Bizarre Things News

October 14, 2016

A Universe of Two Trillion Galaxies

Soft Robots That Mimic Human Muscles

Tatooine Worlds Are Ultimate Survivors

How A Martian Moon Became the 'Death Star'

Latest Headlines

updated 8:37am EDT

New Kind of Local Food Grows in Your Own Kitchen

Oct. 13, 2016 — A home appliance that grows the ingredients for a healthy meal within a week from plant cells is no longer science fiction. The first 3D-printed CellPod prototype is already ... read more

Cosmological Mystery Solved by Largest Ever Map of Voids and Superclusters

Oct. 12, 2016 — Astrophysicists have created the largest ever map of voids and superclusters in the Universe, which helps solve a long-standing ... read more

Mars-Bound Astronauts Face Chronic Dementia Risk from Galactic Cosmic Ray Exposure

Oct. 10, 2016 — Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That's the question concerning scientists probing a phenomenon called ... read more

Jupiter’s Spooky Sounds: Emissions from Jupiter’s Auroras Captured

Oct. 10, 2016 — When a NASA spacecraft made its first full orbit around Jupiter, an instrument on board recorded haunting sounds befitting the ... read more

'DarkLight' Enables Visible Light Communication in the Dark

Oct. 3, 2016 — With the rise in wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers that rely on smart sensors, and the continued popularity of smartphones, smart devices are taking our country by storm. Wireless ... read more

Brewery Wastewater Transformed Into Energy Storage

Oct. 7, 2016 — Engineers have developed an innovative bio-manufacturing process that uses a biological organism cultivated in brewery wastewater to create the carbon-based materials needed to make energy storage ... read more

Methane Muted: How Did Early Earth Stay Warm?

Oct. 7, 2016 — For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn't. Scientists thought they knew why, but a new modeling study has fired ... read more

Smallest. Transistor. Ever.

Oct. 6, 2016 — Engineers have been eyeing the finish line in the race to shrink the size of components in integrated circuits. Now, a team of researchers has succeeded in creating a ... read more

Hubble Detects Giant 'Cannonballs' Shooting from Star

Oct. 6, 2016 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying star. The plasma balls are zooming so ... read more

3-D-Printed Robots With Shock-Absorbing Skins

Oct. 5, 2016 — Anyone who's watched drone videos or an episode of "BattleBots" knows that robots can break -- and often it's because they don't have the proper padding to ... read more

Mix Tape Magic Given 21st Century Twist

BMW Presents Its Self-Balancing Motorcycle of the Future

Robotic Glove Gives Hand Artificial Gripping Strength

Researchers Dropped A Bunch Of Dummies On Their Heads For Science

Your Next Nurse Could Be a Robot

Oct. 5, 2016 — The nursing assistant for your next trip to the hospital might be a ... read more

Electron Beam Microscope Directly Writes Nanoscale Features in Liquid With Metal Ink

Oct. 4, 2016 — Scientists have now harnessed a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to directly write tiny patterns in metallic "ink," forming features in liquid that are finer than half the ... read more

Are Planets Setting the Sun's Pace?

Oct. 4, 2016 — The Sun's activity is determined by the Sun's magnetic field. Two combined effects are responsible for the latter: The omega and the alpha effect. Exactly where and how the alpha effect ... read more

Astronomy: Discovery of an Extragalactic Hot Molecular Core

Oct. 4, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered a 'hot molecular core,' a cocoon of molecules surrounding a newborn massive star, for the first time outside our Galaxy. The discovery marks the first important ... read more

Omnidirectional Mobile Robot Has Just Two Moving Parts

Oct. 4, 2016 — More than a decade ago, Ralph Hollis invented the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body glides atop a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. The latest version, called ... read more

Microswimmers Can Be Propelled and Steered by Light

Oct. 4, 2016 — Phototactic behavior directs some bacteria towards light and others into darkness: This enables them to utilize solar energy as efficiently as possible for their metabolism, or, otherwise, protects ... read more

Our Galaxy's Most-Mysterious Star Is Even Stranger Than Astronomers Thought

Oct. 3, 2016 — A star known by the unassuming name of KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus has been raising eyebrows both in and outside of the scientific community for the past year. In 2015 a team of ... read more

Brain Waves Can Be Used to Detect Potentially Harmful Personal Information

Oct. 3, 2016 — A researcher is working to advance research to develop secure user authentication methods, by looking at using brain waves as individual identifiers. However, those brain waves can tell more about a ... read more

The Value of Marine Waste

Oct. 3, 2016 — Scientists are using squid, fish and algae waste to obtain new materials. This line of research is offering a fresh take on plastics aligned with the principles of the circular economy, which is ... read more

World's Tallest Wood Building Completed: 18 Storeys

Sep. 30, 2016 — The mass wood structure and façade has been completed for UBC's Brock Commons student residence -- the world's tallest wood building at 18 storeys (53 metres, about 174 feet) -- four ... read more

ALMA Catches Stellar Cocoon With Curious Chemistry: First of Its Kind to Be Found Outside the Milky Way

Sep. 29, 2016 — A hot and dense mass of complex molecules, cocooning a newborn star, has been discovered astronomers using ALMA. This unique hot molecular core is the first of its kind to have been detected outside ... read more

It's Delightful, It's Dynamic, It's Dewetting!

Sep. 28, 2016 — How would you like a kitchen surface that cleans itself? Technological advances such as this could be one step closer after a breakthrough by English ... read more

Secure Passwords Can Be Sent Through Your Body, Instead of Air

Sep. 27, 2016 — Engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop touchpads -- rather than over the air where they're vulnerable to ... read more

Quantum Computing a Step Closer to Reality

Sep. 27, 2016 — Physicists have brought quantum computing a step closer to reality by stopping light in a new experiment. Researchers report that controlling the movement of light is critical to developing future ... read more

Creating Antimatter Via Lasers?

Sep. 27, 2016 — Intriguing calculations explain the production and dynamics of electrons and positrons from ultrahigh-intensity laser-matter interactions. In other words: They've calculated how to create matter ... read more

Scientists Put a New Twist on Artificial Muscles

Sep. 26, 2016 — A high-tech twist has been put on the ancient art of fiber spinning, using modern materials to create ultra-strong, powerful, shape-shifting yarns. A new report describes the path to developing a new ... read more

X-Rays That Don't Come from Any Known Source

Sep. 26, 2016 — Space is filled with types of light we can't see -- from infrared signals released by hot stars and galaxies, to the cosmic microwave background. Some of this invisible light that fills space ... read more

Pluto's 'Heart' Sheds Light on Possible Buried Ocean

Sep. 24, 2016 — Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact ... read more

Cosmology Safe as Universe Has No Sense of Direction

Sep. 22, 2016 — The universe is expanding uniformly. Space isn't stretching in a preferred direction or ... read more

The Scroll from En-Gedi: A High-Tech Recovery Mission

Sep. 22, 2016 — Archeologists have further unlocked writings in the ancient En-Gedi scroll -- the first severely damaged, ink-based scroll to be unrolled and identified noninvasively. Through virtual unwrapping, ... read more

Wednesday, October 5, 2016