Young stars ejecting plasma could give us clues into the Sun’s past Kyoto, Japan — Down here on Earth we don’t usually notice, but the Sun is frequently ejecting huge masses of plasma into space. These are called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). They often occur together with sudden brightenings called flares, and sometimes extend far enough to disturb Earth’s magnetosphere, generating space weather phenomena including auroras or geomagnetic storms, and even damaging power grids on occasion. Scientists believe that when…
High-speed reading of the genetic code should get a boost with the creation of the world’s first graphene nanopores – pores measuring approximately 2…
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground,…
Eyewall replacement occurs when the thunderstorms that circle the eye of a powerful typhoons or hurricanes are replaced by other thunderstorms. Basically, a…
The physics community has spent three decades searching for and finding no evidence that dark matter is made of tiny exotic particles. Case Western Reserve…
Ship hulls and other underwater hulls are treated with paints and varnishes which contain toxic additives to prevent barnacle, algae and mussel growth. Growths on ships can therefore increase fuel consumption by up to 50%. Since the launch of the global ban on tributyltin (TBT) there is a great need for alternative, non-toxic coatings to prevent biofouling.
Researchers from the Biomimetics-Innovation-Centre at Bremen University of Applied Sciences have developed a non-toxic alternative coating which uses sharkskin as a model.
The microstructure of sharkskin helps to reduce water resistance when afloat as well as it is an efficient means against the colonisation of organisms. Studies show that a silicon-based coating imitating the surface structure of the sharkskin causes a reduction in fouling growing on test plates by 70%.
Initial product development – a painting product with randomised structure for the recreational craft sector – has already been realised. A sprayable version of the product is currently being developed to tailor it to the spray process used in this sector.
The new technology relates to a compliant manipulator designed with a significantly improved agility. The individual segments of the manipulators are covered with permanent magnetic guideway discs. The arrangement of the segments is designed in such a way that these repel each other and with a change in length of the manipulator an equal distance of the segments is the result. The motion of the manipulator is e.g. initiated by cables or rods. The change of segment length can be enabled by sliding concentric tubes formed from a superelastic nickel-titanium alloy.
For years, astronomers have been puzzled by a bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way that was believed to be a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our…
When NASA’s Dawn spacecraft visited the asteroid Vesta in 2011, it showed that deep grooves that circle the asteroid’s equator like a cosmic belt were probably…
On Nov. 1, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Super Typhoon…
Two USC researchers have proposed a link between string field theory and quantum mechanics that could open the door to using string field theory — or a broader…
NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an infrared image of the Eastern Pacific that showed Hurricane Vance was a couple of times larger than the developing low…
The driving manner has an enormous influence on the fuel consumption of cars. Possible savings by changing the manner range from 10% to 60%. The described invention can help to unlock this potential. It comprises an assistance system, which captures the characteristics of the way ahead of the driver, e.g. using a navigation system, and then calculates driving recommendations in the form of “tasks”. The tasks are suposed to motivate the driver to adapt his driving, resulting in a changed manner in the long run. It is possible to implement a broad and extensive gamification-concept based on the invention.
A disappearing act was the last thing Rice University physicist Randy Hulet expected to see in his ultracold atomic experiments, but that is what he and his…
Two photons in free space do not interact. Light waves can pass through each other without having any influence on each other at all. For many applications in…
An active region on the sun – an area of intense and complex magnetic fields – rotated into view on Oct. 18, 2014. Labeled AR 12192, it soon grew into the…
The scattered stars are no longer bound to any one galaxy, and drift freely between galaxies in the cluster. By observing the light from the orphaned stars,…
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