Hasta La Gadget!

A recent X-ray analysis of molten iron has uncovered that the Earth’s inner core is actually a lot hotter than we all thought previously. According to a team scientists from French research agency CEA, French National Center for Scientific Research CNRS, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF, the inner core of the Earth is said to be 6,000 degrees Celsius, or 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

This means that the inner core of the planet that we live on is as hot as the surface of the Sun. The Earth’s core is made of solid, crystalline iron that’s surrounded by liquid. This is formed due to the tremendous amount of pressure buildup. However, recent experiments have shown that this inner structure is actually formed at much higher temperatures.

Previous estimates, which took place in the 90s, were achieved by measuring iron’s melting curves, and this placed the core temperature at 5,000 degrees Celsius. However, this new technique utilizes fast X-ray diffraction, and it allows researchers to examine tiny samples of iron at immense pressures to get a better sense of how small iron crystals form and melt.

However, the real challenge was to replicate that crazy amounts of pressure that’s experienced in the Earth’s inner core, which are obviously hard to replicate on the Earth’s surface. However, scientists were able to get close, using high-powered lasers. The iron samples were placed under high pressure from two diamonds squeezing the iron together, and then they were blasted by lasers, which turned the iron into liquid form, where scientists then observed the diffraction period to come up with a final number.

[via BBC News]

Earth’s core as hot as the Sun, claim scientists is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Saturn is one of the most beautiful planets in our solar system thanks in large part to its gigantic system of rings. Those rings can be difficult to see most of the time, but about halfway through Saturn’s 30 Earth year orbit around the sun, those rings stand out in beautiful detail. The reason is that in the 15th year of Saturn’s 30-year cycle Saturn’s day and nights are equal and sunlight is able to shine on the rings edge-on making them easier to see.

The last time this phenomenon happened was in 2009, and NASA took full advantage of the situation having its Casini spacecraft snap some beautiful photographs of Saturn’s rings. The photographs have recently shown up as scientists used the photographs to perform some research investigating clouds of dust created in the ring system when those rings are struck by meteoroids and other objects flying through space. Scientists say that it’s very easy to see the clouds of dust, called ejecta, spewing out of the ring system in this view.

Researcher Matthew Tiscareno, a planetary scientist from Cornell University, and his team used the photographs taken by Cassini to investigate the ejecta to determine what kind of impact had created the dust plumes. The team of researchers looked for observed dust clouds anytime between one hour and 50 hours after the initial impact. The team worked backwards measuring the length and tilt of the cloud to see what sort of impact created the dust cloud.

According to Tiscareno and his team, by analyzing the images of Saturn’s ring system they were able to determine that the ejecta clouds they observed were created by “streams of meteoroids” plunging through Saturn’s ring plane. The researchers initially believe that single meteoroids impacting the ring plane were causing these clouds of debris. His team now believes that single meteoroids moving through the ring plane would create a hole, but not a cloud. These clouds of dust and debris are now believed to have been created by a group of meteoroids that are able to displace a lot of dust at one time. The research performed by the team of scientists is detailed in today’s issue of the journal Science.

[via Space.com]

Cassini snaps pics of Saturn’s rings getting pummeled by debris is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

IDC is the first of the big analyst companies to come out with quarterly mobile device shipment numbers that indicate Q1 as the first quarter where smartphones have outnumbered more basic feature phones in worldwide shipments: in a total market of 418.6 million devices, 216.2 (51.6%) were smartphones. But it is was a kind of tipping point of another sort, too: it is a sign of how Apple is not the juggernaut that it once was.

(BTW… for those of you keeping track, this is not the first quarter where Android has all but dominated the top-five rankings, save Apple’s presence. That happened in Q4 2012, according to IDC’s figures.)

Samsung shipped nearly 71 million smartphones in the quarter, giving it a market share of almost one-third of the whole of the smartphone sector (32.7%). Apple, meanwhile, shipped 37 million devices — just over half as many as Samsung, for a market share of 17.3%. With all others in the top-five — LG, Huawei and ZTE — still with less than 5% market share apiece, Samsung and Apple remain a strong top-two.

But looking at the pattern of growth something else comes out: Apple only grew its volumes by 6.6% over the same quarter a year ago. In fact, in that regard, that growth puts it far behind not only Samsung (at 60.7% volume growth), but also behind LG (110.2% growth); Huawei (94.1%); and ZTE (49.2%). As a point of comparison, Samsung and Apple were more nearly level a year ago, in Q1 2012, (44 million versus 35.1 million in Q1 2012), and respectively saw growth of 267% and 89% in shipment volumes — the only two that increased:

Today:

A year ago:

As we’ve pointed out before, shipments to those who sell devices are not the same thing as sales to users, but it is an important barometer for where the wider market is going. (The most recent figures from Kantar Worldpanel, which track sales, spell out how the difference between Android-based and Apple sales is not as wide as 2:1 in every market, but is in fact significantly wider in some.)

It’s notable that Nokia, BlackBerry, and HTC whose shipments were on the decline last year but still enough to keep them in the top-five, are now out of the picture altogether. It also shows that Nokia’s sub-10 million sales of smartphones, with 5.6 million Lumias, are not big enough figures to break out of the sizeable ‘others’ category.

With Apple still shipping more than three times as many devices as its next-closest competitor, LG, even if things continue as they are today, it will likely still be some time before it gets overtaken by the others in the list. Its performance also was enough to keep it in place as the world’s third-largest mobile handset maker overall, in a list otherwise dominated by companies that make both smartphones and feature phones:

IDC notes that LG, which shipped 10.3 million smartphones in the quarter, a rise of over 110% over the year before, was helped by three factors in the last quarter. The first of these was the popularity of the Nexus 4 device it created with Google; the second was the success of its lower-priced L Series (15 million sold in this category alone since launched); and the third was its LTE line. These three point to how those Android handset makers that can create strong enough and distinctive handsets that are set apart from the rest of the Android crowd can continue to pull away from the crowd.

Apple’s iPhone brand has never been seen as anything other than premium, and true to type, it is still not playing at the same level as others smartphone industry in creating new models that aim at the “cheap smartphone” market.

CEO Tim Cook did not discuss the prospect of a new, low-cost device, on Apple’s earnings call this week — the focus remains on selling older models, namely the iPhone 4, in markets like China as a route to bringing new smartphone users on to the platform. Other handset makers like Samsung, Nokia and many “others” are building out portfolios that hit not only at high-end users but those looking for entry devices priced at closer to $100 or even less. Some handset makers, specifically in emerging markets, are targeting only this market.

On the other hand Cook also left open the possibility that whatever comes next may be something different altogether: the “really great stuff” coming out in the autumn and in 2014 could be another iPhone. Equally, it could be something else altogether, and not a handset at all.

Image: Flickr

We’ve been pretty harsh on Carnegie Mellon University’s artificial snake, which, admittedly, is an impressive piece of robotic engineering. But seeing it randomly writhe around while it tries to make its way across the floor and over obstacles will never not be unsettling. More »

An engineering team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have just developed a new nanofiber that is simultaneously tough and strong. Strength determines how well a material can carry a load, while toughness determines how much energy is required to break said material. Before, it was believed that you would have to sacrifice one attribute for the other, but the UNL team were able to prove that theory wrong. They discovered that by making nanofiber more thinner than it was ever done before, they could give the material not just more strength, but toughness as well.

The team is comprised of Yuris Dzenis, the team’s leader as well as a McBroom Professor of Mechanical and Materials Sciences at UNL, and his engineering colleagues Dimitry Papkov, Yan Zou, Mohammad Nahid Andalib, Alexander Goponenko, and Stephen Z.D. Cheng. The National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the U.S Army Research Office Multidisciplinary University Research Intiative all provided the funding for the group’s research.

The UNL team developed the thin, polyacrilonitrile nanofiber using a technique known as electrospinning, where they applied high voltage to the synthetic polymer related to acrylic until a small jet of liquid ejected. This resulted in “a continuous length of nanofiber”. The team stated that while the strength of the nanofiber came from its thinness, its toughness resulted from the “nanofibers’ low crystallinity”.

Dzenis says that this new nanofiber could be used to transform anything made of composite materials. He stated that body armor, airplanes, bridges, bicycles and more could benefit from this new material. He used body armor as an example, and pointed out that in order for body armor to stop a bullet, it needs material that can absorb the bullet’s energy, which these nanofibers are capable of doing. He says,

“If structural materials were tougher, one could make products more lightweight and still be very safe.”

[via University of Nebraska-Lincoln]

UNL engineers develop new strong, yet tough nanofibers is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.