The mollusks pictured above are either getting ready for Coachella, or showcasing an intriguing new species of sea creature. This just-discovered type of polyp spends its life decorating the shells of snails. Read more…
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A Newly-Discovered Organism Turns Mud Snails Into Tiny Ravers
Energy-saving bulbs may have some competition in the shape of an ageing technology. Scientists have developed a new kind of incandescent light bulb that uses modern science to ramp up its efficiency, almost matching that of commercial LED bulbs. Read more…
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This New Incandescent Bulb Uses Nano Mirrors to Match LED Bulb Efficiency
An anonymous reader writes: The stars call to us through the ages, with each and every one holding the promise of a future for humanity beyond Earth. For generations, this was a mere dream, as our technology allowed us to neither know what worlds might lie beyond our own Solar System or to reach beyond our planet. But time and development has changed both of those things significantly. Now, when we look to the stars, we know that potentially habitable worlds lurk throughout our galaxy, and our spaceflight capabilities can bring us there. But so far, it would only be a very long, lonely, one-way trip. This isn’t necessarily going to be the case forever, though, as physically feasible technology could get humans to another star within a single lifetime, and potentially groundbreaking technology might make the journey almost instantaneous. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel
Medieval artisans unwittingly used nanotechnology when they mixed gold chloride into molten glass to create richly hued stained glass windows. Soon we could have full-color displays or stained-glass windows that change color at the flick of an electrical switch, thanks to the same kinds of light-scattering nanoparticles. Read more…
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Soon We Could Have Displays and Windows That Change Color with the Flick of a Switch
Did your Netflix stream grind to a halt as your loved one set up the Christmas decorations? According to British telecoms watchdog Ofcom, it could be the fairy lights that slow down your Wi-Fi network at this time of year. Read more…
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Christmas Lights Might Slow Down Your Wi-Fi
Researchers have discovered a new form of carbon structure, called Q-carbon, that’s harder than diamond and allows artificial versions of the precious stone to be made at room temperature and pressure. Read more…
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There’s a New Form of Carbon That’s Harder Than Diamond
Graphene, everybody’s favorite wonder material, has yet another trick up its sleeve. The ultra-strong, highly conductive carbon lattice is extraordinarily good at detecting faint and high frequency sound waves. Read more…
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A Graphene Microphone Could Pick Up Sounds Far Beyond the Limits of Human Hearing
The cockroach is a resilient little beast, and now it turns out they have the proverbial jaws of death. They can bite with a force 50 times stronger than their own body weight, and with five times more force than a human being. Read more…
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A Cockroach Can Bite Five Times Stronger Than a Human
schwit1 writes: Researchers have created the least reflective material ever made, using as inspiration the scales on the all-white cyphochilus beetle. The result was an extremely tiny nanoparticle rod resting on an equally tiny nanoparticle sphere (30 nm diameter) which was able to absorb approximately 98 to 99 percent of the light in the spectrum between 400 and 1, 400nm, which meant it was able to absorb approximately 26 percent more light than any other known material — and it does so from all angles and polarizations. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Engineers Create the Blackest Material Yet
Archaeologists can figure out how old a substance is by radiocarbon dating, but to do that they need to know what the substance is—and that’s not always clear. Radioactive material comes to the rescue again! Read more…
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How We Figure Out the Composition of a Substance by Hurling Neutrons at It