Isn’t Science Wonderful

You have got to love science. New things are coming out faster than we can keep up with. One great innovation which Japanese scientists have come up with is a touchable hologram, but they are not the only ones. Bristol University has developed a 3-D touchable one. The user will be able to actually feel shapes which are in the air and this will be accomplished by using focused ultrasound. It is hoped this technology will help surgeons explore CT scans and help them feel tumors. "Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system," said one of the developers. The patterns are created in the air using the ultrasound and this disturbs the air in a manner which can be felt. Disney created a system called Aireal in 2013, but it is not as advanced as the Bristol system.

There could be a new memory storage system in town, but I am not sure computer companies will like it. I say this because it is said to be so efficient you will never need another, because it is capable of storing as much data as you will ever accumulate in a lifetime. It is a glass memory crystal and it is being said it will retain its data for one million years. Scientists from the UK and the Netherlands banded together to create this leap in technology. It uses a laser which alters the optical properties of fused quartz at the nanoscale. One disk has the potential to store 360 terabytes of data which is the same amount you would need 75,000 DVDs to hold. One of the great things about this is the longevity of the data. This could relieve companies of having to back up their data ever few years to prevent degradation of the data.

Scientists are always trying to improve our computer experience and one of the ways Northwestern University and Carnegie Mellon University are trying to do this is by giving us more feedback on our touch screens. In this vein they have announced they have created “virtual bumps”. They claim if this technique was used properly it could make our brains think there was an actual keyboard we were touching or it could be used for almost anything with a tactile response and would be helpful. An expert on touch based systems said, "Touch is so important in our real world, but it is neglected in the digital world.” The developers stated, "By leveraging the virtual bump illusion, we were able to design a meaningful experiment that shed light on the way the brain integrates information from multiple fingers. Our big finding was 'collapse ' -- the idea that separate bumps felt in separate fingers are nonetheless experienced as one bump if their separation happens to match that of the fingers."

Cold Fusion. Just the name conjures up all sorts of experiments which have been at the center of scientific controversy for years. This time may be different however. A new cold fusion experiment has been verified by a third party and said to be extremely effective. The E-Cat was invented by Andrea Rossi and it is said the device was observed to generate massive amounts of cheap green energy and this time the success was observed by third party researchers and a 54 page report was issued about this. The amount of energy it produced was said to be 1.5 megawatt-hours. This is significant because this amount of energy is far more than can be produced by any chemical reaction. The fuel which was created was isotopes and the spent fuel could only have been produced by nuclear reactions. It was said this conclusion boggled the minds of the researchers who examined the results after a 32 day run. They had also examined the machine before the start of the experiment. The third party researchers were said to be reputable scientists from Italy and Sweden. All this was accomplished with only 1 gram of fuel inside the E-Cat.

Scientists and engineers in China have been busy testing the concept of a super-maglev system.Β  The idea is to run a maglev vehicle inside a tube. Maglev systems use electro magnets to suspend a vehicle slightly above its track and propel it by using the magnets. The Chinese have said air limits the speed of vehicles so they are testing their maglev vehicle in a tube which has a vacuum inside of it. They think this will allow a maglev train to operate at incredible speeds. One source stated they believe trains will be able to travel at least 7 times faster with this system than they do now. We know some trains are capable at traveling at over 200 miles per hour so we are talking about a train which might reach 1,400 miles per hour. At these speeds air travel could become irrelevant except for very long distances. China already has the Shanghai maglev which hits 270 miles per hour on its 18 mile trip. They also have the CRH380A which hit 302 miles per hour.

It is turning out that batteries may not be required someday for electric cars. How is this possible you might wonder? A team of researchers have created a super capacitor film which could replace batteries. Scientists at Rice University and Queensland University of Technology have written two papers on the subject. The film is strong, thin and capable of releasing a large amount of energy in a short period of time. They offer charging times of just a few minutes. One of the advantages is that the film could be installed where there is already room for it such as inside doors, roofs etc., so it would not take up any room like a battery pack. This would also reduce weight. The reason we don’t have these devices in cars already is there is yet a problem to be overcome and the scientist are working on it now and that problem is the super capacitor film doesn’t hold as much energy as a battery. The goal is to have this film store more energy than a battery. The super capacitor doesn’t rely on metal so it is environmentally friendly and easy to get rid of when no longer needed.

The world is changing and it seems science is advancing at an ever increasing rate. Things are happening so fast that one who is born today might live in a completely different world 50 years from now.