A company based in Canada has created the world’s very first plane that’s made mostly from hemp and powered by cannabis oil, giving completely new meaning to the term “sky high”
Designed and built by the weed company Hempearth – who also sell other weed-related items such as food, clothing, and accessories, the plane is claimed to be much stronger, lighter, and much more environmentally friendly than normal planes. Then it physically gets you higher than marijuana, but your plane is made of marijuana, and on marijuana fuel.
But how does it do it, exactly? Almost the entire plane is made from composite hemp fibers that are said to be 10 times stronger than steel, and this includes not only the chassis, but also everything inside of the plane including the seats, walls, and cushions.
When you want to get sky high.
IN A NUTSHELL 🌿 The Dragonfly Turbine is designed by Renzo Piano and ENEL Green Power, inspired by the flight of dragonflies. 🏙️ It features a compact and eco-friendly design that blends seamlessly into urban landscapes, minimizing visual impact. 💡 The turbine maximizes wind capture efficiency even in low-wind conditions, providing reliable energy output. 🇮🇹
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed a new dry electrode for aqueous batteries which delivers cathodes with more than double the performance of iodine and lithium-ion batteries.
“We have developed a new electrode technique for zinc –iodine batteries that avoids traditional wet mixing of iodine,” said the University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao, Chair of Nanotechnology, and Director, Center for Materials in Energy and Catalysis, at the School of Chemical Engineering, who led the team.
We mixed active materials as dry powders and rolled them into thick, self-supporting electrodes. At the same time, we added a small amount of a simple chemical, called 1,3,5-trioxane, to the electrolyte, which turns into a flexible protective film on the zinc surface during charging.
Scientists from the Natural History Museum have unraveled the geological mysteries behind jadarite, a rare lithium-bearing mineral with the potential to power Europe’s green energy transition which, so far, has only been found in one place on Earth, Serbia’s Jadar Basin.
Discovered in 2004 and described by museum scientists Chris Stanley and Mike Rumsey, jadarite made headlines for its uncanny resemblance to the chemical formula of Kryptonite, the fictional alien mineral which depletes Superman’s powers. However, today its value is more economic and environmental, offering a high lithium content and lower-energy route to extraction compared to traditional sources like spodumene.
A team of researchers at the museum have uncovered why this white, nodular mineral is so rare. Their findings show that to form, jadarite must follow an exact set of geological steps in highly specific conditions. This involves a strict interplay between alkaline-rich terminal lakes, lithium-rich volcanic glass and the transformation of clay minerals into crystalline structures which are exceptionally rare.
Once only a part of science fiction, lasers are now everyday objects used in research, health care and even just for fun. Previously available only in low-energy light, lasers are now available in wavelengths from microwaves through X-rays, opening a range of different downstream applications.
In a study published in Nature, an international collaboration led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has generated the shortest hard X-ray pulses to date through the first demonstration of strong lasing phenomena.
The resulting pulses can lead to several potential applications, from quantum X-ray optics to visualizing electron motion inside molecules.
