Science is AWESOME!

[mechamothgirl]

[obsidiannebula]

I feel that this is important to add

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Halloween may be fun, but the make-believe ghosts and ghouls should always stand aside for AWESOME SCIENCE!

October 31st marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the CSIRO Radio Observatory - affectionately known as The Dish.

Located in Parkes, Australia, The Dish broadcast the images of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon to the world. Its moment of glory was documented in the comedy film The Dish.

Google has also marked the occasion with a Google Doodle!

Awesome.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Researchers develop paint-on solar cells

By Simon Lauder

Australian researchers have developed solar panels which can be painted or printed directly onto a surface.

The project is one of several initiatives which have the potential to revolutionise solar energy by eliminating the need for bulky panels which need to be attached to buildings.

With help from the CSIRO, University of Melbourne PhD student Brandon MacDonald has worked out how to make solar cells so small they can be suspended in liquid, such as ink.

"We can then apply this ink onto a surface, so this could be glass or plastics or metals," Mr MacDonald told AM.

"What we could do is actually integrate these into the building as it's being made, so you can imagine solar windows, or having it actually be part of the roofing material."

These solar panels will be made of nano-crystals which have a diameter of just a few millionths of a millimetre.

Mr MacDonald says they will use just 1 per cent of the materials needed to make traditional solar panels.

"The problem with conventional solar cells, which are based on silicone and have been around for 60 years, is that they are quite efficient at converting sunlight to energy," he said.

"But in terms of making them it's a fairly costly and time-consuming process and so at the moment solar energy is more expensive than, say, coal or fossil fuels," he said.

"With these inks, and eventually trying to print the cells on a large scale, we hope that we'll make it so that this technology is cost-competitive with traditional energy sources."

[centralscience-deactivated20160]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Reblogged because SCIENCE IS AWESOME and so is this dude's mad scientist hair.

2011 is also the Year of Chemistry!

smugyouth:

“Endothermic”

[fyeahchemistry-blog]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

fyeahchemistry:

Triple Point:- coachk12

This video was posted a few mouths ago, however we failed to credit it properly.

We apologies for this and so give full credit to coachk12

We try to insure all material is credited correctly, however, we do make mistakes. If you feel like we have done a injustice to some of your work posted, please contact me via the submission page and I will do my best to correct any errors .

[betterworlds]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

betterworlds:

Neat idea.  This is a urinal system that processes urine to extract water that can safely be used to grow plants.

There are a lot of folks out there who say that “blue,” meaning water, is the new “green.”  Just take a look at charity:water if you don’t believe them.  Concepts like this show how we can reclaim water that might go to waste.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Make music with Tesla coils!

ArcAttack! at Maker Faire.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

REVERSE LIGHTNING, BIZNATCH!

From Richard Hammond's show, Invisible Worlds.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

  Stellar sprinklers may help irrigate cosmos, study suggests.

Seven hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, a young, sunlike star has been found with jets that blast epic quantities of water into interstellar space, shooting out droplets that move faster than a speeding bullet.

The discovery suggests that protostars may be seeding the universe with water. These stellar embryos shoot jets of material from their north and south poles as their growth is fed by infalling dust that circles the bodies in vast disks.

[geneticist]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

physicsphysics:

geneticist:

The folks over at National Geographic, along with a team of scientists, engineers, and world-class balloon pilots, recreated the house from Disney/Pixar’s UP! The house flew at an altitude of 10,000 feet for 1 hour before it was brought down. This was all done for the new National Geographic Series “How Hard Can it Be?” that premieres this fall.

Well… this is cool.  We’re looking forward to what this series will bring!

[physicsphysics]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

physicsphysics:

Viscosity:  It’s cool as hell.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Self stabilizing upwards swinging pendulum. Very cool.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

"Eat Shit" has never been so literal.

Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

The best part is this movie here.

Sizzling barbeque hotplates have triggered scientists to uncover a new mechanism to reduce drag.

The findings could lead to more efficient pumping of fluids or help give underwater vehicles a temporary boost, says researcher Dr Derek Chan, a professor of mathematics from the University of Melbourne.

"The genesis [of the idea] came from having a drink at the Intercontinental Hotel in Singapore," says Chan.

He and co-author Dr Ivan Vakarelski of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, were mulling over what happens when you throw a drop of water onto a barbeque plate.

"On a very hot plate the water does not evaporate instantaneously but stays around for a very long time," says Chan, adding the water drops appear to slide around on the hot plate.

...

English physicist John Tyndall identified a vapour layer between the water and hot solid. This provided insulation stopping the water drop from evaporating immediately, and also provided a lubricating interface between the water and the hot surface, allowing the drop to slide.

Chan and colleagues decided to turn the Leidenfrost effect "inside out".

Instead of dropping water onto a hot surface, they dropped a hot object into a liquid to see if the vapour layer that formed around it would reduce its drag as it moved through the water.

Very cool! More from the ABC.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Researchers at Cardiff University reporting at the Acoustical Society of America meeting have presented striking images of stringed instruments made using "holographic interferometry", which allows them to visualise precisely how and where the soundboards of instruments vibrate.

Via the BBC.

[dailyawesomescience-blog]

Laser is produced by a living cell

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13725719

A single living cell has been coaxed into producing laser light, researchers report in Nature Photonics.

The technique starts by engineering a cell that can produce a light-emitting protein that was first obtained from glowing jellyfish.

Flooding the resulting cells with weak blue light causes them to emit directed, green laser light.

The work may have applications in improved microscope imaging and light-based therapies.