Lifeboat Foundation

Underground wireless charging will be a better idea!

Fossil fuels are bad for the planet, and freight haulage is one of the more carbon-intensive activities that operate today. That’s why Siemens and Scania have teamed up to trial what’s being called the world’s first “electric highway.” Much like an electrified railroad, the 1.2 mile stretch has a series of wires hanging overhead that a pantograph-equipped truck can connect to. Then, the vehicle can deactivate its fuel-burning engine and coast along on that delicious, dirt-cheap electricity, switching back when the wires stop.

Scania official Claes Erixon has said that the project is “one important milestone on the journey towards fossil-free transport.” Cleantech Canada quotes an unnamed Siemens representative, who says the move could cut energy consumption in half. As it stands, this is the culmination of a two-year project to develop this test track, with more work to be done to determine if it could be rolled out across the country. That is, unless, an alternative freight-transport network that’s even more energy-efficient and speedy, can make its case to governments across the world.

Ah, science. wink

In the right hands, broken electronics can be turned into something useful again. But useful isn’t the best way to describe Drake Anthony’s 200-watt laser bazooka made from a bunch of old DLP projectors he bought off eBay. Words like incredibly dangerous, do-not-try-this-at-home, or “are you crazy?” seem more appropriate.

Continue reading “Terrifying Laser Bazooka Is Like a Handheld Death Star” »

Astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to conclude that a peculiar source of radio waves thought to be a distant galaxy is actually a nearby binary star system containing a low-mass star and a black hole. This identification suggests there may be a vast number of black holes in our Galaxy that have gone unnoticed until now.

For about two decades, astronomers have known about an object called VLA J213002.08+120904 (VLA J2130+12 for short). Although it is close to the line of sight to the globular cluster M15, most astronomers had thought that this source of bright radio waves was probably a distant galaxy.

Thanks to recent distance measurements with an international network of radio telescopes, including the EVN (European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network) telescopes, the NSF’s Green Bank Telescope and Arecibo Observatory, astronomers realized that VLA J2130+12 is at a distance of 7,200 light years, showing that it is well within our own Milky Way galaxy and about five times closer than M15. A deep image from Chandra reveals it can only be giving off a very small amount of X-rays, while recent VLA data indicates the source remains bright in radio waves.

Continue reading “Clandestine black hole may represent new population” »

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos today put a spotlight on the construction of a giant rocket production facility in Florida for his Blue Origin space venture – but he also gave a shout-out to the engine production team back in Kent, Wash.

In an email to Blue Origin’s fans, Bezos noted that ground has been broken for an orbital vehicle manufacturing site at Exploration Park, just south of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Ground-clearing actually began last month.)

“The 750,000-square-foot rocket factory is custom-built from the ground up to accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing,” Bezos wrote. In comparison, the production facility in Kent where Blue Origin is building rocket engines and its New Shepard suborbital spaceships takes in about 300,000 square feet.

Continue reading “Jeff Bezos provides a sneak peek at Blue Origin’s orbital rocket factory in Florida” »

Very fascinating!

A humanoid named Jia Jia has been attracting a lot of attention at the 2016 Summer Davos Forum in Tianjin, China.

Continue reading “This Chinese Robot is Said to Be ‘The Most Realistic Ever Made’” »

This is a nice story on the future. If you’re flying British Airways, give it a read in the print version:

Two very different versions of the near future, when robots have taken half our jobs.

Nice.

Lasers and microwaves control the switching of individual qubits in a 3D array more precisely.

Awesome!

What if industrial waste water could become fuel? With affordable, long-lasting catalysts, water could be split to produce hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells or combustion engines.

By conducting complex simulations, scientists showed that adding lithium to aluminum nanoparticles results in orders-of-magnitude faster water-splitting reactions and higher hydrogen production rates compared to pure aluminum nanoparticles. The lithium allowed all the aluminum atoms to react, which increased yields (Nano Letters, “Hydrogen-on-demand using metallic alloy nanoparticles in water”).

Continue reading “Atomic-scale simulations predict how to use nanoparticles to increase hydrogen production” »

According to The Clarion Project, a political information bureau that warns westerners of the growing threat from radical Islam, ISIS has published a ‘kill list’ that includes the names, addresses and emails of 15,000 Americans.

So far, this is interesting news, but it is not really new. I found ISIS, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida kill lists going back at least 8 years. This 2012 bulletin complains that NBC would not release the names contained on a kill list.

A kill list is newsworthy, and the Clarion article is interesting—but the article has more “facts” with which the publisher wishes to generate mob frenzy…

• It explains that 4,000 of the names on the Kill List have been leaked by hackers
• It echos a report by Circa News that the FBI has decided to not inform citizens that they are on the ISIS kill list.

In a clear effort to whip up and direct audience indignation, it asks readers to take a one-question poll. Which answer would you choose?

Continue reading “Do you have a right to view an ISIS Kill List?” »