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High-Tech Hard Sails Transform Old Cargo Ships Into Racing Yachts

Wing-like rigid sails are leaping from the rarified world of yacht racing to the backs of cargo ships.


There they go again. The firm BAR Technologies has roots in the elite environment of the America’s Cup hyper-competitive racing series, and lately it has been applying its know-how to design rigid sails for cargo ships. That’s right, wind power is making a comeback on the high seas, and the global shipping industry is down for it. Well, beginning to be down for it. Rigid sails for cargo ships are still in the tryout phase, but that could change as Russia continues to pinch the global fuel supply and climate goals kick in.

Berge Bulk Cargo Ship Catches Hard Sails Fever

BAR hooked up with Yara Marine Technologies a while back to bring its “WindWings” rigid sail technology to cargo ships. The latest shipper to take a look is Berge Bulk, which describes itself as “one of the world’s leading independent dry bulk owners with an outstanding reputation for the safe, efficient, and sustainable delivery of commodities around the world.”

Watch NASA’s SpaceX CRS-25 Launch to the International Space Station

SpaceX’s CRS-25 mission is set to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from launchpad 39-A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Launch is targeted for 8:44 p.m. EDT (00:44 UTC), Friday, July 14. The Dragon spacecraft will deliver new science investigations, supplies, and equipment for the international crew, including an image spectrometer to be mounted on the exterior of the station to better understand how dust plumes affect our climate, and a study of immune aging and potential for reversing those effects. It also will carry an investigation from a team of students at Stanford University that will test the process of creating biopolymer soil composite, a concrete alternative, in microgravity. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/spa…highlights.

Credit: NASA

#EMIT #ClimateChange #EarthScience #NASA #ISS #JPL

Bill Gates to erase himself from the billionaires list, donating $20 billion of his wealth

The money will go to the Gates Foundation.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates revealed that he will give away his wealth for various reasons ranging from climate adaptation to pandemic prevention. This will eventually cross his name off on the world’s richest people list.

With his wife, Gates started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in 2000 to fight disease, poverty, and inequity around the world\.


Gates plans to donate most of his wealth to charitable causes carried out by his foundation in the future.

The Future of Earth: 1000 Years From Now

The Future of Earth: 1,000 Years From Now.


In the last 250 years, humans have drastically and irreversibly transformed the Earth. Greenhouse gases emitted by human industries have changed the planet’s climate, presenting the single greatest threat humanity has ever faced. If humans can cause such incredible damage to the Earth in 250 years, what will our planet look like in 1,000 years time?

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/Koranos.

Sources:

Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change.

Meteorite impact two billion years ago may have ended an ice age

The Australian crater Yarrabubba is the oldest known on Earth, according to new measurements, and it might be linked to the end of a “Snowball Earth” ice age.


Yarrabubba crater in western Australia stretches roughly 40 miles across. And since its discovery in 2003, scientists have speculated it’s one of Earth’s oldest meteorite craters. Now, a team of researchers has pinned down the crater’s precise age, revealing it’s about 2.23 billion years old. This officially makes Yarrabubba the oldest known crater on Earth, surpassing the age of Vredefort crater by about 200 million years.

The meteorite impact that created Yarrabubba would have slammed into our planet at the end of one of our “Snowball Earth” ice ages, the researchers say, and it’s possible that the impact heated up our planet and ended that icy episode in Earth’s history.

The researchers presented the findings in a paper published Jan. 21 in Nature Communications.

How technology helps scientists explore Amazonian biodiversity without human interference

Spotting wildlife in these dark and dense forests teeming with insects and spiny palms is always challenging. This is because of the very nature of biodiversity in Amazonia, where there is a small number of abundant species and a greater number of rare species which are difficult to survey adequately.

Understanding what species are present and how they relate to their environment is of fundamental importance for ecology and conservation, providing us with essential information on the impacts of human-made disturbances such as climate change, logging, or wood-burning. In turn, this can also enable us to pick up on sustainable human activities such as selective logging – the practice of removing one or two trees and leaving the rest intact.

As part of BNP’s Bioclimate project, we are deploying a range of technological fixes like camera traps and passive acoustic monitors to overcome these hurdles and refine our understanding of Amazonian wildlife. These devices beat traditional surveys through their ability to continuously gather data without the need for human interference, allowing animals to go about their business undisturbed.

Weather Control and Geoengineering

A look at advanced means of altering or controlling the planet’s climate and geography, drawing on concepts proposed for terraforming other planets. We look at existing and proposed ideas of controlling the weather, creating artificial islands or mountain ranges, using orbital mirrors and shades, and many other concepts.

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Cover Art by Jakub Grygier: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jakub_grygier

Methane converted into methanol at room temperature — just add light

Scientists have developed an efficient new way to convert methane into methanol at room temperature. The technique could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a cleaner way to make key products.

While carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, it’s not the only greenhouse gas changing the Earth’s climate. Methane is emitted in smaller amounts but is 34 times more potent, so reducing its levels remains a priority. Excess methane from industrial processes is often burned off, but that produces CO2.

A commonly sought alternative is to convert methane into methanol, which can be used to make a range of products like fuels, plastics and construction materials. The problem is, the conversion process usually requires high temperatures and pressures, which makes it energy-intensive.

Our universe was made by aliens in a lab, theorises Harvard scientist

Ever considered the notion that everything around you was cooked up by aliens in a lab? Theoretical physicist and former chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb, has proposed a wild – if unsettling – theory that our universe was intentionally created by a more advanced class of lifeform.

In an op-ed for Scientific American, “Was Our Universe Created In A Laboratory?”, Loeb suggested that aliens could have created a ‘baby universe’ using ‘quantum tunneling’, which would explain our universe’s ‘flat geometry’ with zero net energy. If this discovery were proven true, then the universe humans live in would be shown to be “like a biological system that maintains the longevity of its genetic material through multiple generations,” Loeb wrote.

Loeb put forward the idea of a scale of developed civilisations (A, B, etc.) and, due to that fact that on Earth we currently don’t have the ability to reproduce the astrophysical conditions that led to our existence, “we are a low-level technological civilisation, graded class C on the cosmic scale” (essentially: dumb). We would be higher up, he added, if we possessed the ability to recreate the habitable conditions on our planet for when the sun will die. But, due to our tendency to “carelessly destroy the natural habitat” on Earth through climate change, we should really be downgraded to class D.

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