j3toler
- Gadgets
Origami Optics
In 2003, a program funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) known as MONTAGE asked universities to find ways to squeeze unprecedented levels of magnification and resolution from small, super-thin lenses—technology that could be used in future imaging devices for finding, tracking, and identifying military targets. With some advice from his adviser Joseph Ford, UCSD graduate student Eric Tremblay decided to use an old idea—“folding” light, or reflecting it over and over—to solve the problem.
9.20.2008 at 04:34pm - Comment by j3tolerThis sounds like a realy powerful magnifying glass. The only things that it left me wondering was first, is it commersially avaliable, and second, how much would it be priced at?
- Science
The Fast Way Around
The purpose of the LHC is to get lots of protons moving very, very fast. The magnet system is the core piece of technology that makes this happen. More than 1,200 magnet sections, each weighing 10 tons, bend proton beams through vacuum pipes around the 17-mile-long underground tunnel near Geneva. Since these protons are going so fast—99.9999991 percent of the speed of light—superconducting coils of niobium and titanium must produce a magnetic field that’s about 200,000 times as strong as Earth’s to bend them.
9.20.2008 at 04:32pm - Comment by j3tolerSo I got one main question: Although all this is really amazing, purely for OCD reasons, what is the actual speed that these particles will be achieving. I have read that it will be %99.997, %99.99, %99.99998, and now %99.9999991. All I would like to know is the actual speed.
- The Environment
Obscure Knowledge: The Trickiest Trap in Nature
Most spider webs work through chance: The spider erects an invisible trap and waits until some unlucky insect hits it. But a common Australian spider called the St. Andrew’s Cross—known for its striking, cross-barred web—is sneakier.
9.20.2008 at 04:31pm - Comment by j3tolerBut is this the only spider that does this? Because I have heard of others I think.
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December 2009: Best of What's New
In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
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