NASA is awarding $100,000 one-year grants to 30 teams for out-of-this-world ideas ranging from new kinds of spacesuits to quantum communication and space solar power.
The awards were announced today under the auspices of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. The space agency said the concepts were chosen on the basis of their potential for enhancing future space missions.
From National Geographic:
“It’s no illusion: Science has found a way to make not just objects but entire events disappear, experts say. According to new research by British physicists, it’s theoretically possible to create a material that can hide an entire bank heist from human eyes and surveillance cameras…
Unlike invisibility cloaks—some of which have been made to work at very small scales—the event cloak would do more than bend light around an object.
Instead this cloak would use special materials filled with metallic arrays designed to adjust the speed of light passing through.
“A futuristic experiment sounding like something out of a scifi novel, that will hunt for antimatter galaxies and signs of dark matter, was nearly cancelled but is finally poised to voyage into orbit aboard the next-to-last space shuttle mission.
The $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a more than 15,000-pound (6,900-kilogram) device searching for cosmic- rays – high-energy charged particles from outer space – will ride up to the International Space Station on the shuttle Endeavour sometime this month (May).”
For the first time, scientists have found complex, multi-celled creatures living a mile and more below the planet’s surface, raising new possibilities about the spread of life on Earth and potential subsurface life on other planets and moons. (via ‘Worms from hell’ unearth possibilities for extraterrestrial life - The Washington Post)
“For Jonathan Joshi, a USC Viterbi Ph.D. student who is a co-author of the paper, the interdisciplinary approach to the problem was key to the initial progress. Joshi said that working with Zhou and his group of nanotechnology researchers provided the ideal dynamic of circuit technology and nanotechnology.
“The interdisciplinary approach is the only approach that will lead to a solution. We need more than one type of engineer working on this solution,” said Joshi. “We should constantly be in search of new technologies to solve this problem.””
“How does technology lock people away from social mobility?
We have to think of technology as beyond just the Web. If you just look at biotechnology, immediately you have this greater gap. DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] is already doing things like its super soldier program, where it is developing biological enhancements for soldiers. If these things were to come to market, then the wealthy will be able to buy these things. When some people live longer and are stronger and they’re fitter it will be very hard for other people to compete with them. Such innovations will be luxuries in the beginning.
Is that something you’re talking about for five years in the future, 10? 20?
I would say the beginnings will be happening in the next 10 years. An interesting thing will be whether it happens in the U.S. or in China or East Asia. If other places start doing it first it will be very interesting.”
“These results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of new energy technologies, such as microbial fuel cells - or ‘bio-batteries’ - and microbe-based agents that can clean up toxic pollution.”
