the ‘extreme risk’ posed by terrorists or rogue states using artificial intelligence.

Eric Schmidt called for governments to have oversight of private tech companies, citing fears of terrorists using the tech for ‘evil goals’.

‘The real fears that I have are not the ones that most people talk about AI – I talk about extreme risk,’ Mr Schmidt told the BBC, naming North Korea, Iran or Russia.

Mr Schmidt, who held senior positions at Google from 2001 to 2017, said the technology could be used to create biological weapons.

‘I’m always worried about the ‘Osama Bin Laden’ scenario, where you have some truly evil person who takes over some aspect of our modern life and uses it to harm innocent people,’ he said.

With private companies leading the way in AI development, Mr Schmidt called for careful monitoring and regulation by governments.

‘It’s really important that governments understand what we’re doing and keep their eye on us,’ he said.

His comments follow a two-day summit on AI in Paris at which the UK joined the US in not signing a communique about the future direction of the disruptive technology.

The declaration on ‘inclusive and sustainable artificial intelligence for people and the planet’ was signed by 57 countries, including India and China, as well as the Vatican, the EU and the African Union Commission.

The UK said at the close of the summit on Tuesday that it had declined to back the joint communique because it failed to provide enough ‘practical clarity’ on ‘global governance’ of artificial intelligence or address ‘harder questions’ about national safety.

Asked on Sky News whether it was a decision to side with the new US administration, Communities minister Alex Norris said: ‘No (…) that’s not how we make decisions. We make decisions based on what’s best for the British people.

‘That’s what we’ve done in this situation, as we would do in any situation global or domestic, and that’s what we’ve done here.’

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