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Amat Farm

Amat farms (antimatter farms) consist of large banks of solar power collectors which power multicolliders optimally designed to produce antiparticles. The vast showers of collision products which result are sorted magnetically; antimatter particles and other useful species are collected, cooled and held in electric/magnetic traps.

The first amat farms were established in 332 orbiting Sol just outside the orbit of Mercury, known collectively as the Circumsol ring. Several power corporations were involved in this effort, including the Look Outwards Combine, Jerusalem Macrotech and General Dynamics Corporation. In 524 the Jerusalem Macrotech station B4 was destroyed during an unsuccessful raid by Space Cowboys.

Amat fields designed to produce anti-protons are typically 100km or more in diameter; fields which produce positrons are considerably smaller. The antiprotons and positrons are usually combined into anti-hydrogen and frozen for easier storage.

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Cyborg Bacteria Covered in Tiny Solar Panels Are Changing The Future of Clean Fuel

In an effort to improve the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has created cyborg bacteria.

These bacteria were trained to grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals that act as efficient solar panels for harvesting sunlight.

Although most life on Earth relies upon photosynthesis as its source of energy, the process has a weak link: chlorophyll. Plants and other organisms use the green pigment to harvest sunlight during photosynthesis, but it is rather inefficient.

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New Wind Turbines Could Power Japan For 50 Years After A Single Typhoon

Figured this deserved its own post:

The other day i had this idea for wind farms on the far Northern end of Canada, where it is basically a treeless desert, and have those running along the whole coast up there. I remember Japan was working on some wind power system where if it got hit by a typhoon it would supposedly produce 50 years worth of power. The main issues would be the cost of the wind systems, i don’t even know if they are commercially available yet, secondly hooking them up to the power grid and trying to run it into the greater North American power grid, i don’t know if the power grid stretches from up there down to the main grid. The plus to this as opposed to solar is this could be running up there 24÷7÷365. Cost to do something like this, to start, probably in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 million dollars US, and would require a ton of connections.


Typhoons are generally associated with mass destruction, but a Japanese engineer has developed a wind turbine that can harness the tremendous power of these storms and turn it into useful energy. If he’s right, a single typhoon could power Japan for 50 years.

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The Vertical Farm

The term “vertical farming” has not been around long. It refers to a method of growing crops, usually without soil or natural light, in beds stacked vertically inside a controlled-environment building. The credit for coining the term seems to belong to Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., a professor (now emeritus) of parasitology and environmental science at Columbia University Medical School and the author of “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.”

Hearing that Despommier would be addressing an audience of high-school science teachers at Columbia on a recent morning, I arranged to sit in. During the question period, one of the teachers asked a basic question that had also been puzzling me: What are the plants in a soil-free farm made of? Aren’t plants mostly the soil that they grew in? Despommier explained that plants consist of water, mineral nutrients like potassium and magnesium taken from the soil (or, in the case of a vertical farm, from the nutrients added to the water their roots are sprayed with), and carbon, an element plants get from the CO2 in the air and then convert by photosynthesis into sucrose, which feeds the plant, and cellulose, which provides its structure.

In other words, plants create themselves partly out of thin air. Salad greens are about ninety per cent water. About half of the remaining ten per cent is carbon. If AeroFarms’ vertical farm grows a thousand tons of greens a year, about fifty tons of that will be carbon taken from the air.

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The Wireless Charging of Moving Electric Vehicles Just Overcame A Major Hurdle

In a recent study, Stanford scientists were able to transfer electricity wirelessly to a moving lightbulb. The technology they developed help overcome the limited driving range of electric cars, currently one of their biggest drawbacks.

If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.

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Leave the Drones to Tesla

Did you know that Nikola Tesla patented a drone before there were drones?! Over 100 years ago he called these imagined vessels as being used to carry packages, establish communication with inaccessible regions, and “many other scientific purposes.” Drones are basically in the brand’s DNA, so it’s no wonder that there is so much hype around what a Tesla drone might be like! In this concept, called Aurora, Tesla’s electric motor technology is applied to a tricopter design to facilitate long-range, extended-time camera capability.

Operating either autonomously or controlled manually, it’s ideal for reconnaissance, checking on out-of-reach machinery, routine structure inspections, or simply for capturing vivid photography and video for fun. The three rotor design allows for larger propellers. This results in less required rotations and less energy to fly, making it more efficient with up to 35% more battery life. Because of the size of the propellers, it also has greater acceleration and better maneuverability. As far as looks go, it’s carefully considered and beautifully executed sculpting that’s probably the e-drone concept most closely in line with the Tesla aesthetic.

Designer: Alberto Esses

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Scientists Have Invented a Graphene-Based Sieve That Turns Seawater Into Drinking Water

Researchers have achieved a major turning point in the quest for efficient desalination by announcing the invention of a graphene-oxide membrane that sieves salt right out of seawater.

At this stage, the technique is still limited to the lab, but it’s a demonstration of how we could one day quickly and easily turn one of our most abundant resources, seawater, into one of our most scarce — clean drinking water.

The team, led by Rahul Nair from the University of Manchester in the UK, has shown that the sieve can efficiently filter out salts, and now the next step is to test this against existing desalination membranes.

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