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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 445

Jun 17, 2020

$1bn to save the ocean | The Economist

Posted by in category: sustainability

We asked Sir David Attenborough and four other leading thinkers on ocean conservation how they would invest $1bn to protect the ocean. Some of their answers may surprise you. https://www.woi.economist.com/

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Jun 17, 2020

Arrival expands beyond electric delivery vans with a new EV bus

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

UK startup Arrival has generated a lot of buzz with its electric delivery vans, and drummed up ample funding. But now it wants to become a much bigger transportation company — starting with a new electric bus, of which The Verge got an exclusive first look.

Jun 17, 2020

How Elon Musk aims to revolutionise battery technology

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability

Incredible Elon Musk


Could the least exciting bit of Elon Musk’s empire end up being the most transformative?

Jun 16, 2020

Nextbigfuture has noted that with about 20 lunar missions with SpaceX Starships, SpaceX could build a one gigawatt industrial moon base

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

SpaceX could use the electric skateboard of the Cybertruck to build all the of vehicles that they need for a lunar mining operation. About twenty-five to thirty cybertrucks could be delivered to the moon with every SpaceX Starship.

A lunar base and mining operation would lower the cost for lunar operations by 70 times and by ten times for high earth orbit. A lunar mining operation would also lower the cost of operations to Mars and the SpaceX plans for a city on Mars. Before, Elon Musk makes a city on Mars using a dozen fleets of one hundred Starships he will build a mining town on the moon.

Hypebeast has rendered a Tesla Cybertruck as a six-wheel lunar rover.

Jun 16, 2020

“Hovering” boats could solve one of the biggest problems for electric aircraft

Posted by in categories: drones, physics, robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

This mouth-full of a boat uses simple physics to create a cushion of air that allows it to effortlessly fly along the tops of ocean waves with near inexhaustible solar energy. The researchers say that this sleek, solar vessel could act as a mobile charging station for drones in the deep ocean or could conduct oceanic search and rescue missions.


Researchers in Russia have designed a solar-powered, and AI piloted, boat that can walk on water and serve as a mid-ocean fuel-up station for drones.

Jun 14, 2020

Tesla Roadster could hit 0–60 mph in 1.1 sec with SpaceX thrusters

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, physics, space travel, sustainability

It’s no surprise that Tesla’s next-gen Roadster is going to be lightning-quick, with a claimed 0–60 mph time of 1.9 seconds for the base model. However, the addition of SpaceX cold-gas thrusters that will be hidden behind the car’s license plate could drop Roadster’s 0–60 mph time to a dizzying 1.1 seconds.

YouTube channel Engineering Explained used some of Isaac Newton’s basic physics principles to determine that the Roadster could become one of the quickest cars in the world. By plugging in existing information that CEO Elon Musk has revealed about Tesla’s next-gen Roadster, host Jason Fenske determined that the vehicle will weigh roughly 2000 kg (4,400 lbs), which backs into acceleration g-forces of approximately 1.44 G’s.

Jun 14, 2020

Episode 2 — The Mysteries of Our Planet Venus

Posted by in categories: evolution, space, sustainability

Please listen to the second episode of my new Cosmic Controversy Podcast. This week’s guest is planetary scientist Stephen Kane at the University of California, Riverside, who discusses why Venus is so haunting and beguiling all at once.


In this wide-ranging interview, planetary scientist Stephen Kane of the University of California, Riverside, delves into the mysteries of our neighbor planet Venus. We discuss how Venus went wrong and why understanding its evolution is so important in characterizing extrasolar planetary systems like our own.

Jun 14, 2020

Icarus, Much? This Aircraft Aims to Fly to Space Using Only Energy From the Sun

Posted by in categories: solar power, space, sustainability

The SolarStratos will gain its power from 240 square feet of solar panels on its wings.

Jun 13, 2020

Australia’s Renewable Energy Plan Will Require Lots Of Energy Storage. Siemens Wants To Help

Posted by in categories: government, neuroscience, sustainability

Despite pigheaded intransigence at the highest levels of its national government, the renewable energy revolution is coming to Australia in a big way. And why not? Enough sunlight hits what Bill Bryson calls “a sunburned country” every day to meet all of humanity’s energy needs for a year. All it has to do is figure out how to harvest and distribute all that energy. (It could begin by replacing its national leaders with people who possess actual functioning brains, but the same can be said for many nations around the world.)

Jun 10, 2020

Renewable fuel from carbon dioxide with the aid of graphene and solar energy

Posted by in categories: chemistry, solar power, sustainability

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, are attempting to convert carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, to fuel using energy from sunlight. Recent results have shown that it is possible to use their technique to selectively produce methane, carbon monoxide or formic acid from carbon dioxide and water.

The study has been published in ACS Nano (“Atomic-Scale Tuning of Graphene/Cubic SiC Schottky Junction for Stable Low-Bias Photoelectrochemical Solar-to-Fuel Conversion”).

Plants convert carbon dioxide and water to oxygen and high-energy sugars, which they use as “fuel” to grow. They obtain their energy from sunlight. Jianwu Sun and his colleagues at Linköping University are attempting to imitate this reaction, known as photosynthesis, used by plants to capture carbon dioxide from air and convert it to chemical fuels, such as methane, ethanol and methanol. The method is currently at a research stage, and the long-term objective of the scientists is to convert solar energy to fuel efficiently.