ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• For first time, individual atoms seen keeping away from each other or bunching up as pairs
• A tight squeeze for electrons: Quantum effects observed in ‘one-dimensional’ wires
• Food waste could store solar, wind energy
• Stem cells grown into 3-D lung-in-a-dish
• Exploration team shoots for the moon with water-propelled satellite

For first time, individual atoms seen keeping away from each other or bunching up as pairs Posted: 15 Sep 2016 01:29 PM PDT If you bottle up a gas and try to image its atoms using today's most powerful microscopes, you will see little more than a shadowy blur. Atoms zip around at lightning speeds and are difficult to pin down at ambient temperatures. If, however, these atoms are plunged to ultracold temperatures, they slow to a crawl, and scientists can start to study how they can form exotic states of matter, such as superfluids, superconductors, and quantum magnets.

A tight squeeze for electrons: Quantum effects observed in ‘one-dimensional’ wires Posted: 15 Sep 2016 11:34 AM PDT Researchers have observed quantum effects in electrons by squeezing them into one-dimensional 'quantum wires' and observing the interactions between them. The results could be used to aid in the development of quantum technologies, including quantum computing.

Food waste could store solar, wind energy Posted: 15 Sep 2016 10:32 AM PDT Saving up excess solar and wind energy for times when the sun is down or the air is still requires a storage device. Batteries get the most attention as a promising solution although pumped hydroelectric storage is currently used most often. Now researchers are advancing another potential approach using sugar alcohols — an abundant waste product of the food industry — mixed with carbon nanotubes.

Stem cells grown into 3-D lung-in-a-dish Posted: 15 Sep 2016 10:22 AM PDT By coating tiny gel beads with lung-derived stem cells and then allowing them to self-assemble into the shapes of the air sacs found in human lungs, researchers have succeeded in creating three-dimensional lung "organoids." The laboratory-grown lung-like tissue can be used to study diseases including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which has traditionally been difficult to study using conventional methods.

Exploration team shoots for the moon with water-propelled satellite Posted: 15 Sep 2016 09:05 AM PDT Cislunar Explorers, a team of Cornell University students guided by Mason Peck, a former senior official at NASA and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is attempting to boldly go where no CubeSat team has gone before: around the moon. Not only is Peck's group attempting to make a first-ever moon orbit with a satellite no bigger than a cereal box, made entirely with off-the-shelf materials, it's doing so with propellant that you can obtain simply by turning on a faucet.

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