X-ray vision tracks lightning bursts

Blink and you’ve missed it. Researchers in the US have captured the world’s first X-ray images of lightning, by creating a special camera that can capture radiation at 10 million frames per second. They presented their new findings at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco and they say that this new view of lightning could help to solve some of the mysteries of this spectacular natural phenomenon.

The research was carried out at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing, located in Florida. It is one of the few sites in world where lightning is initiated and studied under controlled conditions. By firing rockets with trailing wires into thunder clouds, scientists are able to generate electric fields that are large enough to trigger bolts of lightning, which then propagate back down towards the rocket launch tower.

Joseph Dwyer and colleagues at the Florida Institute of Technology became interested in the fact that lightning emits X-rays as it propagates through the air, a phenomenon that was only noted in the past decade. But given that X-ray sources in lightning travel through the Earth’s atmosphere at velocities approaching the speed of light, it is difficult to catch them on camera before they disappear. In addition, they cannot be imaged with standard mirrors and lenses because huge amounts of material are required to prevent X-rays and gamma rays from entering through the sides of a camera.

Dwyer’s team has created a customized camera that has 30 detectors made from a combination of sodium iodide and photomultiplier tubes, each measuring 3 × 3 inch. The device, which is approximately the size of a standard refrigerator, is also equipped with a 3 inch pinhole aperture, and can record X-rays at 10 million frames per second. “This is actually a very old technique for making images, like that seen in a camera obscura,” Dwyer says.

During July and August this year, Dwyer’s team studied four rocket-triggered lightning flashes at the Florida test site. Each flash lasted for approximately two seconds and the resulting sequences of images revealed that X-rays emerged primarily from the vicinity of the lightning tip as it propagated towards the Earth. As the lightning crashed into the control tower it also triggered large bursts of gamma radiation, which were also captured by the camera.

“For the first time we’re catching a glimpse of lightning in the X-ray emission,” says Dwyer. “We’re seeing lightning as Superman would see it with his X-ray vision”.

Credit: James Dacey/physicsworld.com

via: spaceplasma

(via n-a-s-a)

Wood Record Plays Radiohead’s “Idioteque”

Amanda Ghassaei of instructables.com has figured out a way to turn any MP3 into a physical record using 3-D printing. Thus far, Ghassaei has been able to successfully produce records on wood, acrylic and paper. Check out her post for all the details and more videos.

Ed note: How do you 3-D scan a dinosaur? With lasers of course.

What Lies Ahead for 3-D Printing?

Wandering the brightly lit halls of the 3D Systems’ plant in Rock Hill, South Carolina, I gaze upon objects strange and wondrous. A fully functioning guitar made of nylon. A phalanx of mandibles studded with atrocious-looking teeth. The skeleton of a whale. A five-color, full-scale prototype of a high-heeled shoe. Toy robots. And what appears to be the face of a human fetus. “That was made from an ultrasound image,” Cathy Lewis, the company’s chief marketing officer, tells me, shrugging.

This collection of objects shares one feature: All were “printed” by machines that, following instructions from digital files, join together layer upon layer of material—whether metals, ceramics or plastics—until the object’s distinctive shape is realized. The process is called 3-D printing (or additive manufacturing, in industrial parlance) and if you haven’t heard of it by now, you haven’t been paying enough attention to scores of breathless news stories and technology blogs—or to President Barack Obama, who declared in his most recent State of the Union address that 3-D printing “has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.”

While many people only now are hearing about the technology, engineers and designers have been using large and expensive 3-D printers for nearly three decades, making rapid prototypes of parts for aerospace, defense and automotive companies. Over the years, however, digital design software has matured, scanners have become ubiquitous and affordable desktop printers have come within reach of self-starting entrepreneurs, schools and home tinkerers. Technologists boisterously proclaim that 3-D printing will democratize design and free us from the he­gemony of mass manufacturing.

