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Category: innovation – Page 122

“It’s historic,” says MIT scientists.

In a significant breakthrough, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) lunchbox-sized machine has been producing oxygen from the Red Planet’s atmosphere for more than a year, giving hope of life on Mars one day.

Since April 2021, the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) successfully made oxygen from the Red Planet’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, according to a press release published by the institute on Wednesday.

“It’s historic,” said MOXIE’s deputy principal investigator Jeffrey Hoffman, a professor of the practice in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

MIT’s MOXIE experiment has now produced oxygen on Mars. It is the first demonstration of in-situ resource utilization on the Red Planet, and a key step in the goal of sending humans on a Martian mission.

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For the first time, scientists have confirmed a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion involving the first successful instance of ignition, the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining.

The achievement, results for which have been published in three peer-reviewed papers, occurred at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility on August 8, 2021.

Nuclear fusion involves a reaction where at least two atomic nuclei possessing a low atomic number fuse together, forming heavier atomic nuclei. During such a reaction, differences between the masses of the reactants and products result from the difference in energy that binds atomic nuclei before and after the reaction occurs. This difference will either cause the absorption or the release of energy.

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Acoustic location was used from mid-WW1 to the early years of WW2 for the passive detection of aircraft by picking up the noise of the engines.

Passive acoustic location involves the detection of sound or vibration created by the object being detected, which is then analyzed to determine the location of the object in question.

“Imagine how techology we see as innovative today will look to people in the future”

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Its creator Franky Zapata thinks so, as do the thousands of people who are likely signing up to test drive the JetRacer.

The French inventor and adrenaline junkie is no newbie when it comes to daredevil stunts—or wild inventions. A world champion jet skier several times over, his first invention was the Flyboard, a sort of jetpack/hoverboard combo powered by gas turbines. Next came the Flyboard Air, a similar device powered by jet turbines. Three years ago Zapata crossed the English Channel on a Flyboard Air; the journey took just 22 minutes, with a stop halfway to refuel.

Zapata has employed the same “micro-turbo-jet engines” from his Flyboard on the JetRacer. Though they’re relatively small, the engines pack a punch, perhaps because there are 10 of them. The vehicle can reportedly reach speeds up to 250 kilometers per hour (that’s 155 miles per hour), and an altitude of 3,000 meters/9,800 feet. Its speed and maneuverability come at the expense of range, though, which the website says is “relatively short” without specifying distances.

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