When you switch on your transistor radios (or MP3 players, for those of us in the bleeding edge of technology) do you stop and think about how they're getting smaller and smaller with every passing day? Ever wondered how just small they can go? Well, a group of researchers from Chicago have discovered that they can go as small as tinier than a sand grain - and it's not that hard to make them, either.

Check out how in the full article.

Scientists and researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a nanoengineered battery that is physically identical to paper. Ultra thin and flexible, this could very well be the future of energy storage devices.

The creation of this product was pure genius. Paper was combined with aligned carbon nanotubes which act as electrodes and permit it to conduct electricity. Ann and John H. Broadbent Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer Robert Linhardt noted that:

It’s essentially a regular piece of paper, but it’s made in a very intelligent way. We’re not putting pieces together – it’s a single, integrated device.

The components are molecularly attached to each other: the carbon nanotube print is embedded in the paper, and the electrolyte is soaked into the paper. The end result is a device that looks, feels, and weighs the same as paper.

Engineered to function as both a lithium-ion battery and a supercapacitor, it has the capability of providing a consistent stream of energy like a normal battery in addition to the supercapacitor's high energy pulses. This versatility will come in handy if ever this technology becomes adopted by the masses.

It is very resilient with the ability to function in extreme temperatures. Running out of power is not even issue since sweat or even blood can be used powering the device (Matrix anyone?). All of these factors combine to make it ideal for use in hostile environments.

Currently, the development team behind the project are working on a way to mass produce it cheaply. It's a pretty safe bet that when they do, this new battery/supercapasitor will be sending waves through the electronics industry.

We are all familiar with microtransactions. For all its worth, we could be seeing here the future of videogaming which is digital distribution. It would be remembered that back in July of last year, manufacturer Seagate patented HAMR or heat-assisted magnetic recording that could have drastic impacts to the industry.

HAMR, if you're not well familiar with it, is a technology based on nanotube lubrication to allow the read/write head of a disk to get closer to the surface and store more information. It allows a total number of 300 TB of information on a standard 3.5" drive and that would be roughly around 6,144 50GB Blu-ray discs.

Seagate disclosed that HAMR is just the first of a two part process. The company's head of Interfaces and Architecture, Eric Reider, explained:

HAMR helps with the writing process. Bit patterning allows us to create the media. Each bit is represented by an island of about 50 magnetic grains, but these patches are irregularly shaped, like ink on newsprint. By chemically encoding an organized molecular pattern onto the platter's substrate at the moment of creation, however, HAMR can put a single bit on every grain.

We quite honestly didn't catch most of that but in short, they've perfected the technology. They mentioned further that this technology is expected to become widely available by 2010 which is rather interesting because we're all expecting a batch of new gen of consoles by then.

Damascus swords, whose construction dates back to the 8th century AD, were the Ginsu knives of their day. Legends hold that they can cut through a blot of silk dropped on its edge, or slice through hard rock without losing its sharpness and cutting power. The technique to forge Damascus swords (and their material, Damascus steel) have been lost to antiquity, so scientists have turned to studying surviving antiques to discover the secret behind their Ginsu properties.

Guess what it is: it's probably nanotubes. IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY AD?!

As reported by National Geographic, scientists at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany using electron microscopes have discovered carbon nanowires and nanotubes within the molecular structure of a Damascus sword. Just like the steel ribs of reinforced concrete, the researchers theorize these nanowires provide stiffness to the relatively softer steel. These are also the first nanotubes ever found in steel, the researchers add.

Besides adding stiffness, they may also contribute to the sword's cutting power. Part of the process of creating a Damascus sword involves etching with acid. Because the carbon nanotubes are resistant to acid, at the end of the acid etching, these tubes would stick out like microscopic saw teeth. Nanotube action for smooth, close shave - of your head from the neck up, it seems.

