Researchers devised a new miniature ballistics test to test graphene’s bullet resistance. They used a laser pulse to superheat gold filaments until they vaporised, acting like gunpowder to fire a micron-size glass bullet into 10 to 100 sheets of graphene at 3000 meters per second. The team found that graphene sheets dissipate this kinetic energy …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 236 is up at Yes Vermont Yankee ANS Nuclear Cafe – the US EPA Clean Power Plan aims to reduce emissions rates (not necessarily emissions) by setting goals for states in terms of lbs of CO2/MWh. According to the US Energy Information Agency (US EIA), in 2012 New York State’s …
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens Official Teaser Trailer #1 (2015) – J.J. Abrams Movie HD A continuation of the saga created by George Lucas set thirty years after Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983). Fivethirtyeight.com had polling of America’s favorite Star Wars characters. The Washington Post combined the …
United Overseas Bank (a Singporean Bank) estimates that by 2025, China’s economy will be worth $28 trillion, just behind the US at $29 trillion but well ahead of the euro zone at $20 trillion. The bank projections show that even by growing annually at just about two-thirds of the pace that it was used to …
There has been some recent coverage of the Dynomak nuclear fusion project in IEEE Spectrum and other sources over the last few days. Nextbigfuture had extensive coverage of the Dynomak over 6 weeks ago. Dynomak makes the claim that they will be cheaper than coal power. The Dynomak is priced out at about $2.7 billion …
There were some meetings and papers considering how to scale and test geoengineering. The papers did not consider iron sequesteration in the ocean. The 120 ton experiment of placing iron sulphate in the ocean was an Eddy scale experiment off of the coast of British Columbia Canada. Ocean mesoscale Eddies are 10 to 500 kilometers …
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered an invisible shield some 7,200 miles above Earth that blocks so-called “killer electrons,” which whip around the planet at near-light speed and have been known to threaten astronauts, fry satellites and degrade space systems during intense solar storms. The barrier to the particle motion …
3D printing of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanowires is realized at room temperature by local growth of GO at the meniscus formed at a micropipette tip followed by reduction of GO by thermal or chemical treatment. 3D rGO nanowires with diverse and complicated forms are successfully printed, demonstrating their ability to grow in any direction …
OpenWorm is an open source project dedicated to creating a virtual C. elegans nematode in a computer. The bot’s artificial brain has the same number of cells as a real nematode brain, and they are connected up in exactly the same way. But instead of a fluid tubular body animated by 95 muscles, WormBot has …
Individual biological circuit componentss can have precise and predictable responses but those outcomes become less predictable as more such elements are combined. A team of researchers at MIT has now come up with a way of greatly reducing that unpredictability, introducing a device that could ultimately allow such circuits to behave nearly as predictably as …
US crude oil production increased to 9.077 million barrels per day. USA oil production is within about 500,000 barrels per day of Saudi Arabia oil production. Saudia Arabia and Russia are trying to curb over production to try to defend the oil price. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science …