A recap of what made news in the world of science and technology this week.

Google fined $272 million in news copyright issue

French regulators said on 20 March that tech giant Google was being fined $272 million (around ₹2,263 crore) for breaching commitments on paying media companies for reproducing their content online and using their material for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini without informing them. According to an AFP report, Google had made commitments in 2022 to negotiate fairly with French news organisations, a year after the Competition Authority hit the US company with a €500 million (around $542 million) fine over the long-running dispute. But the agency said on Wednesday that it was imposing a fresh fine on Google for “failing to respect commitments made in 2022” and not negotiating in “good faith” with news publishers, the report said.

Nasa spacecraft altered asteroid’s shape

In 2022, US space agency Nasa launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (or DART) spacecraft to test if it could deflect an asteroid off its path. But scientists revealed on 19 March that the spacecraft not only changed asteroid Dimorphos’ trajectory but its shape as well. A Reuters report said that the asteroid, which looked like a ball that was a bit plump in the waist before the DART impact, now appeared to be shaped more like a watermelon—or, technically, a triaxial ellipsoid. Launched in November 2021, the DART spacecraft successfully collided with Dimorphos in September 2022. Dimorphos is a minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos. Neither of the asteroids pose an impact threat to earth.

UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change indicators

The World Meteorological Organization, a specialised agency of the United Nations whose mandate covers weather, climate and water resources, revealed in a report on 19 March that climate change indicators reached record levels in 2023. The State of the Global Climate report said that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. The report also confirmed that 2023 was the warmest year on record. In a more worrying trend, the report also revealed that towards the end of 2023, over 90% of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year. 

– Compiled by Nitin Sreedhar, with inputs from agencies.

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