MIT researchers have invented an imaging system that acquires data at speeds beyond anyone’s imagination. 1 trillion exposures a second is what the system is capable of acquiring and uses a process called Femto-photography. The technology was a result of research carried out by Ramesh Sarkar at the MIT Media Lab and a joint collaboration with Graphics and Imaging Lab at Zaragoza University, Spain. The process used a streak camera that was synchronized to a pulsed laser modified for capturing 2D images rather than a single scan line.
The technique allowed researchers to capture extremely short exposures in which light talked just0.6mm within that period. The technique was also capable of reconstructing and capturing images in corners outside of the line of sight or in this case camera.
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Imagine a tiny little glass disc that can store 360 TB of data. Not only that, UK scientists have created these glass discs to store data in 5D for 13.8 billion years and can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 degrees centigrade.
Much like the femto-camera, researchers at Southampton University created femtosecond laser writing technology in 2013 where the ultrafast laser using short intense pulses of light wrote data in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by 0.005mm. Dubbed the superman memory crystal, it can be used in large applications like national data, archiving, libraries and as researcher Peter Kazansky said "This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization: all we've learned will not be forgotten."
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Well, it’s a synthetic one of course but the biological leaf is a major breakthrough made by suspending chloroplasts in a silk protein matrix which then absorbs water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen like a natural plant and could also be used in space travel.
The synthetic oxygen producing plant will help NASA as interplanetary exploration is slowly becoming a reality and such technology will improve life in space. Called the Melchiorri Silk leaf it was created by Julian Melchiorri from a matrix of protein extracted from silk and chloroplasts which is the substance that enables plants to perform the process of photosynthesis in which oxygen is produced.
According to Melchiorri, it is extremely light and consumes low energy and moreover, although synthetic, it is also completely biological. Melchiorri also used the technology to create lighting for his house and to produce oxygen.
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Mange new technologies is Aerogel where An object coated with an Aerogel block can be heated to 2,200 degrees centigrade and held by bare hands. That’s Aerogel for you. Aerogel is an ultralight porous material; created from a gel whose liquid component is substituted with gas. A similar silica Aerogel was also used to coat the Mars rover.
Aerogel is also called frozen smoke or solid cloud and is solid with low thermal conductivity and low density where the liquid component of the gel is extracted by a process of supercritical drying. Aerogel was first created in 1931 but has evolved to the lighter aero-graphene that has the density of air at room temperature.
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