Could be redirected with lasers.
NASA needs “more hands on deck” due to one asteroid threat in particular, claimed scientist Professor Greg Leonard, who works for the US space agency.
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NASA engineer invents physics-breaking new space engine
Star Trek’s Montgomery Scott famously said “ye cannot change the laws of physics”, but a real-life space engineer says he might have just done that.
David Burns of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama has unveiled what he’s calling the ‘helical engine’, which could potentially power flights across space without using any fuel at all.
There’s just one small problem — it breaks the laws of physics as we know them.
Marine cultivation technology opening the door to the rich sources of clean energy in our oceans
New technology plans to tackle the future energy crisis by capturing sunlight and turning it to bioenergy.
Economist who slated colleagues’ work is tipped for Nobel
Ariel Rubinstein, who says economics lacks common sense, heads list of likely winners.
Study finds method to diagnose Lyme disease within 15 minutes
Researchers have developed a new treatment method capable of detecting Lyme disease in just 15 minutes.
Caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and transmitted by the bite of infected Ixodes ticks, Lyme disease if left untreated can cause serious neurologic, cardiac, and/or rheumatologic complications.
“Our findings are the first to demonstrate that Lyme disease diagnosis can be carried out in a microfluidic format that can provide rapid quantitative results,” said Sam Sia, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering.
Black holes might not crush you after all—they could be even weirder than that
Just when you thought one of the most bizarre things in space was something that eats massive amounts of light and energy and would probably shred you with its gravitational forces, what if it was something even harder to imagine?
Black holes are supposed to have a singularity—a point that is so small and dense we can’t even fathom it—in the middle of all that swirling light and gas. But what if at least some cosmic phenomena that look like black holes are actually cosmic objects full of dark energy? That is what astrophysicists Kevin Croker and Joel Weiner of the University of Hawai’i at Manoa recently published in a study in The Astrophysical Journal that tries to prove these hypothetical Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs) exist.
Tonight will be the darkest night of the past 500 years
Thanks to a lunar eclipse on the longest night of the year, tonight we’ll be experiencing the longest, darkest night in a very long time. It’s been nearly 500 years since the last solstice lunar eclipse. Here’s what you’ll see.
Eclipse photo by Chris Hondros/Getty.
NYU science journalism professor John Rennie explains what you’re likely to see in the wee hours of the morning:
Ceramics That Won’t Shatter
A biomimetic ceramic that is strong and tough could be used to make lightweight vehicles.
Hard Light
When ordinary light, whether it comes from science fiction projectors or a magic spell, seems to have (or really does have) actual substance, it’s Hard Light. Hard light objects behave like any other object — chairs support weight, bullets kill, razors shave, and so forth. An illusory person made of Hard Light can pick up real things and interact physically with real people, even though they don’t technically exist.
Strictly speaking, hard light is not holography. A hologram is a sort of three-dimensional projection. It is not solid. If something is solid, it is, by definition, not a hologram.
That said, it’s easy to imagine holography being used in tandem with some other technology (Deflector Shields, perhaps) to produce a projection which seems solid to observers. The Holographic Terminal in its “real world” form comes to mind.
World’s Biggest 3D-Printer Makes World’s Biggest 3D-Printed Boat
University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center just printed a 25-foot, 5,000-pound boat, the largest object that has ever been printed. The exorbitant act earned the college no less than three Guinness World Records.
The awards are as follows: one for the world’s largest prototype polymer 3D printer, one for the largest solid 3D-printed object, and one for the largest boat which has ever been produced by a 3D printer. The 3D printer is designed to print objects as long as 100 feet by 22 feet wide by 10 feet high, and can print at 500 pounds per hour.
“As we saw today, the University of Maine Composites Center does award-winning, cutting-edge research that makes Maine proud and will bring jobs to our state,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Golden. “Their work, like the boat and 3D printer we’re here to see, has impressive potential to change how we make things out of all sorts of materials — including Maine wood fiber. Today is about three Guinness World Records, but it’s also about celebrating innovation that will help protect and create good-paying Maine jobs in forest products and manufacturing.”