Lifeboat Foundation

Australia seems to be one of the leaders in the transition to renewables.

Australia has reached its highest position ever on the Ernst & Young (EY) Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index, jumping to third place for the first time thanks to a big boost from its green hydrogen and solar energy export plans.

In the latest edition of the biannual RECAI, which ranks the world’s top 40 countries based on investment in renewable energy, EY moved Australia up one spot from number four in the May rankings, putting it behind only China and the US, in that order.

Continue reading “Green hydrogen export potential lifts Australia to No. 3 on global renewables index” »

Elon Musk made new comments about the Tesla Semi program, Tesla’s upcoming electric semi truck, and said that the vehicle will eventually have up to 1,000 km (621 miles) of range.

This new range is going to be achieved, thanks to Tesla’s new in-house battery cells and battery pack technology.

When launching Tesla Semi in 2017, the automaker said that the production versions of Tesla Semi, which is a class 8 truck with a 80,000-lb capacity, will have 300-mile and 500-mile range options for $150,000 and $180,000, respectively.

Cloudy days pose a real problem for solar panels. But a new innovation can convert UV light to energy—even if the sun isn’t shining.

What if with the new wave of technologies, such as nanotechnology which would enable us to reprogram matter at a molecular level, we can overcome scarcity once and for all? Design would then become the most important part from start to end product which can be freely shared or have a premium in the marketplace. At any rate, this will dismantle the current social, economic, and political system, because it will become irrelevant; every institution, every value system, every aspect of our lives have been governed by scarcity: the problem of distributing a finite amount of “stuff.” There will be no need for any of today’s social institutions. In other words, when nanotech and ultra-realistic VR are commonplace, the system built on scarcity will crumble and that would herald the forthcoming “economic singularity.” #EconomicSiingularity

The current faltering economic model is suboptimal, hinders economic growth, and is not sustainable going forward.

When light falls on a material, such as a green leaf or the retina, certain molecules transport energy and charge. This ultimately leads to the separation of charges and the generation of electricity. Molecular funnels, so-called conical intersections, ensure that this transport is highly efficient and directed.

An international team of physicists has now observed that such conical intersections also ensure a directed energy transport between neighboring molecules of a nanomaterial. Theoretical simulations have confirmed the experimental results. Until now, scientists had observed this phenomenon only within one molecule. In the long term, the results could help to develop more efficient nanomaterials for organic solar cells, for example. The study, led by Antonietta De Sio, University of Oldenburg, and Thomas Frauenheim, University of Bremen, Germany, was published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Photochemical processes play a major role in nature and in technology: When molecules absorb light, their electrons transit to an excited state. This transition triggers extremely fast molecular switching processes. In the human eye, for example, the molecule rhodopsin rotates in a certain way after absorbing light and thus ultimately triggers an electrical signal—the most elementary step in the visual process.

To the Moon and back, twice.

It is mainly about greater reliability.

Science & technology Jul 30th 2020 edition.

Continue reading “What the million-mile battery means for electric cars” »

When the Mini Vision Urbanaut is parked, the dashboard can turn into a daybed among other lounging-related abilities in the concept car.

After years of underplaying soft threats like disease and climate change, the national-security establishment faces calls for a new approach in light of Covid-19 crisis.

While many of us simply flush and forget about it, our pee has the potential to be a valuable resource. As it’s currently managed, though, the world’s pee is not doing us nor the planet a service. That’s why momentum for recycling our own liquid gold is growing: upcycled pee could readily sub in for conventional fertilizers.