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Apr 2, 2019

Billionaires Have Funded Space Travel For Decades

Posted by in category: space travel

Reading today’s headlines you may think that billionaire entrepreneurs are new to the space race — they’re not. It all started with them. Here’s the brief history of private space travel.

Video by Gloria Kurnik.

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Apr 1, 2019

British startup looking to build 18-seat bioelectric hybrid airplane

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

British startup Faradair Aerospace has unveiled plans to build and sell an 18-seat bioelectric hybrid airplane for use as both a passenger and cargo air transport. The company is calling its plane the Bio Electric Hybrid Aircraft (BEHA). The current model is the M1H, and the plans include a triple box wing configuration to give it exceptional lift.

The M1H will have an for use during takeoff and landing, providing a much quieter experience than jets with a traditional engine. Engineers at Faradair claim the plane will produce just 60 dba when taking off, compared to the average of 140 dba for conventional jet aircraft. It will also have a 1,600hp turboprop engine in the rear of the plane for use during flight and for recharging the batteries that power the plane when landing and taking off.

Representatives for Faradiar also claim the plane will be able to land and take off from shorter runways than conventional jet aircraft, needing just 300 meters of space—this feat will be possible due to the “vectored thrust” provided by the two contra-rotating propfans, its triple box wing design and a light body made of carbon composites. Once in the air, the plane will be capable of flying at speeds of 230 mph.

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Apr 1, 2019

Scientists Create an Artificial Cell That Makes Its Own Energy

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

Artificial cells created inside the lab have taken another major step forward, with scientists developing cells that are able to produce their own chemical energy and synthesise parts of their own construction.

That makes these artificial cells a lot more like real, biological cells – cells that can construct and organise their own building blocks naturally.

Not only could this help us understand how real cells work and come into being in the first place, it could also be vital for a host of other areas of research – such as ongoing efforts to produce artificial organs and other body tissue to fight back against disease.

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Apr 1, 2019

Astronomers Worldwide Are About to Make a Groundbreaking Black Hole Announcement

Posted by in category: cosmology

The European Southern Observatory has just revealed there will be a huge announcement next week. Yes, we know how that sounds — but as far as we can tell, it appears the world is about to finally see the first ever photo of a black hole’s event horizon.

Of course, we won’t know for sure until the press event itself, which we will cover live on our site. But here’s a massive clue: according to the advance statement, the researchers will be discussing the “first result from the Event Horizon Telescope.”

For years, the Event Horizon Telescope has been staring into the heart of the Milky Way, trying to obtain a photo of the location of Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole.

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Apr 1, 2019

“World’s first working thermal battery” promises cheap, eco-friendly, grid-scalable energy storage

Posted by in category: energy

South Australia has recently put the world’s biggest lithium battery into operation – but perhaps it should’ve waited. A local startup says it’s built the world’s first working thermal battery, a device with a lifetime of at least 20 years that can store six times more energy than lithium-ion batteries per volume, for 60–80 percent of the price.

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Apr 1, 2019

First bacterial genome created entirely with a computer

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

All the genome sequences of organisms known throughout the world are stored in a database belonging to the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States. As of today, the database has an additional entry: Caulobacter ethensis-2.0. It is the world’s first fully computer-generated genome of a living organism, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich. However, it must be emphasised that although the genome for C. ethensis-2.0 was physically produced in the form of a very large DNA molecule, a corresponding organism does not yet exist.

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Apr 1, 2019

How to ice-proof the next generation of aircraft

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

35,000 feet is standard cruising altitude for a commercial jet airplane, but at those lofty heights the air temperature plummets below −51 degrees Celsius and ice can easily form on wings. To prevent ice formation and subsequent drag on the aircraft, current systems utilize the heat generated by burning fuel. But these high-temperature, fuel-dependent systems cannot be used on the proposed all-electric, temperature-sensitive materials of next-generation aircraft.

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Apr 1, 2019

The Newest AI-Enabled Weapon: ‘Deep-Faking’ Photos of the Earth

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The Newest AI-Enabled Weapon: ‘Deep-Faking’ Photos of the Earth | RealClearDefense.

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Apr 1, 2019

Interesting Engineering

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

This robot works wonders in logistics as it can autonomously locate, grasp and place boxes onto pallets via BostonDynamics.

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Apr 1, 2019

Astronomers Are Teasing the First-Ever Photo of a Black Hole

Posted by in category: cosmology

The international team behind the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project is gearing up for a huge announcement next week — and according to ScienceAlert’s analysis, it’s likely to be the first-ever photo of a black hole’s event horizon.

If that prediction is correct, the April 10 event will be a monumental moment for science — providing a glimpse of one of the most epic objects in the known universe.

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