The new discoveries in the field of nano technology never fail to impress. Here’s what the scientists at University of Sydney have come up with – a material that acts like a kind of sticky tape that can hold water droplets even when the surface is upturned.

The material has what have been called “raspberry particles” due to their appearance. It is these particles that hold on to the tiny water droplets on the surface of the material. This is similar to some rose petal surfaces which also have a similar property and don’t let go of dew drops.

Dr Andrew Telford from the University’s School of Chemistry who led the research says that the ability to immobilize very small droplets on a surface is a significant achievement. Their team is the first which has been able to allow for the preparation of these raspberry particles on an industrial scale.

Needless to say the concept can have many exciting commercial applications including reduction of condensation in aircraft cabins and making certain kinds of medical testing possible. Not to mention using it on quick dry walls and roofs to keep the structure cool. The possibilities for future science projects using this material are potentially endless.

For the last decade Deep Impact has been NASA’s comet hunter and has sent back unprecedented images of comets from space. However 9 years and 500,000 images later the NASA team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California has had to announce that the mission is now over.

It completed its original mission of determining the surface and interior composition of a comet, over s period of six months in 2005. It also did extended missions such as observing comet fly pasts and sending home data about planets as well before it finally lost communication with Earth.

The decision to call it quits was made after communications with the probe named Deep Impact failed about a month ago. Despite repeated efforts the team has been unable to communicate with the probe. History’s most traveled comet research mission, having traveled 4.7 billion miles has finally called it a day.

Deep Impact has revolutionized our understanding of comets and their activity, said Mike A’Hearn, the Deep Impact principal investigator at the University of Maryland in College Park. It has been a fantastic, long-lasting spacecraft that has produced far more data than we had planned, said Mike. This was one science project whose success NASA would love to replicate.

There are many theories on how life evolved on Earth and one such theory in the running is called Panspermia. The hypothesis in this case is that life actually began on the planet when meteoroids brought tiny life forms such as bacteria and yeasts with them from another planet or source.

When the Solar Sytem was young the planets and moons were regularly hit by a number of meteorites. Planetary Scientists support this theory with proof of meteorites that have fallen to Earth from Mars. It is not too much of a stretch in the imagination which can lead us to believe that the basic live cells also hitched a ride on similar meteorites.

The detractors of the theory ask if it would have been possible for even the toughest form of life to survive not just inter space travel to Earth but also the impact that the meteorite would have on arrival? While the Earth’s atmosphere might have been rarer then than it is now, it would have still heated up the rocks falling from the sky.

So now we must consider, without much scientific evidence to support the theory, that life on another planet may not really be alien but actually related to us at a molecular level. More science projects would needed to prove or disprove this theory.

When you saw the Terminator heal itself you thought it was cool. Now scientists are coming up with a new science project where this piece of science fiction may actually become fact. Although currently at a very small scale at the Centre for Electrochemical Technologies in Spain.

Ibon Odriozola and his research group have come up with self-healing silicone elastomers using silver nanoparticles as cross-linkers in the past. Unfortunately these needed an external pressure to be applied and the silver was too expensive to be economically viable. Now they have overcome these problems by using common polymeric starting materials.

They managed to show that permanently cross-linked poly(urea-urethane) elastomeric network was able to heal itself within two hours once it was cut by a razor blade.  It goes without saying that this ability will have widespread industrial applications once made available commercially.

The researchers are now going to conduct further scientific research in stronger materials which would be tougher than the softer composite formed by the current self healing polymer. Needless to say that the results of this science experiment will be closely monitored by industry specialists. Who knows it just might be possible to actually come up with an entire robotic machine with such self healing properties as demonstrated by the Terminator some day.

As the first man made object crosses out into interstellar space there has been a lot of noise made by scientists and researchers the world over about its crossing the heliopause. The heliopause is the boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space. Now we need to define the heliosphere and interstellar space.

The heliosphere happens to be the solar bubble, which is inflated by plasma that streams outward from our sun, Sol. This tends to extend far beyond the farther most planets of the solar system. For the last few years the Voyager I has been traveling through this and it was finally cleared in mid September 2013.

As the word suggests interstellar space is essentially the space between the stars. One team member of the Voyager I mission said that traveling to interstellar space is at present like traveling to a new location with an incomplete guide book. While there are many theories about what scientists expect to find in interstellar space, there is as yet little known about it.

As the Voyager I travels onwards away from the sun, it will provide the scientists back home with invaluable data on interstellar space. So when the next science project launches a space craft to travel out of the solar system, we will know a whole lot more than we do today.

