Boeing says its metal microlattice is the 'lightest metal ever' (Tomorrow Daily 256)

[MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet. Welcome to Tomorrow Daily. The best geek talk show in the known universe. These are our mini episodes designed to satiate your needs until our new set is built but enough of that. Let's hit the headline. [MUSIC]. Researchers working for Boeing have developed a material that is one hundred times lighter than styrofoam. And they're finally showing off that process in a new video. Oh and by the way that material it's actually made of metal. HRL Laboratories developed this material. It's a microlattice that they compared to your bone structure. So, rigid on the outside, but generally hollow on the inside. Meaning it would be lightweight but also really hard to crush. The material itself is 99.99% air. And the wall thickness of the hollow tubes that make up the microlattice are a 1,000 times thinner than a human hair which is pretty futuristic stuff. Possible applications for this metal microlattice includes Boeing's own airplanes or maybe even cars because HRL Laboratories works with General Motors. Now going from Earth-bound travel to up in space, robots may someday help astronauts aboard the ISS. So this robot is the Bezman ILA, it's a collaboration between the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence and the University of Bremen. ILA has articulated fingers on both arms, cameras in its head, a short-range laser scanner in its chest, and a bunch of other various features and connection abilities. Now the idea here is to train the robot to complete menial tasks onboard the ISS, freeing up astronauts to complete tasks that either require human intuition or maybe a task that requires two human operators. They're still working really hard on AILA and they're not quite ready yet to tackle things like microgravity and how AILA would get around, but we may see a demonstration via a simulation of the International Space Station sometime in the near future. Going from robots helping astronauts in outer space to people who maybe saw A Bug's Life way too many times and said We should drink water like ants, I have to of course tell you about ooho. This is ooho, an edible water bottle that looks and handles like a palm sized water balloon. It was created by London based startup Skipping Rocks Lab who said this delivery method for water is easy and cheap to make, hygienic and most importantly, bio-degradable. Skipping rocks reminds us that single use water bottles are wildly unsustainable and terrible for the environment but Ooho's casing is made of brown algae and calcium chloride so once you're done sucking all the water out of that beautiful little orb you can throw it out with the knowledge that you're helping save the environment or you can eat. Oh no. Oh no, no no. Oh no. I'm not eating that. Let's talk about back it or hack it. On today's back it or hack it's the perfect product for anybody who wants to grow a micro rainforest in their home. [LAUGH] This is called the BioPod this is pretty cool. We're super intrigued by the Biopod. This is a self-titled, worlds first smart micro-habitat. The Biopod uses an app to actually regulate light, temperature, humidity, ventilation, and even rainfall inside the unit. And there are bunch of different presets in the app that you can choose from once you get your Biopod and you're ready to Start up ranging from growing some tomatoes all the way to cultivating a little tiny rain forest complete with tree frogs. The app walks you through the set up, planting of your plant and then let's you walk away from it as it regulates the small environment to its needs, There are three models of bio pod. There's the one which is the most basic model, there's the tera which is meant to be sort of a terrain. And then of course the aqua so you can actually make it a fish tank if you want, if you buy that higher end one. The Biopod one starts at $205 US without plants, so gotta populate yourself with plants. If you want the Biopod to come with a plant starter pack, there are backer levels for that as well. They have 22 days left And they've already surpass our goal of 30,000 Canadian dollars by quite a bit. So, if you wanna back it, the Biopad looks like it's definitely gonna happen. Alright guys we talk about crab fundings, we've talked about the headlines let's take a look at a beautiful photos. [MUSIC] Today's phonetography is RHYS and he took this with his Galaxy S6 Edge and he writes to us and he said. Hey Ashley, love the show. I love the passion you bring to the story. Really gets people excited about tech, love it. These are couple of photos taken on my S6 EDGE of Melbourne, Australia. This is the beautiful Crown Casino Flames along South Bank as well as adds a view of the Eureka Tower during sunrise from my home. Of course you have permission to use these photos if I'm lucky enough to make it on the show. It's your lucky day and if they have a lottery in Australia, you should buy a ticket. You'll probably only win like two dollars. But you know maybe if you're lucky enough to make it onto Tomorrow daily you can win threes of dollars from the lottery. If you guys want to send the photography you can of course send it over to Tomorrow@CNET.com. Send us your picture, give us permission to use it, tell us a little story about it too. also you can find us online. We're at tomorrow daily dot com. If you want to share the show with your friends. We are all over social media and of course if you want to find me or our producer Logan personally on Twitter you can find me at Ashley Esqueda and producer Logan at Logan Mois. Well that's it for the show guys. We will be back tomorrow with a bunch of science fact meeting science fiction but until then Be good humans. We'll see you guys next time. Bye. [MUSIC]