What if the fundamental “stuff” of the universe isn’t matter or energy, but information?
That’s the idea some theorists are pursuing as they search for ever-more elegant and concise descriptions of the laws that govern our universe. Could our universe, in all its richness and diversity, really be just a bunch of bits?
To understand the buzz over information, we have to start at the beginning: What is information?
I’ve been studying this topic for use in a story I’m working on and I’ve come across various videos and interviews on the topic, but they all seem mostly concerned with assembly of larger objects.
I was just curious if the same actions that would assemble an object could be reversed to disassemble it, or if there were other necessary actions that needed to be taken. I understand that energy needs to be put in to break a molecular bond, so is that something that would have to be taken into account as well?
Also, as a side note, the current idea is to have the nanobots be mostly carbon constructs, if that affects the way things work.
New research on electrochemical reactions highlights the critical role of electrolyte ions, aiding in the advancement of sustainable energy technologies.
Electrochemical reactions are central to the green transition. These reactions use the electric current and potential difference to carry out chemical reactions, which enables binding and realizing electric energy from chemical bonds. This chemistry is the basis for several applications, such as hydrogen technology, batteries, and various aspects of circular economy.
Developments and improvement in these technologies require detailed insight into the electrochemical reactions and different factors impacting them. Recent studies have shown that besides the electrode material also the used solvent, its acidity, and the used electrolyte ions crucially impact the efficiency of electrochemical reactions. Therefore, recent focus has shifted to studying how the electrochemical interfaces, i.e. the reaction environment at the electrode and the electrolyte interface shown in Figure 1, impact the outcome of electrochemical reactions.
When electricity flows through a battery, the materials inside it gradually wear down. The physical forces of stress and strain also play a role in this process, but their exact effects on the battery’s performance and lifespan are not completely known.
A team led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a framework for designing solid-state batteries, or SSBs, with mechanics in mind. Their paper, published in Science, reviewed how these factors change SSBs during their cycling.
Flow battery charges using solar or wind power, converting salt to safe electrolytes, which can be easily reversed for green power when needed.
Norwegian power heavyweight supports Aquabattery, a startup pioneering an innovative long-duration energy system.
Astronomers know of about 60 rocky exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. When they try to determine how habitable these planets might be, detecting water in their atmospheres plays a huge role. But what if there was another way of measuring the water content in these worlds?
Researchers are developing a way of modeling these worlds to determine how much water they have.
Habitability likely requires surface water, as far as we can tell. But detecting surface water is next to impossible. The next best thing is to use the tools we have—like the James Webb Space Telescope—to detect and characterize exoplanet atmospheres. But despite the JWST’s power, it can’t examine every exoplanet atmosphere. Some are beyond its reach. But one team of researchers is using what we do know about exoplanets, tidal heating, and radiogenic heating to try to determine which exoplanets might have oceans, either on the surface or under the surface.
Scientists have developed a model to better understand the physics of the powerful superflares emitted by stars far beyond our solar system.
Solar flares, which are rapid and strong bursts of energy and radiation that originate from the Sun’s surface, are known to be emitted into space by our Sun.
NASA’s Kepler and TESS missions, however, have discovered several stars may produce superflares that are 100–10,000 times brighter than those emitted by our Sun.
The material developed by researchers in Panama uses a mixture of newspaper, rice husk, borax, and glue.
Bilanol/iStock.
The construction industry ranks as the second-largest consumer of plastic globally, contributing to over a third of greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy usage worldwide. The manufacturing procedures involved in producing construction materials have detrimental effects on air, land, and water quality.
Continue reading “Scientists turn rise husk, recycled newspaper into thermal insulation” »
Optical scientists have found a new way to significantly increase the power of fibre lasers while maintaining their beam quality, making them a future key defence technology against low-cost drones and for use in other applications such as remote sensing.
Researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA), the University of Adelaide (UoA) and Yale University have demonstrated the potential use of multimode optical fibre to scale up power in fibre lasers by three-to-nine times but without deteriorating the beam quality so that it can focus on distant targets.
The breakthrough is published in Nature Communications.
