RSS Feed
TwitterIf you thought it was only Spiderman who could glide on any surface with no apparent gravitational pull, then it’s time to get out of fiction and look closer to reality – scientists have created robots that can scale walls and hang off the ceiling just like geckos. Metin Sitti and Ozgur Unver of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have claimed that their new robots – a sticky-tracked wall climber and a 16-legged ceiling walker – could tackle many jobs in the home including painting ceilings and clearing cobwebs. The researchers said that the robots could also play a part in exploration, inspection, repair and even search and rescue. Moving ahead of using suction for locomotion in previous wall and ceiling climbers, scientists have resorted to a “sticky” elastic polymer, or elastomer, that can adhere to a variety of surfaces, including wood, metal, glass and brick. By using the elastomers, scientists are hoping to mimic the mechanism, which geckos use to climb walls and walk upside down- the millions of tiny hairs called setae on their toe pads, reports New Scientist. The researchers showed that the geckos” setae do this by harnessing van der Waals forces- a weak electrostatic attraction which operates only at an intermolecular level. Thus, Sitti has been experimenting with squishy elastomers to mimic the forces that geckos” setae use. Both robots made by Sitti use sticky elastomers, though not in the form of hairs, to grip surfaces using van der Waals forces. Their wall-climbing robot, called Tankbot, is a palm-sized, 60-gram machine with a tacky elastomer tank track on either side of it, and its trick is to keep its tracks in close contact with the surface whilst continuously “unpeeling” itself. Tests showed that Tankbot could deftly scale walls and even carry small payloads.
Posts Tagged ‘New Scientist’
Now, gecko-inspired supersticky robots that scale walls
April 28th, 2009 
admin 
Posted in Tech News 
Tags: Carnegie Mellon University, Ceiling Walker, Close Contact, Cobwebs, Elastomer, Electrostatic Attraction, Geckos, Gram Machine, Gravitational Pull, Locomotion, Metin Sitti, New Scientist, Painting Ceilings, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Scale Walls, Tiny Hairs, Unver, Van Der Waals, Wall Climber, Wall Climbing Robot 
No Comments »Astronomers spot most distant object in the Universe
April 28th, 2009 admin Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe, which is a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth.According to a report in New Scientist, it detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic “dark ages”, when the first stars and galaxies were lighting up space. The object is a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the brightest type of stellar explosion. GRBs occur when massive, spinning stars collapse to form black holes and spew out jets of gas at nearly the speed of light. These jets send gamma rays our way, along with “afterglows” at other wavelengths, which are produced when the jet heats up surrounding gas. The burst, dubbed GRB 090423 for the date of its discovery on April 23, was originally spotted by NASA’s Swift satellite at 0755 GMT. Within an hour, astronomers began training ground-based telescopes on the same patch of sky to study the burst’s infrared afterglow. Some of the first observations were made on Mauna Kea in Hawaii with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope and the Gemini North telescope. Other telescopes later measured the spectrum of the afterglow, revealing that the burst detonated about 13.1 billion light years from Earth. “It’s the most distance gamma-ray burst, but it’s also the most distant object in the universe overall,” said Edo Berger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a member of the team that observed the afterglow with Gemini North. This burst lies at a redshift of 8.2, more distant than the previous GRB record holder, which lay at a redshift of 6.7. Other astronomers have claimed to find galaxies at even greater distances – at redshifts of 10 and 9, but those findings are still ambiguous, according to Joshua Bloom of the University of California, Berkeley, who observed the afterglow using the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Until now, the record holder for the farthest galaxy had a spectroscopically confirmed redshift of 6.96. The burst’s immense distance makes the now-dead star the earliest object to be discovered from an era called ‘reionisation’, which occurred within the first billion years after the big bang. At that time, an obscuring fog of neutral hydrogen atoms was being burned off by radiation from the first stars and galaxies, and possibly also from the annihilation of dark matter particles. “For astronomy, this is a watershed event,” Bloom told New Scientist. “This is the beginning of the study of the universe as it was before most of the structure that we know about today came into being,” he added.
Posted in Tech News Tags: Black Holes, Burst Grb, Distant Object, Gamma Ray Burst, Gamma Rays, Gemini North Telescope, Harvard Smithsonian Center, Harvard Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, Infrared Afterglow, Infrared Telescope, Light Years, Mauna Kea, Nasa, New Scientist, Redshift, Redshifts, Stars And Galaxies, Stellar Explosion, Swift Satellite, University Of California Berkeley No Comments »10 Amazing High Tech Crimes (Which Mostly Failed)
March 12th, 2009 admin If crime didn’t pay, there wouldn’t be any criminals. Throughout history, the successful criminals have used technology to stay above and beyond the law, developing new techniques to hedge their bets and avoid arrest. While some tech masterminds have escaped the long arm of the law, most have still failed.
