It’s incredible to think that the PX are Bowers & Wilkins’ first ever pair of noise-cancelling headphones. It is not by any stretch a new technology, and to enter a market so late in the game you would assume that B&W are already on the back foot.

You would be wrong however. The company’s reluctance to use noise-cancelling has always because of the trade-offs that come with sound quality.

Indeed when we asked a spokesperson for the company it was clear that noise-cancelling was something they actually wanted to actively avoid for a long time, so why now?

Well quite simply, they believe they can now release a pair of headphones that cancel noise to a high-standard while still maintaining the incredible sound quality that defines B&W’s entire portfolio.

To give you some idea of how important that reputation is, B&W’s most expensive headphones the P9s aren’t even wireless, let alone noise-cancelling.

So how do the PX’s stand up to B&W’s almost ludicrous standards, and then also the competition.

Well from a design perspective the PX’s are perhaps the most edgy pair of headphones B&W have ever made. Gone is the all-leather design, instead this is a merging of leather, high-quality fabrics and curved metal.

The result is something that looks still distinctly B&W but with more of a modern twist. They’re also quite large and in our view a little heavy so don’t expect them to blend into the background on the bus or train.

The metal frame and stiff leather ear cups also have another unfortunate side-effect which is that like so many other expensive headphones they have a tendency to push down on the top of your head resulting in a soreness that would kick in after the hour/two hour-long mark.

The PX’s certainly aren’t the only headphones to do this, both the recent Beats headphones suffer from it as do many others but it’s something to absolutely consider if you’re planning to take them on a long-haul flight though.

B&W have sensibly opted for clickable controls here rather than anything touch-sensitive and the headphones charge via USB-C. This last bit deserves a special mention because not only does it allow for faster charging but it also means that if your laptop has a USB-C port you can actually play high-quality audio direct to the headphones from the laptop.

Enough about the design though, the key question here is how do they sound? Well they sound like a pair of high-quality Bowers & Wilkins headphones, which in and of itself should give you some sense of the achievement here.

While the noise-cancelling was good (not excellent), the fact they’ve managed to achieve that and maintain this quality of sound is nothing short of remarkable.

Being able to put the headphones on, block off the outside world and then listen to every minute detail on Ólafur Arnalds’ Eulogy For Evolution 2017 was goosebump-inducing.

We don’t want to say that it’s crisp because that suggests there’s a sharpness to the sound, which there isn’t. Instead it’s more a wide, open soundstage that can pick out even the tiniest details and give them the same breadth of volume that you would want from a thunderous bass.

Now in addition to the sound quality, B&W have opted to pair the PX with an app that allows you to update the headphones and gives you some limited control over the ‘smart’ features that come with them.

Now we use the term ‘smart’ loosely because sadly this was the weakest part of the experience. The app allows you to select a number of different noise-cancelling environments such as an office or a plane but all they really seem to do is just determine how severe the noise-cancelling is.

In addition there are sensors in the headphones that can detect when you’ve taken them off, or have lifted a single ear cup. The headphones will pause the music while one side is raised, and then un-pause it when you place them back on your ears.

It’s a useful idea in theory but in our experience it was a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t, and sometimes it would just randomly pause the music without us doing anything. It’s not a deal-breaker and it can almost certainly be improved upon with further updates.

The PX’s reportedly have a 22-hour battery life with noise-cancelling enabled. We’ll be completely honest we didn’t get that, with the battery finally packing in at what must have been at least the 15/18-hour mark. That’s still over a days listening.

Are these the best noice-cancelling headphones we’ve ever used? Honestly, no they’re not. Are they the best-sounding noise-cancelling headphones we’ve ever used? Absolutely.

The PX’s don’t once compromise on sound-quality, so in that respect B&W have remained true to their ideals. As a pair of ‘smart’ headphones there’s definitely room for improvement too, but the addition of a USB-C port shows that the company is already planning for the future.

At £329 the PX’s are absolutely at the high-end of headphones which means they go up against the likes of the QC35′s and the PXC 500s. While they might not be able to compete in terms of raw noise-cancelling ability these are by far the best-sounding headphones with noise-cancelling. If sound quality is everything to you, then look no further.

They’re not what you would call effortlessly portable, certainly not as much as say the Beats Studio3′s or the QC35s. This combined with the soreness they cause after long bouts of listening suggest to us that if you’re a long-distance traveller, we would probably recommend you look at the rivals we mentioned above.

The Bowers & Wilkins PX headphones are available now for £329.

A set of fossilised teeth dating back a staggering 9.7 million years could rewrite the famous ‘out-of-Africa’ theory that suggests humanity moved from Africa to Europe after a major change in the climate.

Discovered by archeologists in a former bed of the river Rhine, the discovery is so significant that the local town’s mayor has claimed that “we shall have to start rewriting the history of mankind after today.”

The teeth themselves seem to share some striking similarities with the teeth of Lucy a 3.2 million year old skeleton discovered in Ethiopia.

Writing in Researchgate, Dr Herbert Lutz writes: “Both teeth, the crowns of an upper left canine and an upper right first molar, are exceptionally well preserved and obviously come from the same body of unknown sex.”

“While the molar shares characters with various other taxa,” explains Dr Lutz. “The canine reveals intriguingly potential hominin affinities: its lingual outline is clearly diamond-shaped.” 

Herein lies the problem which is that while they match those of Lucy, they don’t match with any known species in Europe at the time.

Until now there have been no truly concrete examples of hominins – a species closely related to humans – existing in the European continent around this time.

If they do turn out to belong to a hominin it would throw into question the currently held theory that early humans first evolved in the African continent and started moving north around 200,000/400,000 years ago.

It wouldn’t be until 60,000/70,000 years ago that they would start spreading around the world on a mass scale.

Of course if these teeth turn out to be from a human-related species this would drastically alter the theories that we currently have.

The significance of this is so great that the archaeologists actually waited a year before finally publishing their paper.

While the paper is now finally out in the public domain, Dr Lutz says that the work has just begun as further research will need to be carried out to finally prove the theory.

The government has announced a brand-new bill that could actually force petrol and service stations by law to install charging stations for electric and hybrid vehicles.

There are currently only 4,500 charging stations around the UK, the bill would enable this number to increase drastically along with the implementation of roadside charging points in areas where charging at your home is impossible.

Transport Minister John Haynes said: “This bill will aid the construction of greater infrastructure to support the growing demand for automated and electric vehicles as we embrace this technology and move into the future.”

The bill goes on to state that every new charging point that’s installed will need to be a ‘smart charger’ meaning that it will know the demand that’s being placed on the national grid and adjust in order to maintain equal demand across the country.

A German company Ubitricity has already started rolling out a trial program in London that can actually convert street lamps into charging stations.

While the bill certainly sounds promising, Steve Gooding, Director of the RAC Foundation believes that “The test, though, will be how effectively those powers are exercised.”

The bill’s arrival comes just months after the government finally confirmed that it would be banning the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040.

While the date set is further away than most other countries, a recent report by Dutch bank ING predicted that by 2035 almost all vehicles sold in Europe will be electric anyway.

In addition to government support, the car industry has already started making commitments to move all its cars over to either electric or hybrid engines.

Volvo confirmed that all its cars would have an electric motor by 2019 while the Volkswagen Group also announced that it would move all 300 of its models over to an electric powertrain by 2030.

So while it’s clear that car companies are happy to set ambitious targets, the pressure will not be on the government to make sure that the infrastructure will be ready, potentially even before the 2040 deadline.

The need for a large charging network isn’t just to accomadate the increased number of electric vehicles on the road, it will also be needed because at present electric cars just can’t compete with their combustable counterparts in terms of range.

While car companies like Tesla are offering frankly practical driving ranges (at a premium), the average electric car currently available has a range of around 150+ miles at most.

To help alleviate the concerns around charging times as well, companies like Toyota have said that it is working on a brand-new battery technology that is safer, cheaper and can be charged in just minutes.

Currently a Tesla can be charged to around 80% in just 30mins using the company’s ultra-fast charging solution the Supercharger.

Finally the bill also requires that all owners of self-driving cars will need to be insured and it promises that a system will be put in place that in the event of an accident there will be quick and easy access to compensation.

For any wannabe Ernest Shackleton, it might seem that the 21st century doesn’t provide many opportunities left for real exploration, but don’t despair as there is still one place on Earth full of unanswered mysteries.

As much as 95% of the deep ocean is unexplored, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a new documentary for The Atlantic, has highlighted one of the most baffling questions of all. 

In 1997, the loudest underwater sound ever recorded was detected by hydrophones set 5,000 miles apart in the Pacific Ocean.

Initially built to assist in the detection of Soviet submarines, the listening system had never heard anything like the ultra-low frequency sound emanating from a point off the southern coast of Chile, that lasted for one minute and never to be heard again.

And for the team of ten oceanographers at NOAA, lead by Dr Christopher Fox, who were left to piece the puzzle together, it was “baffling” and had no immediate scientific explanation.

Now twenty years later, the source of the sound, which has come to be known colloquially as the bloop, (as well as whistle, slowdown, upsweep and even Gregorian chant), is still a mystery.

Over the years, there were many possible theories put forward.

When it first happen, Dr Christopher Fox went to the United States Navy intelligence, to ask if it could have been a manmade sound from a bomb detonating or a submarine, but they said it wasn’t them.  

