Lifeboat Foundation

Fourth Power says its ultra-high temperature “sun in a box” energy storage tech is more than 10X cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, and vastly more powerful and efficient than any other thermal battery. It’s hoping to prove it with a 1-MWh prototype.

As a grid-level energy storage solution, Fourth aims to compete with big lithium battery arrays in the short-duration 5–10 hour range – basically storing excess solar energy during the heat of the day for use in the evening and at night when generation drops off. But the company says it’s also relevant up to the 100-hour stage, which would cover the “several days of bad weather and poor renewable generation” case.

This is one of a number of thermal energy storage companies coming up out of Massachusetts and backed by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund. You might remember Antora Energy from a few months ago, with its ultra-hot carbon block batteries and high-efficiency thermophotovoltaic energy converters, for example.

Quantum entanglement is the most distinctive signature of quantum mechanics, says Juan R. Muñoz de Nova, a condensed-matter physicist at the Complutense University of Madrid. “It contradicts the intuitions we have on a daily basis,” he says. “That is why entanglement is so intrinsic to quantum mechanics.”

This phenomenon has been observed by researchers around the world, and the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three scientists for experimentally advancing our understanding of it. Scientists have detected quantum entanglement through experiments involving macroscopic diamonds and ultracold gases.

In September 2023, the ATLAS collaboration made another advancement when they unveiled the highest-energy measurement of quantum entanglement ever, using top quarks produced in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Interestingly, the measurement turned out a bit differently than expected.

For 100 years, we have puzzled over the purpose of biophotons, low-level radiation emitted by all plants. Precision studies of lentils now hint that it could be a form of quantum communication.

By Thomas Lewton

A robot that automates a common technique for animal cloning has been used to produce a litter of cloned pigs in China — with a much higher success rate than human scientists.

The challenge: China is both the world’s biggest producer of pork and its largest consumer, so having ideal breeding stock — animals that birthe large litters of quick-growing piglets — is important for the nation’s economy and food security.

However, in 2018 and 2019, an epidemic of deadly African swine fever wiped out almost 50% of China’s pig population. As a result, many farmers have had to import breeding pigs, and China is now eager for its pork industry to become almost entirely self-sufficient.

Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”

According to quantum mechanics, some objects, like photons or electrons, can be entangled. This means that no matter how far apart they are, what happens to one will affect the other instantaneously. To Einstein, this seemed ridiculous, because it entailed information moving faster than the speed of light, something he deemed impossible. But, numerous experiments have shown that entanglement does indeed exist.

The challenge was putting it to use. A few experiments in the lab had previously managed to send information using quantum entanglement. But translating their efforts to the real world, where any number of factors could confound the process is a much more difficult challenge.

DARPA has tapped Raytheon to design and develop a wireless, airborne relay system to “deliver energy into contested environments,” as part of its Energy Web Dominance program, in which DARPA wants to be able to power anything from nearly anywhere.

Under a two-year, US$10 million DARPA contract, Raytheon will create a Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) system, using a series of high altitude unmanned aircraft equipped with laser-based power receiving and transmitting capabilities. Energy will be beamed up to high altitude, then relayed across however many jumps are necessary to reach the target area.

That target might be on the ground, or it might itself be another autonomous aerial platform, in which case it could stay airborne as long as necessary, its batteries being constantly charged from afar.

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Artificial intelligence is more likely to save humanity than to destroy it, Jeff Bezos said recently. The billionaire also said he would like to see the human population grow to one trillion, with most people living in huge cylindrical space stations.

In an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, the Amazon AMZN, +1.73% founder and former CEO rejected the idea that humans should colonize other planets, saying he believes building space colonies is the only way to achieve such population growth.

Continue reading “Jeff Bezos plays down AI dangers and says one trillion humans could live in huge cylindrical space stations” »

A NASA technology experiment on the International Space Station completed its first laser link with an in-orbit laser relay system on Dec. 5, 2023. Together, they complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system.

NASA’s LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) and the new space station demonstration, ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal), successfully exchanged data for the first time. LCRD and ILLUMA-T are demonstrating how a user mission, in this case the space station, can benefit from a laser communications relay located in geosynchronous orbit.

HELSINKI — China sent the classified Yaogan-41 optical satellite towards the geostationary belt Friday using the country’s largest launch vehicle.

The sixth Long March 5 rocket lifted off from the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 8:41 a.m. Eastern (1341 UTC) Dec. 15. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced launch success around an hour later.

Continue reading “China launches large classified optical satellite towards geostationary orbit” »