ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Milky Way image reveals detail of a billion stars
• Two-in-one device uses sewage as fuel to make electricity and clean the sewage
• Toward a test strip for detecting TNT and other explosives in water
• Ripping electrons from their cores: Physicists mix two lasers to create light at many frequencies
• How will widespread use of electric cars impact the power grid?
• Solar storm seen from inside and outside Earth's magnetosphere
• Many billions of rocky planets in habitable zones around red dwarfs in Milky Way
• Powerhouse in the Crab Nebula: MAGIC telescopes observe pulsar at highest energies yet and strongly challenge current theories
• Building lightweight trains
• Wave character of individual molecules revealed
• Writing graphene circuitry with ion 'pens'
• Wind turbines that learn like humans
• More energy efficient transistors through quantum tunneling

Milky Way image reveals detail of a billion stars Posted: 28 Mar 2012 05:37 PM PDT More than one billion stars in the Milky Way can be seen together in detail for the first time in a new image. Large structures of the Milky Way galaxy, such as gas and dust clouds where stars have formed and died, can be seen in the image.

Two-in-one device uses sewage as fuel to make electricity and clean the sewage Posted: 28 Mar 2012 05:36 PM PDT Scientists have described a new and more efficient version of an innovative device the size of a washing machine that uses bacteria growing in municipal sewage to make electricity and clean up the sewage at the same time. Commercial versions of the two-in-one device could be a boon for the developing world and water-short parts of the U.S.

Toward a test strip for detecting TNT and other explosives in water Posted: 28 Mar 2012 12:44 PM PDT Scientists have developed a new explosives detector that can sense small amounts of TNT and other common explosives in liquids instantly with a sensitivity that rivals bomb-sniffing dogs, the current gold standard in protecting the public from terrorist bombs.

Ripping electrons from their cores: Physicists mix two lasers to create light at many frequencies Posted: 28 Mar 2012 11:28 AM PDT Physicists have seen the light, and it comes in many different colors. By aiming high- and low-frequency laser beams at a semiconductor, the researchers caused electrons to be ripped from their cores, accelerated, and then smashed back into the cores they left behind. This recollision produced multiple frequencies of light simultaneously.

How will widespread use of electric cars impact the power grid? Posted: 28 Mar 2012 08:32 AM PDT A resource to estimate the impact that greater use of electric vehicles will have on the national grid has been developed by a team of experts.

Solar storm seen from inside and outside Earth's magnetosphere Posted: 28 Mar 2012 06:09 AM PDT For the first time, instrumentation aboard two NASA missions operating from complementary vantage points watched as a powerful solar storm spewed a two million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles and interacted with the invisible magnetic field surrounding Earth.

Many billions of rocky planets in habitable zones around red dwarfs in Milky Way Posted: 28 Mar 2012 06:09 AM PDT Rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars, according to new research. The astronomers estimate that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun's immediate neighborhood. This is the first direct measurement of the frequency of super-Earths around red dwarfs, which account for 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way.

Powerhouse in the Crab Nebula: MAGIC telescopes observe pulsar at highest energies yet and strongly challenge current theories Posted: 28 Mar 2012 06:08 AM PDT The pulsar at the center of the famous Crab Nebula is a veritable bundle of energy. Astronomers observed the pulsar in the area of very high energy gamma radiation from 25 up to 400 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), a region that was previously difficult to access with high energy instruments, and discovered that it actually emits pulses with the maximum energy of up to 400 GeV -- 50 to 100 times higher than theorists thought possible. These latest observations are difficult for astrophysicists to explain.

Building lightweight trains Posted: 28 Mar 2012 06:08 AM PDT The less trains weigh, the more economical they are to run. A new material capable of withstanding even extreme stresses has now been developed. It is suitable for a variety of applications, not least diesel engine housings on trains -- and it makes these components over 35 percent lighter than their steel and aluminum counterparts.

Wave character of individual molecules revealed Posted: 28 Mar 2012 06:08 AM PDT Quantum theory describes the world of atoms very precisely. Still, it defies our macroscopic conception of the everyday world due to its many anti-intuitive predictions. The wave-particle dualism probably is the best known example and means that matter may spread and interfere like waves. Now, scientists have recorded the interference process of individual molecules. "Seeing how the interference pattern develops with every light spot, molecule after molecule, and how a basic principle of quantum mechanics is visualized enhances our understanding of the atomic world," explains one of the researchers.

Writing graphene circuitry with ion 'pens' Posted: 27 Mar 2012 12:29 PM PDT Researchers coax graphene to grow in previously defined patterns, offering a promising new tool in the quest to develop graphene-based electronic devices.

Wind turbines that learn like humans Posted: 27 Mar 2012 12:29 PM PDT A control algorithm inspired by human memory may increase wind turbine efficiency while requiring less computational power than other control methods.

More energy efficient transistors through quantum tunneling Posted: 26 Mar 2012 01:09 PM PDT Researchers have announced breakthroughs in the development of tunneling field effect transistors, a semiconductor technology that takes advantage of the quirky behavior of electrons at the quantum level.

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