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As we approach two full years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we now know it spreads primarily through airborne transmission. The virus rides inside tiny microscopic droplets or aerosol ejected from our mouths when we speak, shout, sing, cough, or sneeze. It then floats within the air, where it can be inhaled by and transmitted.

This inspired researchers in India to explore how we can better understand and engineer airflow to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19. To do this, they used their knowledge of airflow around aircraft and engines to tailor the airflow within indoor spaces.

In Physics of Fluids, they report computer simulations of airflow within a public washroom showing infectious aerosols in can linger up to 10 times longer than the rest of the room. These dead zones of trapped air are frequently found in corners of a room or around furniture.

The founding team at H3X have a compelling origin story. The three friends — Jason Sylvestre, Max Liben, and Eric Maciolek — formed a bond as they participarted in an engineering course regarding electric vehicles.

After their careers led them in separate directions, with each finding work in the tech and auto industries, a Department of Energy grant brought them back together to ponder how they could improve electric motors.

Their first-principles mindset and efforts have borne fruit in the form of a new electric motor that can potentially power large commercial flights.

Physicists and engineers have long been interested in creating new forms of matter, those not typically found in nature. Such materials might find use someday in, for example, novel computer chips. Beyond applications, they also reveal elusive insights about the fundamental workings of the universe. Recent work at MIT both created and characterized new quantum systems demonstrating dynamical symmetry—particular kinds of behavior that repeat periodically, like a shape folded and reflected through time.

“There are two problems we needed to solve,” says Changhao Li, a graduate student in the lab of Paola Cappellaro, a professor of nuclear science and engineering. Li published the work recently in Physical Review Letters, together with Cappellaro and fellow graduate student Guoqing Wang. “The first problem was that we needed to engineer such a system. And second, how do we characterize it? How do we observe this symmetry?”

Concretely, the quantum system consisted of a diamond crystal about a millimeter across. The crystal contains many imperfections caused by a next to a gap in the lattice—a so-called nitrogen-vacancy center. Just like an electron, each center has a quantum property called a spin, with two discrete . Because the system is a quantum system, the spins can be found not only in one of the levels, but also in a combination of both energy levels, like Schrodinger’s theoretical cat, which can be both alive and dead at the same time.

Creating the most reusable launch vehicle, ever.

Far from the Space Race where billionaires are outwitting one another to build colonies and private stations in space, a quiet YouTuber has built a water rocket that uses a parachute to gently return to Earth.

We are always on the lookout for interesting bits of engineering. While we cover the achievements of private companies with as much enthusiasm as we have for space technology, there is something very soothing and peaceful about watching a water rocket go up from a launch site that is nothing more than a lush green meadow and an overcast sky.

Thanks to the YouTube channel The Q, you can sit back and enjoy this beautiful launch powered by just air and water; in case you want to go back to the school days and do it all over again over the weekend, the video presents instructions on how to make the rocket as well.

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Immunotherapy is a promising strategy to treat cancer by stimulating the body’s own immune system to destroy tumor cells, but it only works for a handful of cancers. MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances.

Like the Stanford Torus, the O’Neill Cylinder, and the Generation Ship, the Space Elevator is one of those ideas that keep popping up! Just when you think scientists and engineers have given up on it, there’s a new round of theoretical studies that assert how it could be done. You might say that the Space Elevator is an idea that’s too good to let go of.

Considering the benefits involved, this should come as no surprise. Granted, the cost in terms of money, resources, and time would be considerable, as are the engineering and logistical challenges involved. But for the one-time price of creating this megastructure, we would be able to realize space-based solar power, habitats in orbit, cities on the Moon and Mars, and more!

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Thanks to recent advances in materials science, Space Elevators have become somewhat feasible at last.

Like the stanford torus, the o’neill cylinder.

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In this not-quite-serious video I explain what it would take to terraform Mars and make it habitable for humans.

Images at 5 mins 50 seconds are from Dan Barker https://twitter.com/danbarker.

Screenshots at 7 mins 11 seconds are from https://www.themartiangarden.com/

Correction: At 1 minute 44 second it’s the mass that is a tenth that of Earth, not the gravitational pull, which is about 0.4 times that of Earth. The text shows the right numbers. Sorry about that.

Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video http://jordibusque.com/