Researchers from the University of Dallas in Texas have hijacked one of nature’s most intriguing phenomena — the mirage — to make an invisibility cloak. It can hide objects from view, works best underwater and even has a near-instant on/off switch.

To understand how it works, you need to first grasp the basics of the mirage effect. This unusual experience, sometimes seen in the desert or on hot roads during the summer, can trick your brain into seeing objects that aren’t really there.

It happens when a big change in temperature over a small distance bends light rays so they’re sent towards the eye rather than bouncing off the surface. So if you see a pool of blue water in the middle of the desert it’s just the blue sky being redirected from the warm ground and sent directly into your eye. Your brain, being the clever little computer that it is, swaps this mad image out for something more sensible: a pool of water.

With that in mind, the researchers wanted to find a material that has an exceptional ability to conduct heat and quickly transfer it to surrounding areas to mimic the light-distorting temperature gradients of the desert. That material, they found, was sheets of carbon nanotubes.

The nanotubes — one-molecule-thick sheets of carbon wrapped up into cylindrical tube — have the density of air but the strength of steel. They’re also excellent conductors, making them an ideal material to exploit the “mirage effect.”

Through electrical stimulation, the transparent sheet of highly aligned nanotubes can be quickly heated to high temperatures. By transferring that heat to its surrounding areas, a steep temperature gradient is generated, which causes the light rays to bend away from the object concealed behind the device. Therefore, the object appears invisible.

“It is remarkable to see this cloaking device demonstrated in real life and on a workable scale,” said a spokesperson for the Institute of Physics. “The array of applications that could arise from this device, besides cloaking, is a testament to the excellent work of the authors.”

You can see it in action in the video above.

This is a photo of bird being eaten by a plant.

According to a story from the BBC, it's not unusual for a carnivorous pitcher plant, such as this one, to get its "hands" on a frog, a mouse, or even a rat. But poultry is a rare dish.

The plants kill by tricking prey into investigating the pitcher, usually by offering sweet nectar. Once part of the way into the pitcher, the prey finds it impossible to climb back out. Then it drowns. And then the plant slowly dissolves it—Saarlac-like—over a long period of time.

The US may have hit peak water back in the 1970s, but it continues to struggle to meet the water needs of a growing population. And elsewhere, many nations are attempting to provide their citizens with a reliable source of water, even as sporadic droughts and various forms of pollution limit the potential supply of fresh water. That challenge has driven many technological innovations in desalination, which has seen its energy requirements plummet over the last few decades. Unfortunately, according to a recent perspective in Science, we're approaching the thermodynamic limits of desalination efficiency, meaning that further significant gains will have to come from somewhere other than the desalination procedure itself.

Desalination's reputation as an energy hog started out with the initial large-scale facilities, which involved boiling salt water and simply condensing out fresh water from the resulting vapor. Although some of these plants are still in operation, all new construction relies on a more efficient process called reverse osmosis.

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There's a major, ongoing drought in Texas, Oklahoma, and southern Kansas. As of July 26th, Amarillo had clocked in a record-breaking 30 days of 100+-degree temperatures. Wichita Falls, Texas, is on a (so far) 50-day streak with no precipitation. (If the trend continues to August 8th, as is predicted, it'll break into Wichita Falls' list of top 10 runs of precipitation-free days.)

All of that means lower water levels in local lakes. And, in Nacogdoches, the exposed lakebed revealed something very interesting—a part of the space shuttle Columbia, lost when then that shuttle disintegrated upon reentry in 2003. At the Houston Chronicle website, Eric Berger explained that this sphere is actually a tank for holding the cryogenic hydrogen that was critical to generating electricity via chemical reactions in the shuttle's fuel cell power plants.

NASA has reminded Texans that even though eight years have passed this, and any other shuttle parts that might turn up, are government property. It's a crime to tamper with them or squirrel them away.

Via Gizmodo and looprock

This was pretty much destined to happen, eventually. The old Wile E. Coyote story problems were getting a bit stale.

"The sound got his attention and he kept pressing it. At first it scared the rest of them away but they soon came back - it was amazing to watch.

"He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus. He obviously hadn't worked that out yet.

This amazing video was shot at an astronomical observatory in Hawaii. It's real, according to Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait. In fact, there's another camera that captures the same phenomenon from a different angle. So the question becomes, "What the hell is that?" Plait details a possible explanation, worked out by members of the Astronomy Picture of the Day forum.

