ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• How highway bridges sing -- or groan -- in the rain to reveal their health: Just a drop of water can indicate the stability of a bridge
• New self-healing coating for aluminum developed to replace cancer-causing product
• Milky Way's black hole getting ready for snack
• State-of-the-art beams from table-top accelerators
• Better way to shed water: Lubricated, nanotextured surfaces boost performance of condensers in power and desalination plants
• Split-personality elliptical galaxy holds a hidden spiral
• Water could flow on Mars, model suggests; Scientists look at melting and evaporation of frozen brines
• Astronomers study 2-million-light-year 'extragalactic afterburner'

How highway bridges sing -- or groan -- in the rain to reveal their health: Just a drop of water can indicate the stability of a bridge Posted: 22 Oct 2012 01:27 PM PDT Engineers have found that by listening to how a highway bridge sings in the rain they can determine serious flaws in the structure. Employing a method called impact-echo testing, experts can diagnose the health of a bridge's deck based on the acoustic footprint produced by a little bit of water. Specifically, the sound created when a droplet makes impact can reveal hidden dangers in the bridge.

New self-healing coating for aluminum developed to replace cancer-causing product Posted: 22 Oct 2012 11:54 AM PDT Engineers have developed a new environmentally-friendly coating for aluminum to replace the carcinogenic chromate coatings used in aerospace applications. The chromate conversion coatings have been used for more than 50 years to protect aluminum from corrosion.

Milky Way's black hole getting ready for snack Posted: 22 Oct 2012 11:54 AM PDT Get ready for a fascinating eating experience in the center of our galaxy. The event involves a black hole that may devour much of an approaching cloud of dust and gas known as G2. A supercomputer simulation prepared by physicists suggests that some of G2 will survive, although its surviving mass will be torn apart, leaving it with a different shape and questionable fate.

State-of-the-art beams from table-top accelerators Posted: 22 Oct 2012 11:53 AM PDT "Table-top accelerators" – laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) that propel electron pulses to high energies within a few centimeters – promise far less expensive future accelerators with far less environmental impact than today's conventional machines. Scientists have devised novel methods to test the quality of uniquely challenging LPA beams.

Better way to shed water: Lubricated, nanotextured surfaces boost performance of condensers in power and desalination plants Posted: 22 Oct 2012 11:22 AM PDT Condensers are a crucial part of today's power generation systems: About 80 percent of all the world's powerplants use them to turn steam back to water after it comes out of the turbines that turn generators. They are also a key element in desalination plants, a fast-growing contributor to the world's supply of fresh water. Now, a new surface architecture holds the promise of significantly boosting the performance of such condensers.

Split-personality elliptical galaxy holds a hidden spiral Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:22 AM PDT Most big galaxies fit into one of two camps: pinwheel-shaped spiral galaxies and blobby elliptical galaxies. Spirals like the Milky Way are hip and happening places, with plenty of gas and dust to birth new stars. Ellipticals are like cosmic retirement villages, full of aging residents in the form of red giant stars. Now, astronomers have discovered that one well-known elliptical has a split personality. Centaurus A is hiding a gassy spiral in its center.

Water could flow on Mars, model suggests; Scientists look at melting and evaporation of frozen brines Posted: 22 Oct 2012 08:28 AM PDT Researchers have created a model that might explain how water could produce the flow patterns seen by a spacecraft orbiting Mars.

Astronomers study 2-million-light-year 'extragalactic afterburner' Posted: 22 Oct 2012 04:14 AM PDT Blasting over two million lights years from the centre of a distant galaxy is a supersonic jet of material that looks strikingly similar to the afterburner flow of a fighter jet, except in this case the jet engine is a supermassive black hole and the jet material is moving at nearly the speed of light.

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