How Crookes' Radiometer Works
	The Crookes radiometer is a light mill consisting of a set of fins placed on a spindle that rotates inside a partially vacuumed glass bulb when exposed to light. The rotation speed is directly related with the intensity of the electromagnetic radiation, while the rotation direction depends on the temperature of the environment in which the device is placed. The force responsible for the rotation of the spindle has been subject to debate fo ... [read more >>]
	19 July 2008, 07:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Ceramics Could Make Microwave Ovens Twice as Efficient
	Microwave ovens heat up food by generating an electromagnetic wave with an alternating electric component. As the wave interacts with molecules of water in the food, having a positive charge at one end and a negative one at the other, it forces them to rotate and align with the electric field. At the same time, other molecules in the vicinity of the rotating ones are forced to vibrate, thus heating the food rapidly. Currently ... [read more >>]
	17 July 2008, 06:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Massive, Rocky, Hot Planets Could also Support Life
	There is no reason why other rocky planets in the universe should not be able to support life, but a considerable amount of time will pass before a planet such as our own is found in the galaxy, mostly because of its relatively small size. So far, a couple of hundred of planets have been discovered by astronomers, orbiting around other stars, most of which are gas giants. Just recently, the latest technological advancements have enabled th ... [read more >>]
	12 July 2008, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Pangaea Fell Victim to Its Own 'Game'
	Nearly 300 million years ago, the world's last known supercontinent, Pangaea, started breaking up, eventually forming the seven continents we see today. Heat radiating from Earth’s molten iron and nickel core is released to the outermost layers of the mantle through convection, which can also be held responsible for the sluggish movement of the plate tectonics, driving into and away from each other only to form a new supercontinent ev ... [read more >>]
	07 July 2008, 05:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Microwave Ovens Work
	They entered our lives less than four decades ago. Today most people can't imagine life without microwave ovens due to their extremely high efficiency and ability to cook and heat up food in short amounts of time. You just put food in the oven, set up a timer and at the end of the cycle all you have to do is eat. It doesn't get any easier than that! As their name says, these ovens make use of microwaves to heat up fo ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2008, 09:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Motion Sensors Work
	There are two types of motion sensors currently commercially available, the active sensors and passive sensors. A motion sensor is classified as being active only when it emits some kind of energy into the surrounding medium to make an accurate reading, whether it is infrared light, microwave radiation or sound waves. Passive motion sensors do not emit energy, but can identify possible burglars by reading relative changes in the energy in ... [read more >>]
	07 May 2008, 06:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How We Fight Summer Heat
	The summer is coming and our thermo-regulation system will be once again pushed to the limits. Did you know that the human body is more resistant to cold than it is to heat? The fact is that we have physiological mechanisms more effective for combating the cold than the heat. Temperature is a parameter characterizing the heating stage of a physical system while heat represents the energy transferred from one body to another via a therm ... [read more >>]
	06 May 2008, 09:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Birds, Dinosaurs and Brown Fat
	The ordinary lard is more than familiar to most of us. However, mammals also have a different fatty tissue called brown fat, involved in generating heat. A new study made at New York Medical College and published in the journal BMC Biology has discovered why birds lack this tissue. In the end, birds are actually living dinosaurs, and the lack of heat-generating brown tissue may have been one of the factors that led to the extinct ... [read more >>]
	24 April 2008, 02:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Sugar Cube-sized Cooler May Dissipate Heat in an Instant
	If you know how the cooling cycle of a typical refrigeration system works, then you probably already know what a Stirling machine, or a Stirling cooler, is. University of Twente has just developed a miniature Stirling cooler, roughly three times the size of a sugar cube, able to cool micro-electronics to temperatures up to 80 Kelvin in the smallest amount of time possible in relation to other cooling solutions currently available. For ... [read more >>]
	16 April 2008, 08:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Electronics Work Better When Cooled
	It is well known that electronic devices work better when subjected to low temperatures. The reason is very simple. The electrical resistance of materials is in direct relation with temperature. Higher temperature means higher electrical resistance and ultimately higher power loss. With enhanced temperature, thermal noise is also increased, not to mention lower speed and reliability. Long story short, electronics don't like heat! ... [read more >>]
	01 April 2008, 08:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Saturn's Relentless Storm
	Back here on Earth, we may experience some dangerous storms from time to time; however, they are nothing compared to the storms taking place on gas giants such as Saturn or Jupiter. These storms apparently never stop and are so big that the whole Earth would fit inside of them. Saturn's storm, for example, has a cyclone-like eye about 4,200 kilometers in diameter, with walls towering up to 70 kilometers above the surroundin ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 04:10GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Meet the Fire God: He Cooks With His Hands
	I tell you, Chinese men are precious. They wont's leave you starving even when a kitchen is not nearby. "The power of mind" can have a very realistic meaning in the case of He Tieheng, a mystic Chinese who does not need to keep a cooking machine in the house. That's because the cooking machine is himself: he can cook food only using his mind power. The auto-denominated Fire God explains his unusual deeds thro ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What is the Heat?
