Lifeboat Foundation

After decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) for the first time on Aug. 8, 2021, putting researchers at the threshold of fusion gain and achieving scientific ignition.

On the one-year anniversary of this historic achievement, the scientific results of this record experiment have been published in three peer-reviewed papers: one in Physical Review Letters and two in Physical Review E. More than 1,000 authors are included in one of the Physical Review Letters paper to recognize and acknowledge the many individuals who have worked over many decades to enable this significant advance.

“The record shot was a major scientific advance in fusion research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is possible at NIF,” said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for LLNL’s inertial confinement fusion program. “Achieving the conditions needed for ignition has been a long-standing goal for all inertial confinement fusion research and opens access to a new experimental regime where alpha-particle self-heating outstrips all the cooling mechanisms in the fusion plasma.”

Bill Gates is funding more research into dimming the sun! Check out how solar geoengineering works.

Bill Gates is a man who recently suggested the world should eat 100% synthetic beef, has argued that bitcoin is bad for the planet, co-founded Microsoft, and remains one of the richest people in the world.

He is also very interested in dimming the light from the sun to reduce or delay the effects of climate change, according to a forthcoming study from the Bill Gates-backed Harvard University Solar Geoengineering Research Program — which aims to evaluate the efficacy of blocking sunlight from reaching our planet’s surface.

Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate change solution-focused VC firm backed by the likes of Bill Gates, has joined a $44 million backing of solar startup Terabase Energy, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “Bill Gates-backed startup is using robots to build enormous solar farms” »

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) states that there’s a 93 percent chance that one year between now and 2026 will be the hottest on record. Not only will these record high temperatures have an impact on our environment and lives, but they are also expected to change the way in which we safeguard technology. For example, how do you cool data centers while the outside temperature keeps getting higher and higher?

This problem has been discussed previously before due to several failings of data centers around the world caused by cooling failures. That weather shift will have an impact on all human-made infrastructure—including the data centers that keep our planet’s collective knowledge online. According to wired.com, 45 percent of US data centers have experienced an extreme weather event that threatened their ability to operate.

The atmospheric water vapor could also contribute to global warming.

A new study has revealed that a record-breaking amount of water vapor entered Earth’s atmosphere after a volcanic eruption in Tonga in January.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A volcano in southwest Iceland began erupting Wednesday, the country’s meteorological authorities said — just eight months after its last eruption officially ended.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office urged people not to go near the Fagradalsfjall volcano, which is located some 32 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

The eruption in an uninhabited valley is not far from Keflavik Airport, Iceland’s international air traffic hub. The airport remained open and no flights were disrupted.

Lengthy outages loom after storms, as surging electricity demand and global supply-chain issues quadruple wait times for the vital equipment.

‘May the forest be with you.’The GEDI system aboard the ISS shoots laser beams down at Earth to fight deforestation.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is building new digital tools to help fight deforestation and climate change. One of these is the FAO’s Framework for Ecosystem Monitoring (FERM) website, which uses satellite images to highlight the negative impact on forests worldwide.

Continue reading “A breakthrough technology shoots laser beams at trees from ISS” »

Cheap and quick to produce, the plasma sensors could help scientists predict the weather or study climate change.