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Stanford researchers fired extremely bright flashes of light from the world's most powerful X-ray laser onto droplets of liquid. These vaporized instantly, but not before the whole process was imaged in full detail.
Lazy physicists from Australia programmed an artificial intelligence system to maneuver a delicate experiment with little to no oversight. The A.I. had to control an array of lasers that are used to cool atoms near absolute zero temperature, where the slightest hiccup could destroy the fragile state of matter of the atoms. But the machine performed marvelously.
By all account, we can only perceive three spatial dimensions: width, length and height. Everything seems more vibrant and 'real' in 3-D, compared to 2-D, but one can only wonder what things must look in four dimensions. Alas, our brains simply can't fathom a four-dimensional universe, let alone a 99-dimension universe. Moreover, it seems our Universe simply can't host more than three dimensions due to the laws of thermodynamics, physicists say.
This remarkable research could open the doors for biological thermometers at the nanoscale which might tell us a thing or two about how our bodies function at the smallest level.
Physicists have crammed water inside extremely small cracks about ten-billionth of a metre and found the molecules entered a never before seen state. In this brand new state, the water molecules don't adhere to strict laws of classical physics anymore, nor do they behave like a liquid, gas or solid.
The closest we've come to natural muscles is a novel elastomer developed at Stanford University, Palo Alto that can stretch 45 times its length and return to its original size. It's also self-healing.
A new circuit was demonstrated at the 2016 IEEE International Solid- State Circuits Conference this past February that can, among other things, double Wi-Fi speed, while halving the size of the chip. The researchers at Columbia Engineering invented a new tech called "full-duplex radio integrated circuits" which uses only one antenna to simultaneously transmit and receive at the same wireless radio frequency.
Heat engines, whether they're as big as a five-story building or as small as an atom, operate using the same thermodynamic processes. This was proven by Johannes Roßnagel at the University of Mainz in Germany who made a single calcium-40 atom behave like a Stirling engine. Nothing short of amazing!
After an A.I. beat the human champion at Go, a game almost infinitely more complex than chess, some might feel like tossing the towel and let our robot overlords take their rightful place. Not so fast! We're still good for something. Pressed to find a solution for a complicated quantum physics problem that neither the researchers themselves nor an algorithm could properly solve, Danish physicists turned to the gaming community. They devised a game which mimicked the task at hand while also keeping it fun, and found some gamers came up with novel "outside the box" solutions which the algorithm couldn't even touch. Points for humanity!
The great physicist who invented Calculus in his 20s and gave the world the universal law of gravity transcribed countless pages from a famous alchemy manuscript which describes how to manufacture a key element for the Philosopher's Stone.
Composite metal foam (CMF) is light, but strong -- it can even stop bullets!
Finally, a team of researchers have bridged the gap and found an accurate mathematical equation that can determine the "spectral radiative heat transfer rate between two closely spaced bodies, generalizing the concept of a blackbody to the case of near-field energy transfer."
NASA plans to improve today's planes with a blast from the past -- re-implementing a structure known as a wing truss would reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions of common commercial aircraft by as much as 50%, according to computational models.
A new nanomaterial printing method could make it both easier and cheaper to create devices such as wearable chemical and biological sensors, data storage and integrated circuits -- even on flexible surfaces such as paper or cloth. The secret? Plamsa.
Together, these two brilliant people forever changed how we understand the world we live in. They did so at a huge cost, with incredible levels of radiation exposure, that would in the end claim Marie's life. But by tackling some of the deadliest forces known to man with their bare hands, they earned life unending in the scientific community.
Tired of laundry day? Pioneering nano research into self-cleaning textiles could soon make cleaning your clothes as easy as hanging them out on a sunny day.
Despite solar cells made with perovskite recently crossed the 20 percent efficiency mark, researchers say there's still room to improve if only they knew how charge flows at the nanometer scale. They just had to ask.
A wind or Aeolian harp is exactly what the name implies: the only musical instrument played by the wind.
A new approach to removing ice could make driving during winter less annoying, and flying a lot less dangerous. It relies on a rubbery coating that exploits the mechanics between rigid surfaces, instead of attempting to chemically repel the water in ice like other coatings.
Swiss physicists have developed a new model to chart the early development of the Universe in better detail than ever before.
We can't call it a major discovery. Not yet.
Iowa State University engineers have created a flexible, tunable "meta-skin," a material that uses rows of liquid-metal devices to cloak an object from radar detection.
There's a tune to oxygen, carbon and any other element from the periodic table.
A team from Cornell University’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering has found a way to arrange quantum dots together in an almost perfect structure.
