Did you ever see two sets of dots, one white in color and the other black placed near each other? Despite the fact that the dots are exactly the same size the white dots will appear larger to the human eye than the black ones. This is known as the Galileo’s illusion. It is credited to Galileo Galilei, the famous Italian scientist.

Galileo was puzzled by the appearance of the planets and how they seemed different when seen by the naked eye and through the telescope. He knew that the illusion was caused by his eyes but he was unable to explain why it happened. Galileo assumed that the illusion was caused by blur or similar optical effects.

Scientists at the State University of New York College of Optometry finally solved the puzzle of the illusion. This is what their study revealed.  The neuroscientists discovered that dark stimuli resulted in a faithful neural response, light stimuli resulted in non-linear and exaggerated response that make the stimulus look larger.

That is why the black dots seem to be the same size that they actually are while white dots appear larger. This visual illusion occurs because the way our eyes see lightness and darkness in the world is different. Interesting outcome of a long standing science project mystery!

Recurring Slope Lineae are dark flow like features spotted on the surface of the planet Mars in the summer season. The RSL flows are seen to grow during the time period when temperatures rise enough for the salty ice present on the planet to melt. They are also known to disappear in the winter season.

The presence of RSL features on Mars have been seen as indication of water streaks in the planet which sets up the debate for presence of water. The Georgia Institute of Technology has been studying minerals that RSL might leave in their wake so as to determine if there really is any water involved.

After studying 13 RSL sites, out of the 200 that are currently available, using Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars or CRISM the scholars have not yet been able to find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. What they did find instead was signatures of ferric and ferrous minerals at most of the sites.

As per them there is no smoking gun to indicate water even though the flow like features appear to be formed by apparent movement of a fluid that we would like to believe is akin to water. Water or no water, the RSL and Mars as a whole will continue to be the center of many more science experiments and studies in the years to come.

The Hubble Space telescope sent in an interesting photograph to NASA scientists recently. It showed the birth of a young star in a Chameleon cloud. The star is seen in the image throwing off narrow streams of gas from its poles at high speed. This creates a collision with the slower moving gases that surround it.

As a result of the two gas streams colliding the area around the young star is lit up. The birthing of a young star sees it gobble up the resources close to it to form the core that is massive enough to trigger nuclear fission. The process is being demonstrated beautifully in the case of this young celestial body which has been dubbed HH 909A.

A star begins to throw out material in violent bursts just before the fission process begins. It is at this stage that the new star currently is being photographed. The resulting narrow, patchy regions of faintly glowing nebulosity are known as Herbig-Haro objects. They do not last long and are thought of in terms of a blink of the eye in astronomical timescales.

No matter how long the young unruly star throws a tantrum, the scientists who are studying it will have no reason to complain. This is one science project where the scientists will be waiting to watch the next action of the star baby eagerly.

Astronomers had found a planet similar to Earth in a solar system that is approximately 200 light years away. The planet had been revealed when the data from NASA”s Kepler spacecraft was analyzed. The initial similarities had made the researchers dub it Earth’s Gassy Twin, but subsequent findings have suggested that there are more than a few differences between this pair of planets.

The mass of the planet called KOI-314c is like that of Earth but it is about 60% larger in diameter as it has a very thick gaseous atmosphere. From observations made and conclusions drawn the astronomers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have suggested that the planet is merely 30% denser than water.

Traditionally astronomers measure the weight or mass of a heavenly body in a solar system by the tiny wobbles of the parent star induced by the planet’s gravity. However the astronomers who weighed KOI-314c used a different method called the transit timing variations or TTV.

This method is dependent on more than one planet orbiting the same star to be effective. TTV was used because the traditional method is very difficult to use to determine the mass of a planet the size of the Earth. The main finding of this science project just emphasized the fact that even twins can be very different.

The smart phone touch screen has changed the way we interact with a mobile. It is perhaps the personal organization tool which has become more valuable to the user than any previous generation’s communication method. It goes with you everywhere and does just about anything that you ask it to.

It also does one thing that you don’t ask it to. It picks up bacteria and fungi and can transfer them to you causing you to become ill. However glass manufacturing giant Corning has come up with a solution to this problem. Corning has designed what it claims yo be the world’s first antimicrobial touch screen glass.

As per the company Corning’s Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass inhibits the growth of algae, mold, mildew, fungi and bacteria. It is formulated with ionic silver. The antimicrobial property of the glass is intrinsic and effective for the lifetime of the device. The glass can be used in all kinds of electronic devices such as computers, mobiles, tablets, laptops, calculators, and other gadgets that use electronic display panels.

This is one science project that will come in handy to all those users of electronic gadgets who never realized that they could be picking up a microbial infection from their commonly used gadgets.

