Plants can't talk, but new technology in sonar echoes are helping scientists identify plants by sound alone. Eventually, this kind of research may lead up to identifying virtually anything just by sound. And who is thank for this new tech? Bats. Full story after the "read more" link below.

Have you ever noticed the way light refracts when passing through a transparent object? That same principle became the basis for many of today's lenses.

In a recent study conducted by Princeton University scientists, a way to bend light in a manner which can aid advances in areas such as high-speed communications, medical diagnostics, and even detection of terrorist threats may have been just discovered.

The new principle is based on a new substance called "metamaterials", which are made out of metals and semiconductors arranged in very small alternating patterns that modify their collective properties. This allows them to refract light in the opposite direction and allows new applications that cannot be accomplished by conventional means.

Metamaterials possess a negative index of refraction on a completely opposite scale compared to normal lenses. So what does this mean exactly? One of the most practical uses for this would be the possibility of manufacturing flat lenses instead of curved ones, which are far cheaper and easier to make considering the availability of the materials needed to make metamaterials.

Also, less light is lost when using metamaterials. This extends the possibility of creating lenses with a magnifying power many times over the current microscopes we have. The study of mid-infrared lenses made out of metamaterials is already being conducted by a multi-institutional research center called the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE).

MIRTHE, lastly, is looking into the possibility of using a new type of laser that relies on mid-infrared lenses for medical purposes, as well as a way to study the environment by detecting trace amounts of gases in the atmosphere and human breath.

The human eye can only see the colors within the visible spectrum of light. What that basically means is that there's a bunch of other colors we can't see, but our cameras can though. Now new technology called Kameraflage is aiming to use it as their invisible ink.

Kameraflage basically puts in an extra layer of images - within the color range human eyes can't see - where it becomes visible through the lens of a digital camera. (That includes cameras built into mobile phones too!

 This actually opens up a whole new method of advertising and capitalization in a market that was once invisible (literally). Kameraflage has some pretty good ideas on how it can be used:

• Stopping movie piracy: If people record movies straight out from the cinema, their cameras will also record that extra layer of content, permanently tagging that recording as a piracy.
• Advertising: Now you can advertise in places where it would have been inappropriate before, like a museum. Now people don't have to see it unless they intentionally point a camera at it.
  
• Fashion: Uniforms? Boo. Now you can spice it up (secretly though) with the new Kamerflage technology.

So it's un-x-ray vision?

Looking at it at first, one would not think that the image is something special. But it is. Pictured at left is the image of Cluster FSR 1735, the newest star family in our Galactic Plane.

FSR 1735 is a star cluster found in the same slice of space where our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is located. It is a rich, beautiful and circular gathering of about 100,000 stars. We have but one star in our own neighborhood - the Sun, in the Solar System.

FSR however has a mass estimated to be 65,000 times that of the sun, and is about seven light years wide. Imagine how much stronger Superman would be if he ever happens to hang out at this star cluster. But tough luck - this star family is 30,000 light years away.

Scientists have been trying to find new star clusters in the Galactic Plane. It's been a tough duty for them, but using three different near-infrared filters, they've managed to produce images that are 10 times deeper and much more precise than those that they took with Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

So far, the study team is happy about discovering this new star family. Globular Clusters such as the FSR 1735 are believed to have some of the oldest materials in the Universe, and may have witnessed some of the earliest events in the history of Space. Studying them may finally bring us closer to knowing where and how (and why?) the Universe originated.

Here's the old bad news" Killer asteroids and comets are lurking stealthily in our solar system. There are about 20,000 of them which pose a threat to our lives. The good news is that NASA says it can detect these space monsters and devise a plan to save life on Earth as we know it.

Here's the new bad news: Washington says that even if NASA reduces its proposed budget by 70 percent, the answer is still no and the plan is denied the funding necessary to save us all. It leaves NASA - and the rest of the world - sightless to defend itself. Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center said "We know what to do, we just don't have the money."

After reports rattled the world of an asteroid which may hit the Pacific ocean in 2008 were released and debunked, the U.S. congress ordered NASA to devise a way to track down such threats and propose a way to avoid a catastrophe. NASA did just that, and the budget proposed rings to the tune of one billion dollars.

Asteroids that measure 460 feet in diameter are considered threats. To contextualize just what kind of horrors can happen if one enters the atmosphere, NASA had this to say:

Even if the asteroid burns up and shatter to pieces in the atmosphere, the particles raining down can obliterate a small American state like Maryland. If it hits the ocean, colossal tidal waves will follow, and if it's big enough to land intact for deep impact, the blast can rival the one that supposedly wiped the dinosaurs from the face of the Earth.

The best and fastest way to track asteroids is through a space infrared telescope which will cost about 1.1 billion dollars. A cheaper 800-million dollar solution is to mount a new telescope to one of NASA's existing telescopes. The cheapest is to cooperate with other agencies around the world and mount the new telescope into one of theirs. That would bring the cost down to 300-million dollars.

Washington, however, still says that all the solutions are too costly. John Logsdon, space policy director at George Washington University emphasized the need to keep track of these space-based threats and concluded "you can't deflect them if you can't find them."

You've seen Neubit's Acidmod of Chotto Shotto into an IR-based night vision camera, and suffice to say, you pray one's not looking down on you as you sleep. Keep praying. F00 f00 tells us that Neubit got around to posting in Acidmods, Part One of his how to turn Sony's Chotto Shotto into an invasion of privacy lawsuit waiting to happen a night-vision camera.

