There is a new meme called “Cozy Futurism” which is pretending that there a choice between colonizing Mars and fixing Earth-based poverty, inequality and homelessness. I think they are basing this on the historical example of the European countries that did not colonize the Americas from 1500-1800 and solved inequality, poverty and homelessness. Oh that’s …
Cambridge University and NTU Singapore have found that slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates drag more carbon into Earth’s interior than previously thought. Only about a third of the carbon recycled beneath volcanic chains returns to the surface via recycling, in contrast to previous theories that what goes down mostly comes back up. Carbon rich materials …
Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis discuss optimistic views of the future in wide-ranging topics from energy and communications to knowledge and transport, the importance of making humanity an interplanetary species plus the duo will announce the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition. XPRIZE Carbon Removal is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity – fighting …
Nuclear commercial ships have been studied for decades and there is renewed interest. The newest justifications focus on the decarbonization climate change aspects. The first nuclear navy ship was launched in 1954. It was the US nuclear submarine. The US had the nuclear-powered cargo ship NS Savannah launched in 1959. The Russian Sevmorput is the …
Natural gas power plants only emits half of the carbon dioxide as coal power plants. However, natural gas usage can result in a lot more methane leaks and emissions. One ton of methane emissions has the same warming effect as about 86 tons of CO2 over twenty years. Above is satellite images of large methane …
Purdue University engineers have created white paint that can keep surfaces up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings – almost like a refrigerator does, but without consuming energy. Commercial “heat rejecting paints” currently on the market reflect only 80%-90% of sunlight and cannot achieve temperatures below their surroundings. The white paint that …
Tesmanian reports that the Tesla Berlin factory will have eight giant casting machines for the manufacturing of Model Y. Giga Presses are the largest high-pressure die casting machines in the world, with a clamping force of 6,100-tonne-force (60,000 kN) die casting machines for Giga Berlin. Elon Musk at Battery Day said that Tesla developed new …
R-MXAS is a revolutionary aerospace architecture for realizing a synthetic aperture imaging radiometer (SAIR) in a manner affording unprecedented sparsity in terms of number of antenna elements. As such, it enables a feasible path to space-based implementation of RF apertures of unprecedented size. The R-MXAS system is a single platform comprising a 1-D sparse antenna …
French architectural studio, Rescubika, proposes skyscraper that would be the tallest building in New York. The building design is called Mandragore and it would be a 2400-foot-tall tower. It would have a lot of trees and plants that would trap carbon emissions and reduce carbon in the atmosphere. However, Rescubika has not been getting many …
Alberta is joining New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan to work together to support the development and deployment of SMRs (small modular reactors). Combined the four provinces are 21 million out of Canada’s 38 million people. SMRs in the future could also support Alberta’s oil and gas industry by reducing their emissions. SMR’s can be used …
Over the last three decades, the South Pole has experienced a record-high statistically significant warming of 0.61 ± 0.34 °C per decade, more than three times the global average. Here, we use an ensemble of climate model experiments to show this recent warming lies within the upper bounds of the simulated range of natural variability. The warming resulted …
