NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned the sharpest images ever seen of the dwarf planet Ceres. The images were taken 147,000 miles (237,000 kilometers) from Ceres on Jan. 25, and represent a new milestone for a spacecraft that soon will become the first human-made probe to visit a dwarf planet. “We know so little about our …
Airborne wind energy seem simple. You would use kites, gliders, rotors or lighter than air constructs (different air filled shapes) to capture wind energy at higher altitudes. The wind is stronger and more consistent at higher altitudes and the systems could use 100 times less material than conventional wind turbine systems. Many promising possibilities remain …
Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate slumped to five-year lows amid concern that hedge funds and other money managers bet too much on rising prices. Brent and WTI tumbled 18 percent in November as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to maintain its 30 million-barrel-a-day output target. Crude has traded in a bear market …
Biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won a $3 million Breakthrough Prize for CRISPR-Cas9, a “powerful and general technology” for editing genomes that’s been hailed as a biotechnology breakthrough. Feng Zhang a researcher in Cambridge at the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute won a broad U.S. patent on CRISPR-Cas9 that could give him and his research center …
The supersonic Concorde passenger jet had its last flight in November, 2003. The Aerion supersonic businessjet could lead the re-emergence of supersonic commercial aviation. New technology will make the planes a lot more fuel efficient and there has been work to reduce the sonic booms. The Aerion AS2 is a Mach 1.6 supersonic business jet …
1. Robert Rock [President, Environmentalists for Nuclear, Canada] at Linkedin – Is Germany’s Green turning Brown ? Robert Rock looks at the effect of Germany’s Energiewende. The Energiewende has cost German citizens more than € 100 billion euros. That cost continues to grow. The environment minister believes that it will cost over € 1 trillion …
Brian Wang is participating in another season of the Good Judgement Project. The Good Judgment Project is a four-year research study organized as part of a government-sponsored forecasting tournament. Thousands of people around the world predict global events. Their collective forecasts are surprisingly accurate. The latest season started August 20th. I was provided with $50,000 …
1. Regulatory approval was granted for the construction of Barakah units 3 and 4, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) has stepped up efforts to develop a skilled Emirati workforce to staff the country’s growing nuclear sector. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) board of management approved ENEC’s application to …
The Indian government has announced an increase of almost 27% in its budget for atomic research and nuclear power for the latest fiscal year. Investment in nuclear-related public enterprises has also significantly increased. In its budget for 2014-15, which began on 1 April, the government has allocated INR 104.5 billion ($1.7 billion) to the Department …
Nature Communications – High-strength carbon nanotube fibre-like ribbon with high ductility and high electrical conductivity Macroscopic fibres made up of carbon nanotubes exhibit properties far below theoretical predictions and even much lower than those for conventional carbon fibres. Here we report improvements of mechanical and electrical properties by more than one order of magnitude by …
Elon Musk said Spacex will just keep going, but SpaceX’s progression would be slowed down if the U.S. government doesn’t choose the company’s Dragon V2 as the next crew carrier to the International Space Station. Spacex remains focused on creating technology that with enable large groups of people to travel to Mars. “I’m hopeful that …