Lifeboat Foundation

If classic monster movies and old science experiments are to be believed, life begins with a spark.

Not everybody is convinced by this kind of origin story, so the search continues for sources of energy capable of transforming a prebiotic soup into a life-generating dish. Maybe the secret ingredient isn’t anything more shocking than a pinch of salt.

A new study led by researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan has turned their attention to common old sodium chloride as a potential conduit for the chemical energy required for early biochemistry.

Continue reading “Life on Earth Could Have Started Thanks to a Simple Ingredient We Use Every Day” »

QUT chemistry researchers have discovered cheaper and more efficient materials for producing hydrogen for the storage of renewable energy that could replace current water-splitting catalysts.

Professor Anthony O’Mullane said the potential for the chemical storage of renewable energy in the form of hydrogen was being investigated around the world.

Continue reading “New catalyst material produces abundant cheap hydrogen” »

The emancipation of women is generally considered a modern phenomenon, but a new burial site in Lincolnshire has shown that females were already enjoying high social status, wealth and power in their own right during the Dark Ages.

Archaeologists at the University of Sheffield discovered 20 burials at a cemetery in Scremby, on the southern edge of the Lincolnshire wolds, dating back to the late fifth to mid sixth centuries AD. Around half the graves were females, who were found to be richly dressed and surrounded by riches including amber necklaces, hundreds of glass beads, silver buckles and ivory clasps.

Dr Hugh Willmott, Senior Lecturer in European Historical Archaeology from the https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/

Continue reading “Anglo-Saxon burial site shines a light on the high worth of women in the Dark Ages” »

A team of scientists has discovered a single-site, visible-light-activated catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO₂) into “building block” molecules that could be used for creating useful chemicals. The discovery opens the possibility of using sunlight to turn a greenhouse gas into hydrocarbon fuels.

Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. It’s perhaps the best known law of physics, and Guido Fetta thinks he’s found a way around it.

According to classical physics, in order for something—like a spaceship—to move, conservation of momentum requires that it has to exert a force on something else. A person in roller skates, for example, pushes off against a wall; a rocket accelerates upward by propelling high-velocity combusted fuel downward. In practice, this means that space vessels like satellites and space stations have to carry up to half their weight in propellant just to stay in orbit. That bulks up their cost and reduces their useful lifetime.

Scientists used to think a “warp bubble” would require an impractical amount of energy. That’s starting to change.

Fruit flies and a common energy drink ingredient may help explain how the brain regulates sleep and how that regulation can go wrong.

Imagine an airport where thousands of planes, empty of fuel, are left abandoned on the tarmac. That is what has been happening for decades with satellites that circle the Earth.

When satellites run out of fuel, they can no longer maintain their precise orbit, rendering them useless even if their hardware is still intact.

“It’s literally throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars,” Al Tadros, vice president of space infrastructure and civil Space at a company called SSL, said this month at a meeting in the US capital of key players in the emerging field of on-orbit servicing, or repairing satellites while they are in space.

Efforts are underway to drive down cost of using renewable energy.