SOLDERING WITH NANOTUBES
A carbon nanotube has been turned into a tiny soldering iron for the first time, potentially giving researchers a new way to assemble the parts of nanomachines. Alex Zettl at the University of California in Berkeley sprayed carbon nanotubes with indium metal gas, which formed 10-nanometre-wide solid bumps along the nanotube’s surface. Applying a current to the tube heated the carbon and melted the indium bumps, forming droplets that scurried along the nanotube’s surface and collected as a molten blob at one end. Zettl predicts it might be possible to wick them off and use them to solder nanomachine parts together (Nature, vol 428, p 924).
A BIGGER SLICE OF THE SKY
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The Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico can now scan distant galaxies for black holes or alien transmissions at seven times the previous rate. Six new receivers and an ultrasensitive cryogenically cooled radio amplifier were installed on the giant telescope last week.
The 305-metre radio dish gathers signals from outer space and analyses them for fluctuations that could be signals from extraterrestrials or the movements of unknown stars and black holes. But until now the telescope could only scan tiny sections of space at a time because it had just one receiver at the dish’s focal point. The upgrade will increase the slice of sky the telescope can scan at any one time, from an area approximately 1 per cent of the size of the full moon, to 7 per cent.
TV THAT’S TOTALLY IN SYNC
Watching television when the dialogue is out of sync with the picture is infuriating. But cheap, simple microchips installed in future digital sets could let you correct the problem with your remote control.
Bad lip-sync is becoming more common as home entertainment centres boast ever more complicated image-processors that artificially double the number of lines in the picture, or reduce noise. These can set up delays that leave the pictures lagging behind the sound.
Now Micronas of Freiburg, Germany has an easy answer. Feeding the audio signal through a $5 set of microchips with on-board memory can delay the sound by 40 or 80 milliseconds. Stringing two chipsets together doubles the delay available. So anyone with a Micronas-equipped TV set will be able to simply ratchet up the delay until their sound and picture just about match.