Posted in Tech News Tags: Accomplices, Anarchy, Casino Reports, Cohorts, Earpiece, Galileo Spacecraft, High Tech Gadgets, Lam, Laser Scanners, Long Arm Of The Law, Masterminds, Nasa, New Scientist, Physicist, Playing Poker, Protesters, Random Messages, Roulette Players, Slow Motion, Vibes No Comments »Mega-Laser To Probe Secrets Of Exoplanets
February 28th, 2009 admin Artist’s impression of a gas giant planet circling the star Gliese 436. The new laser will investigate the internal chemistry of these vast planets (Image: NASA)From New Scientist:AN AWESOME laser facility, built to provide fusion data for nuclear weapons simulations, will soon be used to probe the secrets of extrasolar planets.The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California was declared ready for action earlier this month.
Posted in Science News Tags: Astronomer, Centre Of The Earth, Extrasolar Planets, Gas Giant Planet, Gliese 436, Internal Chemistry, Laser Facility, Lasers, Lawrence Livermore National, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore National Laboratory, Nanosecond, Nasa, National Ignition Facility, New Scientist, Nuclear Weapons, Star Gliese, Trillion, University Of California Berkeley, Vital Statistics No Comments »Space Telescope To Boost Hunt For Alien Earths
February 9th, 2009 admin Kepler Telescope (Image from Nasa)From The New Scientist:HOW common are alien Earths – small, rocky planets orbiting at the right distance to be not so hot that water boils and not so cold that it stays frozen? Till now clues have been hard to come by, because surveys have not been sensitive enough to find many such planets.That should soon change thanks to the Kepler space telescope, which NASA is expecting to launch on 5 March. Its unique positioning in the solar system and unprecedented sensitivity mean that for the first time we will be able to see Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone” of their stars – the region where the temperature on the planet should be right for liquid water to exist at its surface.Read more ….
Ancient Creature Points To Parallel Evolution
February 1st, 2009 admin Light optical microscope images of placozoans. (Image from NASA Astrobiology Institute)From New Scientist:AN UPDATED family tree of the animal kingdom could radically change the way we think about the evolution of species.According to conventional thinking, simple animals, including sponges, jellyfish and corals, evolved step-by-step in a linear fashion into those with more complex bodies, such as mammals.Now Rob DeSalle of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and his colleagues have challenged this way of thinking.The team analysed DNA and other molecular evidence across the animal kingdom, including tiny sea creatures called placozoans. They have found that the placozoans are the closest living thing to the ancestor of all animals.Read more ….
Posted in Science News Tags: American Museum Of Natural History, Ancestor, Ancient Creature, Animal Kingdom, Family Tree, Jellyfish, Light Microscope, Linear Fashion, Mammals, Microscope Images, Molecular Evidence, Museum Of Natural History, Nasa, Nasa Astrobiology Institute, New Scientist, Optical Microscope, Parallel Evolution, Placozoans, Sea Creatures, Sponges No Comments »Ten Sci-Fi Devices That Could Soon Be In Your Hands
January 29th, 2009 admin The briefcase-sized Prism 200 from UK firm Cambridge Consultants can detect people through brick walls by firing off pulses of ultra-wideband radar and listening for returning echoes. According to the company, these pulses can pass through building materials over 40 centimetres thick, and spot activity over a range of up to 15 metres.
Posted in Science News Tags: Brick Walls, Briefcase, Building Materials, Cambridge Consultants, Cellular Phone Network, Crystal Ball, Echoes, Endeavour, Half The World, Ipods, Japanese Firm, Momentous Event, New Scientist, Plunge, Prism, Prospects, Pulses, Sci Fi, Special Feature, Technological Revolution No Comments »Six Biggest Mysteries Of Our Solar System
January 28th, 2009 admin So far as we know, our solar system is unique in the universe (Image: Nigel Hawtin)From The New Scientist:ONCE upon a time, 4.6 billion years ago, something was brewing in an unremarkable backwater of the Milky Way. The ragbag of stuff that suffuses the inconsequential, in-between bits of all galaxies – hydrogen and helium gas with just a sprinkling of solid dust – had begun to condense and form molecules.
