Circa 2018
The speed of space travel is currently limited by the quantity of chemical fuel that spacecraft must carry. Robert Zubrin, President of Pioneer Astronautics, introduces the dipole drive — a new propulsion system which uses ambient space plasma as propellant, thereby avoiding the need to carry its own.
I guess they can now make the diamond sword from minecraft! 😃
While traditional diamonds are formed over billions of years deep in the Earth where extreme pressures and temperatures provide just the right conditions to crystalize carbon, scientists are working on more expedient ways of forging the precious stones. An international team of researchers has succeeded in whittling this process down to mere minutes, demonstrating a new technique where they not only form quickly, but do so at room temperature.
Continue reading “Scientists produce rare diamonds in minutes at room temperature” »
Is this a case where money falls from the heavens!
This may start a craze where people chase after meteors! 😃
Continue reading “Man Becomes Instant Millionaire When A Meteorite Hits His Home” »
Russia is currently carrying out scientific work on the concept of advanced rocket artillery armament. Efforts are simultaneously underway for upgrading the capabilities of existing weapon systems. Today the Russian artillery troops are receiving upgraded Tornado-G medium-caliber multiple launch rocket systems and modernized Tornado-S launchers, the general said.
The Iskander-M is unique and its upgraded potential “has been tapped by less than a half,” Russia’s Missile Forces and Artillery chief stressed.
A new synthetic probe offers a safe and straightforward approach for visualizing chromosome tips in living cells. The probe was designed by scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Science (iCeMS) and colleagues at Kyoto University, and could advance research into aging and a wide range of diseases, including cancers. The details were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“Chromosome ends are constantly at risk of degradation and fusion, so they are protected by structures called telomeres, which are made of long repeating DNA sequences and bound proteins,” says iCeMS chemical biologist Hiroshi Sugiyama, who led the study. “If telomeres malfunction, they are unable to maintain chromosome stability, which can lead to diseases such as cancer. Also, telomeres normally shorten with each cell division until they reach their limit, causing cell death.”
Visualizing telomeres, especially their physical arrangements in real-time, is important for understanding their relevance to disease and aging. Several visualization approaches already exist, but they have disadvantages. For example, some can only observe telomeres in preserved, or fixed, cells. Others are time-consuming or involve harsh treatments that denature DNA.
An international team of scientists has defied nature to make diamonds in minutes in a laboratory at room temperature—a process that normally requires billions of years, huge amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures.
The team, led by The Australian National University (ANU) and RMIT University, made two types of diamonds: the kind found on an engagement ring and another type of diamond called Lonsdaleite, which is found in nature at the site of meteorite impacts such as Canyon Diablo in the US.
One of the lead researchers, ANU Professor Jodie Bradby, said their breakthrough shows that Superman may have had a similar trick up his sleeve when he crushed coal into diamond, without using his heat ray.
With lithium-containing batteries facing constraints on many of the metals they contain, Nina Notman looks at whether its group 1 neighbour sodium can supply the answer.
The lithium-ion battery powers much of our modern lives, a fact reflected in this year’s Nobel prize. It resides in devices ranging from very small wearable electronics, through mobile phones and laptops, to electric vehicles and ‘the world’s biggest battery’ – the huge 100MW/129MWh Tesla battery installed on an Australian wind farm in 2017.
‘Lithium-ion has a massive span of applications,’ explains Jonathan Knott, an energy storage researcher at the University of Wollongong in Australia. ‘It is being used as a hammer to crack every nut and we need to start getting a little bit more sophisticated in the use of the best tool for the job.’
Circa 2019
A memory-storage device can bank information delivered by either light or electronic signals.
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have sequenced the genome of the bowhead whale, estimated to live for more than 200 years with low incidence of disease.
Published in the journal Cell Reports, the research could offer new insight into how animals and humans could achieve a long and healthy life.
Scientists compared the genome with those from other shorter-lived mammals to discover genetic differences unique to the bowhead whale.