	Temperature can have an unlimited increase but it cannot drop below -273.15o C (0 absolute). Every minute, each square cm of the Earth's surface receives about 2 calories from the Sun. The human body too produces heat, following the burning of organic chemicals. In 1620, Francis Bacon stated that movement is the origin of the heat. One century later, Ludwig Boltzmann discovered that heat is the effect of the movement of ... [read more >>]
	14 February 2008, 08:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Heat Threatens with Nuclear Power Plant Shutdown!
	Severe drought raging across the southeast regions of the United States will probably determine a temporary reduction in electric power production capabilities of most of the nuclear plants, or even shutdowns, until the water levels in the rivers that supply the lakes near the power plants rise again to their normal debits. Water masses represent a critical component in the correct operation of a nuclear power plant, that's why all of ... [read more >>]
	24 January 2008, 09:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Jupiter's Wild Weather Powered by Heat, Scientists Say
	In March 2007 Jupiter spawned a new gigantic atmospheric storm measuring an area of the size of two Earth continents. However, the thick Jovian atmosphere makes the observation of processes which take place inside it very difficult, disabling a good understanding of meteorological phenomenons which trigger these storms. A team of astronomers form Universidad del País Vasco led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega found that, in fact, Jupit ... [read more >>]
	24 January 2008, 03:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

4 Facts About Geysers
	Islanders blamed them on the witchcraft, the Inca on the spirits of the ancestors. Geysers are a type of hot spring that erupt periodically, ejecting a column of hot water and steams into the air. Their emergence needs a combination of factors (water, heat and fortuitous plumbing) that exists in only a few places on Earth, and so they are fairly rare phenomena. Moreover, they are instable and short-lived. There are about 1,000 wo ... [read more >>]
	09 January 2008, 08:14GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Plate Tectonics May Stop Moving for a Brief Period of Time
	This may seem good news for people living in areas with increased seismic activity; however, it is anything but good. A new study involving the Earth past geological activity suggests that the plate tectonics could have come to a complete halt somewhere about 30 to 50 million years ago, and may do so in a distant future. Plate tectonics are driven by the heat convection process, which takes place in the inner regions of our planet. The ... [read more >>]
	07 January 2008, 06:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Thermoelectric Materials Promise Higher Energy Efficiency
	Professor Mildred S. Dresselhaus from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has brought back to life the old idea of designing materials that could be used for controlling temperatures, with extremely efficient electronic devices similar to the photovoltaic cells and electronic devices. The material works in efficient ways, heating up or cooling only the necessary area, without producing excess heat or cold which would be wasted, thus ... [read more >>]
