Beam Solar Energy From Space? These Scientists Achieve a Breakthrough
Caltech researchers are experimenting with a space-based solar power system that would assemble itself after being launched by rockets.
New Breakthrough in Energy Storage – MIT Engineers Create Supercapacitor out of Ancient Materials
Constructed from cement, carbon black, and water, the device holds the potential to offer affordable and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources. Two of humanity's most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for
The water naturally forms a branching network of openings within the structure as it reacts with cement, and the carbon migrates into these spaces to make wire-like structures within the hardened cement.
fractal-like structure, with larger branches sprouting smaller branches, and those sprouting even smaller branchlets
existing batteries are too expensive and mostly rely on materials such as lithium, whose supply is limited,
nanocarbon-black-doped concrete
upercapacitors can be charged and discharged much more rapidly than batteries
Since the concrete would retain its strength, a house with a foundation made of this material could store a day’s worth of energy produced by solar panels or windmills
working up to a 45-cubic-meter version to demonstrate its ability to store a house-worth of power.
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
Find could point to new ways to prospect for material in high demand for batteries.
Microsoft’s Remarkably Big Bet on Carbon-Absorbing Rocks
Why the tech giant is so high on Heirloom Carbon
Heirloom Carbon
Heirloom Carbon,
315,000 metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere over 10 years. For a sense of scale, that’s equivalent to about 75% of the carbon Microsoft emitted in 2022
$200 million, “based on market prices,” or $635 per ton
The process starts with limestone, which is formed from the detritus of corals, clams, and other sea creatures that use the dissolved carbon and calcium in the ocean to build their shells. Heirloom grinds up limestone and does something that humans have been doing for thousands of years — heats it in a kiln. This loosens carbon dioxide from the rock, leaving behind calcium oxide
RT-2: New model translates vision and language into action
Introducing Robotic Transformer 2 (RT-2), a novel vision-language-action (VLA) model that learns from both web and robotics data, and translates this knowledge into generalised instructions for robotic control, while retaining web-scale capabilities. This work builds upon Robotic Transformer 1 (RT-1), a model trained on multi-task demonstrations which can learn combinations of tasks and objects seen in the robotic data. RT-2 shows improved generalisation capabilities and semantic and visual understanding, beyond the robotic data it was exposed to. This includes interpreting new commands and responding to user commands by performing rudimentary reasoning, such as reasoning about object categories or high-level descriptions.
The World’s Last Internet Cafes
For a quarter century, internet cafes connected the world. Now they’re vanishing into history.
Back from the Dead: New Hope for Resurrecting Extinct Plants
Armed with new technology, botanists are proposing what was once thought impractical: reviving long-lost plant species by using seeds from dried specimens in collections. The challenges remain daunting, but researchers are now searching for the best de-extinction candidates.
Apple Invents a next-generation AirPods Sensor System that could measure Biosignals and Electrical Activity of a user's Brain
Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to a next-generation of AirPods Sensor System wherein the housing and tips of AirPods could include a number of active and reference electrodes configured to measure biosignals and electrical activity of a user's brain.
Tesla Electric customers report making as much as $150 a day
Tesla Electric customers in Texas are reporting making as much as $150 a day during the heat waves as Tesla’s...
The first fully A.I.-generated drug enters clinical trials in human patients
This week, generative AI hit a new milestone: The first fully AI-generated drug reached clinical trials in human patients.
Lab-grown meat just reached a major milestone. Here’s what comes next.
Reaching commercial production won’t be easy.
Mineral discovery could meet global battery and solar panel demand for next 100 years
Norge Mining hopes to open first mine in Norway within next five years