The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has beaten itself into the Guinness World Records, again for creating the world’s lightest solid.

Described as a solid smoke because it’s 99.8 percent air, the material called Aerogel is actually a stiff foam made from silicon dioxide and sand – the same ingredients that make glass, but Aerogel is one thousand times lighter.

Its density is just 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter, 2 milligrams lighter than the previous world record holder, an older formulation of Aerogel.

More at http://www.space.com/news/aerogel_record_020510.html

Bone Furniture by Joris Laarman

Trees have the ability to add material where strength it is needed. But bones also have the ability to take away material where it is not needed. With this knowledge the International Development Centre Adam Opel GmbH, a part of General Motors Engineering Europe created a dynamic digital tool to copy these ways of constructing used for optimizing car parts. In a way it quite precisely copies the way evolution constructs. I didn’t use it to create the next worlds perfect chair but as a high tech sculpting tool to create elegant shape with a kind of legitimacy. The chair is the first in a series and the process can be applied to any scale until architectural sizes in any material strength…

Star in a Jar? Hints of nuclear fusion found -maybe: Science News Online, March 9, 2002

Anyone know where the cool pic of a tiny star went?