Metallurgists remain skeptical that the Dresden team "cracked the secret"of the Damascus sword, however. One metallurgist from Iowa, himself involved in replicating the forging process of Damascus steel, opines that these nanotubes could also pop up in normal, not-so-legendary steel products. In any case, several researchers are pressing for further study into nanomaterials. First one to benefit's probably Gillette.

"Let's build a Stairway to The Stars - and climb that stairway to the stars! It would be Heaven to climb to Heaven with you..." This suggestion was made in a popular song of the late 1930's by lyricist Mitchell Parrish (who also penned the lyric for another song that suggested outer space, Star Dust). An actual design was put forth forty years later by Arthur C. Clarkein his novel Fountains of Paradise - except that the "stairway to the stars" had actually become an elevator.

The idea actually goes back further than that, however.  As far back as the 1800's, a Russian visionary named Konstatin Tsiolkovsky suggested that humans might build a "celestial castle" in space at the end of a spindly tower that could be reached by humans in an elevator running up and down the tower's length.

Another Russian scientist, Yuri Artsutanov, wrote a paper in 1960 titled To the Cosmos by Electric Train that proposed a cable  be deployed from a satellite downwards until it could be attached to a base station on the surface.

The concept suggests once a payload is in low-Earth orbit - an altitude or about 100 miles (160 kilometres)  - it's  halfway to anywhere in the solar system. It's true -  despite tremendous advances in rocket technology, the first 100 miles are still the the most difficult.

With backing from NASA, a small group of entrepreneurs are attempting to bring Clarke's vision to life. Although it is unlikely to result in a workable space elevator any time soon, US company LiftPort has successfully unrolled a 1.6-kilometre-long carbon ribbon in the skies above Arizona. It was made using helium-filled balloons, after which a robotic climber successfully ascended part of the length. They plan to have an operating space elevator by 2018.

This fall promises some exciting developments. In October, companies will compete in the second round of the NASA-funded  Beam Power and Tether challenges to build a device that can ascend a 90 foot ribbon. Then, in December, Tethers Unlimited will deploy a 1 kilometer (about 3000 foot)  tether made from a Kevlar polymer. The purpose will be to test its durability under space conditions as a payloads ride along its length.

Can a lightweight cable ever be strong enough to stretch all the way into space? And even if it can, will it take an elevator into orbit any time soon? We can hope so, because the hard truth is that in terms of technology and cost, rockets are close to getting as good as they're ever likely to get as far as lifting payloads into orbit.

A working space elevator could reduce the cost of transporting payloads into orbit from $22,000 per kilogram to perhaps less than $1.50 per kilo (about $1.10/lb.)

Peter MacNeeley of the University of British Columbia, says  "With no rockets required, the cost of travel into space would be reduced by a thousandfold...this would literally open the gate to the final frontier."

It's called "art" today, but once upon a time, music was actually considered a branch of science and mathematics. However you look at it, music contains strong elements of art and physics. Scientists are using one of the scientific principles of music to advance the study of matter at the quantum level. However, don't plan on hearing this music anytime soon - its vibrations are way beyond the range of human hearing.

Alex Zettl, a physicist at UC Berkeley, has created what amounts to a nanoscale "guitar" with strings consisting of carbon nanotubes. The "strings," which are described as "tiny bridges," resonate at 1.3 gigahertz - 1.3 billion cycles per second. "Other groups have made resonators that were very small, and have gotten into the one gigahertz regime, but only at very low temperatures and pressures," Zettl said. "So getting these very high frequencies under room temperature and atmospheric pressure is a real breakthrough." The use of carbon for the "strings" allows them to be stiff, yet have a low mass - making them excellent high-frequency oscillators.

Because of their high sensitivity, these carbon nano-strings can be used to measure matter at the molecular level. Placing matter on these "strings" cause measurable slowing in their rate of vibration - much the same way as placing a finger on a guitar string changes its pitch. "Biological molecules, threat molecules – the sort of things airport screeners are interested in – have masses in this range. We’d like to push it to where you can measure individual atoms, but in everyday life the most interesting things are molecules," added Zettl.