Tag Archive for 'OriginOil'

Three Incredible Science Stories! Invisibility Cloaks, the World’s Fastest Camera, and an Algaefuels Breakthrough, Oh My!

jackson published on May 1, 2009 in technology and zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

picture-11(image via researchscientistjobs.com)

Yay, SuperForest!

It seems like our technological capabilities are increasing at an incredible rate these days.

Last week, SuperForester Casey sent me word about the development of the world’s fastest film camera, which uses a laser beam to capture six million frames a second.

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To put this in perspective, the slowest slo-mo footage I’ve ever seen was approximately 1000 frames per second. Looked a little something like this:

Now, imagine slowing this down 60,000 times more. This camera will allow us to record and study events that we could only theorize before. Cells dividing. Atoms splitting. It’s amazing. If I could only wrap my head around how the darn thing works!

Here’s the full story: Debut for world’s fastest camera – Jason Palmer

(Did you know that the concept of slow motion can be traced back to Edmund Spenser in the 1500′s? Wild.)

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Next up, invisibility cloaks could be on shelves soon! Two teams, one at Cornell lead by Professor Michal Lipson, and one at Cal Berkeley lead by Professor Xiang Zhang, have managed to create a material that bends light around itself, making it functionally “unseeable” or, to use the vernacular, invisible.

Produce enough material with a great enough light bending capability, and you could theoretically, make an object invisible to human eyes.

Whoah, right?

Here’s that amazing story: Invisibility cloak edges closer – Victoria Gill

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Finally on our list of technology that thrills come the announcement by the cleverly named company OriginOil that they’ve cracked single step extraction of algae. Translation: grow a bunch of algae in a tank and in one easy step, it separates itself into water, biomass, and oil. The oil and biomass can immediately be used to make fuel, jet fuel, plastics, fertilizers, everything we currently rely on fossil fuels for. And the water can be reused to grow more algae. Win!

Here’s the OriginOil site.

The end of fossil fuels and the beginning of a bright green future for all Earthlings!
Rejoice homies! Science and tech will save the day.

Two of these wonderful hopeful news items came from the BBC! Cheers, gents!