Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2017

Imagine materials strong enough to use in building airplanes or motor cars, yet are literally lighter than air. Soon, that may not be so hard to do because a team of researchers from MIT and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed new ultra-lightweight materials that are as light as aerogel, but 10,000 times stiffer, and may one day revolutionize aerospace and automotive designs.

Aerogels are incredibly light, so light that the record holder, aerographene, boasts a density of just 0.16 mg/cm³. Currently, aerogels are used for insulation, tennis racquets, as a means of controlling oil spills, and were used on the NASA Stardust mission to collect samples from a comet’s tail. Unfortunately, despite its seemingly ephemeral nature, its very much a solid and will shatter if pressed hard enough, so its use is limited.

Continue reading “New materials developed that are as light as aerogel, yet 10,000 times stronger” »

In a step closer to skyscrapers that serve as power sources, a team led by University of Michigan researchers has set a new efficiency record for color-neutral, transparent solar cells.

The team achieved 8.1% efficiency and 43.3% transparency with an organic, or carbon-based, design rather than conventional silicon. While the cells have a slight green tint, they are much more like the gray of sunglasses and automobile windows.

“Windows, which are on the face of every building, are an ideal location for organic solar cells because they offer something silicon can’t, which is a combination of very high efficiency and very high visible transparency,” said Stephen Forrest, the Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor of Engineering and Paul G. Goebel Professor of Engineering, who led the research.

The tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Friday showed off a pig whose brain he says has been implanted with a small computer.

“We have a healthy and happy pig, initially shy but obviously high energy and, you know, kind of loving life, and she’s had the implant for two months,” Musk said of Gertrude, the pig.

The billionaire entrepreneur, whose other companies include Tesla and SpaceX, presented during a live-stream event to recruit employees for his neuroscience startup Neuralink. He described Gertrude’s coin-sized implant as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires”.

The Boring Company’s Las Vegas tunnel will be operational in “only a few months,” according to company frontman Elon Musk, who updated the project’s progress on August 28.

Musk, CEO of the Boring Company, set out to create a new source of transportation in high-traffic areas several years ago while living in Los Angeles. While LA has a private test tunnel in Hawthorne, California, near the Tesla Design Studio and SpaceX Headquarters, Musk wanted to expand upon the idea and move it to other cities.

Las Vegas needed a transportation solution to handle traffic on the Strip, where many of the visitors spend the majority of their time while visiting the Sin City. However, the Las Vegas Convention Center also desired an underground people mover, and the Boring Co. was more than happy to make a $52.5 million bid on the project, which was accepted.

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s Las Vegas Boring Company tunnels ‘only a few months away’ from operation” »

The phrase “too much of a good thing” may sound like a contradiction, but it encapsulates one of the key hurdles preventing the expansion of renewable energy generation. Too much of a service or commodity makes it harder for companies to sell them, so they curtail production.

Usually that works out fine: The market reaches equilibrium and economists are happy. But external factors are bottlenecking renewable electricity despite the widespread desire to increase its capacity.

UC Santa Barbara’s Sangwon Suh is all too familiar with this issue. The professor of industrial ecology has focused on it and related challenges for at least the past two years at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “Curtailment is the biggest problem of renewable energy we are facing,” said Suh, who noted it will only escalate as renewable energy capacity increases.

More advances on artificial photosynthesis.

Scientists at the UK’s University of Cambridge have developed a renewable energy device that mimics photosynthesis by making fuel from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.

Taking inspiration from the way that plants create their own energy, the device is a slim sheet that produces oxygen and formic acid from water, carbon dioxide and sunlight.

Continue reading “University of Cambridge develops synthetic leaf that turns sunlight into fuel” »

Amazon has placed an order of 1,800 electric vans with Mercedes-Benz, adding to the 100,000 electric delivery vans it has on order with Rivian.

« Acording to Electrek, an FBI complaint details how the feds helped foil a plot by Russian hackers to target Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory with a massive ransomware hack and data breach.

It’s worth noting that the complaint itself never explicitly says that the target of the hack was Tesla, though its Gigafactory is located outside Sparks, Nevada. Electrek, though, is reporting as fact that Tesla is the target. We’ve reached out to Tesla for additional information and we’ll update if any new info comes to light. »

Intriguingly, it sounds as though the hackers weren’t just after ransom.

Continue reading “FBI Reportedly Foils Russian Hack at Tesla Factory” »

Forget windmills: This is an energy kite.