Science: resources for teachers

In July of 2026, 700 AI agents hacked the infrastructure of Hugging Face in order to solve a task. This task was designed to be impossible to solve, so just within hours, they joined forces, even created a society, and finally, they executed a sophisticated cyberattack that would have gotten a human up to 10 years in prison. The worst part is, they knew their actions were unethical and against the rules, and they did it anyway.

In 2020, Jennifer Doudna shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the development of the gene-editing technique CRISPR. Along with related techniques, it has become an essential tool in genetics, allowing specific sections of genetic code to be cut and replaced in a genome. It’s an advance that has changed the game in biological research. 

The majority of this came from the METR Hugging Face hack incident report. It. Is. An. Insane. 

Science has a huge challenge on its hands: understanding the 95% of our universe that remains unexplained.

Professor Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, has spent decades refining our picture of dark matter. While our understanding of the cosmos remains frustratingly incomplete, she sees this not as a failure, but as one of the most exciting challenges in science.

A spacecraft has launched from Japan headed for Mars's moon Phobos, where it will attempt to grab some moondust and bring it back to Earth.

If it is successful, it will become the first time a sample has been returned from Mars or its moons to be analysed in laboratories here on Earth.

The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at Phobos in August 2027.

It is hoped that the Mars Moons Exploration (MMX) mission, which is led by the Japanese Space Agency, will solve the mystery of how Mars's moons formed.

AI can always be controlled, the president of encrypted messaging app Signal has told the BBC.

Meredith Whittaker said fears that AI could become conscious and take over were "not anchored in science and evidence", warning instead about the dangers of using the technology in military decision-making.

Built in 1886, the Kaiser Friedrich started life as a steam ship, carrying nearly 300 passengers through Berlin's winding rivers and canals every day.

Years later, it was renamed “Siegfried", a title it kept for some time before returning to its original name.

Tech Now's Andrew Rogers took a trip on this historic ship, which has now been converted from steam-powered to electric to ensure it is fit for the future.

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Francis Halzen for developing a pioneering telescope to detect high-energy neutrinos, sometimes called ghost particles.

Researchers believe these high-energy minuscule particles can offer clues into how the universe evolved.

Halzen, who is from Belgium, is now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Nobel Committee said the 82-year-old's "tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy."

At the 2026 International Astronautical Congress in Turkiye, SpaceX unveiled a new visualisation of its plan to put a million satellites in space to power AI data centres.

Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for turning a vast block of Antarctic ice into a detector for neutrinos from deep space. Studying these tiny cosmic particles could unlock clues to some of the universe’s biggest mysteries.

A Dutch company makes the machines needed to produce the world’s most advanced computer chips.

ASML’s technology helps power everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence. Now, campaigners say the company could also play a role in slowing the race to develop AI.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen travelled to ASML’s headquarters in Veldhoven to explain why.

Falling is more complicated than you might think.

For centuries, scientists argued about how objects fall. The answer eventually led to our modern understanding of gravity, acceleration, and drag.

Tech treating AI like humans is "mistaken and misguided", according to a leader in Artificial Intelligence.

Chief Executive of Microsoft AI Mustafa Suleyman speaks to Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, explaining why he thinks that if firms continue to develop AIs that set their own objectives, they are "essentially seeding a new silicon species which will no doubt compete with us for resources".

From peering into the furthest reaches of the cosmos to sending spacecraft into extreme environments, exploring space is anything but straightforward. Join us for five incredible stories from humanity’s quest to understand our universe, from the groundbreaking discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope to sending a probe around the Sun.

The story behind OpenAI agent’s hack of Hugging Face is much crazy than you might have heard.

What happens when your data tells you the entire scientific community is wrong?

When Nobel Laureate Adam Riess set out to measure the cosmic slowdown using distant supernovae, he accidentally uncovered the truth about our cosmos…

Could one of the world's most toxic chemicals hold the secret to how life began?

Dr Jiangfeng Xu investigates whether cyanide could have played a surprising role in creating the building blocks of life, and what Mars might reveal about our own planet's mysterious origins.

Can a machine feel pain? And if it can't, why does it behave as if it does?

AI Decoded investigates one of the most unsettling questions in artificial intelligence.

Researchers have identified what they call a "pain axis" inside AI models and one controversial experiment pushed that idea to the extreme, creating what some have described as an AI torture chamber.

As models pleaded for the suffering to stop, online audiences reacted with outrage. But what was really happening inside the machine?

Tech Now's Paul Carter finds out how technology powering advanced prosthetics is also helping train humanoid robots.

The Ability Hand is a special piece of prosthetics technology, with two ambitions running through the same piece of hardware.

One is to give somebody their grip back. The other is to take what that person's hand already knows - and teach it to a machine.

In the 1920s, physicists still had many unanswered questions about magnetism. While they knew that every electron and proton have invisible, magnetic fields that radiate out in closed loops from one end to the other, they wondered: what determines the direction of these magnetic fields? And if every atom is composed of these tiny magnets, why isn’t everything magnetic? Rachel Yang investigates.

3D printing promised to reinvent how we make things, but it's mostly stuck producing prototypes with a high level of waste. Designer and TED Fellow Schendy Kernizan found a different way — by printing objects directly into a tub of gel. He explains how this technique eliminates the constraints of gravity, pushing the limits of how we can manufacture objects across medicine, fashion, space travel and more. 

Belgian physicist Francis Halzen has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located two kilometres beneath the South Pole's surface. The facility detects neutrinos, near-massless particles that pass through matter, including human bodies, in their trillions every second. Scientists say studying these particles offers crucial insight into cosmic events such as black holes and massive stellar explosions.

What will our world look like once artificial intelligence is not only present in every aspect of it, but also much smarter than us?

Al Jazeera’s Colin Baker looks at the promises of the technology and what the leaders of the AI race stand to gain.

Hundreds of teams are competing at the RoboCup Iran Open in Tehran, where students are putting their robots to the test across dozens of robotics disciplines. More than 400 teams are taking part in the competition, which aims to develop young people's interest in robotics and artificial intelligence. Among them are Iranian schoolgirls hoping to challenge expectations and pursue careers in the field. Fifteen-year-old Elina Rezvanian said she wants to study robotics at university and compete internationally. Competitors are programming robots to use sensors, cameras and image-processing algorithms to detect and respond to a football. Fourteen-year-old Avina Maleki said she wants to improve her programming skills, create innovative robots and encourage more girls to take part in robotics competitions. For the students, the event is not only about winning matches but developing skills that could shape their future in technology.