A Texas-based startup has raised US$4.5 million in seed funding to develop and commercialize a remarkable electric motor technology. The father/son team claims the design can massively reduce the size and complexity of electric powertrains while also significantly boosting efficiency and doubling the torque output.
With these high profile missions to the moon and Mars, sci-fi is set to become a Bollywood staple. “The Indian audience, especially the youth segment, now constantly seeks newer themes and stories,” says Vikram Malhotra, CEO of Abundantia Entertainment, one of India’s biggest production companies. “There has been so much talk and discussion about India’s space programmes and the achievements of our scientists that even the common man now wants to know more about this fascinating world. And on the big screen.”
In 2014, India sent the Mars Orbiter Mission into space, and became the first country to send a satellite to orbit the planet at its first attempt – putting its much richer regional rival China in the shade as it became the first Asian nation to get to the red planet. The project was notable for being led by a team of female scientists; as is India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2 (from the Sanskrit for “moon craft”), which was launched last month and is due to land on the moon in early September. And as the country establishes itself as a space power, Indians have developed an appetite for sci-fi themes in its cinema.
The patriotic outburst that followed the Mars mission has fuelled the latest example of Indian space cinema: Mission Mangal (Sanskrit for Mars), a fictionalised account of the Orbiter Mission. Starring and produced by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, it is due for release on 15 August, India’s Independence Day. “I would follow the news about India’s space missions and feel proud of what we were achieving,” says Kumar. “But through Mission Mangal I guess you could say I have an insider’s perspective.”
Continue reading “One giant leap for Indian cinema: how Bollywood embraced sci-fi” »
Researchers have, for the first time, identified the sufficient and necessary conditions that the low-energy limit of quantum gravity theories must satisfy to preserve the main features of the Unruh effect.
To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a citizen of the United States, residing in the borough of Manhattan, in the city, county, and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy, of which the following is a specification, reference being bad to the drawing accom-’ panying and forming a part of the same.
Texas Copy of The Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York in 1901–1902. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to scale up the facility and add his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi’s radio based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project’s primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
In an attempt to satisfy Tesla’s debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down to 16 acres (6.5 ha) but the original, 94 by 94 ft (29 by 29 m), brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day. Wiki.
A polyphase system is a means of distributing alternating-current electrical power where the power transfer is constant during each electrical cycle. Polyphase systems have three or more energized electrical conductors carrying alternating currents with a defined phase angle between the voltage waves in each conductor; for three-phase voltage, the phase angle is 120° or ~2.09 radians. Polyphase systems are particularly useful for transmitting power to electric motors which rely on alternating current to rotate. The most common example is the three-phase power system used for industrial applications and for power transmission. Compared to a single-phase, two-wire system, a three-phase three-wire system transmits three times as much power for the same conductor size and voltage.
Systems with more than three phases are often used for rectifier and power conversion systems, and have been studied for power transmission.
Solid state laser :3.
Advances in high-energy solid-state lasers and encouraging results from field trials show expanded capabilities of recent U.S military laser prototypes.
Continue reading “High-power Military Lasers: The Pentagon’s laser weapon plans expand” »
Group is set to build the world’s first plane made from and powered by HEMP. Not only the plane set to run on HEMPEARTH Hemp Jet A Bio Fuel, but it is set to be built almost entirely from HEMP. Everything from the seats, the wings, the plane walls and even the pillows are set to contain hemp.
Researchers say they created E coli strain that can draw free energy from the environment; its next task is to see if technique can be applied to complex life forms such as humans and animals.
