Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Smashing the Microscope: Tiny crashes harnessed for nanoconstruction
A new technique supplies loose atoms for nanoscale experiments by using the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to gouge out craters from a surface.
- Tech
Laser Landmark: Silicon device spans technology gap
By coaxing a silicon microstructure into acting as a laser, engineers have achieved a long-sought and important step toward microchips capable of simultaneously manipulating electrons and light.
- Tech
Wee wires that can crawl
Self-propelled strands of a muscle protein coated with gold offer a way to arrange and control the nanoworld.
- Tech
Tracing the origin of Genesis’ crash
The upside-down installation of four switches intended to signal the Genesis spacecraft to open its parachutes is the likely cause of the craft's crash in the Utah desert on Sept. 8.
- Tech
Tiny tubes could ease eavesdropping
A team of researchers is developing highly sensitive acoustic sensors using ordered arrays of carbon nanotubes, which act much like the rodlike stereocilia of the inner ear.
- Computing
Net History
Nethistory.info is a new Web site devoted to the history of the Internet. Its aim is to provide material documenting the applications and platforms that came together to create the early Internet, including protocols, personal computers, e-mail, the World Wide Web, networks, and much more. You can sign up for a free monthly newsletter and […]
- Tech
Cramming bits into pits
By skewing the alignment of pits on an optical disk's surface, disk makers might store much more than one bit per pit.
- Tech
Dawn of the commercial space age
On Oct. 4, a privately funded, piloted craft called SpaceShipOne reached a height of 378,000 feet (115.1 kilometers), breaking a world altitude record for rocket-powered planes and claiming the $10 million Ansari X prize.
- Tech
Bartending lessons for microassembly
Engineers have demonstrated the feasibility of quickly assembling identical microcircuit components by agitating subunits in a liquid.
- Tech
Transmuting a powerful poison
A new chemical process for fuel cells powered by hydrocarbons eliminates carbon monoxide that would clog fuel-cell electrodes while also extracting energy from the troublesome gas.
- Tech
Hungry for Nano
The food industry is turning to nanotechnology as it searches for innovations that could bring safer, healthier, and tastier products to consumers.
- Tech
Tiny Timepiece: Atomic clock could fit almost anywhere
Physicists have shrunk the high-tech heart of an atomic clock to the size of a rice grain.