... what leaps out is that the expanding halo is limb-brightened, like a soap bubble, and fades with time. That strongly points toward something like a sudden impulse of energy and rapid expansion of material, like an explosion of some kind. Note that the ring itself appears to be moving, as if whatever caused it was moving rapidly as well.

Asterix board member calvin 737 was the first to suggest it might be related to a Minuteman III missile launch around that time. As more people on the forum dug into it, the timing was found to be right. The missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base (in California) at 03:35 Hawaii time, just minutes before the halo was seen. I noticed the stars of Cassiopeia are visible in the webcam, so the view was to the northeast, which is the right direction to see the missile as well. OK, the timing and direction are perfect, so the rocket is clearly the culprit... but how, exactly?

[An idea posted by board member neufer] was that this was from a detonation charge in the missile's third stage. There are ports, openings in the sides of the third stage. Those ports are sealed for the flight until the right time, when they're blown open by explosive charges. This allows the fuel to escape very rapidly, extinguishing the thrust at a precise time to allow for accurate targeting of the warhead. At this point, the missile is above most of the Earth's atmosphere, essentially in space. So when that gas suddenly released from the stage expands, it blows away from the missile in a sphere. Not only that, the release is so rapid it would expand like a spherical shell -- which would look like a ring from the ground (the same way a soap bubble looks like a ring). And not only that, but the expanding gas would be moving very rapidly relative to the ground since the missile would've been moving rapidly at this point in the flight.

In his original post, Plait also explains why he thinks this is the true explanation, and why several alternate ideas don't hold up.

Self-healing polymers are extremely sought after by scientists, as they have many useful—not to mention lucrative—applications. Back in 2009, we reported a polyurethane-based polymeric material that heals itself in roughly an hour when exposed to UV light. That particular polymer, made by Biswajit Ghosh and Marek W. Urban, would be useful as a protective coating for phones, cars, etc. It worked based on the principle of having a reactive chemical component that would split open when physically damaged to create two reactive ends that can then covalently link together under UV light to repair itself.

In a recent issue of Nature, Mark Burnworth and his colleagues report a different type of self-healing material, one that can repair itself in about a minute under UV light. Burnworth’s polymeric material also doesn’t function on the basis of forming chemical bonds between organic compounds for repair. Instead, it relies on localized heating and metal-ligand interactions.

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National Geographic has a slideshow that shows off major milestones in underwater photography. This image is the first color photo ever taken underwater.

Underwater color photography was born with this shot of a hogfish, photographed off the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico by Dr. William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin in 1926. Equipped with cameras encased in waterproof housing and pounds of highly explosive magnesium flash powder for underwater illumination, the pair pioneered underwater photography.

The seemingly random movement of Brownian motion just got a little more classical. Scientists have been able to image the ultrafast motions of a trapped particle, revealing the underlining trajectories causing Brownian motion. This is the first time inertial Brownian motion of a particle in a fluid have been measured.

In 60 BC, the poet Lucretius described the motions of dust in a dark room and speculated on the existence of atoms. In 1827, Robert Brown described the random motions of pollen in water, the motion which now bears his name. It took until 1905 for Einstein to fully describe how Brownian motion arises from instantaneous imbalances in the forces from collisions with water molecules.

At its heart, Brownian motion is still described by classical Newtonian physics, even if we cannot define a classical velocity and can only measure mean square displacement. Einstein said, "It is therefore impossible... to ascertain the root mean square velocity by observation" because the timescales of the instantaneous velocity are vanishingly short. Einstein calculated that the time for a particle to decelerate significantly is about ~100ns, impossibly fast to measure at the time.

But that was then. Now researchers have been able to probe time scales an order of magnitude faster. By holding a micron-sized sphere in a optical trap and measuring the scattered light with a high speed position detector (75MHz), a team was able to measure the motion of the spheres with a resolution of 0.2 angstroms and a temporal resolution of ~10ns. At these resolutions, they were able to track the inertial Brownian motion of the sphere.

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This is an x-ray of a newly discovered species of stingray, native to the Amazon. You can't tell from this shot of its innards, but the Heliotrygon gomesi actually resembles a "pancake with a nose"—big, round, flat, and beige. Read more about this creature at Our Amazing Planet.

Image: Ken Jones

Submitterated by Ajourneyroundmyskull

Batteries are an essential part of most modern gadgets, and their role is expected to expand as they're incorporated into vehicles and the electric grid itself. But batteries can't move charge as quickly as some competing devices like supercapacitors, and their performance tends to degrade significantly with time. That has sent lots of materials science types into the lab, trying to find ways to push back these limits, sometimes with notable success. Over the weekend, there was another report on a technology that enables fast battery charging. The good news is that it uses a completely different approach and technology than the previous effort, and can work with both lithium- and nickel-based batteries.