When 36 years ago Voyager 1 was launched for a four year mission to study Saturn in 1977, the technology it carried was laughable by today’s standards. It had an 8 track tape recorder, a very basic model of an i-phone and computers with extremely low memory capacities.  However this little outdated space shuttle has out performed its creator’s wildest fantasies by become the first man made object to formally leave the Solar System.

After considerable debate to decide what actually were the boundaries of the Solar System the Voyager Mission team leaders finally claimed that the space craft had crossed into the abyss of interstellar space in mid September 2013. There had been no hope that the small craft would make it so far and everything it has achieved after crossing Saturn is taken as a huge bonus by the scientists.

Incidentally 1977 was also the year that “Star Wars” was released. One can just hear the title track say, “in a galaxy far far away,”as the Voyager rolls out into space. Making science fiction fact is what NASA and the space exploration program is all about. And this new feat is sure to engage another generation of eager new scientists ready to prove their mettle with new science projects in the era of space exploration.

LADEE which is short for the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer and is pronounced “laddie” has been launched successfully from Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia shore. The latest NASA lunar project hopes to study the mysteries in moon dust and the atmosphere of the moon.

The lunar mission hopes to shed light on the moon’s rare atmosphere which remains as much as a mystery today as it was when man first landed on it so many decades ago. Richard Elphic, project scientist for LADEE at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California said that it is also packed with a number of new technological wonders being tried out for the first time.

These include a new laser communications system which promised to cut down on communication time with the space craft and also allow more data to be passed to earth. LADEE is the first to be launched off a Minotaur V Rocket. This is a launch vessel that also has a Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile borrowed from the U.S. Air Force attached to it.

The space craft was also built in a uniquely different manner as compared to its predecessors. Its different module designs can be used if tested successfully in future space missions. All in all NASA must be pleased with the successful launch of its latest science project.

Earthquakes cause buildings to fall and crush many helpless victims who are unable to get out in time. Many times the victims are actually on their way out and get crushed by falling rubble. Now the product of new scientific research is a fabric that will work just like a bandage for buildings, holding them together for that extra crucial time in which people can exit the building before it falls.

Developed by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, the fabric has been named Sisma Calce. It consists primarily of glass and polypropylene fibers. It is mixed in the plaster of the existing building and even if the glass shreds apart during an earthquake, the polypropylene’s elastic quality will hold the structure together long enough for people to get out of the building. In some cases it may even save the building from falling at all.

Currently the fabric is being used only on masonry houses as concrete walls require far stronger support to hold together in a high magnitude earthquake. The researchers at KIT are working on a stronger fabric based on carbon fibres to use in concrete walls. If the science project is successful it would make a huge difference during future earthquakes.

See that pretty little flower all red and yellow on yonder plant? It may not look much like your neighborhood drug dealer, but as far as the local bees in the area are concerned, that flower is the one to go to  for their daily fix. Neuro-biologists at Newcastle University in the UK have conducted a science experiment whose results show that flowers offer nectar-with-a-kick to bees.

This enables the bees to remember the flowers better and the bee is far more likely to sip from this flower again, increasing the chances of pollination for the plant. Earlier they believed that the flowers developed the mild toxin to defend themselves against predators, but the poison angle did not play out too well, as the amount of alkaloids produced were not enough of a deterrent to predators.

By addicting the bees to the nectar, the flowers act just like a drug dealer would. They even manage to produce the dosage just right. It is enough to give the bee a kick and not enough to act as a nerve stimulant to the plant itself. So by using the nectar as bait the flowers manage to increase their chances of survival as per this scientific experiment.

Coffee is the way a lot of people start their day, and without their morning doze of coffee people may feel that they are not fully awake. However a unique scientific experiment is trying to put ground coffee beans to a more notorious use… to make alcohol. Now that may have quite the opposite effect on people looking to clear their morning haze.

Scientists got roasted coffee beans from a Portuguese company and dried it before grinding them to a powder. This powder was then heated for almost an hour in water before the liquid was segregated and sugar added to it. Yeast cells were added to the concoction to ensure fermentation like in other alcohol brewing processes.

The new alcoholic drink retrieved contains 40% alcohol just like vodka and tequila. The 8 lucky testers who got to sample it say that the taste is bitter and pungent, while the smell is of coffee. There is a hope of improving the taste of the beverage by aging it for a longer period of time. Will this new drink catch on and make the science experiment a success? Only time will tell.