Freezing Fat to Death

Harvard researchers found kids who sucked on popsickles lost facial fat. Plastic surgeons reasoned if they could manipulate temperature and have people lose fat in other places. And they have been successful.

The procedure uses extreme cold to kill fat white cells while energizing brown fat (fat that helps burn calories). Overtime the fat white cells enters the stage of apoptosis - cell suicide.

Leaves Maintain a Constant Temperature

Research shows that leaves on trees in the tropics to the Arctic maintain a fairly constant temperature of 70°F.

Scientists assumed leaf temperature was the same as its environment because trees are not warm-blooded. The shocking find reveals that leaves from the tropics evolved mechanisms for keeping cool (e.g. angling themselves away from the sun) while trees in polar regions have ways to heat their leaves (e.g. having more leaves per branch to bundle up).

Superfluidity

Superfluidity occurs when certain liquids are cooled to near absolute zero ... becoming frictionless and defying gravity. As such, they actually move up and out of a container without any external force acting upon them.

Watch the clip.

Superconductivity

Discovered in the early 1900s, superconductivity is the mind bending occurrence of zero resistance to electric flow.

Resistance to electrical flow decreases as temperature cools but conductors generally have a limit to which they can allow electric flow. Superconductivity occurs when the material is cooled below its critical temperature. Placing 2 like pole magnets next to each other an electrical current is induced, causing the repulsion we are so familiar with. If we have a magnetic rail and place a magnetic puck cooled to superconductive levels, the magnetic field repels the puck along the magnetic rail - the puck moving along without physically touching the rail. This continues until the puck warms up.

Watch the clip.

Chill Out Pre-Workout

50 athletes were placed into a cooling chamber at -120 degrees for 2.5 minutes. They then ran at 90% of their max. After six months, the cooled athletes showed much better results and an increased oxygen carrying capacity.

Scientists think the chilling 1) slows the rise of body temperate, which harms performance; 2) conserves body fluids, because athletes sweat less.

Freezing Light

Einstein said that the special theory of relativity shows "that mass and energy are different manifestations of the same thing.” Accordingly, researchers have frozen and unfrozen light in an entirely different place.

Researchers sent a light pulse into a sodium cloud of -460 degrees (theoretical point were matter stops). While frozen, the light actually changed state - like frozen water. It also split into two forms of matter. One was frozen while the other moved at 200 meters/hour. The second form - a matter wave - contains the exact information of the original light wave which was converted back into light.

Since fiber-optic communications use light, it means we may one day stop, store and turn messages back on, just like a light switch.