Blades that will form part of the world’s largest onshore wind turbines SANY Renewable Energy The world’s largest-ever onshore wind turbine blades have been manufactured in China. At 131 metres in length, each foil would dwarf Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty. Once installed in central China in the coming months, each of the … Read more
Springer Nature / BrunLab@Princeton University Inflatable squishy tubes could be used to build soft robots that move when air is pushed through them. Robotic hands made from metal frequently end up crushing delicate objects like fruit when trying to pick them up, so researchers often experiment with making them out of gentler materials. Pierre-Thomas Brun … Read more
An image of the North America Nebula taken with the metalens Courtesy of Joon-Suh Park To take high-quality images of the stars, astronomers usually need thick, curved lenses to bend the light precisely. But researchers have designed a flat lens that can take sharp images of the night sky thanks to billions of nanostructures in … Read more
Cement composite material with small fractures overlaid with a depiction of electricity PNAS A mixture of cement and charcoal powder could enable houses to store a full day’s worth of energy in their concrete foundations. This new way of creating a supercapacitor – an alternative to batteries that can discharge energy much faster – could … Read more
Protons can be used to kill cancer cells Shutterstock/Meletios Verras A wedge-shaped device could make the particle accelerators used for proton therapies in medicine an even more effective tool for treating cancer. Beams of protons can be used to kill tumour cells. In traditional radiation therapy, radiation moves through the body before and after hitting … Read more
A small, soft robot can bend through pipes Shutterstock/Dmitry Kalinovsky A tubular, soft robot controlled by light can pump liquids, unscrew bolts and travel through pipes. The robot can also be designed to bend in the direction of a light source, like a plant tilting towards the sun. In some materials, molecules can gain energy … Read more