Matthew Sparkes

91av. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Matthew Sparkes

Technology reporter

London

Bio

Matthew Sparkes is a science and technology reporter who first wrote for 91av in 2006 and currently covers robotics, quantum computing, AI and mathematics. Previously he wrote for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, and he has a BSc and MSc from the University of East Anglia, where he studied AI and computer science.

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with 91av events and special offers.

More from Matthew Sparkes

Explore the latest news, articles and features

Caption: Belgium | Two of the main protagonists in Kristina Steiner?s winning story: Stefaan rides his horse, Dina, to catch shrimp in the summer waters of the North Sea. ?Kristina Steiner for Onewater

Environment

Startling images win water photography competition

Regulars

Physics

Chernobyl cooling systems have lost power but meltdown risk is low

News

Technology

End-to-end encryption: Best ideas of the century

Features

Technology

Crowdsourcing Wikipedia’s encyclopedia: Best ideas of the century

Features

Technology

All major AI models risk encouraging dangerous science experiments

News

Woman with a heart reflected in her eyes.

Technology

We're getting intimate with chatbots. A new book asks what this means

Culture

Society

Russia-US nuclear pact is about to end and we won't see another

News

Technology

The best and most ridiculous robots of 2025 in pictures

News

Space

More than 100 moons were discovered in our own solar system in 2025

News

Technology

2025 was the year of online safety laws – but do they work?

News

$PAGE 20 MOMENT A while ago, I borrowed a piece of opal from a geological museum to photograph for a book I was working on. Using my ?real? camera, I had to figure out a good composition for a picture of this complicated mineral. Notice the larger light-blue ?veins? running across the image. I used them as organizational elements, to create sections to help the viewer decide how to look at the image. PHENOMENON Over many years of geological time, opal is slowly formed as many small spheres of silica (what glass is made of) self-assemble into perfectly ordered layers. Diffraction (not to be confused with refraction) occurs when light passes through the spheres and gaps, and it is split into the colors of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The diameter of the spheres and the spacing between them determines the colors that we see. Light reflected from the different stacked layers creates interference effects.$

Life

Can you work out what these enigmatic close-up photos are of?

Regulars

Aerial view of the round structures of the AmazonFACE experiment built in a National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) research area, located 80 km north of Manaus. AmazonFACE is one of the largest scientific experiments ever conducted in the Amazon. It simulates, in a tropical forest area, the impact of the increase in atmospheric CO2 predicted for the coming decades. Using FACE (Free Air CO2 Enrichment) technology, the project seeks to understand how climate change will affect the forest, its biodiversity, and the beneficial functions it currently carries out.

Environment

Testing the Amazon's ability to soak up increasing carbon emissions

Regulars