Most Powerful Laser
The world's most powerful laser can create miniature stars right in the laboratory.
Podcast
RADIATION: The world's most powerful laser, radiation dangers for astronauts, a new drug fights radiation poisoning, and the lifespan of the sun.
Radiation Protection
Scientists are taking lessons from tumor cells to fight the damaging effects of radiation and chemotherapy.
Space Radiation
Exposure to radiation in space could make astronauts prone to cancer.
Podcast
ENERGY NEWS: Electricity from bacteria, people power, thermoelectricity and what the sun is made of.
Podcast
Space Research Update: the 11-year solar storm cycle returns, the MESSENGER spacecraft reports back from Mercury, and the search for intelligent life in the universe continues with the help of your computer. Also: Unique animal and plant adaptations.
This week's web links:
Space Weather Network: www.swpc.noaa.gov/SWN;
Latest MESSENGER photographs of Mercury: messenger.jhuapl.edu;
Sign up for SETI@Home: setiathome.berkeley.edu
Solar Storm Roundup
Early sun spots forecast rough weather ahead during new eleven-year solar storm cycle.
SETI@Home Upgrade
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues with upgraded software you can use at home.
To sign up visit: https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
Podcast
Future Survival: A vaccine for antibacterial-resistant staph infections, future crops use space-age technology, and growing green roofs
Space Crops
Lighting, heating and recycling technology designed for survival in space could revolutionize how crops are grown here on earth.
Life Origins Roundup
A new study suggests that scientists looking for extraterrestrial life should look in interstellar space clouds, made of hydrogen cyanide gas.
Podcast
Whale-inspired windmills. Tracing the origins of a killer asteroid. Using vowels to sell. And more.
Plant Gravity
A listener asks: Regardless of how you plant a seed, the roots always grow downward and the shoots upward, so how does the plant orient itself?
Podcast
A computer with a sense of humor. Frisky foxes. Giant insects of the ancient earth. And more.
Podcast
How fetuses breathe inside the womb, rats that help out other rats, ancient chile peppers found in Mexico, why we yawn, and the surprising forms alien life might take.
Alien Life Roundup
Extraterrestrial life could be very different from life as we know it.
Podcast
How the solar system formed, determining the standard for the kilogram, how brain damage affects art, cancer drugs from trees, protecting ports with underwater using sound.
Podcast
The dinosaur extinction may have been stinky, carbon emission rates may be worse than was thought, wild wheat plants itself, a cow with naturally skim milk, and what sound sounds like on other planets.
Podcast
Lasers + diamonds = cool physics, TV ads make kids eat more junk food, the domestic robot is inching closer to reality, talking about sin could lead to it, and a listener asks why allergies exist.
Diamonds and Lasers
A new technique uses diamonds and lasers to squeeze materials to high pressures.