Nov 30
Destin over at SmarterEveryDay wanted to take an up-close look at the nanostructure of a butterfly’s wing, so he took a few samples to be looked at under a scanning electron microscope. The results are fascinatingly beautiful.
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Nov 29
We humans can form curious attachments to non-living things, so when Comet Ison veered recklessly toward the sun, naturally we rooted for the plucky iceball. Unfortunately, scientists feared the worst after seeing it mostly vanish when it brushed past the sun’s corona. Cue the heroic music, though, as new footage released early today (after the break) shows that at least part of the 1.4 mile-wide comet has emerged from the brutal encounter. It’s looking a bit ragged after all that, so astronomers will have to wait a bit more to make a final call on its health. Hopefully it’ll still be classed as “comet” rather than “scorched hunk of rock.”
Source: BBC
Nov 29
When you put chains and physics together, you get results that are borderline magic
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Nov 29
We’ve seen single-pixel cameras, and now MIT researchers have figured out how to create clear images of dimly-lit objects using single photons — in 3D, no less. The technique doesn’t involve any fancy new hardware, either, as the team worked with a standard photon detector that fired low-intensity visible laser light pulses. The magic happens from the algorithms they developed instead, which can pick out variations in the time it takes for individual photons to bounce off of subjects. After the software separated the noise (as shown above) the result was a high-res image created with about a million photons that would have required several hundred trillion with, say, a smartphone camera. That’ll open up new possibilities for low-energy surveying, for instance, or even spy cameras that could virtually see in the dark — because no laser research project is complete with a sinister-sounding military application.
Filed under: Cameras, Science, Alt
Source: Nature
Nov 29
If you thought low-light photography was coming on in leaps and bounds, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. This new camera, developed by researchers at MIT, can capture ultra-sharp images of objects even when they’re illuminated by just a handful of photons.
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Nov 29
There’s an iconic scientific image which depicts evolution, and it suggests that we went from monkey to man in six easy steps. The only problem is, that’s kinda bull.
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Nov 29
A newly discovered strain of HIV is spreading across West Africa. What’s worse is that it’s particularly aggressive—and causes significantly faster progression to AIDS than other strains.
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Nov 29
Scientists explain how T Rex soft tissue remained preserved for 68 million years
Posted in: Today's ChiliScientists have been trying to explain exactly how some soft tissue on a 68 million year old T Rex skeleton could have survived millions of years without rotting away. The question has been burning in the minds of researchers since 2005 when an adolescent T Rex skeleton was discovered in Montana that had soft tissue […]
Nov 29
One of the most hazardous of underwater jobs is diving shipwrecks. Divers explore shipwrecks to retrieve objects of historical significance or to help in recovery efforts. The work is so hazardous that much of it is carried out by unmanned robots. The typical underwater robot uses propellers to get around, but that form of propulsion […]
Nov 29
Some shipwrecks are too costly or dangerous for humans to explore, but many underwater robots are too disruptive and unwieldy to serve as substitutes. The Tallinn Institute of Technology’s new U-CAT mapping robot solves that dilemma by imitating one of the ocean’s more graceful creatures: the sea turtle. The small machine uses flippers to get around instead of propellers, preventing it from kicking up silt (which would obscure its camera) and letting it turn on a dime. It’s also autonomous, which helps it venture deep into a wreck without worrying about cables. It’s sure to have a big impact on underwater archaeology, and you can see it in person if you swing by the London Science Museum between November 28th and December 1st. However, It will eventually map shipwrecks in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as part of the EU’s ARROWS Project, providing more detail than any diver could manage.
[Image credit: Tallin University of Technology, Flickr]
Via: Gizmag
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