Meet a shimmering purple ribbon of plasma called Steve.
Three Old Scientific Concepts Getting a Modern Look
The ancients often got it wrong about science — but they weren’t that far off.
Eco-designer turns landfill waste into ‘plasma rock’ — a sustainable, all-purpose material
Landfill waste is given a second life by blasting it with plasma hotter than the sun. Now that’s a project we love!
Paper centrifuge can separate blood into plasma in under two minutes, all manually. It weighs 2 grams and costs ¢20
Human ingenuity knows no limit.
Vampires might be on to something: blood from young humans rejuvenates old mice
It’s the plot of a dark vampire movie.
The U.S. plans to build the most advanced fusion reactor ever
Endless clean energy is just too good to pass up.
New plasma printing technique can deposit nanomaterials on flexible, 3D substrates
A new nanomaterial printing method could make it both easier and cheaper to create devices such as wearable chemical and biological sensors, data storage and integrated circuits — even on flexible surfaces such as paper or cloth. The secret? Plamsa.
“Fingers” of Plasma Invade Saturn’s Magnetic Field
NASA’s Cassini probe recently observed mysterious, huge amounts of plasma on the fringes of Saturn’s magnetic field; surprisingly, they were shooting hundreds of thousands of kilometers inward.
Become a fire-bender – all you need is some electricity
Take a candle, light it, turn it on its side — we all know what will happen. The convection cell that forms around the flame keeps licking up towards the sky (or ceiling) regardless of the orientation of the fuel. But can the movement of air be overcome, can we make a fire burn horizontally? Well, the short answer is yes, yes we can — we just have to use science.
Rosetta mission discovers the comet that “sings”
As I am writing this, the Rosetta mission’s lander, Philae, is mid way through its landing on a comet. If everything works out, this will be the first time humans have landed anything on a comet and will provide valuable information about not only the comet in particular, but also our solar system in general. *UPDATE* Rosetta’s final ‘go’ has
Particle accelerator only 30cm in size is hundred times faster than LHC
Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have devised a particle accelerator that can increase the kinetic energy of particles passing through it hundreds of times faster than the LHC. While the latter is comprised of a 27km ring, the device made by the US scientists is only 30cm in size. This massive leap in miniaturization could drastically reduce the cost
Smallest liquid droplets created at LHC are 100,000th the size of a hydrogen atom
Scientists closely working with the Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, have identified evidence of the minuscule droplets produced in the aftermath of high energy proton and lead ions collisions. If their calculations are right, then these are the smallest droplets of liquid ever encountered thus far, just three to five protons in size. That’s about
High power laser hallows atom from the inside out
An international team of physicists have used one of the world’s most powerful lasers to create an unusual kind of plasma made out of hollow atoms, by using a breakthrough technique which involved emptying atoms of electrons from the inside out, instead of working from the outer shells inwards. This bizarre physics experiment shows once again just how important X-rays are
Amazing high energy, relativistic plasma jets coming out of the Hercules A Galaxy
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… at about 2 billion light years away from Earth lies radio-galaxy Hercules A, also known as 3C 348. At a first glance it looks just like another massive galaxy out there – at least when looking in the visible spectrum. In the radio wavelengths however, the story is completely different.
Solar plasma waves imaged with gradient filter turns science to fine art
This Friday, a solar eruption of spectacular proportions took place. The ensuing plasma wave, measuring millions of degrees in temperature, lasted for several hours, which is atypical for such events, and was several times the size of the Earth. It’s not the eruption’s sheer enormity that’s impressive, but it’s beauty as well, and for this very event, the NASA scientists seemingly turned
Hottest temperature on Earth reached after scientists create quark-gluon particle soup
Not one, but two independent high-energy particle physics laboratories in New York (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider – RHIC) and Geneva ( Large Hadron Collider – LHC) have managed to create quark-gluon plasma after smashing particles into another at very high speeds. The resulting plasma, which only lasted for a fraction of a moment, is the hottest matter ever recorded – somewhere
World’s most powerful X-ray laser heats matter at 2 million degrees
Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser fired upon a neon gas capsule and thus emit an avalanche of short wavelength X-rays,creating the first atom laser. The same laser was used to heat a lump of matter at over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit – hotter than the sun’s corona. “X-rays give us a
[Amazing Photo] Atlantis re-entering Earth’s atmosphere
I know some of you are either nostalgic or plain tired of all the Atlantis posts we’ve been publishing lately, but this one absolutely takes the cake. The photo above, taken from aboard the International Space Station by one of the astronauts there, shows Atlantis as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, leaving a trail of golden plasma behind it. The plasma
Tour de Hell: 2,100 miles of pain for cyclists
Each year for three weeks, professional cyclists suffer at great lengths, enduring both physical and mental pain, in the Tour de Frace. Considering each day means around 100 miles on a bike, most of the time uphill, though mountains and so on, there aren’t any losers at the Tour de France. If you manage to finish, you’re very much a
Large Hadron Collider creates mini big bangs and incredible heat
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has taken another step towards its goal of finding the so called ‘god particle‘: it recently produced the highest temperatures ever obtained through a science experiment. The day before yesterday, 7 November was a big one at the LHC, as the particle collider started smashing lead ions head-on instead of the proton – proton