Travel to the Mars in 0 seconds?

Every traveler is always dreaming about ways to make their journey pass quicker. I also realized this after 19 hours journey to France. No one would feel any discomfort if journey lasts only 0 seconds. Very quick isn't it? It's even faster than light if you are traveling over a huge distance, for example going to the Mars. But what device could actually do it? These things are usually met in almost every science fiction movie- they are called teleportation machines. People have fantasized about traveling quick and far from very early days. The first written story appeared as early as 1877 in Edward Page Mitchell's story "The Man Without a Body". After it everyone put only more and more effort to create a real teleportation machine. But did they succeed? Apparently they did! Scientists were studying real teleportation since 1997. Sadly it is really different from teleportation we imagine. It will take decades to transfer the smallest lead ball you could ever imagine as this effect was achieved only for photons. Despite this, scientists are moving forward and teleportation record was broken by Chinese researchers. Instead of 16 km they managed to transfer photons by almost 100 km, which is 6 times more than anyone did it before. So how was this made? Firstly teleportation can appear only between entangled photons which means they have to interact to each other to get the same quantum state and then after separation if one photon changes another becomes the same as well. This leads to the idea of having our avatars in every place of the world in order to be able to teleport, but agree with me, it is better than nothing. I can already imagine transatlantic airplanes (maybe even galactic starships) full of humanoids. We would transfer our minds to them only after the flight. Just imagine comfort of this! I can already see increasing tourism as you can have a truck full of them and no one will complain about it. But let's go back to the topic. The biggest problem till now was laser pulse dispersion, which caused a reduced number of photons reaching the target. It was solved by using very fancy optics with which even this camera couldn't compare http://easyphys.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/digitalizing-universe.html. This is one of the most welcome devices so let's be patient. 

Everything can be found in more details here: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27843/

Hydrogen future

Nowadays every house has a gas pipe and no one could imagine life during winter without it. But not for long as natural gas will be changed by hydrogen. Sounds unexpected? This is not true as such an idea has been developed for years and scientists were putting loads of effort to make this happen. In last year's technology improved really a lot and more research results are still coming. So it is possible to dream about future when all electricity in all private houses will be generated by hydrogen fuel cells, solar panels or wind turbines. Everyone will forget what means gas, coal or wood burner. There will be places to fill your car with hydrogen or sockets to charge it. All these ideas were inspired by an article from Brookhaven National Laboratory. Sadly scientists didn't improve efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells and even reduced it a little, but this didn't stop them to reach a very important goal: reduce the price of required equipment. Till now the most important catalyst in hydrogen industry was platinum as it achieved the best characteristics. Despite that platinum's price is enormous over 50 000 dollars per kilo. For this price you could easily get two very good cars! It is very hard to believe but the new method uses nickel and molybdenum, which are totally opposite to platinum- enormously cheap. For 50 dollars you can get a kilogram of each. This is 1000 times cheaper for a twice bigger quantity! Hydrogen should be rediscovered again especially when using new materials efficiency was reduced only slightly. So what allowed achieving these characteristics? Firstly it was decided to change platinum with nickel. But due to unsatisfying reactivity it was mixed with molybdenum. New material also didn't satisfy scientists so they introduced nitrogen to form sphere like nanoparticles. Results were much better as nanosheet was formed. The door to the future was opened, now we just need to wait what is going to happen.

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120511122232.htm

Deleting memory as a hard disk?

What is the most powerful thing in the life of the person? Of course it is our memory. It is very hard to imagine society where no one can remember anything. None of the present achievements could be obtained and even daily communication would be different as we wouldn't be able to talk. Today I saw an article that scientists identified a mechanism which is essential for creating our memories. But scientists were happier about finding out that the same mechanism is essential for forgetting as well. This is not everything as forgetting was proved to be active and not passive process as it was thought before. To get these results fruit flies were studied. They were learned to associate smells with negative or positive reinforcement. This showed that small amount of dopamine is responsible for making memories and forgetting the information, but scientists were interested how the same molecule can cause two opposite consequences. The conclusion of the experiment was that dopamine starts to stimulate learning receptor first, but when it is overstimulated, it continues to activate the receptor of forgetfulness. Could this give us a solution how to increase our memory? Yes it does, as mutation of forgetfulness receptor, proved to block forgetting of information. This is a great discovery towards more knowledge about our own body. It can also be instantly used in medicine to cure people who can't forget car crash or any other horrible event. Here we can also start a discussion about people who could use it for bad purposes. They could easily make witnesses to forget important faces or other important information. So how could we protect ourselves? Teach this method only to few people in the world? Leave your opinion below.

More details about experiment: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120509180113.htm

Wind panels?

Very tough times are coming for electric companies because renewable energy came to the game. Every year more and more people are talking about this source of electricity and heat, especially when climate is changing. Government is also trying to convince everyone to use renewable energy and does it by giving grants for installing equipment and even paying for generated and used electricity! This is still not enough as nowadays renewable energy technology is very expensive but new generation and new ideas are coming. Very impressive and promising is Keon Jae Lee from The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology work on piezoelectrics nanocomposite materials (material generating electricity from applied mechanical work like wind or waves). He and his team managed to increase critical limits by mixing piezoelectric nanoparticles with carbon-based nanomaterials. Those critical restrictions are: expensiveness, inability to create big scale samples and difficult way of manufacturing. Let's dream a bit how world can change right now. This technology allows changing existing house into off-grid house (house which doesn't take anything from main electricity or gas suppliers) very easily, you just need to cover the house with piezoelectric's panels (yes, not solar panels!). On the roof they would have a huge advantage against solar panels as it can generate electricity during the night and even winter (which is the biggest disadvantage of solar energy). Panels on the sides of the house could use huge amounts of wind power as it hits them perpendicularly and a lot of energy could be transferred. But this is not enough as it could also use sound waves coming from cars. Finally living close to very busy streets would pay back. Another option is to use piezoelectrics in asphalt. Just imagine you are going somewhere and generating electricity at the same time. So if you have electric car, you leave house with full battery and get to destination without discharging. It is possible to continue and continue talking about how big revolution could be made with this technology, but sadly posts have limits.

Check this for more details: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/tkai-pgt050712.php

Memories of holes in roads

Nowadays our world is based on transport so most people know the feeling that driving in bad roads is pain. Then all concentration is directed to think how to go around holes without damaging car and still moving quicker than snails. This is a problem not only for us. For road service companies it is difficult to find every crack in the road and fix it immediately. Another problem is that price of asphalt is very high as huge amounts are necessary. There is a solution to find material which could withstand loads of different critical conditions like freezing winter, hot summer and heavy trucks. Zhanping You from Michigan Technological University suggested to mix some nanoclay into asphalt, tried this technology and it worked! Nanoclay addition of around 3% by weight to asphalt changed its viscosity to the better side. This improvement won't let to deform asphalt as easily as before and rutting won't appear that often. Less maintenance means saving a lot of money and making roads safer. There still are loads to test, loads to do as characteristics of new asphalt under different temperatures are unknown. Zhanping You and his team are also inspecting asphalt characteristics containing other nano mixtures. Hopefully they will succeed to create material which could stay without any maintenance for more than 20 years. Such roads would be another step to a safer driving. In addition we wouldn't need to worry about holes appearing in the road from nowhere so all our attention would be concentrated on signs, other cars and pedestrians. Better roads, better tomorrow!

More details can be found in: http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2012/may/story67607.html

Glass without reflection

Today I was walking from university and swearing the sun for shining and not allowing to read my e-mails in the phone. I was forced to look for every shadow but reading didn't become even slightly easier. This is a frequent situation which makes very easy to derive equation: sun + screen = no good. This equation applies wherever you are. It doesn't care if you are sitting in front of your pc at home or using laptop outside. Usually bright sun is not the most important variable because even few beams of light can change a very exciting video into pain. The pain could be reduced by increasing brightness but this is not good for batteries and especially eyes so another solution is required. Just after coming back home I started reading science news and I was shocked that god heard me! One of the first articles was about recent improvement in this field. MIT researchers have just developed glass which won't reflect any images and also possesses other very impressive characteristics. The new generation of glass will be self-cleaning and hydrophobic. Instantly a question arises how this can be achieved? Researchers covered glass with nano (nano- 10^(-9) m) size conical spikes. I wish mass production would be started immediately but this technology still requires loads of testing and developing as new structure makes glass easily breakable. A single touch with a key could break it so holding your phone in a pocket with keys would be a horrible idea. This glass is also far away from being as strong as Gorilla Glass which is usually used in smartphones and tablets. Let's hope technology will improve quickly and studying outside in nice weather using laptop will be the best decision ever.  

                                  

More information:http://vr-zone.com/articles/mit-researchers-develop-glare-free-self-cleaning-glass/15701.html