The Download: gene de-extinction, and Ukraine’s Starlink connection
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Summary
The University of California, Berkeley has developed a way to 3D-print beams of light which could revolutionise displays, making them thinner and cheaper.
Arrays of tiny waveguides are each printed with a specific diameter, allowing different colours to be combined to create any colour in the visible spectrum.
The team used phase-shifting algorithms to calculate how light waves interact with each other, allowing them to be combined.
Current technologies rely on expensive, tiny lasers which are compiled to create light beams, but this new innovation could create a single, standard beam of light.
Engineers at the University of Washington have created a new breed of “liquid metal” that may finally make it possible to create a seamless, stretchable circuit board thats faster, cheaper, and more efficient than those currently used in electronics.
The new material retains its conductive properties after being stretched to more than three times its original length.
Futuristic ideas - like interactive tattoos and wearables that create electricity as you move - could become a reality with the material.