Wednesday 30 July 2014

NIST Shows Ultrasonically Propelled Nanorods Spin Dizzyingly Fast

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Vibrate a solution of rod-shaped metal nanoparticles in water with ultrasound and they’ll spin around their long axes like tiny drill bits. Why? No one yet knows exactly. But researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have clocked their speed—and it’s fast. At up to 150,000 revolutions per minute, these nanomotors rotate 10 times faster than any nanoscale object submerged in liquid ever reported. The discovery of this dizzying rate has opened up the possibility that they could be used not only for moving around inside the body—the impetus for the research—but also for high-speed machining and mixing. Scientists have been studying how to make nanomotors move around in liquids for the past several years. A group at Penn State looking for a biologically friendly way to propel nanomotors first observed that metal nanorods were moving and rotating in response to ultrasound in 2012. Another group at the University of California San Diego then directed the metal rods’ forward motion using a magnetic field. The Penn State group then demonstrated that these nanomotors could be propelled inside of a cancer cell. But no one knew why or how fast the nanomotors were spinning. The latter being a

The post NIST Shows Ultrasonically Propelled Nanorods Spin Dizzyingly Fast has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
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Pretty, pretty

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Pretty, pretty
Spirograph anyone?
 #outerspace

Corina Marinescu originally shared:

Because Fibonacci...
Earth orbits the Sun 8 times in the same period that Venus orbits the Sun 13 times! Drawing a line between Earth & Venus every week results in a spectacular FIVE side symmetry!!

Image via imgur

#fibonacci   #earth   #venus  

 » see original post https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/Cras5W5RJjk
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Observatory: The Moon Is (Slightly) Flat, Scientists Say

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“Like a lemon with an equatorial bulge” is how a planetary scientist, the author of the study, described the true shape of the moon.















via New York Times

Mercury's bizzare magnetic field tells scientists how its interior is different from Earth's

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Mercury's interior is different from the Earth's interior in a way that explains Mercury's bizarre magnetic field, planetary physicists report. Measurements from NASA's Messenger spacecraft have revealed that Mercury's magnetic field is approximately three times stronger at its northern hemisphere than its southern one.

via Science Daily

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New catalyst converts carbon dioxide to fuel

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Scientists have synthesized a catalyst that improves their system for converting waste carbon dioxide into syngas, a precursor of gasoline and other energy-rich products, bringing the process closer to commercial viability.

via Science Daily

Evidence of a local hot bubble carved by a supernova

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I spent this past weekend backpacking in Rocky Mountain National Park, where although the snow-swept peaks and the dangerously close wildlife were staggering, the night sky stood in triumph. Without a fire, the stars, a few planets, and the surprisingly bright Milky Way provided the only light to guide our way.



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Next-generation dark matter experiments get the green light

Science Focus

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Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation announced support for a suite of upcoming experiments to search for dark matter that will be many times more sensitive than those currently deployed. These so-called Generation 2 Dark Matter Experiments include the LUX-Zeplin (LZ) experiment, an international collaboration formed in 2012, managed by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) and to be located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota. With the announcement, the DOE and NSF officially endorsed LZ and two other dark matter experiments. “The great news is we’ve been given the go-ahead,” says William Edwards, LZ project manager and engineer in Berkeley Lab Physics Division. “We’re looking forward to making what has been a proposal into a real, operational, first-rate experiment.” The LZ water shield, currently housing the LUX experiment. The LZ experiment was first proposed two years ago to search for and advance our understanding of dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up roughly 27 percent of the universe. The experiment will build on the current dark matter experiment at SURF called the Large Underground Xenon detector, or LUX. Dark matter, so named because it doesn’t emit or absorb

The post Next-generation dark matter experiments get the green light has been published on Technology Org.

 
#physics 
 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/U6_ASt5RygU/
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Dogs 'hardwired' to be jealous wags

Science Focus

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Jealousy is not just part of the human condition, a study suggests, it appears to be hard wired into the brains of dogs too. 
#science 
 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28446512#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Monogram Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: stlrnrsry, star clusters, galaxies, stars, starfields, awesome astronomy pictures, constellation puppis, the stern, monogram, monograms, star nurseries, nebulae, european southern observatory, eso, vista, initials, initialled, monogrammed

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A gorgeous set of oval stickers showing the area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas.

The image, looking like a colourful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region - the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionised gas.

The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

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Image code: stlrnrsry

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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M31: The Andromeda Galaxy

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Crab Nebula Room Decals

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: astronomy, space, space images, nebula, supernova, remnant, crab nebula, hubble telescope, hubble, telescope, exploration, constellation of taurus, constellation, taurus

The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The nebula was observed by John Bevis in 1731; it corresponds to a bright supernova recorded by Arab, Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1054. The Crab Nebula is one of the most intricately structured and highly dynamical objects ever observed.