If you sprinkle water on a hot plate, it will evaporate. Basic physics, really. If the plate is really hot (well above the boiling point of water) something very interesting happens, which the untrained eye might discard as uneventful. The droplets will dance around the plate on a cushion of its own vapor -- this form of levitation is called the Leindenfrost effect. This layer is about 100 nanometers wide, and for the first time a team of researchers has imaged it.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment Collaboration has started the first batch of tests using a small-scale 35 tons prototype of the final device, dubbed the DUNE Buggy. The team is busy gathering readings from the prototype to tweak and optimize the design of the final device.
Mantis shrimp are probably best known for the dazzling colors that adorn their shells. The second thing they're best known for is their tendency to violently murder anything they come into contact with.
Though technically a metal, the electrons inside graphene behave like a liquid traveling very fast in waves.
This polymer can change shape and release tremendous amounts of stored elastic energy relative to its weight simply by being exposed to a temperature change. This in itself isn't exactly new, but the team led by Chemical Engineering Professor Mitch Anthamatten at the University of Rochester innovated by making the polymer react to room temperature -- a first.
After a century of speculation and tantalizing results, scientists have, for the first time, confirmed the existence of gravitational waves.
In one scenario, parts would spiral farther than the moon!
In the wake of calamities like hurricanes or tornadoes, you'll find trees leveled to the ground. But observations suggest that all trees seem to break at the same wind speed, with parameters like the type of tree, height or diameter barely affecting the outcome.
In a study published in the January 19, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), scientists at Tsinghua University in China confirmed that something very unusual is happening inside extremely heavy atoms, causing them to deviate from their expect chemical behavior predicted by their place on the Periodic Table of Elements.
Tornadoes are associated with the strongest and most violent storms, reaching winds of up to 300 miles per hour (480 km/h).
To the romantic eye, a tree swaying in the wind is a testimony of nature's heart beat. An engineer might be moved by the same feeling, but he might also add: "well, that looks like a lot of wasted energy."
The moon does more than cause tides and delight lovers - according to a new study, it can also affect how much rainfall falls down on the ground.
Griffith University Associate Professor Joan Vaccaro believes she may have uncovered how our reality differentiates the future from the past. Her paper could topple our understanding of time flow (ironically) forever.
That's not one million or one billion, but roughly on unquadragintillion -- a number so big it exceeds the number of particles in the Universe. So, why is this important?
Finnish and American scientist made knots out of solitary waves, or knot solitons. This was the first time this was demonstrated possible, though theoretically predicted for decades. These sort of knots are thought to play an important role in the quantum-mechanical foundations of nature, though these have remained elusive in quantum dynamics.
Geckos are the largest animals able to scale walls. They use the same mechanism as spiders and hundreds of other animals able to do so: through tiny hairs on their pads that adhere to surfaces due to molecular force interactions. But why isn't there an animal bigger than the gecko that can cling to windows and walls? For that matter, why isn't there any Spiderman?
Though incandescent light bulbs have been used to light homes for more than a hundreds years, and still do so in most of the world, these are ridiculously inefficient. This has prompted many governments to completely phase-them out, among which the E.U., Australia, Canada, Russian, as well as the United States. Their place has been taken over by fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), and the even more efficient LEDs. A team at MIT, however, has a bright idea that might revamp the unfavored bulbs. They've designed a new sort of incandescent bulb that uses a photonic crystal to recycle the waste energy. The resulting bulbs could be more power and light efficient than anything on the market right now.
Tantalizing rumors about gravitational waves have been spreading through the scientific community.
Almost 100 manuscripts have been submitted following last week's tantalizing announcement from CERN.
There's three things every good alien movie needs, in my opinion: aliens, spaceships and tractor beams; so far, science hasn't really delivered well on the "alien" part, and our spaceships still have a way to go. However, recent work in the UK might pull the third element out of the realm of sci-fi into reality.
You know how the old saying goes, that "diamonds are forever," and giving your significant other a piece of diamond jewelry is considered to be a declaration of eternal love? Well, scientists working at the Borexino experiment in Italy may change the saying and send enamored young men scrambling for something that's really eternal to profess their love -- electrons.
The full extent of Japan's 2011 Fukushima meltdown is still being uncovered, with measured levels of contamination increasing in previously identified sites throughout the North American coast. While it's still too low to threaten human or ocean life, this confirms that the power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes researchers report.
To make diamonds, the industry typically resorts to subjecting graphite to immense pressure and temperature, which makes production volumes low and costly. This paradigm is about to change, since researchers at North Carolina State University found a new phase for carbon called Q-carbon, produced at ambient temperatures and pressure. This is surprisingly close to diamond in structure, with the added benefit of exhibiting a couple of unique properties.
In a new study published in Nature, researchers have demonstrated a technique that allows the mapping of organs at microscopic scales.
An University of Queensland study of mantis shrimp discovered a new form of light communication employed by the animals, the findings having potential applications in satellite remote sensing, biomedical imaging, cancer detection, and computer data storage.
Until the advent of calculus and computing infinite series, not that many digits were added to the ones found by Archimedes for more than a 1,500 years.
