Lifeboat Foundation

Aeromine says its unique “motionless” rooftop wind generators deliver up to 50% more energy than a solar array of the same price, while taking up just 10% of the roof space and operating more or less silently. In independent tests, they seem legit.

Distributed energy generation stands to play a growing part in the world’s energy markets. Most of this currently comes in the form of rooftop solar, but in certain areas, wind could definitely play a bigger part. Not every spot is appropriate for a bladed wind turbine, though, and in this regard, University of Houston spinoff Aeromine Technologies has designed a very different, very tidy form of rooftop wind energy capture that looks like it could be a real game-changer.

Continue reading “Rooftop wind system delivers 150% the energy of solar per dollar” »

The 2022 Global Satellite Servicing Forum, the DARPA-originated @_CONFERS consortium’s annual event, is Oct. 19–20. In-space servicing and manufacturing stakeholders will discuss in-space lessons learned and their work toward achieving common technical and safety standards to extend satellite utility, resilience, & reliability. Learn more and register at https://www.satelliteconfers.org/gssf/#satelliteservicing #inspaceservicing #GSSF22

Imagine taking a star twice the mass of the sun and crushing it to the size of Manhattan. The result would be a neutron star—one of the densest objects found anywhere in the universe, exceeding the density of any material found naturally on Earth by a factor of tens of trillions. Neutron stars are extraordinary astrophysical objects in their own right, but their extreme densities might also allow them to function as laboratories for studying fundamental questions of nuclear physics, under conditions that could never be reproduced on Earth.

Because of these exotic conditions, scientists still do not understand what exactly neutron stars themselves are made from, their so-called “equation of state” (EoS). Determining this is a major goal of modern astrophysics research. A new piece of the puzzle, constraining the range of possibilities, has been discovered by a pair of scholars at IAS: Carolyn Raithel, John N. Bahcall Fellow in the School of Natural Sciences; and Elias Most, Member in the School and John A. Wheeler Fellow at Princeton University. Their work was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Continue reading “New tool allows scientists to peer inside neutron stars” »

With the help of NASA’s QueSST mission, aeronautical innovators hope to break the sound barrier once more, but this time in a totally different fashion that…

In this video, you are going to learn: what dangers are waiting for us in seemingly empty places? Can physicists on Earth destroy the entire cosmos? And most importantly, can a vacuum end the world we know and love?

The afterglow of the binary neutron-star merger GW1708171 gave evidence for a structured relativistic jet2–6 and a link3,7,8 between such mergers and short gamma-ray bursts. Superluminal motion, found using radio very long baseline interferometry3 (VLBI), together with the afterglow light curve provided constraints on the viewing angle (14–28 degrees), the opening angle of the jet core (less than 5 degrees) and a modest limit on the initial Lorentz factor of the jet core (more than 4). Here we report on another superluminal motion measurement, at seven times the speed of light, leveraging Hubble Space Telescope precision astrometry and previous radio VLBI data for GW170817.

Researchers have demonstrated a quantum sensor that can power itself using sunlight and an ambient magnetic field, an achievement that could help reduce the energy costs of this energy-hungry technology.

No longer the realm of science fiction, quantum sensors are today used in applications ranging from timekeeping and gravitational-wave detection to nanoscale magnetometry [1]. When making new quantum sensors, most researchers focus on creating devices that are as precise as possible, which typically requires using advanced—energy-hungry—technologies. This high energy consumption can be problematic for sensors designed for use in remote locations on Earth, in space, or in Internet-of-Things sensors that are not connected to mains electricity. To reduce the reliance of quantum sensors on external energy sources, Yunbin Zhu of the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues now demonstrate a quantum sensor that directly exploits renewable energy sources to get the energy it needs to operate [2].

Jim McDivitt, an astronaut who played a key role in making America’s first spacewalk and moon landing possible, has died. He was 93.

NASA confirmed his death to NPR on Monday, adding that he was surrounded by family and friends when he died on Thursday.

Known for being a courageous test pilot and dedicated leader, McDivitt commanded two of the most crucial flights in the early space race — Gemini 4 and Apollo 9.

Thanks to NASA, the world may soon have access to chargers that can top off an EV in as little as five minutes. One of the biggest obstacles to fast charging is dealing with temperature. According to NASA, for an EV to be charged in five minutes, the charger must deliver an electric current of 1,400 amperes. For reference, the fastest chargers currently available max out at around 520 amperes. More amperes equals more heat. A lot more heat. Companies and research organizations are pursuing solutions to the problem; Ford and Purdue University, for example, are exploring liquid-cooled charging cables.

A team sponsored by NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division is working on technology that could provide another solution needed for ultra fast EV charging. The technology has been developed for use in space, in which massive temperature differentials require massive heat transfer capabilities. An experiment to prove the new tech, the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE), was installed on the International Space Station and is providing data that NASA will use to determine if the system will provide the claimed orders-of-magnitude benefits in heat transfer efficiency.

We’re definitely not NASA-level engineers but we will try to explain the FBCE the best we can. The FBCE is made up of several modules; one of which is called a “Flow Boiling Module” (FBM). When cooling liquid inside the FBM begins to boil, the bubbles formed draw liquid from the inner part of the flow channel to its walls. The process “efficiently transfers heat by taking advantage of both the liquid’s lower temperature and the ensuing change of phase from liquid to vapor.” The technique has been dubbed “subcooled flow boiling.”