Yale University's Hong Tang, whose team previously showed an ability to manipulate circuits on a silicon board with attractive light, has developed a method to do the same with repulsive light. The light causes miniature components on silicone chips to move perpendicularly from the direction the light is traveling, rather than being a triggered by a beam of light shining upon it directly.

In order to create the force, scientists split a beam of infrared light and forced it down two different nanowires. The more the two beams moved out of phase with one another, the greater the force they were able to exert upon the components around the nanowires on the chips. The ability to create repulsive light will allow scientists to manipulate nanocomponents on silicon boards without the use of electricity, eliminating the need to vast wiring systems and reducing interference. Tang's discovery is just one more step towards creating functional nanodevices and exponentially expanding the scale of electronic miniaturization.

Scientists Discover Light Force with 'Push' Power [PhysOrg]

[Image via Hong Tang]

The tower, funded richly by JP Morgan and other turn-of-the-century industrialists, was originally conceived for radio communications, which were just on the cusp of being invented. It was fitted out with a massive antenna, and rumors swirled that Tesla had also created a vast catacombs of tunnels beneath it for some purpose nobody understood. As the inventor of alternating current electricity, along with hundreds of other devices, Tesla was so respected that his funders were willing to put up with his eccentricities if they paid off.

Unfortunately, they didn't. After erecting the massive tower and building a huge laboratory next door, Tesla was beaten to the punch by some guy named Guglielmo Marconi. You know, the inventor of radio. Tesla tried to woo back his irritated funders by promising something bigger and better than radio: Wireless electricity. Unfortunately nobody went for it and he was left destitute. Tesla sparked the tower up only one time in 1903, shooting enormous bolts of electricity into the air. Then he sold it off along with its environs, called Wardenclyffe, to pay his debts.

Eventually parts of the tower were demolished and used for scrap, but a hulking chunk of it remains, along with the lab and possible tunnels beneath. Some of Tesla's massive, bizarre equipment is still in the buildings, and the purpose of some unimaginably huge batteries there remains a mystery.

Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports this week, the Wardenclyffe property is up for sale by its current owner Agfa. The company spent millions cleaning up toxins on the site, and with the economic downturn can no longer afford to keep it. They promise potential buyers that they'll deliver the property "cleared," meaning they'll destroy what's left of Tesla's research facility. There will be no chance for anyone to study its remains, to see if the man really had invented wireless electricity a century ago.

This would be a tremendous loss for science history. Luckily several groups are lobbying to turn the area into a museum for Tesla. You can find out about their efforts in the NYT article here. Let's hope the push for a museum succeeds.

This picture may not be sexy, but it's definitely naughty. Also, it's a great way to train kids not to piss off bridges - because, you know, electricity from a wire might leap up through your pee stream right into the place you will one day love most, little boy. Seriously, this image is so preposterously wonderful that it should really be in every beginning electrician's handbook.

I don't want to make it seem like there's something dirty about learning how dangerous those household appliances can be. But why did we need to see this lady in her sexy undies getting electrocuted? She couldn't have worn a robe?

And here's another lady who absolutely had to be buck nekkid for us to see demonstrated exactly how an electrical current would blast right through her heart. Apparently, they want ladies everywhere to be worried that an exposed wire under the floorboards could touch the pipes, then electricity would travel up the pipe, into the faucet, and right into our nubile . . . erm, I mean, our biological organisms. OK sure it wouldn't be realistic to put her in a bathing suit, but there's still something kind of pervy about this whole scenario.

Now if you weren't with me on the pervy thing, probably this excellent image will set you straight. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE, PEOPLE? So the guy is clutching two lamps in ecstasy, while a giant lump under the covers does . . . something to his something. Let's hope that lump is his special friend, and not some kind of parasite. Seriously, WHO DOES THIS? Who clutches two flimsy electrical lamps while in the throes of ecstasy (or parasite takeover)? OK maybe it was just something they did back in the 1930s?

Check out more amazing illustrations, including some involving women and farm animals, care of Pettis, in his Flickr stream. [via Laughing Squid]

Researchers studying data from the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe have reported that Titan’s atmosphere contains a faint electrical field, opening the door to the possibility of lightening strikes on the planet’s surface:

"As of now, lightning activity has not been observed in Titan's atmosphere," said lead author Juan Antonio Morente of the University of Granada in Spain.

But, he said, the signals that have been detected "are an irrefutable proof for the existence of electric activity."

