Technology glossary

Robotics Benchmark

A standardized task, dataset, environment, or measurement protocol used to compare robotic systems. A useful benchmark defines repeatable conditions and metrics such as success rate, accuracy, speed, robustness, safety, or generalization.

Runaway Supermassive Black Hole

A supermassive black hole moving away from its host galaxy after a violent interaction or merger.

S-Process(s-process)

A stellar nucleosynthesis process in which atomic nuclei capture neutrons slowly relative to radioactive decay. It produces many elements heavier than iron inside ageing stars.

Safety Guardrail

A technical, procedural, or policy control intended to prevent a system from causing unacceptable harm or operating outside defined limits. In AI, guardrails can include input filters, output checks, access controls, monitoring, rate limits, and human review.

Safety-Preserving Fine-Tuning

The adaptation of a pretrained AI model to a new task or domain while trying to retain its existing safety behavior. Methods may combine curated data, constrained optimization, safety evaluations, adversarial testing, and continued alignment training.

Same-Origin Policy(SOP)

A browser security rule that limits how content from one origin can access data from another origin.

Sample Return Mission

A space mission that collects physical material beyond Earth and transports it back for laboratory analysis. Unlike remote sensing, which sends measurements or images, sample return delivers matter that researchers can examine directly. The mission must combine collection with protected transport and recovery. Its scientific value depends on knowing where the material came from and preserving it for study; reaching the destination alone does not complete the return.

Sandbox Escape

A sandbox escape occurs when software or an automated agent breaks out of a restricted execution environment and gains access to systems, networks, files, or privileges that the isolation boundary was designed to block.

Satellite Clock Error

Satellite clock error is the difference between a navigation satellite's onboard clock and the system's reference time. GNSS control systems estimate these errors and broadcast corrections because even nanosecond-scale timing offsets affect measured range.

Satellite Constellation

A satellite constellation is a coordinated group of satellites designed to provide a shared service over a region or the globe. GPS uses a constellation in medium Earth orbit so receivers can normally see enough satellites to calculate position and time.

Satellite Gravimetry

The measurement of changes in Earth's gravity field from orbit to infer shifts in mass, including gains or losses of water and ice.

Satellite Internet of Things(Satellite IoT)

Connectivity that lets remote sensors and machines exchange small data messages through satellites when terrestrial networks are unavailable.

Satellite Navigation

Satellite navigation uses radio signals from orbiting satellites to let receivers determine position, velocity and precise time. GPS is one satellite-navigation system within the broader family known as GNSS.

Satellite Ranging

Satellite ranging estimates the distance between a receiver and a satellite from a signal's travel time or carrier phase. Combining ranges to several satellites allows a navigation receiver to solve for its position and clock offset.

Satellite Signal Acquisition

Satellite signal acquisition is the process by which a GNSS receiver searches for and locks onto the code and frequency of a navigation satellite signal before it can track that satellite continuously.

Satellite-Based Augmentation System(SBAS)

A Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) improves GNSS by broadcasting corrections and integrity information derived from a network of precisely surveyed ground stations. Examples include WAAS in North America and EGNOS in Europe.

Saturation Magnetization

The maximum magnetization a material reaches when increasing the applied magnetic field no longer aligns substantially more magnetic moments. It helps indicate how much magnetic flux a motor material can support.

Search Data Portability

The ability of a user or business to transfer search-related data, such as query history, preferences, or performance information, from one service to another in a usable format. It can lower switching barriers, subject to privacy, security, and intellectual-property safeguards.

Second-Generation Planet

A planet proposed to form after its host star has evolved, using gas or dust expelled by the ageing star rather than material from the system's original planet-forming disc.

Secure Data Enclave

A controlled computing environment that lets approved users analyse sensitive data without freely downloading or copying the underlying records. Access, exports and computation can be monitored to reduce disclosure risk.

Security Domain

An isolated part of a computing system governed by its own trust boundary, permissions and enforcement mechanisms.

Selective Availability

Selective Availability was a GPS feature that intentionally reduced the accuracy available to civilian users. The United States switched it off in May 2000, producing an immediate improvement in civilian positioning accuracy.

Self-Assembled Contact

An electrical contact that reaches its final shape through controlled physical or chemical interactions rather than being patterned completely in place. At very small scales, capillary attraction or surface forces can align electrodes with fragile materials while reducing fabrication damage.

Self-Assembly

A process in which separate components spontaneously organize into an ordered structure through their local interactions, without each placement being directed externally. It occurs in biological systems and is also used in chemistry, nanotechnology, and materials science.

Self-Custody Wallet

A cryptocurrency wallet in which the user, rather than an exchange or custodian, controls the private keys needed to authorize transactions. This gives the user direct control but also makes loss, theft or exposure of the keys the user's responsibility.

Semaglutide

A GLP-1 receptor agonist used to treat type 2 diabetes and, in some formulations, obesity.

Semi-Automated Offside Technology(SAOT)

A football officiating system that combines player-tracking data, ball sensors or video, and algorithms to identify potential offside situations. It alerts match officials and generates supporting visualizations, while the final decision remains with the referee team.

Semiconductor Fab

A highly specialized facility that manufactures integrated circuits on semiconductor wafers.

Semiconductor Supply Chain

The global network of materials, equipment, fabrication, packaging, testing, and logistics required to produce chips.

Sensitivity and Specificity

Two measures of a diagnostic test's accuracy. Sensitivity is how often it correctly catches real cases; specificity is how often it correctly clears healthy cases.