Interesting Science Facts You Maybe Don't Know Jan 25, 2011 / Category : StrangeNews / 25 Comments It's time to refresh our brains with another list of fascinating factlets. These mini-facts are all science based and should be news to some readers. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 11 cheap gifts guaranteed to impress science geeks Science comes up with a lot of awesome stuff, and you don't need a Ph.D, a secret lab, or government funding to get your hands on some of the coolest discoveries. We've got a list of 11 mostly affordable gifts that are guaranteed to blow your mind, whether or not you're a science geek. Click on any image to see it enlarged. 1. Aerogel Also known as frozen smoke, Aerogel is the world's lowest density solid, clocking in at 96% air. Aerogel isn't just neat, it's useful. Price: $35 2. Inside these sealed glass balls live shrimp, algae, and bacteria, all swimming around in filtered seawater. EcoSpheres came out of research looking at ways to develop self-contained ecosystems for long duration space travel. Price: $80 3. NASA has been trying to figure out how to get a sample of rock back from Mars for a while now. Every once in a while, a meteorite smashes into Mars hard enough to eject some rocks out into orbit around the sun. Price: $70+ 4. Price: $150 5. Price: $110 6. Price: $80 7. Price: $15 8.
What would happen if I drilled a tunnel through the center of th" Want to really get away from it all? The farthest you can travel from home (and still remain on Earth) is about 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) straight down, but you'll have to journey the long way round to get there: 12,450 miles (20,036 kilometers) over land and sea. Why not take a shortcut, straight down? You can get there in about 42 minutes -- that's short enough for a long lunch, assuming you can avoid Mole Men, prehistoric reptiles and underworld denizens en route. Of course, you'd be in for a rough ride. For sake of argument (and survival) let's pretend the Earth is a cold, uniform, inert ball of rock. At the Earth's surface, gravity pulls on us at 32 feet (9.8 meters) per second squared. You're still moving at a heck of a clip, though, so don't expect to stop there. Of course, reality has a tendency to intrude on even the best thought experiments.
Human observation of dark energy may shorten the life span of the universe Could humanity's observation of dark energy have shortened the life span of the universe? The answer is "yes" according to the author of a new scientific paper that has recently come to light. Featured in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine, the subscriber-only story, "Has observing the universe hastened its end?", discusses the paper and its claims. Now, before I go further, I must point out that this work has not yet appeared in any peer-reviewed journal. Their official paper, titled "The Late Time Behavior of False Vacuum Decay: Possible Implications for Cosmology and Metastable Inflating States," is far from grandiose. To understand the potential implications of the calculations in the paper, one must start at the beginning—the Big Bang, and even before. This idea was challenged in the late 1990's by the discovery of dark energy. How does this relate to the work in the research article? How could something like this possibly happen?
The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World Let's face it, we really trust science. In fact, studies suggest that the vast majority of people will murder another human being, if a guy in a lab coat tells them it's OK. But surely in their insatiable curiosity and desire to put knowledge above all things, science would never, say, inadvertently set off a chain of events that lead to some sort of disaster that ended the world. Right? Well, here's five experiments that may prove us wrong. Recreating the Big Bang Scientists are kind of pissed that they weren't around when the Big Bang happened. The solution, science says, is to make it happen again. God, 1. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Well, first imagine an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust. So, Basically It's Like... Imagine you have a huge tanker truck parked outside a children's hospital. How Long Have We Got? Meet the Large Hadron Collider. This is not only the largest particle accelerator ever built, it's the largest anything ever built. Risk Level: 3 The Quantum Zeno Effect Risk Level: 5
thermodynamics - Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon Stirring will win, hands down, every time. This is why physicists need to talk to chemists once in a while. As Georg correctly remarks, the latent heat of vaporization of water is enormous - but he's wrong about waving the spoon; stirring is the champion here. Why? It's similar to stirring iced tea. This kind of thing has a lot of applications to laboratory and industrial chemical processes, surface catalysis, petroleum cracking, yadda yadda. If you want an even faster way to cool a cup of coffee, here's a tip from my Granddad Parker: forget the spoon and saucer your coffee. I, For One, Welcome Our New Computer Overlords Last night, IBM’s Watson computer won the final round of the three-day Man V. Machine Jeopardy! competition. At the beginning of the show, the humans were fierce, proving that they could buzz in faster than Watson, even though the machine knew the answer. Both human competitors, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, got it correct as well. Rutter: $21,600Jennings: $24,000Watson: $77,147 But although Watson won the competition, humans still prevailed. On Jeopardy! In this video from IBM, project researchers describe how a computer system like Watson could be capable of reading an unlimited number of documents, understanding the information and completely retaining it. Financial companies could use a computer like Watson to read and analyze news reports, market reports, trade publications, world events, blogs — you name it — and extract meaningful information for investors or business owners. I think Watson is agreat achievement of our time.
