Phobos-Grunt, the 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched into orbit and promptly crippled by failed auxiliary engines, is due to crash back onto Earth soon. Russian space authorities have named January 15th as the likely re-entry date. In case you thought that your fears of high-speed orbital debris ended with 2011.
Five days into 2012 and we’ve already got fancy new technology. A team from Cornell University have developed a light-distortion device that can mask events as if they hadn’t happened; they managed to use light distortion to hide an event for 40 picoseconds. Which, granted, is 40 trillionths of a second, but the research is groundbreaking in the extreme.
Stephen Hawking is one of the most brilliant scientists of our lifetime, and author of “A Brief History of Time”. And he is currently shopping around for a new assistant. His website features a picture of his wheelchair, complete with wires and complex electronics. The caption reads “STOP PRESS: Could you maintain this?”
A team of scientists has finished developing a cheaply manufactured paint-like product prototype that they hope you will eventually be able to put on the outside of your home. The paint will generate electricity from light – electricity that can then be captured and used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside of your home.
A Brazilian woman has given birth to a baby with two heads this week. The boy has two brains and two spines but shares one heart, lungs, liver and pelvis. In the spirit of Christmas, she has decided to call her son(s) Emanoel and Jesus respectively.
According to the exciting world of Science, the men in white coats have discovered a molecule in the brains of mice that, when switched on, gives these mice super memories. This could work for humans too – but the question is, do you really want to?
It’s always nice when researchers employing a loosely scientific method produce results you were more or less expecting. Folks at the University of Portsmouth have determined that loud music makes people want to drink alcohol in greater quantities and at a much faster rate because the music makes it taste sweeter. Science!
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have done the unthinkable. They’ve captured video at the speed of light, or, one trillion frames per second.
Police in Britain will soon be testing a shoulder-mounted laser that is capable of emitting a blinding wall of light from up to 500 metres away. It’s hoped the laser will help repel rioters and other troublemakers in an effort to prevent a repeat of the rioting that took place there earlier this year.
Not only are the beds about 77 000 years old, but it appears they were also designed to ward off insects like mosquitoes. The fossilized material has been found at an ancient cliff shelter known as Sibudu, which is near to Durban on our east coast, and continues to fuel the debate that modern man evolved out of Africa.
The Beagle Freedom Project rescues dogs that are bred and used for lab testing. These dogs are born in laboratories and live in cages their whole lives. The project recently rescued 40 dogs, between ages four and seven, who have never seen outside sunlight.
More and more of the technology that we see in the movies is becoming an everyday reality. The contact lens embedded with a tiny LED that can light up when a wireless signal is sent to it is one of these realities. Soon you’ll be able to stream your social media feeds and bring up other holographic images cybernetically.
In September, the science world was left in shock when workers at the world’s largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light. Now, measurements by an opposing team of physicists suggest neutrinos cannot have travelled faster than the speed of light.
Scientists at UC Irvine (a university in California) have unveiled what is currently the world’s lightest man-made substance, an “ultralight metallic microlattice,” that is 100 times lighter than styrofoam, and 1 000 times less dense than water.
It’s 08h00 on a Monday morning, so how better to welcome the week than with some complex physical graphs and equations explaining the world’s most popular mobile gaming app, Angry Birds. Ready? Let’s go! (Ka-kaaw!)
A 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched on Wednesday, due for a rendezvous with one of Mars’ moons, has had a system fail before it even left earth orbit, and now threatens to do what asteroid YU55 didn’t. провалить!
Robots have been the subject of countless science fiction tales and blockbuster movies, most often portrayed as malicious machines that have become independent of their creators and use their inherent advantages to rise to the top of the food chain. Until very recently, this type of scenario could only ever exist in fiction.
Strokes can have massive effects on the body and mind, and are known to be occasionally transformative. Perhaps none more-so than the stroke experienced by Chris Birch during a rugby training incident in Wales. Birch,26, claims to have woken up after suffering a stroke feeling very different, and that the incident had turned him into a gay man. He was engaged to his girlfriend at the time.
An asteroid the length of four rugby fields will be speeding through Earth’s solar system tomorrow, at a closer proximity to us than the moon. Nothing of this magnitude has come nearly as close to colliding with our planet for 30 years. But rest assured the asteroid is not going to hit us. Not yet, anyway.
Commercial space travel is now literally months away, and it appears that a mission to Mars is not too far off either. Six men that have been locked in large steel piped tubes for 520 days emerged from isolation earlier today after a bid to simulate a mission to Mars. This is taking Survivor to the next level.
Okay, this might seem like it belongs in the same dark vault of impossible philosophical conundrums as “How much wood would a wood chuck chuck” but hear the hot IT nerd out:
A new laser is to be built that is as powerful as “concentrating the rays of the sun for the entire earth onto the tip of a pen”. Scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space, AKA the vacuum. Because that’s a fantastic idea. It is official, mankind has a death-wish.
There are other products on the market that deliver short bursts of energy, but for those that really like their coffee; there is a new way for you to ingest it, without the hassle. Harvard biomedical engineering professor, David Edwards, has invented AeroShot: caffeine delivered to your body faster than coffee. Cue the coffee inhaler.
When reversing genetics in an attempt to create a real, live, man-eating dinosaur, it pays to know what the consequences may be. In this case, being the paleontologist who advised Steven Spielberg on the making of four Jurassic Park movies and decades of children’s nightmares about killer lizards should just about cover it.
Okay, not quite X-Ray specs, but definitely a leap forward in covert surveillance technology. Watch these hot science geeks show off a new type of radar they’ve cooked up that can detect objects moving through 20 cm thick concrete walls.
In a rare intersection of Science #FAIL and “Crap, that was close!”, scientists have re-analysed the findings of Mexican astronomer, José Bonilla, who, in 1883, spotted over 450 fuzzy looking objects passing in front of the sun. Turns out it was a trillion tonnes of comet debris!
Neuroscientists have discovered that using Facebook has a measurable impact on the size of particular areas of the brain. The results of a recent study show that the more Facebook friends you have, the bigger and denser become the three parts of your brain which are associated with the power to socialise. It’s unclear whether by ‘socialise’ they mean really, in real life. But maybe.
‘Quantum Levitation’ even sounds cool. The guys from the University of Tel-Aviv’s School of Physics Superconductivity Group recently demonstrated ‘quantum locking,’ at the Association of Science – Technology Centers Annual Conference by getting a supercooled magnet to levitate above a locked track. The science is clunky, the video looks very cool.
A young fashion designer from Germany has produced the first man-made synthetic fibre entirely without chemicals. And she did it with a staple you can find in your fridge — milk! The fabric is called QMilch, and is made from high concentrations of the milk protein, casein. The best part is that it looks and feels like silk but doesn’t smell.
Ian Neale holds the world record for growing the heaviest swede, weighing in at 38kg. Last week, the 68-year-old from Newport in South Wales, received a special video message from Snoop Dogg. The rapper wanted specific cultivation advice in return for some VIP passes for one of his gigs. The record-breaking vegetable grower accepted Snoop’s invitation.