Then in 2002 reports said it was consistent with large marine animals – perhaps a many-tentacled giant squid (the largest on record at the time was 60ft long).

But Phil Lobel, Boston University, quickly dismissed this as a creature like this has no gas-filled sac that would be the way you would create a noise like this. 

Then Fox and his team explored the possibility of it being a blue whale, but if so it would have been more powerful than any previous call recorded on Earth.

The bloop was also explained as being consistent with noises generated by icequakes in large icebergs, or large icebergs scraping the ocean floor

By 2012 the NOAA concluded that the noise was an icequake, and scientist Robert Dziak told Wired: “Each year there are tens of thousands of what we call ‘icequakes’ created by the cracking and melting of sea ice and ice calving off glaciers into the ocean.

“And these signals are very similar in character to the Bloop.” 

But later in 2012 a documentary on the Discovery Channel said it was actually due to mermaids, dismissing the ice theory.

Today the most likely explanation is that it was ice related, but this hasn’t stopped the most bizarre explanation of all – that it is a fictional creature from H.P Lovecraft’s novel ‘The Call Of Cthulhu’.

As the roughly triangulated origin of the bloop is approximately 950 nautical miles (1,760 km) from the precisely-described location of R’lyen a sunken extra-dimensional city.

In the documentary, Dr Fox says he is happy no conclusive answer has been found: “I am glad there are still mysteries on earth and in the universe.”

There is something so predictably soul-destroying about airport security. From the long queues to the moment when you realise that everyone in front of you has 23 iPads between them and at least 100 iPhones that they completely forgot to take out of their bags.

We’re of course fans of being safe, and making sure that everything is checked, but the government has finally realised that it’s not what you would call a quick process.

The Department of Transport has asked universities and companies to bid for a £3 million research fund which would develop new technologies to speed the whole process up.

This could include revolutionary “portable scanning” devices that would scan bags as you were walking through duty-free saving you time while still getting the job done.

You wouldn’t even have to take the gadgets out of your bag, instead the technology would be able to detect the presence of illegal materials or anything dangerous simply as you walked past.

Since March passengers have been stopped from taking large electronic devices in their hand baggage on inbound flights from some airports in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia over security fears.

Security minister Ben Wallace said: “Aviation security is a Government priority and one with an ever-changing threat landscape.

“We need to embrace and encourage the talent from industry that will allow us to stay several steps ahead of those who wish us harm.”

You might not be enjoying the start of autumn because it means colder weather and dark mornings, but it also heralds the beginning of stargazing season.

October not only marks the arrival of the Harvest moon, but also one of the most impressive meteor showers in the calendar.

The Orionid meteor shower happens annually, during the tenth month of the year, and can see as many as 30 meteors an hour shooting across UK skies.

What you are seeing when you watch the Orionid meteor shower is the stream of debris left by Halley’s comet coming into contact with Earth’s atmosphere.

The Orionid shower is one of two meteor showers (the other is Eta Aquarids in May) that happens as a result of Halley’s comet disintegrating into clouds of ice and dust. Although the last Halley’s comet happened in 1986 (it is visible from earth every 75 years) the resulting debris is still travelling in orbit today.

And because the stream of debris is travelling so fast – usually at a speed of 66 kilometres a second – when it intersects with our planet it burns up briefly and quickly. Leaving an impressive trail of shooting stars behind.  

The Orionid shower is named (as all meteor showers are) after the region of sky that they appear to come from – in this case, the Orion region. 

As it is one of the biggest meteor showers in the astrological calendar, the Orionid meteor shower can turn up to 15 and 30 meteors per hour. With an expected average of about 20 an hour. 

You won’t need a telescope or binoculars, as it can be seen with the naked eye. 

But obviously the extent of what you can see will depend on local weather conditions and cloud cover – current forecasts for the UK on Saturday night predict it to be dry and clear (although with localised cloud cover in some areas).  

The Orionid meteor shower is visible for the entire month of October every year.

But it peaks on the 20 and 21 October (Friday and Saturday) and especially on Saturday night into Sunday morning. This is because the moon will set before the meteor shower rises in the east.

If you don’t manage to catch it this weekend, then it will still be partially visible until the 7 November. 

The best time to watch the shower will be after 9.30pm on Saturday night. 

If you are able to stay up between midnight and 3am you are guaranteed the best chance of seeing meteors with great frequency as meteor showers normally peak just before dawn. 

The most important thing to consider about your location for watching the Orionid shower is how close you are to light pollution. 

Especially if you are in a city or a highly residential area where streetlights are going to make it tricker to see the sky clearly. So try and get as far away from built-up areas as possible, go to a public park.

For example, if you are in London the best place will probably be clear areas such as Richmond Park or Hampstead Heath.

In general, if you are able to travel further afield, try heading northwards.