The start of the new year means one thing if you're a technology obsessive like us: CES, the year's largest consumer electronics show.

In its 56th year (55 in person and one virtual event in 2020 because of a worldwide virus), CES is happening this week from January 5–8 in Las Vegas.

The Inverse Gear team will bring you the latest and greatest in consumer electronics, so definitely bookmark our CES 2023 hub page to stay on top of all the latest announcements.

Paper towels are one of the most fervently consumed household goods on the market, as evidenced by pandemic shortages.

In 2020, people used over 13 billion pounds of them in the United States alone. This means we’re sacrificing lots of trees to clean up coffee spills.

But it can be tricky to slash paper towel waste — a viable alternative must be reusable and absorb more water than paper products. It should also be just as convenient.

Now, a team of engineers from the University of Maryland may have found a more sustainable picker-upper: Their new design for a flexible hydrogel sheet could become the kitchen towel of the future.

Minerals found on Mars in 2014 looked like proof that Mars once had an atmosphere teeming with oxygen, because those same minerals formed in wet, oxygen-rich environments here on Earth.

But in recent experiments, Stony Brook University planetary scientist Kaushik Mitra and his colleagues found that it doesn’t take oxygen to kickstart the chemical reactions that produce those minerals after all.

That may mean that ancient Mars didn’t have an atmosphere rich in oxygen, which could have some interesting implications for the search for evidence of past life on Mars.