Cree, front-runners in the scramble to replace traditional forms of illumination with greener LED sources, has just announced the release of a new type of tube light designed to tackle one of the biggest energy hogs in Corporate America: fluorescent overhead lights. Read more…
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LED Tubes Will Make Fluorescent Seem Old Fashioned
When you’re looking for alien life, the best place to look is somewhere like Earth; the only place we know of that life exists. Kepler-186f , the first Earth-sized planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star, is the best bet we’ve ever found. Read more…
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What We Know About the First Earth-Sized Planet In a Habitable Zone
Jeremiah Cornelius writes: “The U.S. Navy’s new railgun technology, developed by General Atomics, uses the Lorentz force in a type of linear, electric motor to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7 — in excess of 5, 000 mph. The weapon has a range of 100 miles and doesn’t require explosive warheads. ‘The electromagnetic railgun represents an incredible new offensive capability for the U.S. Navy, ‘ says Rear Adm. Bryant Fuller, the Navy’s chief engineer. ‘This capability will allow us to effectively counter a wide range of threats at a relatively low cost, while keeping our ships and sailors safer by removing the need to carry as many high-explosive weapons.’ Sea trials begin aboard an experimental Navy catamaran, the USNS Millinocket, in 2016.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Navy Debuts New Railgun That Launches Shells at Mach 7
New submitter lashicd sends news that the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory has announced a successful proof-of-concept demonstration of converting seawater to liquid hydrocarbon fuel. They used seawater to provide fuel for a small replica plan running a two-stroke internal combustion engine. “Using an innovative and proprietary NRL electrolytic cation exchange module (E-CEM), both dissolved and bound CO2 are removed from seawater at 92 percent efficiency by re-equilibrating carbonate and bicarbonate to CO2 and simultaneously producing H2. The gases are then converted to liquid hydrocarbons by a metal catalyst in a reactor system. … NRL has made significant advances in the development of a gas-to-liquids (GTL) synthesis process to convert CO2 and H2 from seawater to a fuel-like fraction of C9-C16 molecules. In the first patented step, an iron-based catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO2 conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease unwanted methane production in favor of longer-chain unsaturated hydrocarbons (olefins). These value-added hydrocarbons from this process serve as building blocks for the production of industrial chemicals and designer fuels.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Navy Creates Fuel From Seawater
cartechboy writes: “One of the arguments for electric cars is that we are reducing greenhouse gases and emitting less CO2 than vehicles with an internal combustion engine. But Mazda says its next-generation SkyActiv engines will be so efficient, they’ll emit less CO2 than an electric car. In fact, the automaker goes so far as to say these new engines will be cleaner to run than electric cars. Is it possible? Yes, but it’s all about the details. It’ll depend on the test cycles for each region. Vehicles are tested differently in Europe than in the U.S., and that variation could make all the difference when it comes to these types of claims. At the end of the day whether future Mazdas with gasoline-powered engines are cleaner than electric cars or not, every little bit in the effort to reduce our carbon emissions per mile is a step in the right direction, right?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mazda Says Its Upcoming Gas-Powered Cars Will Emit Less CO2 Than Electric Cars
The new iPhone camera is 8-megapixels. Meanwhile, Canon is reportedly testing a new DSLR with 75-megapixels. But how many megapixels is the human eye? That is, how many megapixels would an image the size of your field of vision need to be to look normal? Read more…
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What Is the Resolution of the Human Eye?
LEDs have come a long ways. From the early 70s when a bulky LED watch cost thousands of dollars to LG’s announcement last month that it had created an OLED TV as thin as a magazine , these glowing little bits of magic have become wonderfully cheap and impossibly small. But guess what: they’re about to get much smaller. Read more…
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The World’s Thinnest LED Is Only 3 Atoms Thick
MTorrice writes “Lithium-sulfur batteries promise to store four to five times as much energy as today’s best lithium-ion batteries. But their short lifetimes have stood in the way of their commercialization. Now researchers demonstrate that a sulfur-based polymer could be the solution for lightweight, inexpensive batteries that store large amounts of energy. Battery electrodes made from the material have one of the highest energy-storage capacities ever reported” Litihium Ion batteries should maintain capacity for about 1000 cycles, whereas Lithium-sulfur batteries traditionally went kaput after about 100. But it looks like they are getting pretty close to something feasible, from the article: “The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1, 225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1, 005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sulfur Polymers Could Enable Long-Lasting, High-Capacity Batteries
Take 300, 000 computer-controlled mirrors, each 7 feet high and 10 feet wide. Control them with computers to focus the Sun’s light to the top of 459-feet towers, where water is turned to steam to power turbines. Bingo: you have the world’s biggest solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System . Read more…
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The World’s Largest Solar Plant Started Creating Electricity Today
The last time Hamburg’s hulking air raid bunker saw use, it was 1945—and locals were taking cover from Allied bombs inside its six-foot-thick concrete walls. That was almost 70 years ago. This year, the bunker is serving a new purpose: Supplying the city with renewable energy. Read more…
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This Abandoned Nazi Bunker Just Reopened As a Clean Energy Plant