The discovery is a significant one since many biochemists theorize that lightning triggered the reactions necessary for the creation of life on Earth. Since Titan’s atmosphere contains chemicals similar to those in Earth’s prebiotic astmosphere, it increases the possibility that life could form on Titan or in other parts of the universe:

"I look at Titan as a big, frozen, prebiotic casserole," [Jeffrey] Bada [of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography] said, referring to the state before the emergence of life.

"The idea that life could be widespread in the universe, I think, is very credible."

Electricity Found on Saturn Moon—Could It Spark Life? [National Geographic]

• He worked for Thomas Edison and was promised a huge bonus if he redesigned his electric motors and generators. He did so, and gave Edison several patents as an employee, but Edison never paid out. Tesla quit and developed the more efficient "alternating current" that opposed Edison's "direct current" and eventually became the standard electrical current that we still use today.
• He was one of the first people to work with x-rays, and he invented an "X-Ray Gun" that you could use to fire x-ray beams at someone with, and it would develop on unexposed film hung behind the subject. A favorite target of this gun? Mark Twain.
• He thought that memories and thoughts were recorded on the brain and could be watched, like a movie, through the retina.
• He thought he could control the weather, and attempted to develop this technology. Eventually he was able to produce spectacular artificial lightning bolts.
• He developed the first radar system.
• He built his own wireless radio transmission tower in New York in conjunction with a German company named Telefunken, but the government tore it down in 1917 for fears that the Germans would use it to spy on the U.S.
• He transmitted radio waves before Marconi, but was never seen as the "father of radio," even though the Supreme Court decided to uphold his radio patent over Marconi in 1943. He died before the case was heard.
• He tried to develop anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel after becoming fascinated with idea of light as both a wave and a particle. He put a lot of theoretical work into Tesla's Flying Machine, which would have been an ion-propelled airplane.
• There is a crater on the moon named after him.
• He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future, and that they would rule over mankind like "Queen Bees."
• He was developing a way to harness energy from space, and said that one day all of man's inventions would run on this energy.
• He had plans to illuminate the world's oceans and build a massive ring around the Earth that would allow people to travel around the world in a single day.
• He developed something late in life called Nikola Tesla's Death Ray, and had a press conference to publicize it, stating it could "send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks." It later became the basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" satellite defense system that is still being developed today.
• He died alone and in massive debt in his New York hotel room in 1943 at the age of 86. Upon his death, the FBI declared all of his papers and research to be "top secret" and seized them. Eventually, some were returned to his family. Some have never been found. Cue conspiracy theories.
• Visitors frequently request his room at The New Yorker Hotel, room 3327. Supposedly they hope for a "spark" of inspiration.
• He was portrayed by David Bowie in the film The Prestige, although he sadly never invented the machine shown in the film, which we won't spoil for you here. Although you can check out a clip here featuring Bowie as Tesla, which we hope will inspire you to rent this excellent "science meets magic" film.

They write:

The Hexagram shirt was inspired by and conceived to fit into the dystopic universe of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, a novel depicting what the world would have been like during the 1960s, had the Axis won WWII.

In the book, the U.S. west coast is a colony of Japan, whose rule and influence has permeated and dominated Californian society for years. The Book of Changes has become the mainstream method, for Japanese and Californian people alike, to take important decisions in life.

Whenever someone has a choice to make, that person takes out three little coins that are shaken and tossed on a surface several times, the resulting heads and tails data is then translated into one of the 64 hexagrams that comprise the Book of Changes.

Mitch Pileggi, who played FBI assistant director Walter Skinner in The X-Files, stars as Horace Pinker, a serial killer who has made a deal with the devil. Once he gets caught and sentence to death in the electric chair, he comes back as a pure energy source and is able to transfer his consciousness between human hosts. So, he goes on another killing spree with his newfound power.

However, his estranged son realizes that he can be controlled, like any energy source, and eventually forces him into a television transmitter, where he chases him across the television landscape. They go through Entertainment Tonight, where they encounter John Tesh, zip though some old war footage, and even pass by Leave It To Beaver. No kidding. Just like in that recent Jumper commercial. Or in Amazon Women From The Moon. Eventually the son stops him with the mightiest of all weapons, the television remote. And... scene.

Please, zap this idea before it gets out of control and we have a repeat performance.

People Under The Stairs, Shocker Sequel? [Bloody Disgusting]