mirror

Launching a space telescope is a costly process. Not only is the hardware needed for the telescope expensive, but the weight of the entire thing drives the cost of the fuel up, too. New rollable mirror tech could make building space telescopes much cheaper thanks to lighter, more transportable material. The new tech is covered heavily in a new study published in Applied Optics. The study’s sole author, Sebastian Rabien, says that it could make creating large-scale mirrors like those used on the James Webb much…

Long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) both seem to impact the oldest parts of the brain in a curiously similar fashion.Using a high-resolution version of magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI), researchers in Australia have shown the brainstem regions of 10 ME/CFS patients and 8 long COVID patients are significantly larger than those of 10 healthy control subjects.The brainstem connects the spinal cord to the largest part of the brain, the cerebrum. From the top down, the stem comprises…

Too Long; Didn't Read*The Matrix* portrays a dystopian future in which people’s minds are trapped in a computer-generated simulation while their bodies are harvested for electricity to power robotic metropolises. The parallels between the survivors living in Zion and modern society are undeniable but hardly surprising. We have come to rely on the Internet for navigation, banking, communication, and more. Too Long; Didn't Read*The Matrix* portrays a dystopian future in which people’s minds are trapped in a…

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If you thought your wallet would have a break after all the new Lego sets that finally became available today, think again. To help celebrate Disney’s 100th anniversary, Lego announced a handful of new Disney-themed sets enroute in the coming months, including its next series of collectible minifigures.The balloon house from Up is going to be a hard set to resist, as are the minifigure versions of Baymax, Stitch, Coco’s Ernesto de la Cruz, and the internet’s favorite animated fox: Robin Hood. If you thought your wallet…

Perovskites are one of the most promising new materials for solar cell technology. Now engineers at the University of Rochester have developed a new way to more than triple the material’s efficiency by adding a layer of reflective silver underneath it.For the better part of a century, silicon has been the go-to material for making solar cells, thanks to its abundance and efficiency in converting light to an electrical current. But in just the last decade, a new contender has rapidly risen through the ranks – perovskite,…

The images from Turkey and Syria in the last week show us just how devastating a major earthquake can be. When the magnitude 7.8 earthquake we expect on the San Andreas fault happens, we will also see death and destruction, perhaps not as extensive as seen in Turkey, but much worse than most people expect. Rather than the post-earthquake usable buildings many people think are guaranteed by the building code, the current code asks only that our buildings try not to collapse.Office buildings, hospitals, apartments and homes…

Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images You don’t have to spend too long scrolling through your Twitter timeline to find someone dispensing nuggets of ethereal wisdom pontificating on the very nature of existence, but people might be a lot more willing to take them on board if they come from Brie Larson. After all, the Academy Award-winning Marvel Cinematic Universe veteran has amassed millions of followers due to not only her celebrity status, but a constant drip-feeding of wholesome content that regularly…

The 2022 Apple Watch App of the Year, Gentler Streak, brings a big update to start 2023. With version 2.8, the health tracker that wants to bring compassion to your fitness goals has added the long-awaited Live Activity support for iOS 16 and iPhone 14 Pro users with Dynamic Island. The Live Activity feature brings Gentler Streak Apple Watch workout tracking to the iPhone’s Notification Center and iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island, so it’s easier to follow an exercise right from your iPhone screen. In…

Over the decades, scientists have held a literal mirror up to various animals to determine whether their minds feature some kind of representation of self.Elephants, apes, dolphins, Eurasian magpies and cleaner wrasse fish are just some of the menagerie to join humans and chimpanzees in this exclusive club, each responding to their reflection in a way that shows understanding that it represents themselves.Scientists have now put Adélie penguins to the mirror test, coming up with mixed results. While it might be premature…