The Hello, forward. Hello Dominic, hello Dominic. Hello and this week how the Earth's core has been changing how we measure time, how nerves

cause cancer to spread, and we get heated over solar power as we find out how to cross the Australian outback in a solar car and how a technology

can empower communities.

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And first up let's take a look at this week's science headlines and kicking off I've got a story about how

scientists in the states have come up with a solar-powered medical sterilizer.

Now this is Naomi Hallas who's a researcher at Rice University and it's published this week in the journal PNAS.

And what this group have done is to develop a device which can produce steam at 140 degrees

C from even water which is... and they're doing it using nanoparticles. So they have a small flask and they add a few

million of these gold nanoshells. Down a microscope they look like tiny dots. They're effectively

little particles of gold which are about 1,500th per millimeter across each and they have the ability to absorb a very broad range of light

wavelengths, and when they absorb that light, turn it into heat. This has the effect

of making the particle very hot, and this heats up the water immediately around the particle,

turning it into a tiny bubble of steam.

This means that you then insulate the particle from the rest of the water around it,

so that the steam can then become very, very hot because the particle continues to absorb energy.

You then get a bubble, so it pulls the particle to the surface of the flask and the steam comes out and that steam is at up to 140 degrees and you can then direct that jet of steam onto, say, a sterilization box,

where you can put medical instruments or contaminated things that you want to sterilize,

and it works.

They have actually tried it on something called Geobus Thermophilus, which is a test organism.

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