Tech & Science Daily | JPEG by digital artist Beeple sells for record $69 million at auction

The modern artist Mike Winkelmann, known popularly as Beeple, has sold a digital picture for nearly $70 million at Christie’s, the first-ever sale by a major auction house of a piece of art that does not exist in physical form.

The collage by the American artist - ‘Everydays: The First 5,000 Days’ -only exists as a JPEG file, and sold on Thursday for a record $69.3 million at Christie’s.

This became the most expensive ever ‘non-fungible token’, which is a collectible digital asset using blockchain digital ledger technology to record authenticity.

An alien planet 41 light-years away from earth - that’s 246 trillion miles - has been found to be creating itself a completely new atmosphere.

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says GJ 1132b has a new cover made from chemicals including hydrogen cyanide and methane, similar to smog found in polluted cities on Earth.

The boss of the gaming platform Roblox is now worth $4.6 billion, that’s £3.3 billion, after its value rose by 60 per cent after the first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The buying frenzy means Roblox is now worth more than more established publishers, including Ubisoft and Electronic Arts.

Netflix is testing a feature that asks viewers to verify they share a household with the account holder and, Twitter is rolling out the live audio feature ‘Spaces’. Plus, Scientists from University College London unravel the mysteries of a 2,000 hand-powered mechanical device built by the ancient Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism was used to forecast positions of the sun, moon and planets, as well as lunar and solar eclipses.

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