Having cancer is hard enough, but often the treatment is just as bad as – if not worse than – the disease itself. In the interest of treating certain types of cancer more safely and with less radiation than current methods, Ohio State University astronomers Sultana Nahar and Anil Pradhan have looked to the stars for a novel solution. The researchers were looking at black holes to study how chemical elements react to radiation around black holes and in stars. They do this by watching how radiation is emitted from and absorbed by these elements.

As they watched computer models of heavy metals reacting with radiation, they realized that the metals throw off low-energy electrons when they are hit with a small dose of X-rays. Believe it or not, this could be huge news for cancer sufferers. The connection comes from those low-energy electrons. If this process took place inside a human body, the ejected electrons could easily destroy cancer cells. If an implant containing platinum nanoparticles were placed at the site of a malignant tumor and then hit with a small, focused dose of X-rays, the tumor would be easily obliterated.

The patient wouldn’t have to suffer through traditional radiation or chemotherapy and the treatment, in theory, would be just as effective. The healthy cells surrounding the tumor would be left unharmed. Although there is plenty more research to be done on this concept, the team is hopeful that they have stumbled upon a revolutionary cancer treatment. They have built a proof-of-concept machine that shows how the electron-freeing process works, but

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Forget underground bunkers; the survivalist tool of the future is the portable radiation detector. Need to know whether that wasteland in the distance is safe for scavenging? Just plug the RDTX Portable Radiation Detector into your iPhone or iPod Touch and it’ll tell you whether or not the radiation level is safe for you. A simple three-color system tells you whether you should turn tail and head for safer ground: green means safe, yellow means elevated radiation levels were detected, and red means you’re in a danger zone.

Although we aren’t sure that social networking will still be a thing after large-scale nuclear decimation, the device from Scosche will share your radiation measurement results via Facebook, Twitter or Google Maps. At least then you can save your friends the trouble of exploring the same places in the nuclear wasteland that you’ve already determined are dangerous.

There may very well be a good use for this tool pre-nuclear wasteland (like for people who live near the damaged Fukushima plant in Japan), but it almost seems like a tongue-in-cheek product poking fun at just how many things we trust our iPhones for these days. Nevertheless, it looks like a genuine product from Scosche that sells for a reasonable $249.99 – but it’s not available in the U.S. and it appears to be sold out to everyone at the moment.

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Radiation and food safety are big issues these days, but most of us feel utterly helpless when it comes to determining the safety of our food. The Fukushima Plate from Nils Ferber would let everyone take a more active role in food safety by measuring the amount of radiation found in everything we eat – with just about no effort.

The Fukushima Plate is a regular dinner plate with a radioactive meter built in to tell you just how much radiation has seeped into the meal you are preparing to eat. You decide how much radiation is acceptable by setting the limiting value on the plate’s control panel. Since different people have different ideas of what is safe, this gives you control over your own health.

Rings on the plate’s surface light up when radiation is detected in the food. A plate with no rings lit means that the radiation level is safely below the recommended threshold. One ring means that the radiation level is slightly increased.

Two white rings indicate a higher level still, and two white rings with an encircling red ring mean that the food on the plate contains more radiation than your chosen threshold amount. For people who don’t believe the news reports that there is no reason to worry about food safety, the Fukushima Plate could provide some much-needed peace of mind at mealtime.

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The International Space Station has helping scientists examine all kinds of mysteries since it was launched into orbit in 1998. Having a unique set of environmental factors, it’s the perfect place to study the effects of microgravity on humans, animals and even the objects we use every day. These are five of the most interesting microgravity experiments that have taken place aboard the ISS.

If humans are ever going to colonize space, we’ll need to know exactly which materials will perform best in that situation. The above case is full of several different types of materials, and it belongs to an experiment called Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE). The object is to discover the effects of solar radiation and other space factors on materials from Earth.

Garnering public interest may not be a scientifically important mission, but space agencies do want to keep the public informed and interested in their space missions. That’s why, in 2009, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata boarded the ISS with a list of 16 tasks chosen from nearly 1600 suggestions from the public. He was to fold laundry, apply eyedrops, and even ride a flying carpet – partially in the name of science, but mostly in the name of public relations.

A surprising discovery that’s arisen from continued space travel is that it seems to weaken the immune system. Even more surprising, though, is that some microbes actually get more dangerous in space than they are on Earth. In a 2004 experiment, it was discovered that the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium was three times as likely to kill mice in space than on Earth. This knowledge is being used to isolate the cause of such virulence and increase the effectiveness of vaccines.

Even combustion is different in space. These pictures of a flame on Earth (left) and a flame in space (right) demonstrate the effect that microgravity has on fire. Hot air doesn’t rise in space as it does on Earth, creating a spherical flame. Research on the subject could help fire-suppression technology on future space missions.

Butterflies weren’t the only animals to be tested in microgravity. Scientists have long been curious about the effects of microgravity on developing embryos. They wondered whether an embryo that develops in space would be markedly different than its Earth-bound counterparts, and if there would be any noticeable defects. The Japanese Medaka fish (a Medaka embryo is shown above) were among the first animals to be used in such an experiment. They turned out relatively normal, but other animals have been found to have significant physical deformities when they develop without gravity.

The post Flying Carpets to Fish Embryos: 5 Great Microgravity Studies first appeared on Gajitz.