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Invisibility cloak research focuses on how to make light waves pass through an object as though nothing is there. Now what if you took that same basic principle and applied it to other types of waves — like those of vibration? More »
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We all annoyed our parents with these and broke vases with these and chased these down the street into traffic and, on rainy days when we were bored, melted these in the microwave. But what actually makes superballs work? More »
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Almost 30 years after Daniel Shechtman noticed something weird in his lab, he finally won a Nobel Prize for chemistry. But before that, his strange discovery resulted in him being asked to leave the lab for bringing disgrace upon his colleagues. More »
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A group at The University of Bristol have come up with the world's first magnetic soap. At first, this sounds like just another interesting technological leap from soap on a rope — plus a way to combine two of the world's coolest things, soap and magnets. But actually, this invention could have a much more vital purpose. More »
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Flies and beetles sense the world using organs that humans only dream of. In this gorgeous microscopy video, University of Cambridge materials scientist Chris Forman explains what the foot of a fruitfly and the antenna of a beetle have in common with your nose and hands. More »
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University of Cambridge materials scientist Chris Forman shows us the eyes of a beetle and a fruit fly in a way you've never seen them before. That's not just because they're electrograph images, which reveal the eyes in amazing detail. Forman also offers a quick introduction to biomimesis, or using biology to shape technological designs. Find out where bug eyes will show up in tomorrow's gadgets. More »
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Spider silk is one of those wonderful materials whose incredibly tensile properties are the stuff of myth. That's why it's been the target of years of transgenic research. As far back as 2000, researchers were genetically engineering other animals to produce it — like the infamous spider-goat. However, many of their attempts have had problems, either because so little silk is produced, or it requires extensive post-production to render it usable. Sure, you can milk spiders directly, but the process is slow, difficult, and extremely costly. More »
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Researchers from Kyoto University have discovered a new technique that could dramatically improve the efficiency of some semiconductors. They took gallium arsenide, and blasted it with a terahertz range electric field pulse for just a picosecond, which lead to a 1,000-fold increase in exciton density. An exciton is a pair of an electron and a positively charged area it came from, which are attracted to each other and recombine to luminesce. They're how we get light out of LEDs and other applications, and this new technique could make them dramatically more efficient. More »
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Research scientists, especially environmental scientists, are always looking for funding. A recent project, studying how debris move and decay in the ocean, has come up with a controversial way to bankroll their project. They'll take tourists on a cruise of the March tsunami debris. More »
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What if washing your favorite T-shirt didn't require any washing whatsoever? Well, guess what. Science says it's possible. Chemical engineers in China say they've developed a cotton fabric that cleans itself — all it needs is a little sunlight. More »
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High-energy radiation and atomic oxygen wreak havoc on satellite parts. To evaluate the durability of materials being developed for future satellites, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is running samples through a space-based torture test called MISSE-8. Astronauts bolted a platform full of one-inch samples of mirror coatings, laser-tuning crystals, structural foam and other materials to the outside of the International Space Station, where it will remain for just over two years. The samples, which were sent to the ISS on one of the last space shuttle flights, in May, will return to Earth in July 2013 on the SpaceX Dragon capsule. Scientists from the labs that made each sample will examine them for pitting, cracks and discoloration. More »
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Right now, the race is on to create complex, self-assembling, three dimensional objects. It would be a boon to manufacturers, medical researchers, and even toy makers. Now, a new technique has been developed which not only assembles these objects molecule by molecule, but can do so in many shapes. More »
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A special kind of lab-created opal can be used to carry several encrypted messages at the same time. Find out how it can keep secrets for someone — and tattle on that same person — depending on what you spray it with. More »
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Graphene is incredibly cool stuff: a sheet of interlocking carbon atoms, only one atom thick. It's an extremely interesting material, and a newly pioneered technique has created a way of painting stripes on the graphene sheets to change its functionality. More »
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Carbon nanotubes can create a 'perfect black' that visually wipes out a dimension, making 3D objects look 2D. When draped over a substance, a thin coat of them renders the object invisible by absorbing all the light coming in. Scientists think that similar substances might be responsible for much of the 'missing matter' in the universe, and would make dandy space ship cloaks. More »
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Yesterday we told you about a new nanomaterial so lightweight that it can rest on the seed heads of a dandelion. Now you can watch this ultra-light metallic microlattice in action. More »
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Ultra-lightweight materials are an incredibly cool area of materials science, bringing us crazy substances like aerogel. And now, for the first time, scientists have produced a metal that's so light it can balance on the fluff of a dandelion. Here's why this material is revolutionary — and how it's made. More »
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The ranks of wall-climbing robots are increasing in number. A team of Canadian engineers from Simon Fraser University have combined what they describe as gecko-inspired "fibrillar dry adhesives" with track wheels, to create a modular, tank-like robot that can scale walls and even transfer from horizontal to vertical surfaces with ease. More »
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Believe it or not, radar systems that can see through walls (aka "wall-through" radar systems) aren't exactly unheard of, it's just that most of them are burdened by limitations that make their use in real world settings pretty impractical. More »
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Materials scientists have created a substance called 'new diamond.' It has the hardness of diamonds, without one of their very significant weaknesses. Unfortunately, the 'new diamonds' don't have their advantageous sparkle either. Learn about the strength behind diamond's 'ugly stepsisters.' More »
