Hypersonic Speed refers to speeds of Mach 5 and above. Mach speed refers to the speed of sound. Thus when you talk about a craft travelling at hypersonic speed, it’s likely to be travelling at least five times the speed of sound. Needless to say the craft would have to be able to withstand a great deal of pressure.

Finding a material that would survive regular hypersonic speed travel is the first challenge that scientists face. So far carbon nano tubes have been used in planes for their strength and ability to withstand heat. They have proved stronger than steel, however scientists at the Binghamton University say that boron nitride nano tubes are the construction material of the future.

Boron nitride nano tubes or BNNTs are currently being manufactured solely by NASA. They are lightweight and able to withstand great pressure. While carbon nano tubes stay stable at temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius, BNNTs stay stable till 900 degrees Celsius.

Unfortunately the production of BNNTs costs $1,000 per gram. This makes it a very expensive proposition for using in construction of a aircraft. While science experiments with the material will continue to see if hypersonic speeds can be reached in a craft made out of this material, it’s prohibitive price will not translate easily to commercial application. We may still be waiting a while to experience commercial hypersonic speed travel.

A good body massage can help the blood circulation going, relieve pain and fill you up with energy to face the day. For those suffering from pain in the back or in the knee joints, gentle massage can be a better way to deal with the pain than consuming pain killers every day. Considering all the benefits of a good massage, a startup in Singapore has come out with a robot masseur.

Known as EMMA, which is short for Expert Manipulative Massage Automation, the robot acts like the human palm and thumb while giving a massage. The robotic masseur uses advance sensors to measure tendon and muscle stiffness. Then it calculates the best possible massage technique which would benefit the patient. The Artificial Intelligence is cloud based and has the ability to track the patient’s progress over multiple treatments.

The most remarkable achievement of this science project is that EMMA has now been pressed into public service at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in Singapore. This is a first for any robot masseur. It’s human counterparts include a physician and a massage therapist. If the robotic massage expert gains popularity it will help with low cost health care options. While it’s early days yet, one doesn’t know what will happen in the future.

The digital world is at our finger tips thanks to the smartphone. This allows us access to a host of information at anytime. However It is also extremely addictive. We are now “plugged in” to some device or the other almost all the time. The extent to which this is true becomes more obvious when we consider the denim jacket a popular fashion brand is releasing this season.

The Levi Strauss denim company has collaborated with Google to offer touch controls woven into the very fabric of the denim jacket. Made of a special Jacquard fabric, the jacket can sync with smartphones wirelessly. It allows the user access to a limited set of commands using a swipe or tap action. Cyclists wearing the jacket can turn music on or off, get directions and read text messages with a simple hand gesture.

Without looking away from the road, the cyclist can access basic functions on the smartphone. This is one science project that has come up with a user product which is likely to be very popular with those on the go, wanting to stay connected. Needless to say the denim jacket expects to sell very well as far as Levi Strauss is concerned.

Devising safe passwords which can not be hacked is a robust industry. There have been all kinds of encryption devices that have come into play to protect the password of a person. Biometrics have been some of the more promising passwords. The retina scan, the fingerprint and now apparently the shape of your heart.

At the University of Buffalo researchers have come up with a low level Doppler radar that measures your heart, which unlocks your computer operating system. What’s more the radar will continue to monitor your heart so that no one else can step in and run your computer once the system has been unlocked.

Assistant Professor Wenyao Xu assures users that the strength of the radar is less than the WiFi waves and does not pose a health risk to the user. The reader is about five milliwatts which is less than 1% of the radiation that a user of a smartphone is exposed to. So constant use is not going to affect the individual’s health.

The science project is one that will ensure privacy for a person’s computer. Considering that no one but the owner is able to use the system, this could be one of the most unique ways of ensuring security for personal documents.

Your emotions are closely linked with your moods. Suppose your clothes were able to reflect your mood, it would make social interactions a lot easier. Anouk Wipprecht is a Dutch designer who has come up with the ultimate fashion statement. Clothes that can beam your feelings for the world to see.

Her clothes combine digital technology with haute couture. In essence the built in sensors of the clothing is able to track and blink in time with the heartbeat of the person wearing it. Quite literally showcasing your heartbeat and it’s underlying emotion. It’s like a fashion accessory with a medical attachment.

If you get angry and your heart races, you can’t maintain the cool facade with your clothes blinking rapidly. If you have a crush on someone, and they come close to talk with you, your hastened heartbeat will reflect in the blinking of your clothing. Think of all the situations and moods that can get your heart racing, now imagine everyone seeing your heart racing thanks to your clothes.

Anouk wants the clothes to do away with our deepest deceptions. She wants us to interact as honestly as possible. Her designs were shown in the sidelines of the Milan Fashion Week. While this science project has amazingly combined a body function with stylish clothing, it’s not clear how many people would be comfortable broadcasting their mood through their clothing.

There’s a lot of interesting things to see in outer space and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope continues to bring these to our attention. Not all of them are very far away. A group of German scientists have recently studied an interesting phenomena in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System.

In September 2016 the asteroid 288P came close enough to the planet Earth for a detailed look at it’s physical features. What the astronomers saw was astonishing because it wasn’t just one asteroid, but a binary pair. The two asteroids seem to be of the same mass and size. They are orbiting each other at a distance of about 100 kilometres.

That’s not all that was special about the situation. Apparently the binary asteroid system exhibited comet-like features, including a bright coma and a long tail. This helped them classify 288P as the first known binary asteroid which is also considered a main-belt comet.

The study of main belt comets offers a great deal of knowledge about how the Solar System initially evolved. In fact it is believed that water reached the planet Earth via main belt comets. This scientific study of the binary asteroids will help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of the whole Solar System.