Groudbreaking New Metal - Nanocomposites

_Tombstone_

Bunch of clever folk have just discovered a way to infuse ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles into Magnesium evenly dispersing it throughtout in it's molten state with NO clumping which was the main problem up till now.

The new material has record strength, superior stability at high temperatures, improved plasticity and the developers have already developed a scalable manufacturing method. Soon coming to a spaceship near you.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-researchers-create-exceptionally-strong-and-lightweight-new-metal





Study says Magnesium is abundant so we shouldn't end up with something like this as a result of this work either....



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151202-Cerro-de-Pasco-Peru-Volcan-mine-eats-city-environment/

Capt'n Midnight

Wasn't there a magnesium factory up in Drogheda a while back ?
Extracted it from seawater.

Sounds a bit like fibre glass. Except with magnesium instead of plastic and nanotubes instead of glass. Or bone which uses protein and calcium

_Tombstone_

Another odd combo they are after figuring out - how calcium Carbonate (chalk) and Micelles make seashells.

http://www.pnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4250

Big things expected to come from this work.

_Tombstone_

Another new one thats gonna do away with the need to solder and inefficient thermal pastes - MesoGlue

“Both ‘metal’ and ‘glue’ are familiar terms to most people, but their com­bi­na­tion is new and made pos­sible by unique prop­er­ties of metallic nanorods–infinitesimally small rods with metal cores that we have coated with the ele­ment indium on one side and galium on the other. These coated rods are arranged along a sub­strate like angled teeth on a comb: There is a bottom ‘comb’ and a top ‘comb.'” said Huang. “We then inter­lace the ‘teeth.’ When indium and gallium touch each other, they form a liquid. The metal core of the rods acts to turn that liquid into a solid. The resulting glue pro­vides the strength and thermal/electrical con­duc­tance of a metal bond. We recently received a new pro­vi­sional patent for this devel­op­ment through North­eastern University.”

“The metallic glue has mul­tiple appli­ca­tions, many of them in the elec­tronics industry. As a heat con­ductor, it may replace the thermal grease cur­rently being used, and as an elec­trical con­ductor, it may replace today’s sol­ders. Par­tic­ular prod­ucts include solar cells, pipe fit­tings, and com­po­nents for com­puters and mobile devices,” he said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAr1vW46Jf8

_Tombstone_

That Graphene is mighty stuff.

New lenses on the way.

"A flat optical lens just a billionth of a metre thick will let us see living creatures as small as a single bacterium better than ever before.

Lenses can be 3D printed using a sprayable Graphene oxide solution.

The result is a very strong and flexible flat optical lens that is 300 times thinner than a sheet of paper and weighs a microgram — next to nothing. At the same time, it has a precise and adjustable three-dimensional focus that allows a detailed view of objects as small as 200 nanometres long at wavelengths ranging from visible to near infrared."

This is gonna be big for mobile phones, it'll mean tiny, super zoom, thermal imagining cameras with possible medical diagnostic features - you can buy lense addons at the min to take pics of Moles and stuff to send to Docs, more a poorer country thing


For Space, its for the Cubesats, current lenses in them things can be as heavy as tin of beans. So savings on launch + better imaging.

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/01/focus-on-results.php

_Tombstone_

Britain leads race to make nuclear waste safe for 100,000 years

New type of Cement to be used to build underground waste bunkers.

_Tombstone_

Superman Memory Crystal

The crystal storage contains 360TB per disc and is stable at up to 1,000 degrees celsius. You record data using an ultra-fast laser that produces short and intense pulses of light — on the order of one quadrillionth of a second each — and it writes the file in fused quartz, in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometers. Reading the data back requires pulsing the laser again, and recording the polarization of the waves with an optical microscope and polarizer. The five dimensions consist of the size and orientation in addition to the three-dimensional position of the nanostructures.

It says the storage could be useful for national archives, museums, libraries, and other organizations with tremendous amounts of data to store.

Capt'n Midnight

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

Superman Memory Crystal

Holographic memory is the technology of the future.
Just like it's been for the last half century. :pac:
http://www.economist.com/node/1956881

THE notion of holographic memory dates back to 1963, when Pieter van Heerden, a researcher at Polaroid, first proposed using the method to store data in three dimensions.

_Tombstone_

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Holographic memory is the technology of the future.
Just like it's been for the last half century. :pac:
http://www.economist.com/node/1956881

Ah this new one is 5D though, it's like turning the dial up to 11 these yokes.:pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOO5S4vxi0o

_Tombstone_

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

That Graphene is mighty stuff.

Graphene strikes again! By mimicing the surface of a moth’s eye they've made the most light-absorbent material ever created and have opened up the possibility of indoor solar cells that capture energy from indirect sunlight, as well as ambient energy from household devices.

http://europe.newsweek.com/indoor-solar-cells-made-possible-moth-eye-graphene-breakthrough-430827?rm=eu


Lots of uses for this but the mentioned one is the powering of the (crappily named I think) IOT - Internet Of Things - which is turning into an awful security/privacy joke.

Peer-Seeking Webcam Reveals the Security Dangers of Internet Things
Suspicious Swann DVR traffic
IoT: The Rise of the Machines

_Tombstone_

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

Graphene strikes again! By mimicing the surface of a moth’s eye they've made the most light-absorbent material ever created and have opened up the possibility of indoor solar cells that capture energy from indirect sunlight, as well as ambient energy from household devices.

http://europe.newsweek.com/indoor-solar-cells-made-possible-moth-eye-graphene-breakthrough-430827?rm=eu

And now we have a graphene solar cell that generates power from raindrops hitting it. Early days for it but...

http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/11/solar-cell-generates-power-from-raindrops/






The next big thing in space may be really, really small satellites

The miniaturization of space continues, unabated. First came CubeSats, measuring about 11cm long and weighing no more than 1.33kg. These small research payloads have helped spur the development of a small satellite launch industry, and using the International Space Station to deploy them has become one of the national lab's hottest commercial activities.

However, the evolution of satellites downward from thousands of kilograms, down to a single kilogram, does not seem to be stopping. On Thursday. Arizona State University announced it is developing FemtoSats, a 3cm cube with a mass of just 35g. These "SunCubes" grew out of a research project begun in 2014 by Jekan Thangavelautham, a professor in the university's School of Earth and Space Exploration.