ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Finding ET may require giant robotic leap
• Nature's billion-year-old battery key to storing energy
• New research could mean cellphones that can see through walls
• Where do the highest-energy cosmic rays come from? Probably not from gamma-ray bursts
• Physicists observe the splitting of an electron inside a solid
• Serious blow to dark matter theories? New study finds mysterious lack of dark matter in Sun's neighborhood

Finding ET may require giant robotic leap Posted: 18 Apr 2012 01:23 PM PDT Autonomous, self-replicating robots -- exobots -- are the way to explore the universe, find and identify extraterrestrial life and perhaps clean up space debris in the process, according to an engineer, who notes that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence -- SETI -- is in its 50th year.

Nature's billion-year-old battery key to storing energy Posted: 18 Apr 2012 11:37 AM PDT New research is bringing us one step closer to clean energy. It is possible to extend the length of time a battery-like enzyme can store energy from seconds to hours, a new study shows.

New research could mean cellphones that can see through walls Posted: 18 Apr 2012 10:53 AM PDT Researchers have designed an imager chip that could turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other solid objects.

Where do the highest-energy cosmic rays come from? Probably not from gamma-ray bursts Posted: 18 Apr 2012 10:50 AM PDT Some rare cosmic rays pack an astonishing wallop, with energies prodigiously greater than particles in human-made accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. Their sources are unknown, although scientists favor active galacti nuclei or gamma-ray bursts. If so, gamma-ray bursts should produce ultra-high-energy neutrinos, but scientists searching for these with IceCube, the giant neutrino telescope at the South Pole, have found exactly zero. The mystery deepens.

Physicists observe the splitting of an electron inside a solid Posted: 18 Apr 2012 10:48 AM PDT An electron has been observed to decay into two separate parts, each carrying a particular property of the electron: a spinon carrying its spin -- the property making the electron behave as a tiny compass needle -- and an orbiton carrying its orbital moment -- which arises from the electron's motion around the nucleus. These newly created particles, however, cannot leave the material in which they have been produced.

Serious blow to dark matter theories? New study finds mysterious lack of dark matter in Sun's neighborhood Posted: 18 Apr 2012 08:19 AM PDT The most accurate study so far of the motions of stars in the Milky Way has found no evidence for dark matter in a large volume around the Sun. According to widely accepted theories, the solar neighborhood was expected to be filled with dark matter, a mysterious invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force it exerts. But a new study by a team of astronomers in Chile has found that these theories just do not fit the observational facts. This may mean that attempts to directly detect dark matter particles on Earth are unlikely to be successful.

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