We'll leave it as a Read link for the technically inclined to work on, that they may have dark-room recording capabilities, too. We can explain some of the details of the mod (Part One), not to mention how night-vision works, so that people who are still confused as to how night-vision devices (NVD) work will understand the mechanics behind this mod.

This mod falls under the category of active IR NVDs: they use infrared light (e.g., a remote control IR diode) as a "flashlight" to light up the night. The NVDs you might be more used to are passive NVDs used in the military, such as the one pictured left. They rely on low-light amplification with image intensifiers to lift the blanket of the night. IR NVDs are not normally used in military applications, as the opposition can detect the IR flashlight with their own IR NVDs.

IR-wavelength light is invisible, so our eyes can't pick them up. The Chotto Shotto camera can pick up IR light, but an IR light filter in the assembly filters out the IR spectrum. Part One of the mod involves taking this filter out of the picture, which (in low-light conditions) turns the Chotto Shotto into an active IR-ready NVD. Part Two, when Neubit posts it, will cover the IR flashlight built into the mod, but even with Part One, you could probably use a remote control as a mobile flashlight for your purposes, if it's powerful enough.

Now if that purpose involves videos that may require HideMov/HideMedia BETA II video file stealthing... you did not get this idea from us.

Thanks, F00 f00, for getting this idea to us, but we swear we're not getting any ideas (on how to use this thing)!

On February 25, yet another landmark Mars mission operation was achieved. The ESA">European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta probe finally completed what was deemed to be a "key maneuver" in its 10-year mission to land on a distant comet. This "swing-by" is the second of four gravity-assisted moves before finally settling on its target in 2014.

And this momentuous event has got some really cool pictures to show for. Using the Rosetta's Optical Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS), they were able to capture spectacular images of Mars in the so-called "pre-close-approach phase."

Back to the sling shot mission (cos the images are just here for your viewing pleasure, anyway), in order to successfully reach the distant comet, Rosetta must gain the perfect speed and reach the perfect trajectory, "accelerated and assisted by the four swing-bys which use the gravitational pull of planets as a boost."

2007 and 2009 will see the other two sling shot trips around Earth before Rosetta can finally reach its destination.

Images courtesy of ESA News.

  

It apparently pays to carry the biggest, baddest camera to ever grace the surface of Mars. Scientists studying pictures from one of the most recent NASA Martian explorers, Mars Reconnaissance Observer (MRO), have spotted one of its earlier, surface-bound cousins, the 1997 Martian probe that re-started it all: Pathfinder. The big, bad camera in MRO's big, bad camera bay is none other than the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE.

It has been noted that Pathfinder is actually big enough to be spotted by one of MRO's predecessors, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), says New Scientist. Unlike MGS, though, MRO's HiRISE is powerful enough to resolve objects as small as under 30cm across - that's a standard ruler's length, and two to five times smaller than the details MGS could resolve. This means that HiRISE may have also found the other half of NASA's adorable little Martian family, Sojourner. Maybe. Or maybe not.

The size of a rather large toaster oven (63cm lengthwise), Sojourner was last spotted around 13 meters away from Pathfinder, and that was three months after it first set foot on Martian sands. Trying to interpret MRO photos, scientists believe they found Sojourner 6 meters away from Pathfinder. Or maybe they spotted some rocks - they can't really be sure.

They'd like to study future pictures of the Pathfinder landing site from HiRISE, this time taken with higher resolutions in infrared and blue-green, in the hopes that one of these color wavelengths would be reflected by Sojourner's solar panels. Then they'd get positive ID on the toaster.

What's it like to live in a planet where one side is burnt toast while the other is as frigid as your freezer? Three hundred eighty trillion kilometers from the Earth, there exists a planet called Upsilon Andromedae B, which revolves around its star called Upsilon Andromedae, whose temperatures were detected by NASA's Spitzer infrared telescope. Cool, huh?

NASA's telescope has given us an insight that the weather systems in these "exoplanets" (planets outside the solar system) are extremely unusual. Scientists had supposed that very strong winds redistribute heat around the planet, but Spitzer's measurements revealed it's more possible that atmospheric gases were instead absorbing and re-radiating sunlight rapidly. Don't ask why, Upsilon Andromedae B revolves around its sun in just 4.6-days, as compared to our 365-day year. Discovered in 1996, it was thus dubbed as the "hot-Jupiter" planet.

Considering that it was a NASA space telescope that was able to accomplish this groundbreaking feat (first ever exoplanet weather forecast), is there something left for us to imagine on whatever else floats outside of our very own solar system? (George Lucas, where are you?).

The Big Bang is a big conundrum and a lot of people have been debating this topic for a long time. There are people who believe that it happened more than four hundred million years ago, others say it never happened. The cosmic background radiation is an old token from the earliest age of the universe. The small differences in  temperature offers an integral hint on how galaxies formed and it shows how matter began to collect itself. Once measured, scientists would be closer to the time when the universe exploded into creation. Ergo, someone had to find the blackbody spectrum.

It was up to John Mather of NASA and George Smoot from the University of California to find it. They were able to find proof and got a great big medal in the end--the prestigious 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics. The two made a large contribution to the Big Bang theory and they were heavily involved in the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), a satellite that measures the diffuse infrared and microwave radiation from the early ages of the universe. J. Mather was the one who revealed the blackbody form of the microwave background radiation, while G. Smoot measured the small variations in the temperature.

Congratulations to the two scientists. We hope that with this knowledge, people will be more appreciative of how the universe , and eventually the Earth, came into being.