This Room Starts Charging Your Phone As Soon As You Walk In. Inspired By Tesla’s Vision Of Global Wireless

Human fingers can detect nano-size objects. This means you not only have the ability to feel a tiny bump the size of a large molecule, but if your finger was the size of Earth, you could determine the difference between a house and a car. Source

The Amateur Cloud Watching Handbook (#1)

Cloud watching is one of the most pleasurable activities on the planet. You don’t need any fancy equipments or spend money to experience it. Just find a spot to rest and witness the show that nature has to offer.

It is the most breathtaking experiences one can ever resonate with.

Fellow cloud watchers from the past have identified 3 primarily forms of clouds that seems to be consistent everywhere and have named it based on its structure, for the sake of convenience.

Cirrus

Cirrus in Latin means Tendril or hair. The clouds that are like long slithers in the sky, are called by this name.

Cumulus

Cumulus in Latin means Heap or pile. They just look heaps of white floaty objects in the sky.

Stratus

Status in Latin means Layer or sheet. They occur when startas of clouds stack on top of each other.

Clouds are constantly merging and doing all sorts of crazy stuff and they rarely maintain the same shape as you might have already observed

To account for this, dude named Howard brilliantly came up with a elegant nomenclature.

If a Cirrus type cloud after some time transforms into a Stratus type, it is known as Cirrostratus.

If a Cirrus type cloud after some time transforms into a Cumulus type, it is known as Cirrocumulus

If a Stratus type cloud after some time transforms into a Cumulus type, it is known as Stratocumulus

And so on, you get the idea right. By merely observing the transformation pattern of the clouds, you can tell its name.

This helps in setting up something of a standard to express in words what you behold, although it will never exactly be the same that someone else has in mind.

Note on Language

Language is our means of expression. Sometimes we stick with the conventions that had been established by pioneers. Now, that doesn’t need to be the easiest way.

For instance QWERTY keyboard is not the best keyboard to type in, but we still follow it as a convention.

Fortunately, cloud watching conventions are so much intuitive than many others out there!

Have a good day.

PC:  Ted-ed PiccoloNamek,  Nissim Angdembay

( Part -2 coming out soon )

But that’s not all it can do. Microsoft and NASA teamed up to “bring” you, yes you, to Mars.

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Are Cloaking Devices Coming? Metalens-Shaped Light May Lead The Way

“The biggest challenge facing a real-life cloak has been the incorporation of a large variety of wavelengths, as the cloak’s material must vary from point-to-point to bend (and then unbend) the light by the proper amount. Based on the materials discovered so far, we haven’t yet managed to penetrate the visible light portion of the spectrum with a cloak. This new advance in metalenses, however, seems to indicate that if you can do it for a single, narrow wavelength, you can apply this nanofin technology to extend the wavelength covered tremendously. This first application to achromatic lenses covered nearly the full visible-light spectrum (from 470 to 670 nm), and fusing this with advances in metamaterials would make visible-light cloaking devices a reality.”

What would it take to have a true cloaking device? You’d need some way to bend the light coming from all across the electromagnetic spectrum around your cloaked object, and have it propagate off in the same direction once it moved past you. To an outside observer, it would simply seem like the cloaked object wasn’t there, and they’d only view the world in front of and behind them. Even with the recent advances that have been made in metamaterials, we have not yet been able to realize this dream in three dimensions, covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and from all directions. But a new advance in metalens technology might get you the full electromagnetic spectrum after all, as they appear to have solved the problem of chromatic aberration with a light, small, and inexpensive solution. If we can combine these two technologies, metalenses and metamaterials, we just might realize the dream of a true invisibility cloak.

Whether you’re a Star Trek or Harry Potter fan, the ability to turn yourself invisible would be Earth-shattering. Come see how transformation optics might transform the world!

How platinum powers the world

Platinum bars. Image: Sprott Money@Flickr 

Platinum is one of the most valuable metals in the world. Precious and pretty, it’s probably best known for jewelry – and that is almost certainly its oldest use. But its value has become far greater than its decorative ability; today, platinum powers the world. From agriculture to the oil markets, energy to healthcare, we use platinum far more than we realise.

1. Keep the car running

Platinum is needed to make fuel for transport. Image: Pixabay

Platinum catalysts are crucial in the process that converts naphtha into petrol, diesel, and jet-engine fuel, which are all vital to the global economy. The emissions from those petroleum fuels, however, can be toxic, and platinum is also crucial in the worldwide push to reduce them through automotive catalytic converters. In fact, 2% of global platinum use in 2016 was in converting petroleum and 41% went into reducing emissions – a circle of platinum use that’s more impressive than a ring.

