Lifeboat Foundation

DARPA, in partnership with the U.S. Air Force, completed a free flight test of its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) last week. The missile, built by Raytheon Technologies, was released from an aircraft seconds before its Northrop Grumman scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) engine kicked on. The engine compressed incoming air mixed with its hydrocarbon fuel and began igniting that fast-moving airflow mixture, propelling the cruiser at a speed greater than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound).

The HAWC vehicle operates best in oxygen-rich atmosphere, where speed and maneuverability make it difficult to detect in a timely way. It could strike targets much more quickly than subsonic missiles and has significant kinetic energy even without high explosives.

“The HAWC free flight test was a successful demonstration of the capabilities that will make hypersonic cruise missiles a highly effective tool for our warfighters,” said Andrew “Tippy” Knoedler, HAWC program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “This brings us one step closer to transitioning HAWC to a program of record that offers next generation capability to the U.S military.”

The regional entity overseeing much of the electric power grid in the Midwest — the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) — approved a set of major new transmission system upgrades that will bring billions of dollars in benefits to the region while better enabling states and utilities to pursue transitions to clean energy.

See here for my colleague Sam Gomberg’s excellent post explaining the background and details on what is known as “Tranche 1” of MISO’s long range transmission planning process. This much-needed set of 18 projects will improve electricity reliability, address overloaded wires, and help unlock more lower-cost wind and solar power to replace costly, polluting fossil fuel plants in Michigan and many other states in the Midwest (including Illinois and Minnesota).

A carbon-neutral synthesis of kerosene, or jet fuel, has been produced by scientists, made by combining sunlight with water.

5% of human emissions are generated through kerosene use in aviation, which currently has no alternative for long haul jetting.

It consists of 169 sun-tracking reflective panels that redirect and concentrate solar radiation into a solar reactor on top of a tower built at IMDEA Energy Institute in Madrid back in 2017.

A large percentage of a building’s energy usage is consumed by heating and cooling, but a new dynamic shading system designed by researchers at the University of Toronto could help. Inspired by the skin of krill, the system uses cells of blooming pigment that can block light on demand.

Krill are tiny marine organisms that are usually transparent, but have the ability to move pigments around in the cells beneath their skin, allowing them to turn darker to protect themselves from UV damage in bright sunlight. This, the UToronto team reasoned, would be a useful ability for windows and building facades to have.

Continue reading “Low-energy fluidic cells could shade and cool buildings dynamically” »

This Video Explains Lactic Acid Fermentation.
Lactic acid fermentation is a metabolic process by which glucose or other six-carbon sugars (also, disaccharides of six-carbon sugars, e.g. sucrose or lactose) are converted into cellular energy and the metabolite lactate, which is lactic acid in solution.
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Using Newtonian physics, physicists have found an expression for the value of kinetic energy, specifically KE = ½ m v^2. Einstein came up with a very different expression, specifically KE = (gamma – 1) m c^2. In this video, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln shows how these two equations are the same at low energy and how you get from one to the other.

Relativity playlist:

Continue reading “Kinetic energy: Newton vs. Einstein | Who’s right?” »

The Australian Capital Territory government has firmed its commitment to deliver one of the largest battery storage systems in the Southern Hemisphere to support Canberra’s energy grid and the continued uptake of renewables with funding allocated in the upcoming budget to progress the Big Canberra Battery project.

The results of the study by Wells Fargo Foundation and NREL initiative showed that PV-coated windows can appreciably lower the solar heat gain coefficient.

From pv magazine USA

In the IN² NEXT project, PV-coated windows from NEXT Energy Technologies were tested against traditional commercial windows, tracking performance based on their respective solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC), an industry-standard performance metric for commercial windows. The results show that NEXT Energy’s technology could lower the SHGC from an otherwise equal window to below .20.

Continue reading “Comparing performance of transparent solar windows to traditional windows” »