Lifeboat Foundation

Moving CO₂ from Air to Oceans May Be Necessary to Slow Warming.

Climbing concentrations of carbon dioxide make it likely that humans will have to move some gases from the atmosphere into the oceans to prevent crippling effects of climate change, the National Academies said in a major report released yesterday.

It came after months of deliberation among top U.S. scientists who concluded that global efforts to reduce emissions, even if successful, “may not be enough to stabilize the climate.” The report identified six ways to capture and store carbon dioxide in the oceans, a controversial idea that the report said “will likely be needed.”

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Petra emerged from stealth this week, announcing a $30 million Series A. The round, led by DCVC, brings the robotics company’s funding up to $33 million, with additional participation from ACME Capital Congruent Ventures, 8VC, Real Ventures, Elementum Ventures and Mac Venture Capital.

“We’ve invented a completely new way to excavate rock and this will have profound implications on the future of tunneling,” co-founder and CEO Kim Abrams said in release tied to the news. “By delivering a boring solution that affordably undergrounds utilities through high-grade rock, we can finally protect communities from exposure to wildfires and ensure the safety of critical infrastructure in disaster-prone areas, especially in places like the Sierra Nevada mountains, Rocky Mountains, and coastal regions.”

The news arrives as the company is announcing a successful pilot of its robot, Swifty. According to the firm, the robot successfully bored a 20-foot tunnel through Sioux Quartzite at a rate of one inch-per-minute. The metamorphic rock is notoriously hard, making it a popular choice for buildings in the upper Midwest region in which it is found. That strength, however, also makes it a formidable challenge from infrastructure and other projects that require tunneling.

Since then, Sophia has spoken to audiences across the globe (in multiple languages), been interviewed on countless TV shows, and even earned a United Nations title (a first for a non-human).

Today, she’s arguably the most famous robot in the world, but she’s isn’t going to be unique for much longer. Her maker, Hanson Robotics, has announced plans to begin mass-producing Sophia the robot this year — so that she can help the world cope with the pandemic.

Exploring The Longevity Secrets Of “Methuselah’s Zoo” For Healthy Human Aging — Dr. Steven Austad, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Steven Austad (https://www.stevenaustad.com/) is Distinguished Professor and Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging Research, Department of Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research (https://www.uab.edu/cas/biology/people/faculty/steven-n-austad).

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If everything goes to plan, Webb will remake astronomy by peering at cosmic phenomena such as the most distant galaxies ever seen, the atmospheres of far-off planets and the hearts of star-forming regions swaddled in dust. Roughly 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which has transformed our understanding of the cosmos over the past 31 years, Webb will reveal previously hidden aspects of the Universe.

Three decades after it was conceived, Hubble’s successor is set for launch. Here’s why astronomers around the world can’t wait.

NASA is getting out LEO — and letting private companies take its place.

NASA recently announced conctracts for three new space stations, all of them designed and built by private space companies. NASA is getting out LEO.

Circa 2014

An artificial leaf converts water and light to oxygen, and that’s good news for road-tripping to places beyond Earth.

“If we’re going to use scrap aluminum for hydrogen generation in a practical application, we need to be able to better predict what hydrogen generation characteristics we’re going to observe from the aluminum-water reaction,” says Laureen Meroueh PhD ’20, who earned her doctorate in mechanical engineering.

Since the fundamental steps in the reaction aren’t well understood, it’s been hard to predict the rate and volume at which hydrogen forms from scrap aluminum, which can contain varying types and concentrations of alloying elements. So Hart, Meroueh, and Thomas W. Eagar, a professor of materials engineering and engineering management in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering, decided to examine — in a systematic fashion — the impacts of those alloying elements on the aluminum-water reaction and on a promising technique for preventing the formation of the interfering oxide layer.

To prepare, they had experts at Novelis Inc. fabricate samples of pure aluminum and of specific aluminum alloys made of commercially pure aluminum combined with either 0.6 percent silicon (by weight), 1 percent magnesium, or both — compositions that are typical of scrap aluminum from a variety of sources. Using those samples, the MIT researchers performed a series of tests to explore different aspects of the aluminum-water reaction.

Shifts in polar weather have accompanied the replenishment of the ozone layer.