2. Feed the world

Nitric acid is a by-product of platinum which is used in fertilisers. Image: Pixabay

Another vital global sector that makes use of platinum catalysts is agriculture. Without synthetic fertilisers, we would not be able to produce nearly as much food as we need. Nitric acid is essential for producing those fertilisers and platinum is essential for producing nitric acid. Since 90% of the gauzes required for nitric acid are platinum, we may need to use more of it as we try to meet the global food challenge.

3. Good for your health

A pacemaker. Image: Steven Fruitsmaak@Wikimedia Commons 

Platinum is extremely hard wearing, non-corrosive, and highly biocompatible, making it an excellent material to protect medical implants from acid corrosion in the human body. It is commonly used in pacemakers and stents. It is also used in chemotherapy, where platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents are used to treat up to 50% of cancer patients.

Keep reading

The great esGape

Unlike most elemental metals, gallium will melt in the palm of your hand, or at temperatures above about 30 °C. And that’s not the only unusual thing about this element: It also expands when it freezes. In this video series, warm liquid gallium is poured into a glass vial (top), followed by a little clean-up. As the gallium cools back down to room temperature, it starts to bubble up as its volume expands (third video down). Overall, it expands 3%, shattering the vial (bottom). Water is a substance commonly used to demonstrate this sort of expansion, growing about 8% in volume when frozen, but other elements exhibit this behavior as well, including silicon and plutonium. The final two clips have been accelerated 200 times and 10 times, respectively.

Credit: Periodictable.ru (watch the whole video here; GIFs created by rudescience)

More ChemPics and C&EN stories:

Liquid metals take shape

A melting liquid

Rolling out liquid-metal motors

You’ll wonder how you ever lived without this charming social robot

That Time We Flew Past Pluto…

Two years ago today (July 14), our New Horizons spacecraft made its closest flyby of Pluto…collecting images and science that revealed a geologically complex world. Data from this mission are helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system.

The spacecraft is now venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt…a relic of solar system formation…to reach its next target. On New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons will zoom past a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69.

The Kuiper Belt is a disc-shaped region of icy bodies – including dwarf planets such as Pluto – and comets beyond the orbit of Neptune. It extends from about 30 to 55 Astronomical Units (an AU is the distance from the sun to Earth) and is probably populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 62 miles across, and an estimated trillion or more comets.

Nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto, you may be asking how the spacecraft will function for the 2014 MU69 flyby. Well, New Horizons was originally designed to fly far beyond the Pluto system and explore deeper into the Kuiper Belt. 

The spacecraft carries extra hydrazine fuel for the flyby; its communications system is designed to work from beyond Pluto; its power system is designed to operate for many more years; and its scientific instruments were designed to operate in light levels much lower than it will experience during the 2014 MU69 flyby.

What have we learned about Pluto since its historic flyby in 2015?

During its encounter, the New Horizons spacecraft collected more than 1,200 images of Pluto and tens of gigabits of data. The intensive downlinking of information took about a year to return to Earth! Here are a few things we’ve discovered:

Pluto Has a Heart

This image captured by New Horizons around 16 hours before its closest approach shows Pluto’s “heart.” This stunning image of one of its most dominant features shows us that the heart’s diameter is about the same distance as from Denver to Chicago. This image also showed us that Pluto is a complex world with incredible geological diversity.

Icy Plains

Pluto’s vast icy plain, informally called Sputnik Planitia, resembles frozen mud cracks on Earth. It has a broken surface of irregularly-shaped segments, bordered by what appear to be shallow troughs.

Majestic Mountains

Images from the spacecraft display chaotically jumbled mountains that only add to the complexity of Pluto’s geography. The rugged, icy mountains are as tall as 11,000 feet high.

Color Variations

This high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. The surface of tPluto has a remarkable range of subtle color variations. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story.

Foggy Haze and Blue Atmosphere

Images returned from the New Horizons spacecraft have also revealed that Pluto’s global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized. The haze even creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, which makes them visible to the cameras aboard the spacecraft.

Water Ice

New Horizons detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. Scientists are eager to understand why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places.

Stay updated on New Horizons findings by visiting the New Horizons page. You can also keep track of Pluto News on Twitter via @NASANewHorizons.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Google’s Wireless ‘Pixel Buds’ Headphones Can Translate 40 Languages in Real Time