102330
submission
SeaDour writes:
This Saturday night, March 3rd, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from nearly all inhabited parts of the world. A great shadow will stretch across the surface of the moon, eventually casting it in an eerie red glow as sunlight filters through our atmosphere onto the lunar surface. Viewers in Europe and Africa will have the best vantage point, able to watch the entire eclipse in action, while observers in most of the western hemisphere can see it eclipsed as it rises just after sunset.
102282
story
sporkme writes
"A new nanocoating material developed by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the lowest level of reflectivity ever seen ... or not seen in this case. The amount of light reflected by the composite of silica nanorods and aluminum nitride is almost the same amount reflected by air. From the article: 'Schubert and his coworkers have created a material with a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported. Window glass, for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45. Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.' Suggested applications include increased efficiency in solar cells, more energy-efficient lighting and advances in quantum mechanics."