The previous work was lithium-specific, and focused on one limit to a battery's recharge rate: how quickly the lithium ions could move within the battery material. By providing greater access to the electrodes, the authors allowed more ions to quickly exchange charge, resulting in a battery with a prodigious charging rate. The researchers increased lithium's transport within the battery by changing the structure of the battery's primary material, LiFePO₄.

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I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders -- after all, it's showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time -- I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn't notice them ... I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst and ...

At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: my heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it's going to end badly. And all that was left was removing the appendix ... And then I realised that, basically, I was already saved.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Graphene, “one of the hottest new materials in the field of nanotechnology,” has just made your car’s windshield wipers obsolete. Researchers at Vanderbilt University have devised a way to re-jigger graphene so that it sticks to smooth surfaces like ship hulls and windshields. Given that graphene can effortlessly repel water, you’ve just created a simple method to make rainproof your windshield. Quite handy.

“Graphene, eh?” Yup, it’s a new material that’s created by the alignment of “rows of carbon atoms arranged in rings.” I don’t think I need to remind you that carbon is everywhere, so it’s not exactly expensive to create.

Just as exciting is that the material is “10 times” (!) stronger than steel, and it’s quite handy at conducting electricity at room temperature.

It sounds like a comic book super-material. “Graphene—the solution to all the world’s problems!”

Now watch the windshield wiper lobby try to have the substance banned.

China may have bought parts of US F-117 Nighthawk shot down over Serbia in 1999, say experts

A Chinese stealth fighter jet that could pose a significant threat to American air superiority may borrow from US technology, it has been claimed.

Balkan military officials and other experts said China may have gleaned knowledge from a US F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.

"At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers," said Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war. "We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies ... and to reverse-engineer them."

The Nighthawk was downed by a Serbian anti-aircraft missile during a bombing raid on 27 March 1999. It was the first time one of the fighters had been hit, and the Pentagon blamed clever tactics and sheer luck. The pilot ejected and was rescued.

A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up "in the hands of foreign military attaches". Efforts to get comment from China's defence ministry and the Pentagon were unsuccessful.

Parts of the F-117 wreckage, including its left wing, cockpit canopy, ejection seat, pilot's helmet and radio, are exhibited at Belgrade's aviation museum. Zoran Milicevic, deputy director of the museum, said: "I don't know what happened to the rest of the plane. A lot of delegations visited us in the past, including the Chinese, Russians and Americans ... but no one showed any interest in taking any part of the jet."

Zoran Kusovac, a Rome-based military consultant, said the regime of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic routinely shared captured western equipment with its Chinese and Russian allies. "The destroyed F-117 topped that wish-list for both the Russians and Chinese," Kusovac said.

China's multi-role stealth fighter – known as the Chengdu J-20 – made its inaugural flight on 11 January, revealing dramatic progress in the country's efforts to develop cutting-edge military technologies. It is at least eight or nine years from entering service.

Russia's Sukhoi T-50 prototype stealth fighter made its maiden flight last year and is due to enter service in about four years. It is likely that the Russians also gained knowledge of stealth technology from the downed Nighthawk.

I admit this failing: I am an optics geek, and all things light-related tend to get me... um... excited. But a recent paper in Nature Photonics presented a result that most people will find very startling: researchers have created a material which prevents light from exhibiting diffraction.

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Insert your own caffeine addiction joke here.

Stirling engines are fascinating pieces of machinery, with the potential to be far more energy efficient than the internal combustion engines we're used to. They're also way more quiet. The key difference is that gas is sealed inside a Stirling engine. The pistons move as you heat and cool that sealed gas, changing the pressure inside the system.

Stirling engines were invented in the early 19th century, but they aren't used much today, mainly because the need for an external heat source makes them a bit impractical. For instance, a car run on a Stirling engine would take a while to heat up before you could drive it. They also weigh a lot more than an equally powerful internal combustion engine, which means, in a car, you'd lose some of the efficiency you'd gained. That said, there's a lot of potential for these things. Stirling engines can run on pretty much any heat source, which makes them a great fit for alternative energy. They're already starting to show up in stationary power plants that produce both heat and electricity for universities and factory campuses.

