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NASA satellite Voyager 1, at 36 years young, is the first man-made object in recorded history to enter interstellar space. Moreover, it's apparently been doing so for around one year -- NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced as much this afternoon, and explained how they were tipped off. "We have an instrument on board which can measure the density of ions, the plasma which is out there," Voyager project scientist Ed Stone said in a prepared video. "In March of 2012, it turns out there was a massive eruption from the sun which eventually reached Voyager 1 in April of 2013. When that blastwave reached Voyager 1, it caused the plasma around Voyager to vibrate or oscillate in a certain particular tone. Literally the sounds of interstellar space."

The satellite was originally launched in September 1977 in the interest of studying our own solar system as well as the interstellar medium. Having checked the first of those goals of its list, Voyager 1 is apparently head down on the second one. The satellite was thought to have reached interstellar space some time ago, but now NASA says it's really for sure. We wish it the best of luck exploring the icy void of space between solar systems. Remember to bring a towel!

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Grab your Marauder's Map and get ready to roll. Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have pioneered a new, time-efficient method of producing real world invisibility cloaks made out of Teflon. While it isn't the first time we've come across an invisibility cloak, it is the first to make use of an innovation called topology optimization. Thus far, physicists working on invisibility have largely relied on metamaterials -- synthetic materials that alter the behavior of light as it interacts with objects -- but the cost and difficulty of manufacturing them has made them an impractical option. The Zhejiang team has circumvented those obstacles by creating a so-called "eyelid" out of Teflon, the computer-altered topology of which minimizes the distortion of light as it moves past a cloaked object -- and it only took 15 minutes to produce. Since the Teflon eyelid is only invisible to microwaves, it won't enable you to roam the halls of Hogwarts unseen, but the technology could potentially open up new avenues in exploring invisibility on other wavelengths. To learn more, read the full paper at the source link below.

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Quantum cryptography is crack-proof by its nature -- you can't inspect data without changing it -- but the available technology is currently limited to one-on-one connections. Toshiba has developed a quantum access networking system that could bring this airtight security to groups as large as 64 people. The approach gives each client a (relatively) basic quantum transmitter, and routes encrypted data through a central, high-speed photon detector that returns decryption keys. Such a network would not only secure entire workgroups, but lower the cost of encrypting each user. Quantum access networks won't be useful across internet-scale distances until researchers improve the signal integrity, but there may be a time when surveillance agencies will run out of potential targets.

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Silicon is great, but we're tickling the edges of its speed limit. As a result, researchers at Oregon State University have been plugging away at a low-cost, faster alternative for the past three years: tiny quantum devices called metal-insulator-metal diodes, or MIM diodes for short. Silicon chips involve electrons traveling through a transistor, but MIM diodes send electrons "tunneling" through the insulator in a quantum manner, such that they appear "almost instantaneously" on the other side. The tech's latest development doubles the insulator fun -- transforming the MIM into a MIIM (pictured above) -- giving the scientists another method for engineering quantum mechanical tunneling. With MIIMs, super fast transistor-less computers could be around the corner. The Oregon researchers aren't bold enough to put a date on making any of this happen outside of the lab, but they promise entire new industries may "ultimately emerge" from their work, and we're far too under-qualified to doubt them.

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A slew of negatives plague video games -- Peter Pan Syndrome, hyper-violence, camping -- but their youthfulness could do just what Nintendo's Brain Age promised: improve elderly brain function. Over four years, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco had a group play a custom game (video of it in action is after the break) that tasks players to drive and identify road signs that appear while ignoring certain others, according to the New York Times. It's not quite Grand Theft Auto, but it proved how hard successfully multitasking becomes with age. However, after training with the game, the 60 to 80 year old test subjects stomped those a fraction of their age who had no prior exposure to it. What's more, this experience produced brain functionality benefits outside of the game.

This isn't a fluke, either. For proof, the scientists used electroencephalography to monitor the older subjects and found that while playing, the theta wave activity -- associated with attention -- in their prefrontal cortexes looked like that of a younger adult's. These findings may help scientists understand what areas of the brain "could and should" be manipulated to improve cognitive functions like memory. The study appears in today's edition of Nature and backs up similar research from May that also used a concentration-heavy game, and reported like results. Now if you'll pardon us, we have to show our parents that all those hours of our childhood weren't wasted.

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This ain't your kid's average Dora the Explorer backpack. ONA's mission is to introduce the world to something much more on the premium side, and its Bolton Street packs do a pretty good job of contributing to that quest. Crafted with a water-resistant canvas and leather accents, this backpack certainly holds its fair share of stuff -- and it'd better, for $360. Fortunately, the folks at ONA have a couple for us to give away to our readers, so hurry down to the widget below to enter.

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It may be hard to believe, but that transparent disk in the photo above is actually a fully functioning speaker. A team of researchers at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have pioneered a never before seen application of ionic conductivity by creating a see-through artificial muscle that can produce sounds spanning the entire audible spectrum. While ionic conduction isn't a novel idea, it's been considered impractical due to the fact that ionic materials react poorly to high voltage. The team, which included postdoctoral research fellows Jeong-Yun Sun and Christoph Keplinger (pictured above), circumvented that obstacle by placing a layer of rubber between two sheets of transparent conductive gel, allowing the system to work with both high voltage and high actuation, two qualities necessary for sound reproduction. Theoretically, soft machine technology such as this can be used to do much more than play Grieg's Peer Gynt, particularly in the fields of robotics, mobile computing and adaptive optics. To watch it in action, check out the video after the break.

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