Lifeboat Foundation

Can Elon Musk become the leader of all kinds of human transportation in the future?

In today’s video we look at Can Elon Musk’s 700 MPH Hyperloop Concept Be The Fastest Way To Travel?…Keep watching to see hyperloop, virgin hyperloop, elon musk hyperloop, hyperloop elon musk, hyperloop one, hyperloop transportation technologies, hyperloop train, hyperloop test, the hyperloop may disrupt more than just travel, virgin hyperloop one, hyperloop technology, hyperloop travel, hyperloop test launch, hyperloop elon, hyperloop speed, hyperloop dubai, hyperloop explained, tesla hyperloop, hyperloop may disrupt more than just travelSubscribe for the latest news on Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX. Inspired by Tech Space, Tech Vision, Futurity, and Now you know.

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People may call electric cars the future, but with PHEVs an easier path may already be here.

Can we use mountains as gigantic batteries for long-term energy storage? Such is the premise of new research published in the journal Energy.

The particular focus of the study by Julian Hunt of IIASA (Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and his colleagues is how to store energy in locations that have less energy demand and variable weather conditions that affect renewable energy sources. The team looked at places like small islands and remote places that would need less than 20 megawatts of capacity for energy storage and proposed a way to use mountains to accomplish the task.

The idea of transparent solar windows almost sounds too good to be true, and it is, but not entirely. Researchers have been hammering away at the challenge of harnessing sunlight to generate electricity from see-through windows for years. The prize is acres upon acres of new sites for solar panels on buildings, without losing the energy-saving advantages of daylighting. Just look at any glass building and you can practically feel the blooming of the possibilities. The obstacles are many but it looks like a real breakthrough is finally at hand, so to speak.

Transparent Solar Windows, For Real

See-through solar cells have been bouncing around the CleanTechnica radar since at least 2010, when the possibility of creating a transparent solar window was beginning to emerge alongside thin film solar technology.

Solid-solution organic crystals have been brought into the quest for superior photon upconversion materials, which transform presently wasted long-wavelength light into more useful shorter wavelength light. Scientists from Tokyo Institute of Technology have revisited a materials approach previously deemed lackluster—using a molecule originally developed for organic LEDs—and have achieved outstanding performance and efficiency. Their findings pave the way for many novel photonic technologies, such as better solar cells and photocatalysts for hydrogen and hydrocarbon productions.

Light is a powerful source of energy that can, if leveraged correctly, be used to drive stubborn chemical reactions, generate electricity, and run optoelectronic devices. However, in most applications, not all the wavelengths of light can be used. This is because the energy that each photon carries is inversely proportional to its wavelength, and chemical and physical processes are triggered by light only when the energy provided by individual photons exceeds a certain threshold.

This means that devices like solar cells cannot benefit from all the color contained in sunlight, as it comprises a mixture of photons with both high and low energies. Scientists worldwide are actively exploring materials to realize photon upconversion (PUC), by which photons with lower energies (longer wavelengths) are captured and re-emitted as photons with higher energies (shorter wavelengths). One promising way to realize this is through triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). This process requires the combination of a sensitizer material and an annihilator material. The sensitizer absorbs low energy photons (long-wavelength light) and transfers its excited energy to the annihilator, which emits higher energy photons (light of shorter wavelength) as a result of TTA.

Facebook has been rife with “Star Trek” Thanksgiving memes for the last week or more which in and of itself is puzzling. “Star Trek” is hardly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about when commemorating the first harvest feast shared by this country’s Pilgrim colonists and local Native Americans.

But it’s reasonable to assert that “Star Trek” and Thanksgiving are at least tangentially linked since the latter is a celebration of home and hearth whereas “Star Trek” is a celebration of humankind’s exploration of the cosmos. Certainly, this time of year represents an ideal time of year to be thankful for home and shelter.

As for “Star Trek”?

Continue reading “‘Star Trek’ Meme Reminds Us To Be Thankful For Earth Itself” »

Deepsea submersible diving could compete with space tourism.

A form of luxury tourism is hitting the deep sea thanks to a small handful of firms providing state-of-the-art private submersibles to high-paying customers.

Continue reading “Could Luxury Submarine Trips Thrive as an Alternative to Space Tourism?” »

Advanced hydrogel used in SmartFarm was also tested for space-based agriculture.

Sushil Reddy is no stranger to long-distance electric bicycles rides, having broken the Guinness World Record back in 2016 with a 7,424 km (4,613 mile) ride across India. Since then he’s set his sights on solar power, performing several more long-distance solar-powered electric bike rides. Now he’s halfway through a 10,460 km (6,500 mile) ride around the US on a custom-built solar-powered electric bike as part of the SunPedal Ride project.

As the SunPedal Ride project explained:

“The SunPedal Ride is an outreach project started by Sushil Reddy in 2016. The idea is to have conversations about clean energy and sustainable mobility via endurance journeys undertaken on zero tail-pipe emission vehicles. Each edition of The SunPedal Ride is a new challenge which is executed by a team and supported by a group of sponsors/partners to spread the message via public interactions. A medium of a zero tail-pipe emissions vehicle is used in each edition of The SunPedal Ride.”