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Although today’s rocket engines are advanced and powerful, they tend to rely on traditional — and naturally volatile — fuels. Firehawk Aerospace has a safer and more stable new solid fuel, new engines, and millions in new funding to take it through the next round of tests to its first in-atmosphere demonstration launch.

Firehawk appeared on the scene two years ago with a fresh take on hybrid engines; the breakthrough made by CEO Will Edwards and chief scientist Ron Jones was to give that fuel a structure and 3D print it in a specially engineered matrix.

The structured, solid fuel grain is more stable and easier to transport than other fuels, and burns in a very predictable way. The company designed engines around this concept and tested them at smaller scales, though they have also been working on the kind of engine you might actually use if you were going to space. But the company has said that one of the strengths of the system is its adaptability.

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Our universe may be fundamentally unstable. In a flash, the vacuum of space-time may find a new ground state, triggering a cataclysmic transformation of the physics of the universe.

Or not. A new understanding inspired by string theory shows that our universe may be more stable than we previously thought.

Within the first microseconds of the Big Bang, the universe underwent a series of radical phase transitions. The four forces of nature — electromagnetism, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force — were at one time unified into a single force. Physicists do not know the character or nature of this force, but they do know that it didn’t last long.

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Microgrids are the right solution for rural and remote energy production and distribution because they are grids designed for smaller populations.

In the United States, there are at least 60,000 people who have no access to electricity. It is not a large number but poses for this population a barrier to participating in the modern world. You cannot find a job working from home without electricity and Internet access. You cannot visit your doctor virtually. You cannot use electricity to light and heat your home.

But with microgrids that can operate autonomously from the main power grid, rural and remote communities can do everything that people living in big cities can do leading to a better quality of life for those living there.

A Toronto, Canada, based company is a microgrid solutions provider. Called Clear Blue Technologies, it offers energy-as-a-service to rural and remote communities. In Nigeria, it is installing microgrids and distributed energy solutions to help rural communities to access energy and telecommunications services. Its service model manages these installations remotely at a low cost delivering clean renewable electricity while giving rural users access to the Internet. For Nigerian remote communities, it brings them into the 21st century. That’s why in March of this year, Clear Blue was awarded a contract covering 120 telecommunications sites across the country with plans in the next five years to grow that number to 1,060. Talk about levelling the playing field for these communities to give them access to clean energy and cellular phone services.

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A comprehensive analysis of bacterial communities from Deception Island, an active volcano in Antarctica, highlights the potential for using heat-loving bacteria to clean up oil contamination, new research led by KAUST researchers shows.

Júnia Schultz recently joined KAUST as a postdoc working with Alexandre Rosado. She has set her sights on characterizing the microbiome of extreme terrestrial environments in Saudi Arabia, including volcanoes, deserts and geothermal sites. These extremophiles, bacteria that grow in the world’s most extreme environments, including those that love heat (thermophiles), hold immense potential for a myriad of biotechnology applications.

“Extremophiles thrive under a multitude of hostile conditions and have adapted to remain metabolically active in challenging circumstances,” says Schultz. “They exhibit versatile, diverse metabolic and physiological capabilities and often synthesize valuable bioproducts.”

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A new systematic review has presented strong evidence the development of type 1 diabetes is linked to infection by enterovirus, a large group of common viruses. The findings build on a growing hypothesis linking the viruses to type 1 diabetes, with vaccines currently in development targeting the most likely viral strains.

The suggestion an enterovirus infection can trigger type 1 diabetes goes back more than 50 years, to a report published in 1969 that linked new-onset diabetes to recent infections with an enterovirus called Coxsackie B. Since then there have been a number of different studies published digging into this link, and the results have been frustratingly inconsistent.

A key 2011 study offered the first systematic review on the subject, focusing on modern molecular testing techniques (such as PCR tests). It found a clinically significant association between enterovirus infection and type 1 diabetes.

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Now, researchers at the Earth Dynamics Research Group and the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at New Curtin University have used a supercomputer to forecast what could be the likely effect of the movement of the giant tectonic plates.

The formation of continents

Over the past two billion years, the Earth’s continents have collided to form a supercontinent on multiple occasions. Called the supercontinent cycle, this occurs every 600 million years and brings all the continents of the world together.

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Brought to you by the organizers of Transform and GamesBeat Summit: Into The Metaverse, MetaBeat will bring together metaverse thought leaders to give guidance on how metaverse technology will transform the way all industries communicate and do business.

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“I always think it’s important that people understand what something is,” Cook told Dutch publication Bright (via Google Translate). “And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.” In other words, despite persistent reports of Apple’s interest in building all manner of AR and VR hardware, Cook isn’t ready to claim that the company is working towards any so-called “metaverse.”

Mark Zuckerberg has a different view. Earlier this year, the Meta CEO told his employees that the company is in a “very deep, philosophical competition” with Apple to build the metaverse. “This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating that they build a better consumer experience,” Zuckerberg said, contrasting what he says is Apple’s closed approach with Meta’s more interoperable development.

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An electrolyte moves ions – atoms that have been charged by either gaining or losing an electron – between the two electrodes in a battery. Lithium ions are created at the negative electrode, the anode, and flow to the cathode where they gain electrons. When a battery charges, the ions move back to the anode.

Battery innovations can take years to come to fruition because there are so many different chemicals involved in their production. Working out the ratio of chemicals and optimising them for peak use can be an arduous task.

However, when the research team used an automated arrangement of pumps, valves, vessels, and other lab equipment to mix together three potential solvents and one salt, and then fed those results through ‘Dragonfly’, they found that the AI delivered six solutions that out-performed an existing electrolyte solution.

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