This little engine is built from a kit, and can run on everything from the heat of your hand, to the steaming cup of coffee we see here. Apparently, it really does work.

And you can watch it happen in this literally awesome video from the BBC's Bang Goes the Theory. I wonder how much that lens cost? I've got a shed out back, wouldn't be too hard to cut a hole in the roof... [via Boing Boing]

More:

• Waste oil foundry furnace -- complete!
• Charcoal foundry build at Chicago hackerspace
• The Steel Yard's Iron Pour fires up in Providence on 10/30
• Arc furnace that melts anything

I identify as a scientist, but I gotta admit: When I saw this video from Steve Spangler Science, my first impulse was to jump back from the computer, cross myself, and douse the screen with holy water. It reminded me of a line from John Carpenter's underappreciated 1987 horror movie, Prince of Darkness:

And we assume time is an arrow because it is as a clock...Cause precedes effect - fruit rots, water flows downstream. We're born, we age, we die. The reverse NEVER happens...

Unless, apparently, you're dealing with a system operating under conditions of laminar flow. Obviously, there is no real "violation" of the second law of thermodynamics, here, but because almost all of our intuitions about how liquids are going to behave are formed under conditions of turbulent flow, it sure does seem like it. [Thanks, Alan Dove!]

More:

• Mercury "beating heart" demo video
• Dr. Carlson's Science Theater - downloadable science videos
• ScienceHack videos
• How-To: Detecting mercury in light bulbs
• Superconductor levitates around circular supermagnet track

Best answer: "I don't know. Probably very bad for you. And they'd be very cross with you."

If the fear of disgruntled CERN researchers (what's the Greek "-phobia" word for that, I wonder) isn't enough to make you keep your hands to yourself, rest assured, nobody thinks such an adventure would work out for you, health-wise.

One of the scientists interviewed here mentions that particles traveling close to the speed of light start emitting synchrotron radiation, something he calls "very nasty". (Note the fun look of terror in his eyes that goes along with this pronouncement.)

And with good reason. Consider Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, a Russian researcher who accidentally stuck his head into the proton bean of a synchrotron in 1978. The good news: He survived. The bad news: The left side of his face swelled up and peeled off. In the long term, Bugorski has had to deal with hearing loss, fatigue, facial paralysis and seizures.

Conclusion (at least, until somebody tries it on Mythbusters): Sticking any part of your body into the LHC is probably a bad idea.

Thanks to EricHarley for Submitterating!

Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting that at team of researchers at Kyoto University developed a palm-size X-ray generation device with a special power source: two D-type batteries. According to the paper, the current prototype is just 5cm long and 3cm wide.

The way it works is that there are two electrodes (made of tantalic-acid-lithium) placed inside a glass case. These electrodes start producing heat when they are subject to a current, releasing electrons from within the device. If the electrons hit the item to be examined, radiation is emitted.

The research team claims it could specify the elements of a grain of salt placed in the device within 3 minutes. It sees the device as an alternative to conventional X-ray generating machines and says it can be used in combination with a portable X-ray detector.

Apologies for the small picture – it’s the only one available at this point.

Our boy Glenn Anderson caught up with the folks from Natural Fire Solutions at their booth at Modern Day Marine last week.

He saw a guy wielding a blow torch trying with little avail to set several Marpat uniforms alight and thought, “what’s up with this guy?”

Apparently, NFS has developed is distributing a fire-inhibiting compound that can be used to treat everything from your cammies to that Naugahyde Barcalounger your wife wants to dump in the back alley.

All natural materials protected with AF-21 will char (carbonize) when subjected to high heat, but they will not ignite, burn or spread flame, and thermal transfer is also greatly reduced.

Plastic products are a major carrier of fire. In addition to the toxic fumes they produce, they burn and melt, dripping flaming droplets onto other surfaces and materials in the room. Many plastics can also be treated with AF-21, causing them only to MELT, but NOT FLAME; the release of toxic fumes are diminished and the spread of fire will be inhibited.

• Prevents the spread of fire
• Eliminates afterglow
• Treated materials are classified as a Class 0, non-flammable
• Ease of application (spraying, padding, dipping, brushing or fogging); 1 litre covers 8-10 square metres. Does not affect the look, feel, smell or colour of the treated items

It’s a pretty amazing alternative to Nomex or other fabric-based options to the flash fire problem of IEDs and vehicles. Check out the video and see how the NSF engineer holds his hand behind the fabric without melting through his palm…unbelievable!

