Author: Sic
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The Mystical World of Mushrooms
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Dark Lightning
A team of European researchers has just announced that they’ve set a new record by creating black silicon solar cells that can convert 22.1 percent of the Sun’s light into electricity – an increase of almost four percent on their previous record. While this doesn’t compare to the record of 40 percent efficiency in traditional silicon solar cells, it shows that black silicon solar cells are now real contenders that could help greatly reduce the cost of solar power in the future.
via Solar cells that work on cloudy days just hit a record-breaking 22.1% efficiency – ScienceAlert.
Check out this new wind turbine tech: Wind power without a turbine or any blades at all. Instead a long shaft is designed to vibrate in the wind, the vibration is used to induce an electric field using magnets.
It generates 30% less energy but has many other important benefits, including not killing 1300 birds. Which is what happened in one small town.
http://www.sciencealert.com/spanish-researchers-are-developing-bladeless-wind-turbines
The NASA SDO satellite has been filming the Sun for 5 years now. Everyday it generates 1.5 terabytes of video.
Watch this amazing video of the Sun.
http://www.sciencedump.com/content/watch-lightning-bolt-get-captured-glass-box-forever
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Self Driving Cars
This is why we’ve programmed our cars to pause briefly after a light turns green before proceeding into the intersection — that’s often when someone will barrel impatiently or distractedly through the intersection.
via The View from the Front Seat of the Google Self-Driving Car — Backchannel — Medium.
An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors.
Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity