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Category: energy – Page 170

New Form Of Lab-Made Gold Is Better And Golder Than Nature’s Pathetic Version

face_with_colon_three circa 2018.

Gold is amazingly weird. For one thing, it’s now thought that much of it came from aftermaths of the collisions of two super-dense neutron stars. Some of this atomic gold, sprayed across the cosmos, managed to coalesce under gravity, get trapped in a newly-formed Earth, undergo a suite of geological processes, and ultimately pop up at the surface.

Its considerably epic cosmic journey is certainly something to marvel at, as is the fact that it’s useful for so many things besides jewelry. Now, as spotted by New Scientist, we’ve made a new form of gold that’s golder than ever before, and it’s bonkers. Related StoriesCosmic Tug-Of-War Leaves Merging Galaxies Gasping For Fuel “How Do You Handle Menstruation In Space?”: An Astronaut ExplainsEinstein Is Right Again – Gravity Has Not Changed Across The Universe.

NVIDIA Explains Why it Believes a Pixar-invented Protocol is the “HTML of the metaverse”

NVIDIA, one of the tech sector’s power players, is pushing the Universal Scene Description protocol as the foundation of interoperable content and experiences in the metaverse. In a recent post the company explains why it believes the protocol, originally invented by Pixar, fits the needs of the coming metaverse.

Though the word metaverse is presently being used as a catchall for pretty much any multi-user application these days, the truth is that the vast majority of such platforms are islands unto themselves that have no connectivity to virtual spaces, people, or objects on other platforms. The ‘real’ metaverse, most seem to agree, must have at least some elements of interoperability, allowing users to seamlessly move from one virtual space to the next, much like we do today on the web.

To that end, Nvidia is pushing Universal Scene Description (USD) as the “HTML of the metaverse,” the company described in a recent post.

Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas as Bridge to Renewables

The world needs a bridge to the renewable energy future.

The world needs more oil and gas to deal with the energy shortages it is currently facing, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at an energy conference in Norway on Monday, Bloomberg.

The comment might seem strange coming from a person who sells electric vehicles, battery packs, and solar roofing products. However, this isn’t the first time Elon Musk has made such a comment.

The world needs more oil and gas now to deal with an energy shortage while pushing to transition to renewable supplies, Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said.

Maersk Earmarks $2.1 Billion for Ships That Will Run on Methanol

You are looking at a methanol-fed hydrogen fuel cell that may soon be powering marine shipping around the world.

For Maersk, the 12 new ships will help it reduce CO2 emissions by 1.5 million tons annually or 4% of what the company produced in total in 2021. Maersk’s announced commitment is for all future new builds to only burn carbon-neutral fuels. That’s why fuel cells are high on its list of technologies to make that achievement possible.

Methanol Fuel Cells Are a Step Better Than Burning Methanol

A Bill Gates-backed investment group, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, is bankrolling a new Danish company, Blue World Technologies, with plans to produce methanol and high-temperature fuel cells. It has plans to produce enough of the fuel and the fuel cells to power five container ships this year, and ten times that number by 2024.

High-capacity Li-metal battery with improved rate-performance and stability

A study of Li-metal batteries by the research team led by Dr. Byung Gon Kim at Next-Generation Battery Research Center of Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) was published as a cover paper in the international journal ACS Nano.

While the current Li-ion batteries generate energy by taking Li-ions in and out of the based on the intercalation mechanism, the Li-metal battery does not rely on this bulky and heavy graphite but uses metallic Li itself as the anode. As the Li-metal shows 10 times higher theoretical capacity (3,860 mAh/g) than graphite (372 mAh/g), it has steadily gained much attention from areas that need high-capacity batteries, such as and energy storage systems.

Despite this advantage, Li can grow in the shape of a tree branch, called a Li dendrite, if it is not uniformly and effectively stored when cycling process, leading to large volume expansion of the electrode, which in turn may shorten the battery’s cycle life and cause safety issue such as fire and explosion triggered by internal short-circuits.

Chemist shows that intermolecular interactions can attain previously unknown dimensions

Intermolecular interactions are the forces that pertain between molecules. In general, these interactions scarcely extend beyond the boundaries of molecules. For the most part, they are effective over distances of less than 1 nanometer (10-9 m).

The largest distances discovered to date were in energy transmissions, where almost 10 nanometers were reached. A team led by LMU chemist Heinz Langhals has now found which, to the astonishment of the scientists, extend beyond 100 .

The researchers were able to demonstrate this using the concentration-dependent fluorescence decay time of dyes. “In this way, molecules can not only interact with their neighbors, but do so up to almost macroscopic dimensions,” says Langhals.

Spectroscopy That Doesn’t Scratch the Surface

Researchers have demonstrated a way of measuring the electronic states of a material’s surface while avoiding signal contaminations from deeper layers.

The electronic states of a material’s surface might only be 2D, but they offer a depth of interesting physics. Such states, which are distinct from those of the material’s bulk, dominate many phenomena, such as electrical conduction, magnetism, and catalysis, and they are responsible for nontrivial surface effects found in topological materials and systems with strong spin-orbit interaction. Surface electronic states also control the properties of so-called 2D materials, such as graphene. To understand surface phenomena and harness them in practical devices, researchers chiefly rely on photoemission spectroscopy, which measures the energy and momentum of electrons emitted when photons hit the material. The high resolution with which electron energy and momentum can be characterized allows physicists to measure both the band structure and the density of states (DOS) in the few surface layers where escaping photoelectrons originate.

Media goes nuts over Elon Musk calling for more oil and gas, but here’s the full quote

The media is going nuts over Elon Musk calling for more oil and gas at an energy conference in Norway, but the full quote is not being widely reported and brings some important context.

Earlier this year, Elon Musk called to drill for more oil, which raised a few eyebrows, but it was in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how it sent gas prices skyrocketing:

Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil and gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil and gas exports.

Wave-riding generators promise the cheapest clean energy ever

Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL) has been working for more than a decade on a floating wave energy device it calls the Waveline Magnet. With several prototypes tested on-and off-shore, the company claims it delivers “ultra low cost,” with high output.

Solar electricity generation is proliferating globally and becoming a key pillar of the decarbonization era. Lunar energy is taking a lot longer; tidal and wave energy is tantalizingly easy to see; step into the surf in high wave conditions and it’s obvious there’s an enormous amount of power in the ocean, just waiting to be tapped. But it’s also an incredibly harsh and punishing environment, and we’re yet to see tidal or wave energy harnessed on a mass scale.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying – we’ve seen many tidal energy ideas and projects over the years, and just as many dedicated to pulling in wave energy for use on land. There are a lot of prototypes and small-scale commercial installations either running or under construction, and the sector remains optimistic that it’ll make a significant clean energy contribution in years to come.