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Category: innovation – Page 184

Our galaxy may contain billions of habitable worlds that don’t host any life. Should we attempt to change that?Claudius Gros at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, thinks we should. He believes in directed panspermia: deliberately seeding life throughout the cosmos. And to do that, he proposes we use a laser propulsion system that may not be technically out of reach.

Breakthrough Starshot is a project with ambitious aims to use such systems to send tiny, lightweight probes to Alpha Centauri. The goal is to take pictures of our nearest star, but these systems could also deliver much larger payloads into orbit around nearby stars, says Gros.

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Inspired by the human eye, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed an adaptive metalens, that is essentially a flat, electronically controlled artificial eye. The adaptive metalens simultaneously controls for three of the major contributors to blurry images: focus, astigmatism, and image shift.

The research is published in Science Advances.

“This research combines breakthroughs in artificial muscle technology with metalens technology to create a tunable metalens that can change its focus in real time, just like the human eye,” said Alan She, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. “We go one step further to build the capability of dynamically correcting for aberrations such as astigmatism and image shift, which the human eye cannot naturally do.”

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The MIT Technology Review has released a list of technologies it believes will make the most impact over the next 12 months, including smarter cities, genetic fortune telling and “babel fish” earphones.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s magazine has published the annual list online in its March/April 2018 issue, and based its contents on the innovations that will shape the coming year.

“What Tech Review looks for when selecting the list is to identify what will have a profound effect on our lives,” said a statement from the institution, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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“The recent launch of the SpaceX rocket Falcon Heavy is a good illustration of the entry of efficient and innovative private players into an arena long considered the preserve of national governments. But this does not mean that national competition in outer space is disappearing. If anything, it is actually accelerating in Asia. China’s growing space prowess is leading to a space race with India and Japan, which are beginning to pool their resources to better match Beijing.”

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Using a type of graphene called Graphair, scientists from Australia have created a water filter that can make highly polluted seawater drinkable after just one pass.

The technology could be used to cheaply provide safe drinking water to regions of the world without access to it.

“Almost a third of the world’s population, some 2.1 billion people, don’t have clean and safe drinking water,” said lead author Dong Han Seo.

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Scientists have discovered nearly 100 new ‘exoplanets’ in the search for Earth-like planets that could support life.

It’s a major breakthrough that reveals new planets that range in size from smaller than Earth to celestial bodies even bigger than Jupiter.

The findings were made by a team of international colleagues from the University of Denmark, NASA, the University of Tokyo and others.

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A new breakthrough will make DNA sequencing much more accurate and accessible, meaning it’s only a matter of time before your doctor starts doing it.

Getty Images alanphillips

Imagine you’re visiting your doctor for a checkup. Your doctor takes all the usual measurements like your height, weight, heart rate, and blood pressure, and then tells you she’s going to sequence your DNA.

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