News ::: Columbia Engineers Prove Graphene is Strongest Material July 21, 2008 Columbia Engineers Prove Graphene is the Strongest Material Research scientists at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have achieved a breakthrough by proving that the carbon material graphene is the strongest material ever measured. Graphene holds great promise for the development of nano-scale devices and equipment. It consists of a single layer of graphite atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, similar to a honeycomb. As a two-dimensional material, every atom is exposed to the surface. Until now, graphene’s estimated strength, elasticity and breaking point were based on complex computer modeling theories. “Our team sidestepped the size issue by creating samples small enough to be defect-free,” said Columbia Professor Jeffrey Kysar. The studies were conducted by postdoctoral researcher Changgu Lee and graduate student Xiaoding Wei, in the research groups of mechanical engineering professors Kysar and James Hone.
Science News: Nanoguitar Photo by D. Carr and H. Craighead, Cornell. The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices. The world's smallest guitar -- carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell -- has been made at Cornell University to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. The "nanoguitar" -- made for fun to illustrate the technology -- is just one of several structures that Cornell researchers believe are the world's smallest silicon mechanical devices. "We have a new technology for building the smallest mechanical devices," said Harold G. The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms. Photo by D. Photo by D.
Illusion 'cloak' makes you see what's not there - tech - 24 February 2011 NOW you see it, now it looks like something else. Radar images might never be the same again, thanks to an illusion device that can change an object's appearance. The technology could ultimately be used to hide military aircraft. The device is part of a growing family of metamaterials - structures designed to steer light along curved paths. They have already been used to make objects appear invisible and to disguise a gap between two objects. Wei Xiang Jiang and Tie Jun Cui at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, have created a structure that changes the way radio waves interact with a copper cylinder so that it appears to be composed of another material altogether. Copper conducts electricity well and reflects incoming radio waves, giving it a bright radar signature. The illusion only worked when the cylinder was viewed from the side; what's more, the imaginary object it generated was the same size as the original. Journal reference: Physical Review E (DOI:10.1103/PhysRevE.83.026601)
'Anti-laser' built for first time - physics-math - 17 February 2011 An anti-laser – which absorbs light rather than emitting it – has been built for the first time. A laser shines by producing a cascade of photons that bounce around inside a light-amplifying material before exiting from one or both ends. In 2010, Douglas Stone at Yale University and colleagues devised a way to reverse the process, with a material that absorbs rather than amplifies light. The researchers calculated that if they used a light-absorbing material like silicon, then at certain wavelengths, two identical laser beams shone directly at each other would cancel out inside the material. Now, a team led by Hui Cao of Yale has done just that using a 110-micrometre-wide slab of silicon. The researchers chose the wavelength of the laser light so that light waves hitting the outside of the slab from the laser beams were in just the right phase with the waves transmitted through the material to trap the light inside the slab. Journal reference: Science, vol 331, p 889 More From New Scientist