This animation shows molecular building blocks joining the tip of a growing nanowire. Each block consists of a diamondoid — the smallest possible bit of diamond — attached to sulfur and copper atoms (yellow and brown spheres). Like LEGO blocks, they only fit together in certain ways that are determined by their size and shape. The copper and sulfur atoms form a conductive wire in the middle, and the diamondoids form an insulating outer shell. Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

LEGO-style building method has potential for making 1-dimensional materials with extraordinary properties...

Yue Cao et al. A Transparent, Self-Healing, Highly Stretchable Ionic Conductor, Advanced Materials (2016). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201605099

Scientists, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have developed a transparent, self-healing, highly stretchable conductive material that can be electrically activated to power artificial muscles and could be used to improve batteries, electronic devices, and robots. The findings represent the first time scientists have created an ionic conductor, meaning materials that ions can flow through, that is transparent, mechanically stretchable, and self-healing.

The material has potential applications in a wide range of fields...

ESO/M. Kornmesser METI aims to send messages to the potentially Earth-like exoplanet Proxima b, as imagined by an artist. Here it is orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.

After decades of fruitless scanning the skies for alien messages, scientists say it’s time to try a basic rule of etiquette: Say “hello” first. A new San Francisco-based organization, METI, or Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, plans to send signals to distant planets, rather than waiting for them to call Earth. By the end of 2018, the project aims to send some conversation-starters via radio or laser signals to a rocky planet circling Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than the sun, and then to more distant destinations, hundreds or thousands of light years away.

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L. Townsley et al; Optical: UKIRT; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Although there are no seasons in space, this cosmic vista invokes thoughts of a frosty winter landscape. It is, in fact, a region called NGC 6357 where radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the cooler gas in the cloud that surrounds them.This composite image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue) made by the UK Infrared Telescope.

Located in our galaxy about 5,500 light years from Earth, NGC 6357 is actually a “cluster of clusters,” containing at least 3 clusters of young stars, including many hot, massive, luminous stars...