A $1.37 billion loan guarantee that the U.S. Department of Energy granted to Brightsource Energy should enable a 400 Megawatt solar thermal project to proceed The 400 MW solar project would generate electricity equal to about 100 MW of nuclear power (nuclear power has higher operating capacity, solar cannot generate at night or under clouds) …
Researchers at the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center (AMPAC)) have verified findings by Planar Energy that could lead to dramatic cost and performance improvements in large format batteries required for practical electric vehicles. AMPAC scientists independently confirmed that Planar Energy’s new generation of solid state electrolytes have ionic conductivity …
Sidney Crosby helped save Canada from a nervous breakdown with the winning goal in a 3-2 victory over the United States in Olympic Hockey Healthcare Nextbigfuture has looked at comparisons of Canada and the United States healthcare systems before * Canadians spend about 55% of what Americans spend on health care and have longer life …
Nanowerk reports on research from Ruhr-Universität Bochum Researchers have placed two nitrogen atoms a few nanometers apart, so that laser excitation can create a quantum mechanical coupling. The key to the solution: it works with high precision, reliably, and even at room-temperature only in a diamond. Nitrogen-vacancy center at wikipedia The nitrogen-vacancy center (N-V center) …
Quantum encrypted communication is currently limited to about 100 kilometers (60 mile) range. Improving the light storage efficiency will enable better quantum repeaters. Improving quantum repeaters by over ten times will allow for quantum encrypted communication with ranges of thousand of kilometers. Improvements in materials used can increase the effiency of light storage even more …
A breakthrough approach by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and their collaborators in fabricating thin films of a new iron based superconducting material has yielded promising results: The material has a current-carrying potential 500 times that of previous experiments, making it significant for a variety of practical applications. “We’ve shown how to grow quality, single-crystal thin …
Arxiv – Testing the Newton second law in the regime of small accelerations It has been pointed out that the Newtonian second law can be tested in the very small acceleration regime by using the combined movement of the Earth and Sun around the Galactic center of mass. It has been shown that there are …
When a large nearby object, such as a galaxy, blocks a distant object, such as another galaxy, the light can detour around the blockage. But instead of taking a single path, light can bend around the object in one of two, or four different routes, thus doubling or quadrupling the amount of information scientists receive. …
1. Universe Today presents stunning new looks at the Mars Avalanche 2 . Ian O’Neill at Discovery space talks about bad science at the movies. The Core and 2012 have some of the worst science. Apollo 13 and Contact had some of the best. Ian’s article has a good discussion about the benefits of scientific …