New heat resistant material breakthrough gives hypersonic flight a boost
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Materials that don’t react to heat, or cold could make structures safer and solve one of the aerospace industry’s most troublesome issues. Researchers at the University of Southern California have been trying to make a material that doesn’t respond to heat, and it seems...
Physicists just turned a non superconductive material into a superconductor
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Superconductors that could operate at room temperature would transform the healthcare, energy, technology and transportation industries. For the first time, researchers have achieved superconductivity – the phenomenon of electrical conductivity with zero resistance – in a material that’s not a superconductor. The new technique...
Wiivv paves the way for perfect fitting, 3D printed apparel
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The technology to create personalised, perfectly fitting clothing, or orthopedics, exists and it provides retailers and manufacturers with new market opportunities but the customer experience has to be as frictionless as possible. The proliferation of 3D printing has made it possible to manufacture almost...
Britain’s Royal Mint unveils the most secure coin in the world
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Royal Mint calls its new £1 coin a “pioneering” design and says that it will be much harder to counterfeit. Having a currency that is hard to counterfeit is not only a matter of national security but it also helps to build confidence...
Scientists can now see molecules and objects clearer than ever before
Discovery paves the way for new breakthroughs in materials, molecular science, semiconductors and much more A team of scientists from Complutense University have managed to bypass a theoretical limit on optical resolution, allowing them to see more sharply than ever before. Their results are published in a paper in the journal...
Fabric circuits open a door to smarter clothes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A new development in material science opens the door for the development of more advanced Smart Clothing. Many of today’s smart clothes, such as those from Adidas, Athos, Nike, Ralf Lauren and Under Armour rely on sensors, such as EMG sensors, woven into the fabric...
Inside Ginkgo, the gene factory where robots help make new weird synthetic organisms
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Creating new lifeforms sounds like fun and they taste great too. Raising glasses of genetically modified beer, the synthetic biologists at Ginkgo Bioworks celebrated the launch of their new automated lab last month and you can take a virtual tour of their facility here. By...
Scientists create breakthrough everything-phobic nanomaterial
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Sadly ANU’s new everything-phobic spray won’t keep children clean but everything else is game. If you have not been able to bag an iPhone 7 or are still looking jealously at your friend’s dunk proof Galaxy, do not worry as scientists have created a...
New programmable material breakthrough lets plastic flowers bloom
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Who needs to buy real flowers any longer when plastic ones are good enough? Tick tock. Shape-shifting objects can now have their own version of a biological clock, thanks to a new material that transforms at a given time. Morphing materials are interesting because...
Feeding the world with lab grown foods gets closer
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF This could cause a conundrum – is lab made meat considered vegan? From an environmental and humanitarian point of view it’s easy to argue the case for lab produced food. In order to feed the same global population lab grown foods would consume 55% less energy to...
World records set to tumble on Rio 2016’s nano-tech track
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The Rio 2016 running track is the fastest ever and records will fall. Love the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. The running track of the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro passed inspection...
Nanotech helps scientists create high definition colour holograms
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Scientists for the first time have created a technology that can display true, high resolution colour holograms but Hollywood holograms are still a way off. By carefully arranging nanoblocks to display pixels on a metasurface, researchers have demonstrated that they can manipulate incoming visible light...
Scientists travel to the edge of space to 3D print a heart
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 3D bioprinting has long held the promise of ending organ donation lists, now there’s an end in sight. A team of scientists working for the NASA and SpaceX contractor Techshot have become the first people in history to successfully 3D print a heart structure in zero gravity using human...
Gourmet 3D printed food restaurant pops up in London
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Move over Heston Blumenthal there’s a new printer in town. Later this month, a 3D Printing pop up restaurant, called “Food Ink”, will open in London and settings start at £250 per head. The restaurant promises to offer a completely different dining experience,...
Nano watermarks sort the fakes from the originals
New nanotechnology aims to put a dent in the $745 billion counterfeit goods market Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a technique for embedding nanoscale photonic crystals into the glass face of a watch so that when it is exposed to UV light, the design...
New vertical farm in New Jersey revolutionises farming
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Pesticide free farming that yields 75 times more produce that a traditional farm, is this the future of farming? A 21,000 square metre vertical farm, capable of growing a million kilograms of pesticide free produce a year will open in Newark, New Jersey later...
New metamaterial lays the foundation for light based computing
A new on chip metamaterial paves the way for than today’s platforms For the first time, physicists have designed an on-chip ‘metamaterial’ – a class of materials that display properties not found in nature – with a refractive index of zero, paving the way for light-based computers to transmit information at infinitely...
BAE’s trials a molecular assembler that one day will grow drones in the field
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Growing your own products just became a thing. If you needed to be convinced just how fast technology is progressing then think of this. For Millennia humans have assembled individual, pre crafted components together to make products of every shape and form. In 1986...
Nature, the world’s new factory
Nature has always been more efficient at making products than Man but now we’re harnessing it for our own ends Most people would agree we still have much to learn from nature. Nature is vastly more efficient at recycling and reusing matter than humans have been. The whole field and...
Self assembling space stations and the end of flat pack
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF 4D Printing could change how we construct buildings and maintain city infrastructure. Many are only just getting their heads around the idea of 3D printing but scientists at MIT are already working on an upgrade – 4D printing. At the TED conference in Los Angeles,...
