KentuckyFC writes “Liquid mirror telescopes begin life as a puddle of mercury in a bowl. Set the bowl spinning and the mercury spreads out in a thin film giving the surface an almost perfect mirror finish. But these telescopes have two important limitations. First, they have the ability to only point straight up since tilting the mirror spills the mercury. And second, they cannot be made adaptive to correct for any blurring introduced by the Earth’s atmosphere. But liquid mirror telescopes look set for an upgrade thanks to the work of a group of Canadian researchers. Their technique is to change the shape of the liquid mirror using powerful electromagnets. They use a ferromagnetic fluid of iron nanoparticles in oil instead of mercury which is too dense to be easily manipulated in this way. The work is just proof of principle at this stage but the idea is to use magnets to correct for the usual range of optical aberrations that telescopes have to deal with (abstract). And also to allow a liquid telescope to be tilted by using oil that is much more viscous than mercury and correcting any periodic deformation in the fluid that tilting might cause.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TheStreet.com’s Jim Cramer states if we get fed support for a housing bottom, we have the ability to really turn things around.
U.S. stock futures edged higher Thursday morning, a day after market staged a big rally. Investors this morning are bracing for some housing data, but more importantly, a wave of earnings. Already better-than-expected earnings from J.P. Morgan Chase boosted stock index futures from earlier declines this morning.
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