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Self-replication. If there's one thing that scifi has taught us it's that there's no possible situation where giving things that can't replicate the ability to do so is a good thing. Yet, against all our grey goo warnings, science has brought us one step closer. More »
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There's a long and storied tradition of scientists getting fantastic ideas from nature, as there are few finer testing labs than the requirements of natural selection. The newest breakthrough in materials science based on a plant is Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces — or SLIPS. And it could one day give us self-cleaning, self-repairing rooms, just like the ones they appear to have on the Enterprise. More »
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One of the barriers that stops us from plugging computers into our brains and replacing our eyeballs with cameras is the fact that biological systems and electronics use different control systems. Electronics use electrons and living creatures use either protons or ions. Because of this, our cyborg dreams are a bit further off than we would hope. More »
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At some point during World War II, loony solutions to practical problems really started to shine. There were pigeon-guided missiles, shark repellent, and giant aircraft carriers made of ice. Well, almost. The ice aircraft carrier was a legitimate plan in World War II, mostly because military intelligence discovered Pykrete, the substance that melts so slowly it might as well be concrete. More »
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We love our electronics, but the increasing demands of high end gadgets put a huge amount of stress on their Li-ion batteries, to the point where it's not uncommon to have to charge your smartphone every day, and your laptop every couple of hours. We keep waiting for the next big thing in batteries, but what might make your gadgets keep going even longer could be a small tweak from an unexpected place. More »
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Do you ever wonder why everything in the world has a tendency to fall into ruin? Why don't houses, roads, and bridges maintain their structures over time? I asked Rice University materials science researcher Boris Yakobson to explain it. His eloquent and funny answer is that things under load, that is under stress or strain (like a bridge or house), basically want to fall apart on an atomic level. More »
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Growing nanowires vertically has been within our power for some time now, but growing them horizontally, and directly on a surface you might actually want? That's harder. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science think they've figured out the trick, and have coaxed nanowires to grow in nice straight lines on sapphire crystals. This makes the nanowires more directly useful for electronics. More »
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Space colonization has reached an impasse, for reasons far more fundamental than a lack of money for the Space Shuttle program. There is simply no way humans can travel easily offworld without using massive amounts of rocket fuel to escape the gravity well — and that's both expensive and environmentally unsustainable. So how will we get off this rock? More »
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A team of engineers today announced a discovery that could change the world of electronics forever. Called an "epidermal electronic system" (EES), it's basically an electronic circuit mounted on your skin, designed to stretch, flex, and twist — and to take input from the movements of your body. More »
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A functional invisibility cloak is one of those things that physicists keep chasing, and every six months or so we see an update that brings us one step closer to being able to sneak around without being seen. Today's major breakthrough comes from an undergraduate student at the University of St Andrews who figured out how to get around the fundamental problem of light taking too long to travel around the hidden object. More »
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This video shows how, just by rearranging some carbon atoms, a $5 box of Girl Scout cookies becomes a $15 billion hunk of industrial material. In fact, rearranging the atoms of just about any old carbon source — including a standard pencil lead — into thin sheets of carbon atoms called graphene can turn a pretty serious profit. More »
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Scientists have discovered how to make polyhedral cages that are so tiny they can capture ions and molecules, and cut them off from reacting. These self-assembling supramolecular cage are crystal lattices, and they're so tiny, the internal volume only makes up 2,200 cubic anstroms. More »
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The Doppler Effect is the reason why car horns drop in tone as they go by, and radar speedometers work. But a new material may actually create an inverse Doppler Effect. More »
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You're looking at a "biomanufactured brick," the creation of American architecture professor Ginger Krieg Dosier. The brick, which is made by mixing sand with a non-toxic bacteria, requires no heat for the hardening process, and could bring this staple of basic architecture to areas of the world lacking modern infrastructure, all while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions worldwide. More »
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Carbon is one of the most versatile materials in the universe, forming everything from the graphite found in the pencils to hard, sparkling diamonds. But three new forms of carbon might make even the most breathtaking diamond look impossibly dull. More »
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Like pickpocketing, counterfeiting money may soon be a crime of the past. Researchers at the University of Sheffield have created a "colorless pigment" that creates rainbows and prevents replicability for use on money, passports, and other stuff you don't want copied. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5809521&view=rss&microfeed=true Carbon nanotubes have been heralded as the next big thing in nanomaterials thanks to their incredible abilities (though there are some reservations). Now it seems that they could also help get us more clean drinking water. More »
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Plastic wrap hangs on to everything it touches like grim death. Find out how it manages to glom on to nearly every surface in a kitchen. More »
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Chitin makes cockroaches blend in with pantry shelves and dark linoleum, and yet, without mixing in any new elements, it makes the gold and silver beetles of Costa Rica shine like jewelry. Find out how changing shape can change color. More »
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There's a large subfield in physics devoted solely to seeing how stuff behaves when it's squashed through other stuff. Those in that field may want to adopt 64 as their magic number, because it seems to be the percentage at which the behavior of matter changes in a peculiar way. More »
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