We have all heard that money does not grow on trees, however scientists in Western Australia have found that gold does. They found that eucalyptus trees growing in an area which is said to be above a sizable gold deposit have got a higher content of gold in their leaves, branches and twigs.

Initially it was believed that the gold particles must have been blown by dust and landed on the trees giving its individual parts a dusting of the precious metal. Now the scientists believe that the gold has actually come from the deposit under the ground through the trees themselves.

In general background concentrations of gold in vegetation are typically less than 2 parts per billion (ppb) however in this area they have found gold levels up to 80 ppb. Field tests in Australia showed that eucalyptus trees growing above a deposit lying 35 meters underground had 20 times more gold in the gummy substances coating their leaves than did trees that grew 800 meters away.

Evidence enough to suggest that gold truly did grow on the trees. The next science project to try and prove this theory involved growing seedlings in greenhouses insulated from airborne dust and watering them with gold-laced solutions. It is interesting to note that plants did actually pick up the metal through from the soil through their roots and deposit them in their leaves.

The comet ISON is making its first and perhaps only round into the inner solar system. While the very nature of comets makes their behavior hard to predict, so far this comet has been sticking to the schedule which will see it disintegrating by 28 November as it approaches the sun. The whole process should offer us on Earth a spectacular view of cosmic fireworks.

Comets are essentially composed of bits of space rock, fluids and gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water and ammonia. They also orbit the sun although their orbits are not as steady as that of planets. As they approach the sun the matter inside them begins to heat up and undergoes a process called sublimation.

In this process the material making up the comet goes from solid to liquid and if there is not enough mass left the whole comet will explode. The disintegration of the comet can be avoided if the critical mass of the comet can be maintained till it starts moving away from the sun and cooling off again.

The people observing comet ISON feel that it will continue to become brighter in the sky as it approaches the sun till it eventually disintegrates. There doesn’t seem to be much hope of the comet surviving a trip into the inner solar system. Still tracing its path and behavior make an interesting science project.

The consequences of a potential asteroid strike on earth are literally life threatening. In order to minimize this threat the researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI in Freiburg are working hard at different science projects. The ultimate aim of keeping earth, and therefore human beings, safe is actually divided into different parts.

The first would be identifying potential threats, and this is what Frank Schäfer is doing as he studies the larger asteroids which have the potential to wipe out entire cities or regions. He is currently throwing space probes to intercept medium sized asteroids and observing the disintegration process of small asteroids and the deviation from its path in larger asteroids.

Both the methods would work in order to avoid impact with Earth. In the experimentation process it was discovered that the more porous the asteroid is the less likely it is to be affected by a probe. So a space probe is likely to work only on a more dense material asteroid.

While currently no large asteroid is seen heading our way, it does pay to be prepared for any such eventuality in the future. Maybe some early warning systems could be improved and more ways to deal with asteroids be developed in future science projects undertaken.

Armageddon comes Ancient Greek term that refers to a site where the end of days will occur. It is a term that was used as a popular movie’s name where an asteroid strike was about to literally bring the end of days to human life on earth. That may have been a movie, but the threat of an asteroid strike affecting life on earth is not fiction.

It is widely believed by scientists that the Tsunamis and acid rain that occurred 65 million years ago on Earth causing the mass extinction of close to 50% of species then living, was caused by a giant asteroid strike. The asteroid is believed to have been 10 kilometers wide and is said to have hit the earth in the region today known as the Gulf of Mexico.

The impact of the asteroid hit caused a crater that was 170 kilometers wide. The earth literally was covered in darkness as clouds of dust arose and the oceans churned out of control at the big splash. Yes, this is supposed to be the reason why dinosaurs went extinct. So how would just such a scenario be met today?

Does man really have the system in place to warn him of a potentially disastrous asteroid strike? Can he really deploy nuclear missiles in to space to ensure that such an asteroid does not hit earth? And will the human race survive such a defense? Wouldn’t that make the subject of an interesting science project?

That is exactly what a website called Filmillion promised to do. What the software on the site does is ask you 30 questions based on the movie. Some of them are general while others may be a bit more revealing. Based on your answers the website then picks a movie which it feels you are thinking about.

Of course it is not fool proof and while it may work well for the better known block busters, it was not able to pick out Herbie, the movie I chose. However it did get me thinking about the programming effort that must have gone into the website’s software. A fair amount of research must have been needed to pick out all the most popular movies in major genres and add them to the software.

In fact when I revealed that the name of the movie was incorrect, I was asked to add the new name along with its IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) reference. That means its a program that is building on itself as it goes along. This is so much like science in its purest form. Each new discovery leads to the next science project and technology improves by leaps and bounds.

