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Archive for the ‘energy’ category: Page 345

Dec 12, 2015

The Tesla Battery Is Now on Sale

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats

Tesla’s much-hyped home battery, which is known as the “Powerwall” finally went on sale.

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Dec 10, 2015

Tesla unveils a battery to power your home, completely off grid

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats

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Dec 10, 2015

Can You Own Part of an Asteroid? How Asteroid Mining Is Changing Space Law

Posted by in categories: energy, finance, space

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pIY_fmvFDhM

Coal miners mine coal; diamond miners mine diamonds; gold miners mine gold; space miners (will) mine space—and anything in it that has precious metals or compounds that can be whisked into rocket fuel. But, just like the first three kinds of “resource extraction,” the celestial kind will face more than a few philosophical, financial, and regulatory complications.

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Dec 8, 2015

Tiny chip that powers itself from radio waves

Posted by in categories: computing, energy

A tiny chip that uses radio waves to make its energy has been developed by Dutch researchers.

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Dec 8, 2015

Laser-Induced Graphene Looks to Displace Batteries With Supercapacitors

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

Researchers continue to refine the process for producing laser-induced graphene that promises big changes in energy storage.

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Dec 8, 2015

The amazing camera that can see around corners (w/ video)

Posted by in categories: electronics, energy

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pi7iCUSXctY

How can a person see around a blind corner? One answer is to develop X-ray vision. A more mundane approach is to use a mirror. But if neither are an option, a group of scientists led by Genevieve Gariepy have developed a state-of-the-art detector which, with some clever data processing techniques, can turn walls and floors into a “virtual mirror”, giving the power to locate and track moving objects out of direct line of sight.

The shiny surface of a mirror works by reflecting from an at a well-defined angle towards your eye. Because light scattered from different points on the object is reflected at the same angle, your eye sees a clear image of the object. In contrast, a non-reflective surface scatters light randomly in all directions, and creates no clear image.

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Dec 6, 2015

60 Minutes On This Bicycle Can Power Your Home For 24 Hours

Posted by in categories: energy, habitats

Would you exercise for an hour every day if the workout powered your home for twenty-four hours?

People often complain about the high costs of energy and the fact that they “never have time to workout.” This invention certainly solves both conundrums.

And, most importantly, this free power invention has the potential to lift the 1.3 billion people who presently live without electricity out of poverty.

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Dec 4, 2015

Here’s a Peek at the First Sodium-ion Rechargeable Battery

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

Ubiquitous sodium could replace rare lithium in rechargeable batteries, French researchers show. And it could make batteries A LOT cheaper.


Will sodium replace lithium as the material of choice for rechargeable batteries?

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Dec 2, 2015

A Big Win for Cheap, Clean Energy — By Bill Gates | The Gates Notes

Posted by in categories: business, energy, environmental, innovation, science

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Nov 29, 2015

Diamond nanothread rivals graphene as the next big wonder material

Posted by in categories: energy, materials

For some time now, graphene has been the wonder material that scientists have been most excited about using: as it develops, it promises to transform everything from night-vision goggles to energy storage. Now researchers across the globe think they’ve come up with a material to rival it: diamond nanothread.

The clues are in the name. This potentially revolutionary, next-generation material is partly made from diamond and is incredibly thin as well as incredibly strong. Technically speaking, we’re looking at a type of carbon (like graphene) taking the form of a one-dimensional diamond crystal that’s topped with hydrogen. To create the material, benzene molecules were stacked together and pressurised.

It’s too early to say how diamond nanothread could be used — right now scientists are still at the research and simulation stage — but one of the appeals of a material like this is its versatility. And a team of scientists working at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia has been looking into the properties of diamond nanothread and think it might be more versatile and robust than originally believed.

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