If you are a fan of the Star Wars series you would be familiar with the hologram of Princess Leia that appealed for help. The one which spurned Luke Skywalker into finding person she was looking for to get her help. Guess what? A company called Leia Display is now pioneering the technology which could make it possible for you to use such holograms on your smart phone.

To create the hologram the caller needs to sit before a special camera with two lenses that can create the single blended image that appears to be 3D in nature. The image from the camera is fed into a hologram machine which then beams it on to a , hold your breath, water vapor screen. That’s not all, using a microphone it is possible for the hologram person image to move and speak in real time.

Love the concept and want one for yourself? Its going to be a while before you can lay your hands on this hologram spewing phone. The company hopes to have a working model of the technology by next year and will eventually move into production about five years from now.

Marcin Panek, the chief executive of Leia Display says that the idea is to pioneer the technology that was imagined in the movie 40 years ago. Marcin hopes that once it is perfected it will be as if loved ones, friends and family are standing right in front of you. I know a number of parents and grandparents who would love to use the end product of this science project.

When you think of something as sturdy has a jet plane you imagine it being constructed in a factory. However the Royal Air Force has now got a Tornado fighter jet plane that has parts printed out using a 3D printer. The test flight of the fighter jet fitted with these parts was successful as per the British company BAE systems from the air force base at Warton in Lancashire this month.

The new technology which allows them to print out the parts will make it easier for the technicians to maintain the plane and substantially reduce the cost of the production of this fighter jet. The RAF stands to gain  over one million pounds in savings thanks to this new technology over the next four years. Some parts of the plane will now cost less than a hundred pounds to produce.

While a relatively new concept 3D printing is already a well established industrial technology. It has been utilized to make prototypes of a number of products in many different industries across the world. Now it is changing the shape of the components industry by making it possible to print parts cheaper than it is to manufacture them in factories.

Britain’s education secretary Michael Gove said that the technology would soon be taught in state schools. This will help the school students learn valuable skills. It sure will be a science project that many of them will enjoy playing around with.

How would you know if there were actual time travelers from the future amongst us? This was what Astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff, a professor at Michigan Technological University and his students wanted to find out. The most obvious place to find them would be on the internet.

Here is how Nemiroff and his students decided to trace time travelers online. They decided that the internet was the logical place to hunt for them. A time traveler would have knowledge of things from the future and may mention them online before the event transpired. To test this hypothesis they considered two events that gained major internet exposure – Pope Francis and Comet ISON.

Then they set up a search for references to these two before the events came to be. After extensive scanning they found no references to the comet before September 2012 when it suddenly hit the scene. There was just one reference to a Pope Francis before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected head of the Catholic Church on March 16. That too seemed more accidental that prescient.

After the study they concluded that currently there are no time travelers hiding out amongst us. Although I am sure that even if they were, they would not make such elemental slips that would get them caught! Still it was an interesting science project to indulge in even it was quite whimsical.

Think of Google and you will usually think of a search engine, or an online giant. You can be excused for not thinking of the moon. However the Lunar X prize offered by the internet giant has inspired more private moon landing plans than ever before in the history of mankind’s space exploration.

The expenses associated with space exploration combined with close to no returns on investment had made it absolutely unprofitable for private enterprises to get involved in moon’s exploration. Google changes that scenario when it offered a$30 million prize for landing a robotic vehicle on the moon.

No sooner than the prize was announced a number of private concerns began the race to reach the moon to win the grand prize. many of them can be found online in various degrees of research. One of the more serious contenders is Moon Express. Their coffee table-sized spacecraft, will be totally solar-powered and will use hydrogen peroxide-based fuel to lower costs.

Introduced on  Thursday at Autodesk University in Las Vegas, by CEO Bob Richards, Moon Express wants to send this robotic spacecraft to the moon in 2015. Let’s see if they win the race. Giving science a boost is what this science project initiated by Google is what its all about.

A number of nations have been launching satellites into the geosynchronous orbit above the Earth. This has increased the possibility of a couple of them colliding in space. To ensure that this catastrophe does not occur the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA has come up with a solution.

They have developed a Space Surveillance Telescope that watches out for the satellites floating 22,000 miles above the surface of the planet in their orbits. The SST  has the job of discovering, identifying, and tracking orbiting objects in space. It is also going to keep an eye open for objects coming in from outer space.

After having being tested on a New Mexican mountain the SST will now be shifted to its permanent location in the Harold E. Holt Naval Communication Station in Exmouth, Western Australia,  as per the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the US and Australia last month. This position will give it an astonishing view of the relatively less viewed southern hemispheric space.

The SST which is owned by the US Navy will be delivered by DARPA to the location in Australia and will then be operated by the Australian government. The operations of this combined science project will begin next year and will be available online in 2016.