7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics The universe is full of weird substances like liquid metal and whatever preservative keeps Larry King alive. But mankind isn't happy to accept the weirdness of nature when we can create our own abominations of science that, due to the miracle of technology, spit in nature's face and call it retarded. That's why we came up with... #7. What do you get when you suspend nanoparticles of iron compounds in a colloidal solution of water, oil and a surfactant? A ferrofluid is a liquid that reacts to magnetic fields in trippy ways that make you think that science is both magical and potentially evil. Tell us that didn't look like the birth of the most sinister dildo ever. What happens is that when a magnetic field is applied to the fluid, the particles of iron compound inside align to it. What the Hell is it Used For? Ferrofluids have a lot of pretty mundane uses, from lubricating and protecting hard drives to providing heat conduction in speakers, but their primary use is in looking cool. #6. #5.
New material harvests energy from water vapor MIT engineers have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on a ubiquitous source: water vapor. The new material changes its shape after absorbing tiny amounts of evaporated water, allowing it to repeatedly curl up and down. Harnessing this continuous motion could drive robotic limbs or generate enough electricity to power micro- and nanoelectronic devices, such as environmental sensors. "With a sensor powered by a battery, you have to replace it periodically. "We are very excited about this new material, and we expect as we achieve higher efficiency in converting mechanical energy into electricity, this material will find even broader applications," says Robert Langer, the David H. Other authors of the Science paper are Koch Institute postdoc Liang Guo and Daniel Anderson, the Samuel A. Harvesting energy The new film is made from an interlocking network of two different polymers. Such films could act as either actuators (a type of motor) or generators.
Metamaterials experts show a way to reduce electrons' effective mass to nearly zero The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a theory for moving this phenomenon onto the quantum scale, laying out blueprints for materials where electrons have nearly zero effective mass. Such materials could make for faster circuits with novel properties. The work was conducted by Nader Engheta, the H. Their paper was published in the journal Physical Review B: Rapid Communications. Their idea was born out of the similarities and analogies between the mathematics that govern electromagnetic waves -- Maxwell's Equations -- and those that govern the quantum mechanics of electrons -- Schrödinger's Equations. Though the actual mass of electrons is fixed, Engheta and Silveirinha thought the same principle could be applied to the effective mass of the electron.
Star-Shaped Gravity Waves Discovered By Physicists In France By: Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor Published: 02/22/2013 11:11 AM EST on LiveScience Star-shaped waves can form in vibrating tanks of liquid oil, researchers say. Learning more about such bizarre waves could shed light on counterparts that may exist elsewhere in nature, researchers added. Waves of all kinds often behave in an intuitively linear manner. However, a number of strange waves can also form. The waves seen on the surface of water also behave in a nonlinear manner, and bizarre phenomena can result, such as X- and Y-shaped ocean waves or monstrously large freak waves that seem to come out of nowhere. To uncover new, remarkable nonlinear waves, scientists experimented with circular and rectangular tanks containing about two-fifths of an inch (1 centimeter) of silicon oil. A new type of gravity wave eventually resulted, which alternated in shape between stars and polygons — for instance, between a five-pointed star and a five-sided pentagon.
Physicists May Have Created A 'New Form Of Matter' Physicists have created what appears to be a new form of matter. Labelled "colour-glass condensate", it has been identified as a "swarm" of sub-atomic particles with some properties of a liquid. The new form of matter has been discovered at CERN's Large Hadron Collider through looking at the way that particles move way from extremely high-speed collisions. MIT explains that usually in collision inside particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, particles fly away at near the speed on light. But according to the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) team at the LHC, in a sample of lead-proton collisions, some flew away from each other with correlated directions. The distinctive pattern has led to speculation that the particles are actually a new form of matter - a "liquid-like wave of gluons". The colour glass condensate itself is thought to be the surface of the walls of gluons inside a nucleus, travelling at close to the speed of light. "That has surprised many people, including us."
Viking History: Facts & Myths The Vikings were a seafaring people from the late eighth to early 11th century who established a name for themselves as traders, explorers and warriors. They discovered the Americas long before Columbus and could be found as far east as the distant reaches of Russia. While these people are often attributed as savages raiding the more civilized nations for treasure and women, the motives and culture of the Viking people are much more diverse. Many historians commonly associate the term “Viking” to the Scandinavian term vikingr, a word for “pirate.” The Viking Age references the earliest recorded raid in the 790s until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. Error loading player: No playable sources found A Viking raid on the monks of Lindisfarne, a small island located off the northeast coast of England, marked the start of the Viking migration from Scandinavia in 793. The Vikings set up colonies on the west coast of Greenland during the 10th century. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Related:
Huge Rock Crashes Into Moon, Sparks Giant Explosion The moon has a new hole on its surface thanks to a boulder that slammed into it in March, creating the biggest explosion scientists have seen on the moon since they started monitoring it. The meteorite crashed on March 17, slamming into the lunar surface at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph (90,000 kph) and creating a new crater 65 feet wide (20 meters). The crash sparked a bright flash of light that would have been visible to anyone looking at the moon at the time with the naked eye, NASA scientists say. "On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium," Bill Cooke of NASA 's Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before." [ The Greatest Lunar Crashes Ever ] NASA astronomers have been monitoring the moon for lunar meteor impacts for the past eight years, and haven't seen anything this powerful before. Scientists didn't see the impact occur in real time.