Inventing stronger and more durable materials is a constant process which engages the scientific community. There is always a need for finding light weight material that can resist fatigue in both industrial and commercial operations. Space age travel is also a major consumer of new materials and it is no surprise that NASA funds a lot of research related to the discovery of new materials.

At the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the process of building new materials begins with a fabrication method known as additive manufacturing. Dr. Frank Liou and his team have been working on this process for more than 15 years. In it they use lasers to melt small particles of powdered materials as they exit a nozzle to create three-dimensional shapes.

Liou has found that steel manufactured using the additive process is 10 times stronger than steel that has been manufactured in machines. He has now begun work on what he called “hybrid manufacturing” which combines additive manufacturing with conventional manufacturing methods.

Using hybrid manufacturing the researchers are hoping to build a new material using two different metals such as steel and copper. The resulting material may be light and strong and have a number of applications in the aircraft and space industry. It would be worth watching out for what this science project delivers next.

The Mars rover Curiosity has been exploring the martian environment and sending in data that has the teams of researchers on Earth in raptures. However one of the notable ingredients missing from the data is methane. The hydrocarbon gas is one which most scientists taking an educated guess would expect to find on Mars, but so far Curiosity has not found any samples of it.

The presence of methane is a potential sign of the presence of life on the red planet. Many researchers have been hoping to find at least some signs of low forms of life such as bacteria and microbes on Mars. There have even been indications of the presence of methane in previous studies conducted.

Curiosity has analyzed different samples of the atmosphere at Mars for methane six times from October 2012 through June and detected none. While the absence of methane does not exclude the possibility of life altogether, as some terrestrial microbes do not produce methane at all, it does seem strange that the gas is not present in the atmosphere of Mars.

What is truly exciting is that the rover Curiosity has been able to uncover so many previously unknown facts about our neighboring planet. This has been one science project which will inspire generations of new scientists and researchers.

The Van Allen radiation belts were discovered in 1958. They are two doughnut shaped rings of highly charged particles that surround the Earth The outer ring of high-energy electrons and the inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions can comprise a danger to satellites and space crafts.

The radiation belts can cause minor problems in the functioning of certain instruments or even complete failure of critical satellites. The nature of radiation in space needs to be better understood so as to design equipment which is well protected for space use. Lately a third radiation belt has also been spotted around the Earth.

Yuri Shprits, a research geophysicist with the UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences said that in the past, scientists thought that all the electrons in the radiation belts around the Earth obeyed the same physics. However they are finding now that radiation belts consist of different populations that are driven by very different physical processes.

He added that their study shows that completely different populations of particles exist in space that change on different timescales, are driven by different physics and show very different spatial structures. This new found knowledge should enable researchers to come up with new science projects to keep astronauts and their equipment safe.

The new discoveries in the field of nano technology never fail to impress. Here’s what the scientists at University of Sydney have come up with – a material that acts like a kind of sticky tape that can hold water droplets even when the surface is upturned.

The material has what have been called “raspberry particles” due to their appearance. It is these particles that hold on to the tiny water droplets on the surface of the material. This is similar to some rose petal surfaces which also have a similar property and don’t let go of dew drops.

Dr Andrew Telford from the University’s School of Chemistry who led the research says that the ability to immobilize very small droplets on a surface is a significant achievement. Their team is the first which has been able to allow for the preparation of these raspberry particles on an industrial scale.

Needless to say the concept can have many exciting commercial applications including reduction of condensation in aircraft cabins and making certain kinds of medical testing possible. Not to mention using it on quick dry walls and roofs to keep the structure cool. The possibilities for future science projects using this material are potentially endless.

For the last decade Deep Impact has been NASA’s comet hunter and has sent back unprecedented images of comets from space. However 9 years and 500,000 images later the NASA team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California has had to announce that the mission is now over.

It completed its original mission of determining the surface and interior composition of a comet, over s period of six months in 2005. It also did extended missions such as observing comet fly pasts and sending home data about planets as well before it finally lost communication with Earth.

The decision to call it quits was made after communications with the probe named Deep Impact failed about a month ago. Despite repeated efforts the team has been unable to communicate with the probe. History’s most traveled comet research mission, having traveled 4.7 billion miles has finally called it a day.

Deep Impact has revolutionized our understanding of comets and their activity, said Mike A’Hearn, the Deep Impact principal investigator at the University of Maryland in College Park. It has been a fantastic, long-lasting spacecraft that has produced far more data than we had planned, said Mike. This was one science project whose success NASA would love to replicate.