Lifeboat Foundation

There’s no question that solar power is entering the mainstream, but California is about to give it a giant boost. The state’s Energy Commission is expected to approve new energy standards that would require solar panels on the roofs of nearly all new homes, condos and apartment buildings from 2020 onward. There will be exemptions for homes that either can’t fit solar panels or would be blocked by taller buildings or trees, but you’ll otherwise have to go green if your property is brand new.

The plan doesn’t require that a home reach net-zero status (where the solar power completely offsets the energy consumed in a year). However, it does provide “compliance credits” for homebuilders who install storage batteries like Tesla’s Powerwall, letting them build smaller panel arrays knowing that excess energy will be available to use off-hours.

The new standards are poised to hike construction costs by $25,000 to $30,000 (about half of which is directly due to solar), but the self-produced energy is estimated to save owners $50,000 to $60,000 in operating costs over the solar technology’s expected 25-year lifespan.

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SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – A swarm of earthquakes has shaken southern El Salvador, and authorities say dozens of homes have been damaged. There are no immediate reports of serious injuries or deaths.

The U.S. Geological Survey says at least eight quakes of magnitude 4.3 or greater struck the region beginning Sunday morning. They include three of magnitude 5.2 to 5.6.

The Central American nation’s civil defense agency posted photos online of damaged roofs and rock slides.

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The scene in a normally quiet neighborhood on Hawaii’s Big Island is like something out of an overwrought disaster movie: volcanic fissures have opened up, spraying smoke and hot lava in the air where just last week there was a road and people’s backyards.

On Friday morning, Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim told reporters that two homes have been destroyed by the lava.

Eruptions began in the rift zone to the east of the Kilauea volcano Thursday, prompting evacuations of the Leilani Estates and Lanipuna Gardens subdivisions in Puna on the island’s southeastern corner.

Continue reading “Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano Erupts, Flooding Streets With Lava, Destroying 2 Homes” »

Out of the five volcanoes comprising Hawaii’s Big Island, Kilauea is the most active — and it could erupt following 250 earthquakes in 24 hours. A crater floor has collapsed. With homes nearby, residents have been warned to remain alert. Find out how to stay updated on the volcanic activity.

If space is an ocean, the International Space Station is a raft tethered to the shore. The moon is a nearby island that we’ve visited briefly. To go any further or stay any longer, humanity needs more power.

Now, NASA may have the source: A tiny nuclear reactor called KRUSTY, for Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology. (If you’re wondering if this is may be a reference to a popular animated series, its predecessor was known as DUFF).

The reactor uses nuclear fission—the energy released by splitting uranium-235 in a reactor core about the size of a paper towel— to produce 10 kilowatts of power for about ten years, which NASA says is enough energy to power several houses. Four of the reactors could power an outpost on the lunar surface.

Continue reading “NASA successfully tested KRUSTY, a nuclear reactor that works in space and could power missions to the Moon or Mars” »

A decade before Elon Musk founded his fast-rising rocket company, SpaceX, or spoke publicly about colonizing Mars, a different billionaire captivated the world with Biosphere 2.

Ed Bass, an oil tycoon, spent about $250 million to build and operate that facility as a proof-of-concept for a permanent, self-sustaining habitat on Mars. Four men and four women sealed themselves inside the airtight space in September 1991 and emerged two years later.

The experimental space-age facility served as the stage for a spectacular and controversial story of human endurance.

ALON — Transparent Aluminum — is a ceramic composed of Aluminium, Oxygen and Nitrogen. Transparent Aluminum, was once pure science fiction, a technical term used in a Star Trek Movie from the 80’s.

In the movie Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk and his team, go back in time to acquire 2 whales from the past and transport them back to the future. Scotty needed some materials to make a holding tank for whales on his ship, but had no money to pay for the materials.

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Forget the trial and error — mathematics has proved where the best spot to place your router is.

Physicist Jason Cole has figured out a formula that can work out the best place to position your wireless router, and it ultimately depends on your house’s floor plan.

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A new biotech company co-founded by CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna is developing a device that uses CRISPR to detect all kinds of diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and Zika. The tech is still just in prototype phase, but research in the field is showing promising results. These CRISPR-based diagnostic tools have the potential to revolutionize how we test for diseases in the hospital, or even at home.

Called Mammoth Biosciences, the company is working on a credit card-sized paper test and smartphone app combo for disease detection. But the applications extend beyond that: The same technology could be used in agriculture, to determine what’s making animals sick or what sorts of microbes are found in soil, or even in the oil and gas industry, to detect corrosive microbes in pipelines, says Trevor Martin, the CEO of Mammoth Biosciences, who holds a PhD in biology from Stanford University. The company is focusing on human health applications first, however.

Continue reading “This company is making an at-home CRISPR kit to find out what’s making you sick” »