Lifeboat Foundation

Conventional batteries are a lot like camels. They’re great for storage and transportation, but they’re not exactly speedy.

For technologies that require a fast discharge of energy, such as heart defibrillators, alternative materials are often used; foremost among them, antiferroelectrics.

There is only a handful of known antiferroelectric materials, and most of them contain lead, so they aren’t safe enough for everyday applications. Now, a Cornell-led collaboration has discovered a new approach for making a lead-free antiferroelectric that performs as well as its toxic relatives.

Researchers have created intricately patterned materials that mimic antimicrobial, adhesive and drag reducing properties found in natural surfaces.

The team from Imperial College London found inspiration in the wavy and spiky surfaces found in insects, including on cicada and dragonfly wings, which ward off bacteria.

They hope the new materials could be used to create self-disinfecting surfaces and offer an alternative to chemically functionalized surfaces and cleaners, which can promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Elon Musk’s company launched a Falcon 9 rocket bearing the 49 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 3), but a geomagnetic storm that struck a day later sent the satellites plummeting back toward Earth, where they will burn up in the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Preliminary analysis show[s] the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.”

The satellites were hit by the storm just one day after launch.[/s].

The biggest breakthrough in fusion energy since 1997 has been reported today at the Joint European Torus in Oxford, UK, with 59 megajoules produced over five seconds (11 megawatts of power), more than double the previous record.

Experiment at UK’s JET facility boosts hope that clean power source could soon be harnessed commercially.

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication.

And it’s the only one of its kind we’ve seen.

An international group of astronomers discovered a previously unknown mechanism behind the massive aurorae on the poles of Saturn, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “NASA’s Crew-2 Astronauts Flew Over an Impressive Aurora Before Splashing Down” »