Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 484

Most people know that when you flow an electric current through a wire, the wire heats up. Most of our readers will also know that heat is the killer of many of our favorite electronic devices. That's why this new discovery by the University of Maryland is very pertinent to our cause. It's uses could allow for more efficient heat dissipation.

Kamal H. Baloch, Norvik Voskanian, Merijntje Bronsgeest, and John Cumings found that they could outsmart the traditional "Joule heating" and have the heat dissipate into the substrate rather than into the wire. This is due to a process they have dubbed "remote Joule heating." When an electric current flows through a carbon nanotube, the heat will go into the material that the nanotube is sitting upon.

The researchers determined that as much as 84 percent of the power in the nanotube was transferred to the substrate. In the nanoscale that they were working on, it was a bit hard to determine just where the heat was going. They had to use electron thermal microscopy (EThM) in order to figure it out.

I think I found a project that's going to consume my spring break. Well, that is if I didn't already have about 50 things to do over it, none of which are particularly fun. But, even though I can't do it, I think I should share it with you guys, just in case you want to make one. And if you do, you better send me a video.

This incredibly awesome turret is the brainchild of Rudolph Labs and requires a sturdy tripod, an airsoft or paintball gun, and a PC. The PC uses a webcam to scan the scene and watch for movement. Once it locates a target, it can stick to it and fire at will! The software includes the ability to anticipate where the target is going to move.

The bill of materials (excluding PC) is about $110. The designers of the project warn that it could consume a weekend, or three:

Our Solar System is an absolutely mind-blowing thing, and I personally believe we haven't even scraped the surface in terms of our knowledge base on it. There are things that we (the normal people, not NASA high-ups or anything) couldn't even begin to comprehend, let alone know the ins and outs of things we have no idea about.

The latest dance our closest star is doing is letting out solar tornadoes that are several times as wide as the Earth, and are generated in the solar atmosphere. The new data was discovered using the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly telescope that is onboard the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) satellite.

Dr. Xing Li, of Aberystwyth University says:

The US Army shows no signs in stopping its demand for robots, even in the 10-year old conflict. The two new robots that the Army are currently testing will join the over 2,000 robots that are already employed by the Army for bomb disposal, classified ops, and for security checkpoints. Boston Dynamics, creator of the cool BigDog bot and others, is the creator for these two new robots.

Both were developed with funding from the Army's Rapid Equipping Force. They are now undergoing testing at the Army Test and Evaluation Command to pass safety and reliability assessments. The first type is the RHex which is a six-legged, 30-pound crawling bot inspired by cockroaches. It wiggles around through mud, streams, and rocky terrain, going up to six hours on a battery charge. The bot can be controlled by remote up to 650 yards away and can manage stairs, slopes, and even swim underwater.

The Sand Flea is the other bot being developed, and it is capable of jumping up to 30 feet into the air. It weighs 11 pounds and is able to jump 25 times on a single charge of its carbon dioxide bottle. This allows it to jump over walls or onto roofs of buildings. In flight, it's able to stay stable due to a gyro stabilization system.

Personally, I'm getting a little sick of the 3D trend that is visible everywhere. I mean, 3D printers, movies, and game consoles, it's all starting to become a bit ridiculous. Finally, there's a piece of 3D that I can get behind. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently discovered that a 3D inspired solar panel could produce 20 times more energy than its traditional flat brethren.

Traditional solar panels lay on a roof facing the sun to produce energy. MIT researchers decided to test the hypothesis set forth by 13-year-old Adiean Dywer. He hypothesized that a design based on trees would produce more energy. His testing failed, but MIT's didn't. MIT tried various 3D shapes such as a cube, tall cube, and tower to see which produced the most energy. All three outpaced the traditional panel and the accordion-style tower drew in 20 times more power per square foot.

"I think this concept could become an important part of the future of photovoltaics," said Jeffrey Grossman, one of the project leaders. The accordion-style worked so well because it could absorb energy from all angles. It also reduces the foot print of the installation by standing vertically. While MIT is confident with the tower design, they haven't figured out the best distribution for them yet. Since one tower may shade another, they are best used in a urban environment...at least for now.

Harry Potter's invisibility cloak is pretty cool. But it's just fantasy, isn't it? Well, by applying some technology, scientists have been able to make a breakthrough in cloaking objects from heat-sensing cameras and the like. This is done by controlling the flow of heat, either focusing it into a small point, or spreading it outside of an invisibility zone.

the technology will most likely go to the military, where something similar has been proven to hide a tank. This technology also has applications in computers, because it is fundamentally shuffling heat around at will. In computers, heat is still a major challenge for engineers. "We can design a cloak so that heat diffuses around an invisibility region, which is then protected from heat," Dr Guenneau explained. "Or we can force heat to concentrate in a small volume, which will then heat up very rapidly."

It could also be used by thieves, provided they can steal it from the military in the first place. They would be able to hide from police helicopters at night, or from thermal imaging alarm systems. Harry Potter's cloak is becoming reality. It will just take more time and research.

OK, I'll admit it: I'm scared of heights. I live in a two-storey house and can barely look over my balcony without feeling scared. But this, this is just absolutely insane! Enter "Fearless Felix" Baumgartner, who has jumped 2,500 times from planes, and helicopters as well as some of the world's highest landmarks and skyscrapers, such as the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, the Millau Viaduct in southern France, and the 101-story Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan.

This summer, Baumgartner hopes to fly toward the Earth at supersonic speeds from a record 23 miles above the Earth, breaking the sound barrier... with only his body. During a dress rehearsal last Thursday, he made it more than half-way, ascending from the New Mexico desert in a helium balloon, and jumping from more than 13 miles up. It's said that he is one of only three people who have jumped from such a height and free-fall to a safe landing. He's also the first to do so in 50 years.

He's even caught the attention of NASA, where engineers working on astronaut escape systems for future spacecraft keeping an eye on the skydiver. Here's where things get insane: Baumgartner took a 100-foot helium balloon and pressurized capsule which lifted from Roswell, New Mexico last Thursday morning. He then jumped at 71,581 feet - 13.6 miles - and landed safely just 8 minutes and 8 seconds later.

First off, some back story. This will end up as a mini-editorial, but some of you will find this very interesting. Lake Vostok is a large (10,000km2), presumably fresh water body located under some 4km of ice in East Antarctica. The lake is not some little pool of water, its a gigantic, 250km long and 50km wide.

Because the lake is under kilometres of frozen ice, it has been untouched by todays technology and hence, the hands of man. The contents of this secret under-the-ice lake, have not seen the light of day for more than 20 million years. Because of this long period of pure isolation, it is believed that the water inside Lake Vostok could contain new, never-before-seen lifeforms, and unique geochemical processes.

For the past five-plus years, Russia and the United States have been seeking to probe Vostok in order to discover its underlying secrets from this pure, pristine body of water. The problem associated with such an untouched body of water is that as soon as it is discovered, tested and exposed, we would have contaminated it in multiple ways. Because of its long period of isolation, it cannot be explored without the introduction of the outside world, i.e. us.

We're not even finished with the first month of 2012 and we are already experiencing some seriously powerful stuff happening to us because of one of the most important things we, humans, require to live: our Sun, our Star. The Sun, at around 0359 UT on January 23, from sunspot 1402 erupted and produced a long-duration M9-class solar flare.

The explosion's M9-ranking puts it on the threshold of being classed an X-flare, the most powerful there can be. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare's most extreme ultraviolet flare, below:

The resulting coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field at 0617 UT on January 22 and according to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME strongly compressed Earth's magnetic field and briefly exposed satellites in geosynchronous orbit to solar wind plasma. The effects of this will last roughly 24 hours, where Earth's magnetic field reverberates from the impact. This causes bright auroras to be seen around the arctic circle. Bjørn Jørgensen observed this display from Tromsø, Norway:

Qualcomm have an interesting new competition, named the Tricorder X PRIZE. It is jointly organised with the X PRIZE Foundation, who is famous for its Ansari X PRIZE award of $10 million for its first private suborbital space flight. Qualcomm is offering up $10 million to those who could take the concept of a highly-portable health-monitoring device, the Star Trek Tricorder, and make it real.

Peter Diamandis, chair and chief executive of the X PRIZE Foundation says: