Researchers at ETH Zurich achieved a shape memory effect for the first time with objects that are only a few nanometers in size. This can be used to manufacture tiny machinery and robotic devices .
What do you call a broken satellite? Today, it's a multimillion-dollar piece of dangerous space junk. But a new collision-avoidance system developed by students at the University of Cincinnati is getting engineers closer to developing robots that can fix broken satellites or spacecraft in orbit.
Date Time
Lab team uses giant lasers to compress iron oxide, revealing secret interior of rocky exoplanets
An artistic rendering of the interior structure of Earth (left) compared to a large rocky exoplanet (right). Credit: John Jett and Federica Coppari/LLNL.
Advances in astronomical observations have resulted in the discovery of an extraordinary number of extrasolar planets, some of which are believed to have a rocky composition similar to Earth. Learning more about their interior structure could provide important clues about their potential habitability.
Led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a team of researchers aims to unlock some of these secrets by understanding the properties of iron oxide – one of the constituents of Earth’s mantle – at the extreme pressures and temperatures that are likely found in the interiors of these large rocky extrasolar planets. The results of their experiments were published today in Nature Geoscience.