Even when the backpack and film are glued to their backs, the bugs can traverse small obstacles or right themselves when flipped over....
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
If an earthquake strikes in the not-too-distant future and survivors are trapped under tonnes of rubble, the first responders to locate them could be a swarm of cockroaches with backpacks.
That’s a potential application of a recent breakthrough by Japanese researchers who have discovered a way to mount solar electronic batteries on the bugs and direct their movements via remote control. This could be used for searching for survivors in places where disasters have occurred.
The research team chose Madagascar hissing cockroaches for the experiments because they are big enough to carry the equipment and have no wings that would get in the way. Even when the backpack and film are glued to their backs, the bugs can traverse small obstacles or right themselves when flipped over.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected a new, wondrous sight — a cosmic fingerprint radiating out from a point of contact between two distant stars.
An image released by NASA on Tuesday showed what appears to be concentric rings radiating out from a point of contact between a pair of gigantic stars called the Wolf-Rayet 140, located around 5,000 light-years from Earth. This pair consists of a Wolf-Rayet star ten times bigger than the sun, and a companion supergiant star that is 30 times bigger than the sun.
According to NASA’s description of the photograph, the rings are produced whenever the two stars come close to each other in their orbit, which happens once every eight years. The stellar winds — or gas streams — from the stars are compressed, and turn into dust, creating rings.
