Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer
- Microbes
Living lenses? Glass-coated microbes might take better photos
Bacteria with a gene from sea sponges can coat themselves in glass. Working as tiny, bendable lenses, they could lead to thinner cameras or sensors.
- Materials Science
Orange food dye can temporarily turn skin transparent
When mixed with water and rubbed on the skin, a common food dye allows researchers to peer inside the body of a mouse.
- Computing
A new frontier awaits — computing with light
Today’s computers process using electrical signals. But light shows promise as a new means of computing, especially for AI.
- Earth
Thunderstorms churn up a ‘boiling pot’ of high-energy gamma rays
A thunderstorm seen in gamma ray vision plays out as a complex, frenzied lightshow above the clouds.
- Earth
Analyze This: Why do atmospheric ‘ghosts’ glow green after red sprites?
Green ghosts — blurs of light that sometimes follow lightning — get their color from oxygen and metals in space dust.
- Physics
Experiment: Making music with bottles
In this study, we investigate how the volume of air inside a bottle affects the pitch of the musical notes it can create.
- Humans
Experiment: Why does the moon look larger on the horizon?
In this experiment, let’s investigate Emmert’s law, which may explain the full moon optical illusion.
- Space
Scientists Say: Astronomical interferometry
This technique links up many telescopes to see the universe in finer detail than any single telescope could alone.
- Physics
Experiment: Measure the speed of light with a laser
Grab a laser pointer and some Jell-O, because today we’re measuring the speed of light.
- Plants
Flowers may electrically detect bees buzzing nearby
The discovery may reveal how plants time nectar production and share information with neighboring blooms.
- Space
Here’s how to build an internet on Mars
Future Red Planet residents will need to get online to talk to each other and Earth. But that will require a lot of new tech.
- Animals
Elusive worm-lizards sport weird, spooky skulls
CT scans of these mysterious creatures turned up bizarre internal features. They could offer clues about amphisbaenians’ largely unknown behavior.
