Tomas Martin @ 01-02-2008
After work by Stanford University found that carbon nanotubes don’t seem to have any detrimental effect inside the bodies of mice, researchers are looking for more ways of utilising the growing technology in medicine. DARPA has awarded a grant to Rice university to study whether a carbon nanotube based pill would be a good way of treating radiation sickness. Radiation in the body deforms cells and molecules, releasing terribly damaging free radicals which then cause more damage to the body.
“More than half of those who suffer acute radiation injury die within 30 days, not from the initial radioactive particles themselves but from the devastation they cause in the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body. Ideally, we’d like to develop a drug that can be administered within 12 hours of exposure and prevent deaths from what are currently fatal exposure doses of ionizing radiation,” said James Tour, Rice University’s Chao Professor of Chemistry and director of Rice’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.
The Carbon pills would absorb large quanties of the radiation within the body, as well as the free radicals, which could dramatically cut down on the post-exposure spread of damaged cells. As DailyTech mention in their article about the discovery, video game Fallout had carbon-based anti-radiation pills way back in 1997. The third Fallout game is being released this year by the makers of Oblivion, Bethesda, for your post-apocalyptic gaming pleasure.
[story and Fallout 3 teaser poster via DailyTech]
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Tomas Martin @ 28-01-2008
Space is a dangerous place. All that vacuum that looks like nothing actually contains huge amounts of solar radiation. In an orbit around Earth or a short trip to the Moon, this is not usually a life-threatening problem - although the Apollo 16 astronauts just missed a solar storm that could have killed them. But in the eight months or so it would take an expedition to get to Mars, a few solar wind storms could easily kill any humans on board. The shield is a common solution in science fiction - from the near-magic forcefield of Star Trek/Wars to the realistic mirrored disk seen on the craft in last year’s Sunshine.
Scientists at Oxford University are aiming to create a similar shield. By creating a magnetic field similar to that of the Earth’s, which protects us from radiation, the scientists found they could successfully deflect intense beams of charged particles. The technology has been proven to work and now needs to be energy-efficient enough to be run by a spacecraft with limited resources - such a development could well provide technology useful in increasing the efficiency of more mundane technologies as well.
[via the Guardian, screenshot from 'Sunshine' via Moving Pictures ]
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Tomas Martin @ 15-10-2007
A group of mathematicians who previously worked on possible cloaking devices have found the same theory could be equally applied to create things resembling wormholes. The team uses mathematical theory to create ‘metamaterials’ that can bend and curve electromagnetic fields - like bending light to make something appear invisible.
The wormholes they describe aren’t quite the instantaneous transportation portals described by Star Trek or Valve’s new computer game. The light still travels through the metamaterial tube but isn’t detectable outside it, by sight or other methods. Uses for this idea include endoscopic surgery and 3D televisions where all but the end tips of many beams of light are hidden by the wormhole, giving the appearance of a floating image.
[image and link via ScienceDaily, image courtesy of Rochester University]
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