Lifeboat Foundation

A plentiful supply of clean energy is lurking in plain sight. It’s the hydrogen that can be extracted from water (H₂O) using renewable energy. Researchers are on the hunt for cost-effective strategies to generate clean hydrogen from water, with an aim to displace fossil fuels and battle climate change.

Hydrogen is a potent source of power for vehicles, emitting nothing more than water. It also plays a crucial role in several industrial processes, particularly in the production of steel and ammonia. The use of cleaner hydrogen in these industries would be extremely beneficial.

A multi-institutional team led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has developed a low-cost catalyst for a process that yields clean hydrogen from water. Other contributors include DOE’s Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as Giner Inc.

2020 underwater base.

Aquanaut Fabien Cousteau — grandson of famed ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau — has announced plans to build the world’s biggest underwater base for scientific research.

He calls the facility “Proteus” and envisions it being the ocean equivalent of the International Space Station — a place where scientists from across the globe can work together to solve the world’s biggest problems, from climate change to world hunger.

Continue reading “This underwater base could become the ISS of the ocean” »

A powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck near the Alaska Peninsula late Saturday.

Preliminary data placed the quake about 55 miles southwest of Sand Point, Alaska, the National Weather Service said. It had initially been measured at a magnitude of 7.4, the United States Geological Survey said on Twitter.

It struck at about 10:48 p.m. local time. In Kodiak, Alaska, sirens sounded late at night, according to a video posted on social media.

It will also reduce travel time to Saturn’s moon Titan to just two years.

Pulsar Fusion, a UK-based space firm, is building a nuclear fusion-based rocket engine that could exceed temperatures on the Sun. The construction of the largest-ever fusion rocket engine has begun, and its exhaust speeds could exceed 500,000 miles per hour.

Continue reading “UK space firm is building a nuclear fusion rocket engine that will get hotter than the Sun” »

Every now and then, revolutionary technology seems to spontaneously appear out of thin air and change our world. Dynamite, penicillin, X-ray machines, and even microwaves are all examples of such revolutionary accidental discoveries.

Well, this year we may have had yet another. However, this time it is set not only to revolutionise the way we live, but potentially save our planet from looming climate change by unlocking an elusive technology: lithium-sulfur batteries.

For decades, we have been searching for the best technology to power our modern lifestyle and enable clean technology, like electric cars. Since the early ‘90s, the battery technology of choice has been lithium-ion.

Touring, a type of riding that involves long distance trips, has long been the achilles heel of electric motorcycles. While e-motos have developed to the point where they can beat combustion engine motorcycles in nearly every other metric, quick recharging required for long distance riding has yet to reach parity with a gas station fill-up. At least, that was until Lightning Motorcycle debuted what it says is the fastest charging electric motorcycle yet.

Lightning Motorcycles, the Southern California-based boutique e-motorcycle manufacturer, claims that its new fast-charging electric motorcycle can recharge nearly as fast as a combustion engine motorcycle can refuel its tank.

Continue reading “Can Lightning’s electric motorcycle really charge as fast as a gas tank fill-up?” »

NASA’s Juno spacecraft recently captured this spooky green flash of lightning in a massive storm swirling near Jupiter’s north pole.

The tremendous burst of lightning glows bright against the dark gray vortex of the storm, even from Juno’s vantage point 19,900 miles above the tops of Jupiter’s clouds. Lightning often flashes between the clouds of stormy Jupiter’s higher latitudes, especially in the north. NASA’s Juno spacecraft is helping shed light on the gas giant’s wild alien weather.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image from Juno’s raw data.

“In the end, open source will win,” say Olaoluwa Osuntokun and Michael Levin, developing an AI tool for the Bitcoin-based payment protocol.

Silicon anode batteries have the potential to revolutionize energy storage capabilities, which is key to meeting climate goals and unlocking the full potential of electric vehicles.

However, the irreversible depletion of lithium ions in silicon anodes puts a major constraint on the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

Scientists at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering have developed a readily scalable method to optimize prelithiation, a process that helps mitigate lithium loss and improves battery life cycles by coating silicon anodes with stabilized lithium metal particles (SLMPs).