About Michael Anissimov Bio : Michael Anissimov (b. 1984) is a futurist and political thinker focused on emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, previously managed Singularity Summit and worked as media director for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute , as well as co-founding Extreme Futurist Festival . The Singularity Summit has received coverage from Popular Science , Popular Mechanics , the San Francisco Chronicle , award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer, The Verge , and a front page article in TIME magazine. Mr. Anissimov emphasizes the need for research into artificial intelligence goal systems to develop “Friendly Artificial Intelligence” for human civilization to successfully navigate the intelligence explosion . He appears in print, on podcasts, in documentaries, public speaking at conferences, and other media to spread this message. He lives in Berkeley, California. In January 2006, Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr.
CT Scanning Reveals Gorgeous Insect Images | Butterflies Stunning new pictures of butterfly metamorphosis have been captured using common medical imaging. The images of the tiny insects, which are described today (May 14) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, were taken with a CT scanner that has the resolution to image insects as small as 0.2 inches (5 millimeters). The new technique could be used to study insect development in place of dissection. Dissection can be a time-consuming, laborious process that requires killing a different specimen for each stage of development. [ See the Amazing Caterpillars Morph into Butterflies ] Masters of Earth Insects make up between 50 percent and 85 percent of the animals on the planet, said study co-author Russell Garwood, a geologist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, who studies fossilized insects. "To a first approximation, every living thing is an insect, so they're worth understanding," Garwood told LiveScience. Scanning butterflies Insect solutions
Robohand Lets Kids Play Again | 3D Printed Mechanical Hand Using a 3D printer from Makerbot, prosthetic hands can be made in a day or two for a fraction of the cost of traditional prosthetics. What started as a project between two men — South African Richard van As who had lost four fingers in a woodworking accident and mechanical prop designer Ivan Owen in the state of Washington — has become a global project called Robohand with the ability to change the lives of youngsters born without fingers. The Robohand is a set of mechanical fingers that open and close to grasp things based on the motion of the wrist. When 3D printer company MakerBot heard about the project, it donated a MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop printer to each of them. "The process was taking weeks and months per cycle … that was too much wasted time," MakerBot said on its blog. Van As realized others could benefit from the device and posted his story on Facebook . The files to create a Robohand on a 3D printer were posted online and have been downloaded over 3,800 times. 0 of 10
Warp Speed, Scotty? Star Trek's FTL Drive May Actually Work In the "Star Trek" TV shows and films, the U.S.S. Enterprise's warp engine allows the ship to move faster than light, an ability that is, as Spock would say, "highly illogical." However, there's a loophole in Einstein's general theory of relativity that could allow a ship to traverse vast distances in less time than it would take light. The trick? It's not the starship that's moving — it's the space around it. In fact, scientists at NASA are right now working on the first practical field test toward proving the possibility of warp drives and faster-than-light travel. According to Einstein's theory, an object with mass cannot go as fast or faster than the speed of light. In other words, matter-antimatter collision is a potentially powerful source of energy and fuel, but even that wouldn't be enough to propel a starship to faster-than-light speeds. Nevertheless, it's thanks to "Star Trek" that the word "warp" is now practically synonymous with faster-than-light travel .
Hedonistic Robots Could Destroy Humanity | Robots Complex robots are like animals: They learn by doing. Future robots may even respond to reward systems: complete a task with aplomb, and a gain a "feeling" of satisfaction for a job well done. While this technology could create more efficient, goal-oriented robots , it could also have some very dire ramifications for humanity. After all, robots that feel rewarded by making humans happy may eventually decide that if no humans exist, no human will ever be unhappy again. "Robots without preferences can't have complicated behaviors," Roman V. While Yampolskiy believes that robots can be indispensible tools, he also warns that as they learn to seek rewards, they may learn to circumvent helping humans. Yampolskiy asserts that robots with the capacity for feelings of pleasure would, in all likelihood, take all the same shortcuts that humans use to acquire it. Humans, he argued, wirehead as well, although in less direct ways. Follow Marshall Honorof @marshallhonorof . Quiz: Sci-Fi vs. 0 of 10
Fake Forest Converts Sunlight into Chemical Energy One hour of global sunlight contains enough energy to meet the demands of every human on the planet for an entire year. And a recent breakthrough by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory could make harnessing this energy for human consumption a reality. Researchers have developed an "artificial forest" that can convert solar energy into chemical fuels. In a process that mimics photosynthesis, this artificial forest soaks up light and uses it to generate oxygen and hydrogen, two gases that can be used to power fuel cells. "To facilitate solar water-splitting in our system, we synthesized tree-like nanowire heterostructures, consisting of silicon trunks and titanium oxide branches," said Peidong Yang, a chemist at Berkeley Lab's Materials Science Division and lead scientist for the study. "Visually, arrays of these nanostructures very much resemble an artificial forest." One of the light-absorbing semiconductors used was silicon, which generates hydrogen.