Successful Rock Tracking
For the first time, investigators tracked a small asteroid (a few meters in size) before it hit the earth. A telescope that is part of the Catalina Sky Survey, based near Tucson, Ariz., is part of an effort to locate near-earth objects that could pose a collision hazard. It picked up the body, dubbed 2008 TC3, on October 6. Researchers then correctly predicted that the space rock would enter the atmosphere at 12.8 kilometers per second over northern Sudan at 5:46 A.M. local time the next day, releasing approximately one kiloton of energy. Objects of this size strike the earth once every few months.
—Philip Yam

Note: This article was originally published with the title, "News Scan Briefs".

This article was originally published with the title Blocking Sound with Holes.

5 Comments

1. 1. mehrdad.fatemi 09:32 PM 12/14/08

   I think the concept of holes is already employed in vehicle engines to lower the level of noise (they use bubbles in the metal).

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2. 2. pfudd 12:30 AM 12/31/08

   Re: More Fluid Mileage
   
   Electric fields may reduce the viscosity of a liquid, but only in the presence of the electric field. I can't believe that SciAm fell for this scam.

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3. 3. pfudd 12:38 AM 12/31/08

   Re: More Fluid Mileage^2:
   In addition, Electrorehological Fluids as referenced in the article are fluids that have had dielectric particles added, and their viscosity *increases* when an electric field is applied, which would plug things up, not thin them out.

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4. 4. bdz 09:27 PM 1/9/09

   a full text article is available at the American Chemical society site
   http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ef8004898?cookieSet=1
   

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5. 5. Doubletide 08:36 PM 1/15/09

   Re: More fluid mileage
   This is a first class scam. However I am not sure whether Dr. Tao, a physics professor with no previous interest in internal combustion engines, had been taken advantage of by STWA people and got the "study" published in the well-known scholarly journal Energy and Fuels. But the story is not over yet. A university of Toronto combustion professor wrote a Comment on Tao's paper claiming that laws of thermodynamics are violated. See "Gulder "Comments on Electrorheology Leads Efficient Combustion by Tao et al." Energy and Fuel s, ASAP in press (doi:10.1021/ef800829v). Prof. Gulder's Comment can be accessed at http://arrow.utias.utoronto.ca/~ogulder/Z_Energy&Fuels2009comb_eff.pdf

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