This illustration shows the room temperature MEMS metamaterial, which can achieve reconfigurable infrared intensities equivalent to a temperature change of nearly 20 degrees Celsius. Credit: Xinyu Liu, Duke University

1st MEMS metamaterial device displays infrared patterns that can be quickly changed. A new reconfigurable device that emits patterns of thermal infrared light in a fully controllable manner could one day make it possible to collect waste heat at infrared wavelengths and turn it into usable energy. The new technology could be used to improve thermophotovoltaics, a solar cell that uses infrared light, or heat, rather than the visible light absorbed by traditional solar cells...

A lattice created by a multi-material 3-D printer at Georgia Institute of Technology that can permanently expand to eight times its original width after exposure to heat. Credit: Rob Felt

A team of researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and two other institutions has developed a new 3D printing method to create objects that can permanently transform into a range of different shapes in response to heat. The team, which included researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Xi’an Jiaotong University in China, created the objects by printing layers of shape memory polymers with each layer designed to respond differently when exposed to heat.

“This new approach significantly simplifies and increases the potential of 4D printing by incorporating the mec...

Artist concept of the planetary body 2014 UZ224, more informally known as DeeDee. ALMA was able to observe the faint millimeter-wavelength “glow” emitted by the object, confirming it is roughly 635 kilometers across. At this size, DeeDee should have enough mass to be spherical, the criteria necessary for astronomers to consider it a dwarf planet, though it has yet to receive that official designation. Credit: Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Using ALMA, astronomers have revealed extraordinary details about a recently discovered far-flung member of our solar system, the planetary body 2014 UZ224 aka DeeDee...

This is an artist’s impression of gas generation from the collision between objects in a debris disk. Credit: RIKEN

By examining the atomic carbon line from 2 young star systems – 49 Ceti and Beta Pictoris – researchers had found atomic carbon in the disk, the first time this observation has been made at sub-millimeter wavelength, hinting that the gas in debris disks is not primordial, but rather is generated from some process of collisions taking place in the debris disk. Many young stars, as well as more middle-aged stars like our sun, have “debris disks” – like the Oort Cloud in our own solar system – that are believed to be remnants of the system’s formation. Recently, radio observations have detected gas within a number of such discs, but it was not clear why the gas was there...