Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more 9 June 2021
Big SIgh
How large is a cubic metre of water? The answer, which comes as part of our persistent series on Unusual Alternative Measurement Units, is that it is location dependent.
An ABC News item about the East Australian current courtesy of Kevin Ritchie notes that it “can carry 40 million cubic metres of water each second – the equivalent of 300 billion pints of beer”.
Meanwhile, the world’s biggest artificial water-filled hole, currently being built in Cornwall, UK, to simulate extreme environments, is said, in a press release forwarded to us by Laurel Stanford, to hold “over 42,000 cubic metres of water – the equivalent of 17 Olympic size swimming pools or 168 million cups of tea”.
Humans 21 April 2021
Watch
The Handmaid’s Tale is back for a fourth season in April on US streaming service Hulu and the UK’s Channel 4 later this year. This season of the hit sci-fi drama has June (pictured) on the run as the resistance grows in Gilead.
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The Myth of Artificial Intelligence sees the US tech entrepreneur and pioneering researcher Erik Larson explain why he thinks computers can’t think the way we do, and why this actually makes them so much more exciting and useful for our future.
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Maths on the Back of an Envelope, packed with anecdotes and quizzes, is author and
Covid-19 news archive: February 2021 newscientist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newscientist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.