But just because anybody’s ideas can take shape doesn’t necessarily mean they should—a notion that struck me in 3D Systems’ lobby, where I saw shelf after shelf of what some people try very hard not to describe as cheap plastic crap: brightly colored miniature vases, phone cases, jewelry, dolls and, inevitably, skulls. (On just one 3-D file-sharing site, I found 101 designs for skull rings and pendants.) The creator of these lobby tchotchkes? The Cube, manufactured by 3D Systems. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Article by Elizabeth Royte

Photo by Laurie Rubin

We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now

A dramatic application of digital technology has allowed researchers to recover Alexander Graham Bell’s voice from a recording held by the Smithsonian. From the 1880s on, until his death in 1922, Bell gave an extensive collection of laboratory materials to the Smithsonian Institution, including more than 400 discs and cylinders, like the one above, he used as he tried his hand at recording sound. Listen to the words Bell spoke 128 years ago here.

Photo: Richard Strauss / NMAH, SI

The Future is Here and the Future is STEM

Our May issue is out now and we’re excited to bring you features in each of the disciplines know collectively as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Richard Conniff reports on the trillions of microbes that dwell inside our bodies. Elizabeth Royte on the future of 3-D printing and Franz Lidz on how LEGO is constructing the next generation of engineers.

How Do You 3-D Scan a Dinosaur?

Using laser scanners and high-tech computer software, Vince Rossi and Adam Metallo are recreating a digital Dinosaur Hall before it’s dismantled.

Ed note: Ultimately, Rossi and Metallo dream of digitizing all 137 million of the objects in the Smithsonian’s collections. More on the “Laser Cowboys.”

Grand Canyon trails beautifully captured with Trekker, Google’s new Street View backpack

via thisistheverge

Why Hypercolor T-Shirts Were Just a One-Hit Wonder

It was 1991: “Roseanne was on TV, Terminator 2 was on the big screen, Color Me Badd was on the radio and Hypercolor t-shirts were on the backs of millions of middle- and high school-age kids across America.

The Hypercolor fad gripped the nation that year, thanks to the Seattle-based sportswear company that created them, Generra. In fact, in a brief three-month span, between February and May 1991, the company sold a whopping $50 million worth of color-changing, heat-sensitive T-shirts, shorts, pants, sweatshirts and tights.

In addition to its color-morphing cool factor, the “mood-ring of the ’90s” also had game-changing potential for a young adult brimming with hormones. Imagine: You could walk up to your crush in the hallway between classes, take note of the shirt he or she was wearing emblazoned with “Hypercolor,” casually place your hand on him or her, and the warmth of your touch would change the shirt’s color before the eyes of both of you. Let the sparks fly! - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

The Gadgets of the Future From the Electrical Shows of Yesterday

Is the Internet Turning Us Into a Nation of Hate-Filled Trolls?

It’s taken a while for this prophecy to come true, a while for this mode of communication to replace and degrade political conversation, to drive out any ambiguity. Or departure from the binary. But it slowly is turning us into a nation of hate-filled trolls.

Surprisingly, [Jaron] Lanier tells me it first came to him when he recognized his own inner troll—for instance, when he’d find himself shamefully taking pleasure when someone he knew got attacked online. “I definitely noticed it happening to me,” he recalled. “We’re not as different from one another as we’d like to imagine. So when we look at this pathetic guy in Texas who was just outed as ‘Violentacrez’…I don’t know if you followed it?”

“I did.” “Violentacrez” was the screen name of a notorious troll on the popular site Reddit. He was known for posting “images of scantily clad underage girls…[and] an unending fountain of racism, porn, gore” and more, according to the Gawker.com reporter who exposed his real name, shaming him and evoking consternation among some Reddit users who felt that this use of anonymity was inseparable from freedom of speech somehow.

“So it turns out Violencacrez is this guy with a disabled wife who’s middle-aged and he’s kind of a Walter Mitty—someone who wants to be significant, wants some bit of Nietzschean spark to his life.”

Only Lanier would attribute Nietzschean longing to Violentacrez. “And he’s not that different from any of us. The difference is that he’s scared and possibly hurt a lot of people.” - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo of Jaron Lanier by: Robert Holmgren