	21 November 2007, 07:17GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Is This the Solar House of the Future?
	The electricity bill gives you a headache every time. What if it could simply disappear? After all, the Sun offers its energy for free and we use it all the time. The solution could be the solar houses, that heat water, dry laundry and power an electric car for free, with the help of sunlight. MIT students have created an entirely solar-powered house, called the Solar7, for the Department of Energy's annual Solar Decathl ... [read more >>]
	18 October 2007, 05:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Dark Spots on Saturn Moon, Caused by Sun
	The mystery of the space Dalmatian has been solved. The mysterious dark spots on Saturn's moon Iapetus are caused by the Sun. New images delivered by the Cassini spacecraft show the stains are located mainly on the sunward-facing slopes of craters and mountains, pointing to a runaway energy splotching areas of the moon. The 1470-km (918 mi)-wide Iapetus has a black face and a bright back. The dark, organic-rich material o ... [read more >>]
	09 October 2007, 04:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Heat Powered Electronics
	A research team from the German Fraunhofer Institute developed an electronic system that is capable of working with no apparent power source apart from the energy generated by the human body. This kind of power generating system could have a lot of applications in the mobile computing industry alone, where battery life is often the greatest impediment. What the German research team done is to create a thermoelectric generator ... [read more >>]
	20 August 2007, 11:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Ward Off Rattlesnakes: The Heat Signaling
	Like any reptile, a snake loves the heat. But not in the case of the rattlesnake, when confronted by California ground squirrels. A team at the University of California, Davis found that these rodents warm up their tails to ward off rattlesnakes. And when facing a squirrel waving a "hot" tail over its head, northern Pacific rattlesnakes will cede and retreat. The squirrel's tail, heated or not, does not represent a m ... [read more >>]
	14 August 2007, 04:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

10 Reasons to Drink Water
	Two thirds of the adult body are formed by water. A 68 kg person has about 38 liters of water in the body. 23-26 % is found inside the cells, 7,5 % in the space between the cells and less than 4 liters in the blood. This volume must be constantly maintained. How? Drinking daily two liters of water: the body adsorbs it through the digestive system and expels it through urine. Do not worry if you drink more than that: it will only cause ... [read more >>]
	25 June 2007, 15:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Researchers Create Building Materials Made of Mushrooms
	Mushrooms, the fleshy spore-bearing fruiting bodies of fungi typically produced above ground on soil or on their food sources, are good on pizza and even for getting high. Indoor, the ones growing on the walls are considered harmful and inaesthetic and make a bad impression on visitors. Not anymore. A group of young researchers developed a new technique that uses ordinary mushrooms as thermal insulators for walls. Sustainabl ... [read more >>]
	25 June 2007, 05:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Does Our Body Weight Change in Summer?
	We tend to believe that bodyweight variations are strictly linked to the changes in fatty body mass. Still, they can be also the result of acute changes in total body water. Body weight changes triggered by climate usually take the form of weight gain rather than weight loss, especially when the body acclimates to intense activity in heat conditions. Water makes about 60 % of the human body (for a 70 kg men, this means 42 ... [read more >>]
	12 June 2007, 15:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Heat + Sound = Electrifying Love
	That's exactly what a team of scientists observed in an experiment and then transformed into a practical device. The gadget can turn heat into sound and then into electricity and is very promising as an effective method of transforming waste heat into electricity, harnessing solar energy and cooling computers and radars. Orest Symko is an University of Utah physics professor who leads the team, and he said they are planning to tes ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2007, 03:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How to Make Water from Thin Air
	Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are affected by drought, and there are places in the world where it hasn't rained for more than five hundred years. Recurring droughts in Africa have created severe ecological catastrophes, prompting massive food shortages. Two Israeli architects pursuing PhDs at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have designed a low-tech device to collect dew from the air and turn it into fresh wa ... [read more >>]
	02 June 2007, 04:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Gene of Cold Resistance
	It would be nice to see all the mosquitoes and nasty insects dead with the first cold wave, and maybe see them no more the next spring. But it doesn’t work like that: even if we do not see them during the winter, they posses a number of specialized proteins, "heat-shock proteins", that enable them to pass through the chilly months. A research made on flesh flies and other insects reveals that theirs protective heat-shock p ... [read more >>]
	31 May 2007, 04:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Inverse Woodpile Structure Made of Photonic Crystals
	A team of researchers have created a structure made of germanium, a material with a higher refractive index than silicon that looks like an inverse woodpile structure, with excellent optical properties due to its extremely large photonic band gap. What is an inverse woodpile structure? Exactly what the name suggests, only it's not made of wood. Just like firewood stacked together in a fire, the pieces are placed close to each othe ... [read more >>]
	22 May 2007, 03:40GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hot Sex Means No Sex at All
	Hot sex means better sex, right? But for some, hotter could result in no reproduction at all... An overheated pea aphid won't be able to reproduce. In fact, it's not the insect, but its bacterial symbiont that fails. And all is on a single gene. "It's the first time a mutation in a symbiont has been shown to have a huge impact on host ecology," said Nancy A. Moran, Regents' Professor of ecolo ... [read more >>]
	20 April 2007, 08:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

NASCAR Heat 2002 Cheats (Xbox)
	Fans of NASCAR Winston Cup stock car racing can now experience the revolutionary racing modes of NASCAR Heat. Pick your favorite drivers and race on you favorite tracks in Single Race or Championship Season. In Beat the Heat challenges, players can take on all-new racing scenarios that ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2007, 02:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Boiling Ice
	Ice is odd due to the strange behavior of the water. Most compounds in nature shrink when they get cold, and so they display a smaller volume in solid state than as liquids. But regular ice takes up more space than water because water has its minimum volume at 4°C and below or over this temperature its volume expands. If you put a full water bottle to freeze overnight, the next day it will be broken apart by the ice which ... [read more >>]
	16 March 2007, 03:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia