Toggle light / dark theme

👏 What an amazing year this has been for space!

NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems fully assembled NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion Spacecraft, and our launch and recovery teams are fully certified for NASA Artemis I, launching next year. Artemis I will be the uncrewed start of humanity’s return to the Moon! 🌕


Risen Energy Co. is planning to build a 45 billion yuan ($7 billion) integrated solar power factory in Inner Mongolia that’ll run on clean energy.

Who Needs Plants When You Can Harness Solar Energy With An Artificial Leaf?

The idea of a human-made device that can process solar energy to make usable fuels has been tantalizing researchers since the 1970s. There being no such thing as a free lunch, it is not so easy to engineer a device that mimics photosynthesis, which Mother Nature perfected a long time ago. Nevertheless, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California appear to have solved an important piece of the “artificial leaf” challenge.

Solar Energy & The Artificial Leaf Of The Future

The concept of the artificial leaf first crossed the CleanTechnica radar in the form of a card-sized photoelectrochemical cell, back in 2011. Instead of converting sunlight into electricity, the cell acts as a catalyst that deploys solar energy to break water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Introducing the light-operated hard drives of tomorrow

Circa 2020


What do you get when you place a thin film of perovskite material used in solar cells on top of a magnetic substrate? More efficient hard drive technology. EPFL physicist LĂĄszlĂł ForrĂł and his team pave the way for the future of data storage.

“The key was to get the technology to work at room temperature,” explains László Forró, EPFL physicist. “We had already known that it was possible to rewrite magnetic spin using light, but you’d have to cool the apparatus to—180 degrees Kelvin.”

Forró, along with his colleagues Bálint Náfrádi and Endre Horváth, succeeded at tuning one ferromagnet at room temperature with , a proof of concept that establishes the foundations of a new generation of hard drives that will be physically smaller, faster, and cheaper, requiring less energy compared to today’s commercial hard drives. The results are published in PNAS.

South Korean 20-Mile Solar ‘Bike Highway’ Generates Electricity

Sunny way.


A ‘bike highway’ running between Daejon and Sejong in South Korea is a sight —or rather, a concept —, you surely haven’t thought of before: It stretches for 20 miles (32 km), and it not only shields cyclists from the sun but also generates power at the same time.

It’s true that a bicycle lane in the center of a highway is an unusual location for one, especially with three lanes of traffic on either side of it, yet it works. Much like the $3.7 million SolaRoad in the Netherlands, a 230-foot road replaced by solar panels, which powers the highway’s lighting system, this bike highway is a win for green energy. Its lanes produce more than enough electricity to power the lighting of the highway and the electric vehicle charging stations, according to Fast Company.

However, in the Netherlands, bicyclists ride on top of the panels instead of under them, while South Korea’s case is the opposite. Under the overhead solar panels, cyclists use subterranean tunnels to enter and exit the path, which boosts safety tremendously since they can get on and off the bikeway without being involved in the regular traffic. Once on the route, they’re shielded from the traffic on each side by barriers, and while that doesn’t provide pleasant roadside views, it does offer sun protection.

Fantastical Thundertruck EV rocks fold-out solar awnings and a snap-on 6WD caboose

This all-electric 4×4 off-road concept has a monster battery pack, a brutally angular and military look that borrows heavily from the Cybertruck, and pop-out solar panels for off-grid charging. Oh, and if you need extra range, you can snap two extra wheels and a battery onto the back of it with a self-balancing caboose that makes it a six-wheel-drive.

First things first: Thundertruck is the brainchild of a Los Angeles “creative consultancy,” conceived mainly as a way to keep the team busy during the first wave of COVID lockdowns. “Instead of baking bread or making puzzles,” says the Wolfgang L.A. team, “we decided to make a new state-of-the-art EV truck.”

So while Wolfgang says it “has the ability to support an entire product development program, from research and strategy to initial sketches and first prototypes, all the way to advertising launch campaigns and content creation,” it’s fair to say it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing the Thundertruck out bush-bashing or crushing hillclimbs any day soon.

/* */