Researchers in the UK have flown the first aircraft that can maneuver without conventional control surfaces like flaps. In place of elevators and ailerons, the aircraft uses jets of air along the back of the wing to control lift. The demonstration aircraft has been developed as a test bed for new flight-control systems and aircraft manufacture techniques.

Jets of air along the back edge of the wing change how air flows over the wing, a process called circulation control. This can be used to induce the air flowing over the wing to flow around the back edge of the wing instead of simply flowing past. This produces more lift. By turning off and on jets strategically placed along the trailing edges of the wings, the pitch and roll can be controlled.

That is not all this new aircraft can do. It was also designed to test Fluidic Thrust Vectoring (FTV). Most next-generation fighter aircraft have or will incorporate some form of vectored thrust, enabling the pilot to control the direction the thrust from the engine leaves the aircraft. This greatly increases maneuverability and control of the aircraft. However, conventional vectored thrust technologies require a lot of complicated moving parts at the business end of a jet engine. FTV should simplify things by deflecting the thrust of the jet engine by injecting a higher pressure jet of air along the nozzle wall. This secondary jet will deflect the thrust of the engine.

The idea of “flapless” aircraft has several advantages. Fewer moving parts mean less maintenance, lighter weight, fewer failures, and lower cost. It is also more stealthy, as sharp, abrupt angles and gaps like those created by flaps are hard to hide from radar. The successful flight of this aircraft has demonstrated the possibility of fluidic flight control and may be the future of aviation.

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While many of us have probably used Lego parts to simulate scientific principles of one kind or another, reader Kee Nethery discovered that Duplo bricks will actually behave in strange and scientific ways when put through, of all things, a clothes washer:

We ran our son’s Duplo Lego bricks through the clothes washer in preparation for giving them away and the results were astonishing. After a gentle wash for 37 minutes, with some towels to muffle the noise, a significant percentage had combined together. The immediate thought was of amino acids combining into DNA. Half way through emptying the washer they were still coming out assembled. We figured an experiment was in order. Here are the results of the second wash with all the pieces separated before washing:

Experimental conditions: We have a normal home sized front loader washer. It was set to quick wash, low speed tumble, additional rinse. Added two towels and four wash cloths to help muffle the noise, 2 tablespoons of baking soda. The Duplo population was a total of 222 separate pieces.

Experimental Results: When the wash was done, 66 pieces had combined together. 30% of the pieces had mated up with at least one other piece. Of that, 52 were in pairs (23%), 6 were in triples (3%), and 8 were quadruplets (4%).

With 30% of the Legos combining with others in 37 minutes, makes one wonder what conditions are needed for molecules to combine into amino acids and amino acids into DNA.

Caution: We used Duplo bricks that are too big to jam into a crack inside our washer. Many of the small regular sized Lego bricks would probably jam and damage a washer.

This is obviously an important phenomenon that requires further study. Time to start writing the grant applications!

[Kee Nethery is the founder of Kagi.com]

If you haven’t visited http://www.ted.com/ yet, then you need to right now!  Who is TED, you ask?  Turns out, TED is no-one; TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design.  What started out as an attempt to combine these three fields into one harmonious meeting of the minds has grown into something truly wonderful.  TED conferences, currently held yearly in Monterey California and other global locations, bring together many speakers from very diverse backgrounds from all around the world.  In the true spirit of sharing knowledge, TED makes these talks available by streaming and download for FREE on their website!

 Talks are generally 20 minutes or less, and therefore, very to the point.  Topic range wildly, from science, economics and design, to art, literature and mathematics.  You can search for talks using common queries like subject matter or speaker, or in more interesting ways, like “most inspiring” or “most ingenious.”  You would be hard pressed to not find something that turns your crank.  One feature I particularly like is TED’s built in video viewer.  You have all the common features like play, stop, pause, forward/reverse and volume, but you also get an interesting overlay when you place the mouse over the video.  An overlay pop-up appears at the bottom of the video and shows the content of the talk in a time-line fashion.  This time-line allows you to skip to a particular part of the talk that may be of more interest to you, and definitely helps if you want to show someone else just one part of a talk in particular. 

There are so many good speakers and topics its hard to know where to start; my personal two favorites are:

#1: Ron Eglash: African fractals, in buildings and braids - this one is awesome!

#2: Vusi Mahlasela: “Thula Mama” – my favorite new artist, this guy is amazing (I reviewed his latest CD here)!

 There is a wealth of free knowledge available on the web, but rarely is it presented in such a fun, clean, and creative manner.