Dreamy Science Experiments with Art

Since Aristotle first claimed that "a person awakes from sleep when digestion is complete", the act of shut eye has been a very misunderstood phenomenon. It took Sigmund Freud arching back to ancient Egyptian and Greek times who believed dreams could be interpreted to reveal hidden meaning to revolutionalise our thoughts on sleep.

However since the 1970s our old ideas have begun to crumble in the face of harder scientific theories. Thus the question begs, should we shed our earlier notions and put our trust in the new regime? Is hard science the only way forward? Does imagination, invention and art not get to play a role?

Somnolence Structures | Copyright Lisa Carrie Goldberg

Our Universe, The Elegant Fractal?

For as long as we’ve looked up into the sky and marvelled at the beauty and elegance of nature, there has been an unrelenting urge to understand its very essence.

The philosophical notion that natures secrets lay in the patterns of nature and numbers gained momentum in the early modern period as mathematics, science, art and religion grew strongly. The Golden ratio was highly recognised as a leading contender because of it's mystical like properties, it's abundance in nature and it's perceived mathematical beauty.

IBM Demonstrate New Nano Patterning Tool

Nanotechnology is perhaps THE cutting edge technology of the 21st century. However, production of nano particles of all types remain fairly expensive compared to more conventional ways of using the same materials.

However thanks to IBM researchers, the status quo could be about to change for the technique of nano patterning.

IBM scientists have developed a new technique that uses a nano scale tip, that when forced to a surface and heated sufficiently is able to carve away substrate material from the surface to create 2D and 3D patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometres at greatly reduced cost and complexity.

Click on the images bellow for a thorough explanation and access to higher resolution pictures.

Image courtesy of Advanced Materials