Giant Lasers Bring Distant Twinkling Stars Into Sharp Focus
The twinkling of a starry night sky is romantic, sure. But for astronomer Dominika Wylezalek, “it’s a nightmare.” That’s because Wylezalek studies galaxies billions of light-years away, and all that finicky glimmering—she’d call it “turbulence”—gets in the way. So she and her colleagues at the European Southern Observatory fire up this Star Wars–worthy laser cannon…
3 Smart Things About Animal-Inspired Robotics
1. When turkeys strut, their leg muscles work as shock absorbers to boost energy efficiency. That gam action inspired a prosthetic exoskeleton for humans: The lightweight contraption is outfitted with a spring and clutch that take the impact off the user’s calf muscle. In experiments, a person wearing the braces while walking expended 10 percent…
What Is the Dark Side of the Moon?
Q: What is the "dark side" of the moon? A: The short answer? It's a misnomer. A cool-sounding misnomer! But a misnomer. Assuming they aren't talking about the Pink Floyd album or the French mockumentary, people who say "the dark side of the moon" are almost always referring to the moon's far side—which, despite pointing…
DNA Tests Could Help Docs Detect Infectious Diseases Faster
Early last spring, as flu season hit its peak, a woman checked into a Houston hospital with all the familiar symptoms: fever, headache, a grating cough. A chest x-ray revealed an infection engulfing her lungs. Doctors hooked her up to an antibiotic drip, collected blood to be processed and cultured in the hospital’s lab, and…
How Are Planets Made? With Very Little Stuff, It Seems
A long time ago, a star we now call the sun ignited. It did not consume all the material available in its gestational cloud; the leftover gas and dust swirled around it like a ballroom dancer’s skirt. The dusty leftovers started to coalesce in some spots, forming larger rocky objects. After millions of years, the…
Watch Mouse Embryos Develop Under This 4-D Microscope
The new microscope in Philipp Keller's laboratory looks nothing like a microscope. At least, not to the untrained eye. Tangled cords connect the components mounted to its metal base to a bank of ports on an overhead shelf. An important-looking cube built from tinted panes of acrylic sits at its center. And flexible silver ducting—the…
The Clever Clumsiness of a Robot Teaching Itself to Walk
It’s easy to watch a baby finally learn to walk after hours upon hours of trial and error and think, OK, good work, but do you want a medal or something? Well, maybe only a childless person like me would think that, so credit where credit is due: It’s supremely difficult for animals like ourselves…
It’s Time to Talk About Robot Gender Stereotypes
Robots are the most powerful blank slate humans have ever created. Want a helpful robot? No problem. Want a mean one? Sure, if that’s what you’re into. A robot is a mirror held up not just to its creator, but to our whole species: What we make of the machine reflects what we are. That…
The Punishing Polar Vortex Is Ideal for Cassie the Robot
This is not a story about how the polar vortex is bad—bad for the human body, bad for public transportation, bad for virtually everything in its path. This is a story about how one being among us is actually taking advantage of the historic cold snap: Cassie the bipedal robot. While humans suffer through the…
This Tiny Drone Uses Friction to Pull More Than Its Own Weight
Last week, Stanford researchers revealed that that they had built tiny drones that can open doors. I'm not sure I'm happy about this: How will we keep the robots out of our houses if they can just open the doors? But this is also pretty cool. These tiny drones (or micro air vehicles) are able…