Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 4952

Even the simplest human tasks are unbelievably complex. The way we perceive and interact with the world requires a lifetime of accumulated experience and context. For example, if a person tells you, “I am running out of time,” you don’t immediately worry they are jogging on a street where the space-time continuum ceases to exist. You understand that they’re probably coming up against a deadline. And if they hurriedly walk toward a closed door, you don’t brace for a collision, because you trust this person can open the door, whether by turning a knob or pulling a handle.

Read more | >

We’re talking fuels and fertilizers required for the development of life-support systems on the Red Planet.

In 2015, Vasco Guerra, from the University of Lisbon, happened to attend a lecture by Professor Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab and a former deputy administrator of NASA, on space exploration and the forthcoming NASA missions. Back then, Guerra was leading a project on plasma reforming of carbon dioxide on Earth — how CO2 could be a potential raw material to produce fuels with the help of green energy.

Scientists have been working on plasma technologies to split CO2 into oxygen and carbon monoxide, primarily prompted by the persistent problems of climate change. international team of researchers have introduced a plasma-based method that could convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and produce fuels on Mars.

Read more | >

Brandon Ennis, Sandia National Laboratories’ offshore wind technical lead, had a radically new idea for offshore wind turbines: instead of a tall, unwieldy tower with blades at the top, he imagined a towerless turbine with blades pulled taut like a bow.

This design would allow the massive generator that creates electricity from spinning blades to be placed closer to the water, instead of on the top of a tower 500 feet above. This makes the turbine less top-heavy and reduces the size and cost of the floating platform needed to keep it afloat. Sandia filed a patent application for the design in 2020.

However, before he could set his idea in motion, the team needed to build software capable of modeling the response of the turbine and floating platform to different wind and sea conditions to determine the optimal design of the whole system.

Read more | >