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Forget wind power or conventional solar power, the world's energy needs could be met 100 billion times over using a satellite to harness the solar wind and beam the energy to Earth – though focussing the beam could be tricky.
A robot that tricks its opponent in a game of hide and seek is a step towards machines that can intuit our thoughts, intentions and feelings
IN SPACE, no one can hear you scream. That's according to physics textbooks and the tagline of the movie Alien. But it seems that in some circumstances, sound can jump between objects in a vacuum after all. Sound waves are travelling vibrations of particles in media such as air, water or metal. So it stands to reason that they cannot travel through empty space, where there are no atoms or molecules to vibrate. Now a theoretical analysis by Mika Prunnila and Johanna Meltaus, both of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Espoo, suggests that sound may be able to leap across a vacuum separating two objects made of piezoelectric crystals. These crystals generate an electric field when squeezed or stretched by sound waves or other forces, and deform in an electric field.
YOU'RE lying on the beach listening to music, and the battery in your MP3 player is running low. Not to worry: you can simply plug it into your towel for some extra juice. That scenario might not be far off thanks to inexpensive spray-on solar cells that can be applied to almost any surface, from plastic to fabrics. Conventional solar cells are expensive to make. One type, for example, is made using a technique called vapour deposition, in which a photovoltaic material is laid down on a surface at very high temperatures, and often in a vacuum. With a view to bringing costs down, Brian Korgel and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have developed a light-harvesting ink containing nanocrystals of copper indium diselenide. This can be sprayed onto a range of surfaces at room temperature using an airbrush. "It's essentially how you might paint your wall, except the pigment has a purpose," says Korgel.
t's something from nothing. A random number generator that harnesses the quantum fluctuations in empty space could soon sit inside your computer. A device that creates truly random numbers is vital for a number of applications, including cryptography. Algorithms can generate numbers that pass statistical tests for randomness, but they're useless for secure cryptography if the algorithm falls into the wrong hands. Other methods using entangled ions to generate random numbers are more reliable, but tend to be slower and more expensive. Now Christian Gabriel's team at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, has built a prototype that draws on a vacuum's random quantum fluctuations. These impart random noise to laser beams in the device, which converts it into numbers. "It's an easy method, and it's good value," says Gabriel.
A major neutrino observatory set to be built in India cleared a major hurdle this week, when the Ministry of Environment and Forests formally approved the project.
The $250 million underground laboratory, called the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), will be built in the Bodi West Hills Reserved Forest in the state of Tamil Nadu.
The hills there rise very steeply, so workers will have to tunnel only about 2 kilometres horizontally to provide the laboratory with about 1300 metres of high-quality granite cover above. The rock cover is needed to shield the neutrino detector from particles called muons that form when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere.
A blueprint has been sketched out for the smallest ever electric motor, which could eventually be used to drive tiny conveyor belts or pumps in future nanomachines.
The motor's rotor is a long, coal-derived molecule called anthracene, which spins around an axle composed of two ethynyl units. Each end of this axle is connected to an electrode, and a third electrode – called the gate – is located slightly below the axle.
Applying an alternating current to this gate electrode sets up an oscillating electric field that surrounds the molecular motor and, according to the researchers' calculations, should cause the anthracene rotor to turn.