Tri Alpha energy has created a small prototype (the size of two buses) that can make a (more) stable gas plasma tube. Now they are making a bigger one.
Month: August 2015
Zero Gravity Water Bubble
This kind of reminds me of that phone game Osmos
Make graphene from tea trees
Researchers from James Cook University in Australia have found a new way to make the wonder material from the tea tree plant
“The researchers found that they could manufacture a significant amount of almost defect-free graphene in a matter of seconds to minutes, while current methods usually take several hours,”
Importantly, the technique also works without the need for any catalysts, or non-renewable or toxic precursors. And it works at relatively low temperatures.
via Scientists have found a cheap way to make graphene from tea tree extract – ScienceAlert.
A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developing a bioinorganic hybrid approach to artificial photosynthesis have achieved another milestone. Having generated quite a buzz with their hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that used electrons to synthesize carbon dioxide into acetate, the team has now developed a hybrid system that produces renewable molecular hydrogen and uses it to synthesize carbon dioxide into methane, the primary constituent of natural gas.
Understanding How Moon Causes Tides
One of my favourite topics. This guy gets it right in a long winded way.
Watch as a spinning handle flips over and then over again. Ok maybe it is not as cool as the space bubble video.
In a move that’s expected to save 300,000 tonnes of carbon emissions over the next 25 years, the state of Cochin on the southwest coast of India has transitioned its airport to 100 percent solar power.
via India establishes world’s first 100 percent solar-powered airport – ScienceAlert.
You’ve all seen the video from Mauricio, now he wants your help to save sharks.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153621649200955&set=vb.581295954&type=2&theater
A German company has just developed “robot ants” that could possibly transform the future of manual labor, showing extremely high efficiency in factories. Their invention, called BionicANT – which stands for Bionic Autonomous Networking Technologies, is manufactured through 3D printing. The robot is about the size of an adult hand and works imitating the cooperative behavior of the real insect.
http://interestingengineering.com/robotic-ants-could-be-the-future-workforce/
India’s Mars orbiter has sent home beautiful high-res, 3D images of the surface of Mars, and they make you feel like you’re flying right above the Red Planet. The photographs focus on the Ophir Chasma, a giant canyon on Mars that’s 62 km (38.5 miles) wide and 317 km (197 miles) long. In places, the canyon is 8 to 10 km (4.9 to 6.3 miles) deep – roughly eight times deeper than the North America’s Grand Canyon.
Ophir Chasma is part of Mars’s famous rift system, Valles Marineris. Appearing like a giant scar across the equator of Mars, Valles Marineris is one of the Solar System’s largest canyons, and although we’ve always seen it from afar in satellite and orbiter images, humans have never had the chance to see it like this before.
http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25-mars-orbiter-mission/3d-portrayals-of-ophir-chasma-terrain