Europe has an energy crisis. Factories are halting operations in the face of soaring energy prices; families are paying 50% more for heating (or opting to freeze in their homes), and Europe as a whole continues to destabilize its political position by making itself more dependent on Russia for natural gas.
The explanation of inertia based on “Mach’s principle” is briefly revisited and an experiment whereby the gravitational origin of inertia can be tested is described. The test consists of detecting a small stationary force with a sensitive force sensor. The force is presumably induced when a periodic transient Mach effect mass fluctuation is driven in high voltage, high energy density capacitors that are subjected to 50 kHz, 1.3 kV amplitude voltage signal, and threaded by an alternating magnetic flux of the same frequency. An effect of the sort predicted is shown to be present in the device tested. It has the expected magnitude and depends on the relative phase of the Mach effect mass fluctuation and the alternating magnetic flux as expected. The observed effect also displays scaling behaviors that are unique to Mach effects.
We all lead busy lives, and it can be hard to remember to eat healthy. Sometimes, it’s easier to just grab food off the shelf, thinking only of the convenience and not of the nutritional value. Processed foods are always on-hand, and they’ve saved us time and energy in the past. But, at what cost?
Many of the products on this list are staples of our daily diet. However, if not eaten in strict moderation (or avoided completely) they can lead to long-term health problems. Some of these products are clearly harmful, but others seem like healthy foods, only to be proven unhealthy when it’s too late. After looking at this list, you might want to reconsider what you put on your shopping list.
Petmal/iStock.
The firm claims the innovation, known as the “iron-air battery,” could help decarbonize the nation’s power sector more cheaply than lithium-ion storage systems while using only domestic readily available materials.
Posted in energy | 1 Comment on The Polar Vortex starts to intensify, but a crucial stratospheric warming wave is now forecast to develop as we head into the New Year
The Polar Vortex is starting to power up and will drive a weather pattern change in the coming days, creating warm conditions over the United States and Europe. But its power-up will be quickly followed by a disruption event. A strong stratospheric warming wave is forecast to emerge, putting a question mark on the weather patterns for the rest of the Winter season.
Weather and the stratospheric Polar Vortex are strongly connected, especially in Winter. So it matters greatly in what shape or form the Polar Vortex is as we go through the season.
We will look at the important role of the Polar Vortex during the Winter season and how it played into the recent cold outbreaks. But more importantly, we will look closely at the latest forecasts and why the Polar Vortex might be the deciding factor for the weather patterns for the rest of the Winter season.
Posted in energy
The world continues to burn coal in greater quantities than ever. But a plateau in this — the most polluting of fossil fuels — could soon be reached.
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Even though winds on Mars are weak, they could be sufficient to provide power.
Nature Publishing:
Equipmake says it’s got the lightest and most power-dense electric motor on the market, and if there’s one place where weight is critical, it’s on a launch pad. The company has developed an ultra-lightweight motor for Australia’s first rocket launch.
Queensland-based Gilmour Space Technologies is on the home stretch making preparations for the launch of its three-stage Eris orbital launch vehicle next April. It’ll be the first orbital launch attempt of an Australian designed and built rocket, and the company hopes it’ll represent the beginning of a new space launch industry Down Under.
Rather than acting as a supplier to other rocket companies overseas, Gilmour has built its own machine from the ground up. Standing 25 m (82 ft) high, it has a first-stage diameter of 2 m (6.6 ft), and a second-stage diameter of 1.5 m (4.9 ft), and it’s designed to take a payload mass up to 305 kg (672 lb) up as high as 500 km (311 miles) for delivery to sun-synchronous or equatorial orbits.
As our Energy Central Community thrives and grows with each passing year, it’s clear to us that we have something special here. This community of power industry professionals who so eagerly and openly share their insights, their lessons learned, and their questions to allow for constant collaboration is unparalleled anywhere else in our sector.
The most critical part of this successful undertaking, though, is of course the people behind it all. The voices in our Community who are driving those conversations and keeping readers and peers coming back again and again. To once again celebrate the importance of our community members in making Energy Central the powerhouse that it is, we’re ending the year by honoring the members on Energy Central who went above and beyond—frequently sharing news and content, reliably starting conversations across the site, and providing some of the most genuinely high-value contributions throughout 2022.
All week, we’ll be publishing articles highlighting the Top Voice of 2022 for each of our 6 Networks. As part of this tradition, some of those community members recognized were kind enough to answer a few questions to highlight what they found valuable in the sector in 2022, their predictions for 2023, and some personal insights to get to know the men and women behind it all.
For a long time, researchers assumed that phonons could not contribute to the thermal Hall effect because of their lack of charge and spin. New work challenges this assumption.
How heat flows in interacting quantum many-body systems is one of the most interesting open problems in condensed-matter physics. Understanding thermal transport is particularly challenging in systems where charge-carrier contributions to energy transport are strongly suppressed, such as in insulators and superconductors. In such systems, heat transport cannot therefore be understood in terms of electronic carriers alone. In insulators, acoustic phonons are among the main energy carriers in an insulator. However, determining how and to what extent phonons contribute to heat transport in a material is the Achilles’ heel of interpreting thermal conductivity measurements. In particular, whether or not phonons can contribute to the thermal Hall effect—in which a temperature gradient in one direction produces heat flow in a perpendicular direction—remains an open question.
