Lifeboat Foundation

Some of the more well-known examples include retrievable and reusable rockets, retrieval at sea, mid-air retrieval, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) rockets, and kinetic launch systems.

In addition, there are also efforts to develop propulsion systems that do not rely on conventional propellants. This technology offers many advantages, including lower mass and improved energy efficiency, ultimately lowering costs.

On June 10, 2023, an all-electrical propulsion system for satellites (the IVO Quantum Drive) will fly to space for the first time. The system was built by North Dakota-based wireless power company IVO, Ltd. and will serve as a testbed for an alternative theory of inertia that could have applications for propulsion.

Using NASA’s Chandra spacecraft, an international team of astronomers has performed X-ray observations of the Cigar Galaxy. Results of the observational campaign, presented March 16 on the pre-print repository arXiv, deliver crucial information regarding diffuse emission from this galaxy.

Discovered in 1,774, Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82, or M82) is a starburst galaxy located some 11.73 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It has a size of about 40,800 light years and is one of the closest starburst galaxies to Earth.

Observations of the Cigar Galaxy have found that it experiences a large-scale galactic wind at various wavelengths, for instance, in hard X-rays above a few keV. This superwind appears to be concentrated in the galaxy’s two high surface brightness regions or clumps, and is fueled by energy released by supernovae within the clumps that occur at a rate of about one every ten years. Previous Chandra studies of this galaxy have detected bright X-ray binaries that dominate the hard X-ray band and revealed that there is residual diffuse emission surrounding the starburst disk.

The unique radiation emitted by heated or electrified elements has been converted into sound, enabling us to hear the distinctive chord each element produces. Although the idea has been tried before, advances in technology have now made it possible for a far more complete and subtle sonification of the periodic table.

When elements are energized electrons can jump to higher energy levels. Eventually, they return to their ground state, releasing a photon in the process. The wavelength of the photon depends on the size of the energy gap between the excited state and the ground state – more energy produces higher frequency/shorter wavelength light.

Continue reading “The Periodic Table Has Been Sonified And Every Element Sounds Unique” »

It is well-known that an ordinary high frequency electromagnetic (EM) wave radiated into the ionosphere at the Spitze angle is totally transformed at the reflection height (z₀) into the Z-mode. This mode, in turn, penetrates deeper into the ionosphere and it is reflected at some height (z_ref) usually significantly higher than the O-mode reflection height. This result is reconsidered in the present paper. It is argued that the wave appearing as a continuation of the propagating upward quasi-electrostatic wave changes the direction of motion along the vertical axis slightly above z₀ and takes the form of the down-going wave. This wave is excited in the vicinity of the height z₀ due to the phase resonance with the up-going O-mode wave which transforms into the Z-mode propagating upward. Thus, the ionospheric window is not totally transparent for the O-mode radiated at the Spitze angle. The up-going O-mode wave loses some part of its energy due to excitation of the down-going EM wave. This wave, in turn, propagates to the ground as the O-mode wave.

Photosynthesis is the process that plants, algae, and even certain species of bacteria use to convert sunlight into oxygen and chemical energy stored as sugar (aka gluclose). But what are the mechanisms behind one of nature’s most profound processes?

These are questions that a team of researchers led by the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) hope to answer as they used quantum chemical calculations to examine a photosynthesis protein complex known as photosystem I (PSI) in hopes of better understanding the complete process of photosynthesis and how plants are able to convert sunlight to energy, specifically pertaining to how chlorophylls and the reaction center play their roles in the process.

Researchers have ‘hacked’ the earliest stages of photosynthesis, the natural machine that powers the vast majority of life on Earth, and discovered new ways to extract energy from the process, a finding that could lead to new ways of generating clean fuel and renewable energy. We didn’t know as.

Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology and Southern University of Science and Technology have fabricated bifunctional flexible electrochromic energy-storage devices based on silver nanowire flexible transparent electrodes.

Publishing in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, the team used silver nanowire flexible transparent electrodes as the current collector for a bifunctional flexible electrochromic supercapacitor.

This bifunctional flexible device can exhibit its energy status through color changes, and can serve as an energy supplier for various wearable electronics, such as physiological sensors. The findings could have a widespread impact on the future development of smart windows for energy-efficient buildings.

Plants use photosynthesis to harvest energy from sunlight. Now researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have applied this principle as the basis for developing new sustainable processes which in the future may produce syngas (synthetic gas) for the large-scale chemical industry and be able to charge batteries.

Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is an important intermediate product in the manufacture of many chemical starter materials such as ammonia, methanol and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. “Syngas is currently made almost exclusively using fossil raw materials,” says Prof. Roland Fischer from the Chair of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry.

A yellow powder, developed by a research team led by Fischer, is to change all that. The scientists were inspired by photosynthesis, the process plants use to produce chemical energy from light. “Nature needs carbon dioxide and water for photosynthesis,” says Fischer. The nanomaterial developed by the researchers imitates the properties of the enzymes involved in photosynthesis. The “nanozyme” produces syngas using carbon dioxide, water and light in a similar manner.

Scientists at the University of Groningen used a silver sawtooth nanoslit array to produce valley-coherent photoluminescence in two-dimensional tungsten disulfide flakes at room temperature. Until now, this could only be achieved at very low temperatures. Coherent light can be used to store or transfer information in quantum electronics. This plasmon-exciton hybrid device is promising for use in integrated nanophotonics (light-based electronics). The results were published in Nature Communications on 5 February.

Tungsten disulfide has interesting electronic properties and is available as a 2-D material. “The electronic structure of monolayer tungsten disulfide shows two sets of lowest energy points or valleys,” explains Associate Professor Justin Ye, head of the Device Physics of Complex Materials group at the University of Groningen. One possible application is in photonics, as it can emit light with valley-dependent circular polarization—a new degree of freedom to manipulate information. However, valleytronics requires coherent and polarized light. Unfortunately, previous work showed that photoluminescence polarization in tungsten disulfide is almost random at room temperature.