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Revolutionary microshutter technology hurdles significant challenges

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NASA technologists have hurdled a number of significant technological challenges in their quest to improve an already revolutionary observing technology originally created for the James Webb Space Telescope.

via Science Daily

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NASA-funded X-ray instrument settles interstellar debate

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New findings from a NASA-funded instrument have resolved a decades-old puzzle about a fog of low-energy X-rays observed over the entire sky. Thanks to refurbished detectors first flown on a NASA sounding rocket in the 1970s, astronomers have now confirmed the long-held suspicion that much of this glow stems from a region of million-degree interstellar plasma known as the local hot bubble, or LHB.

via Science Daily

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Mysterious molecules in space: Silicon-capped hydrocarbons may be source of 'diffuse interstellar bands'

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New research has offered a tantalizing new possibility in the realm of interstellar molecules and diffuse interstellar bands: these mysterious molecules may be silicon-capped hydrocarbons like SiC3H, SiC4H and SiC5H.

via Science Daily

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New spongelike structure converts solar energy into steam

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A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun. The structure — a layer of graphite flakes and an underlying carbon foam — is a porous, insulating material structure that floats on water. When sunlight hits the structure’s surface, it creates a hotspot in the graphite, drawing water up through the material’s pores, where it evaporates as steam. The brighter the light, the more steam is generated. The new material is able to convert 85 percent of incoming solar energy into steam — a significant improvement over recent approaches to solar-powered steam generation. What’s more, the setup loses very little heat in the process, and can produce steam at relatively low solar intensity. This would mean that, if scaled up, the setup would likely not require complex, costly systems to highly concentrate sunlight. Hadi Ghasemi, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, says the spongelike structure can be made from relatively inexpensive materials — a particular advantage for a variety of compact, steam-powered applications. “Steam is important for desalination, hygiene systems, and sterilization,” says Ghasemi, who led the development of the structure. “Especially in remote areas where the sun is the only source of

The post New spongelike structure converts solar energy into steam has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
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Tough foam from tiny sheets: Lab uses atom-thick materials to make ultralight foam

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Tough, ultralight foam of atom-thick sheets can be made to any size and shape through a new chemical process. In microscopic images, the foam dubbed "GO-0.5BN" looks like a nanoscale building, with floors and walls that reinforce each other. The structure consists of a pair of two-dimensional materials: floors and walls of graphene oxide that self-assemble with the assistance of hexagonal boron nitride platelets.

via Science Daily

In the Shadow of Saturn Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: shadow, saturn, nasa, outer, space, universe, galaxy, astronomy, solar, system, eclipse, sun, cassini, ring, new, rings, earth, color

In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn and slightly scattering sunlight, in the above exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the above image. Visible in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus, and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, visible on the image left just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth. Credit: CICLOPS, JPL, ESA, NASA

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Initialled Dumbbell Nebula Constellation Vulpecula Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: awesome astronomy images, inspirational, dmbblneb, vulpecula constellation, intense ultraviolet radiation, european southern observatory, messier 27 ngc 6853, heavens, monograms, initialled, eso, vista, initials, monogrammed, monogram

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A great photo from deep space featuring the Dumbbell Nebula - also known as Messier 27 or NGC 6853. It's a typical planetary nebula and is located in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox).

The distance is rather uncertain, but is believed to be around 1,200 light-years. It was first described by the French astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier who found it in 1764 and included it as no. 27 in his famous list of extended sky objects.

Despite its class, the Dumbbell Nebula has nothing to do with planets. It consists of very rarefied gas that has been ejected from the hot central star (well visible on this photo), now in one of the last evolutionary stages. The gas atoms in the nebula are excited (heated) by the intense ultraviolet radiation from this star and emit strongly at specific wavelengths.

This image is the beautiful by-product of a technical test of some FORS1 narrow-band optical interference filters. They only allow light in a small wavelength range to pass and are used to isolate emissions from particular atoms and ions.

In this three-colour composite, a short exposure was first made through a wide-band filter registering blue light from the nebula. It was then combined with exposures through two interference filters in the light of double-ionized oxygen atoms and atomic hydrogen. They were colour-coded as “blue”, “green” and “red”, respectively, and then combined to produce this picture that shows the structure of the nebula in “approximately true” colours.



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Image code: dmbblneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Eta Carinae Nebula Wall Skin

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: eta carinae nebula, eta carinae, carinae, nebula, carinae nebula, space, astronomy, stars, outer space, wr 22

This spectacular panoramic view combines a new image of the field around the Wolf–Rayet star WR 22 in the Carina Nebula (right) with an earlier picture of the region around the unique star Eta Carinae in the heart of the nebula (left).

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