Posted in space
đ Itâs the only place in the universe that we know contains life. Celebrate its beauty by taking a look at these breathtaking images of our home planet, as captured by crew members aboard the International Space Station:
Astronauts living on the International Space Station help with the study of human survival and endurance in space. The challenges they encounter are unique due to the lack of gravity that we take for granted on Earth.
Physicists have discovered a novel kind of nanotube that generates current in the presence of light. Devices such as optical sensors and infrared imaging chips are likely applications, which could be useful in fields such as automated transport and astronomy. In future, if the effect can be magnified and the technology scaled up, it could lead to high-efficiency solar power devices.
Imagine a day when a submarine could blast a target to smithereens using nothing more than acoustic energy. Thatâs the idea behind a recently granted U.S. Navy patent for a cavitation weapon. The powerful weapon would use sonar to generate âacoustic remote cavitation,â i.e. a big pressure bubble, that would destroy everything from torpedoes to mines. As the patent describes:
*A method is disclosed of generating a predetermined field of cavitation around a remote target in an underwater environment. The method includes the steps of identifying a remote target location, generating at least two acoustic beams, each at a high power output, from an underwater acoustic source, and controlling the generated acoustic beams to intersect with each other at the remote target location and thereby create a destructive cavitation field at the intersection of the beams. The acoustic source and target can be located in unconfined underwater space and at a distance of at least 100 m apart. *
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By finding water on the moon, startup Ispace envisions a bustling lunar economy by 2040.
Nothing lasts forever. Humans, planets, stars, galaxies, maybe even the Universe itself, everything has an expiration date. But things in the quantum realm donât always follow the rules. Now, scientists have found that quasiparticles in quantum systems could be effectively immortal.
That doesnât mean they donât decay, which is reassuring. But once these quasiparticles have decayed, they are able to reorganise themselves back into existence, possibly ad infinitum.
This seemingly flies right in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that entropy in an isolated system can only move in an increasing direction: things can only break down, not build back up again.
