Lectures - StumbleUpon. UCB Physics Lecture Demonstrations - StumbleUpon. Plasma Weapons and Research - Inventions That Control Plasma - Popular Mechanics - StumbleUpon. When English physicist William Crookes first discovered plasma in 1879, he did not propose any use for the stuff.
Crookes found that he could make gas behave differently than other forms of matter by stripping electrons from it with electrodes. What we now call plasma is used in arc-welding torches, neon signs and high-end television screens. Scientists are still finding novel ways to manipulate plasma. For example, Jamey Jacob, an aerospace engineer from Oklahoma State University, has replaced mechanical parts on the wings of aircraft with arrays of tiny actuators. Pie.jpg from harvard.edu - StumbleUpon. Dark alien planet discovered by NASA. An alien world blacker than coal, the darkest planet known, has been discovered in the galaxy.
The world in question is a giant the size of Jupiter known as TrES-2b. NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected it lurking around the yellow sun-like star GSC 03549-02811 some 750 lightyears away in the direction of the constellation Draco. The researchers found this gas giant reflects less than 1 percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it darker than any planet or moon seen up to now. [The Strangest Alien Planets] "It's just ridiculous how dark this planet is, how alien it is compared to anything we have in our solar system," study lead-author David Kipping, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com.