Lifeboat Foundation

Can the very locations that fossil fuels are mined also be used to extract rare earth elements (REEs) for renewable energies? This is what a recent study published in Frontiers of Earth Science hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how coal mines could be exploited for REEs whose metals could be used for technology applications and renewable energies throughout the world. This study holds the potential to help scientists, miners, and conservationists better understand previously unknown avenues for pursuing REEs within the United States, as REEs are traditionally imported from other countries.

“The model is if you’re already moving rock, could you move a little more rock for resources towards energy transition?” said Dr. Lauren Birgenheier, who is an associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah and a co-author on the study. “In those areas, we’re finding that the rare earth elements are concentrated in fine-grain shale units, the muddy shales that are above and below the coal seams.”

I don’t subscribe but if you do, you’ll get more but the short summary kinda gives a general idea. Astronomers spotted 60 stars with potential Dyson sphered around them but it isn’t 100% verifiable. It could be a simpler explanation they say.

Sufficiently advanced aliens would be able to capture vast quantities of energy from their star using a massive structure called a Dyson sphere. Such a device would give off an infrared heat signature — and astronomers have just spotted 60 stars that seem to match.

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

Continue reading “Dozens of stars show signs of hosting advanced alien civilisations” »

ChargePoint’s (NYSE: CHPT) new Megawatt Charging System for commercial electric trucks is capable of dispensing enough energy to power around 1,000 homes.

Hossein Kazemi, ChargePoint’s CTO for hardware, said, “Megawatt charging solves one-half of the electrification equation for trucking. The companies developing electric trucks can now leverage this infrastructure to test and enable their vehicles until they meet – or even exceed – the distances covered by internal combustion trucks.”

The Megawatt Charging System cable and connector will be available on ChargePoint’s Power Link 2000 stations, part of its modular Express Plus DC fast charging platform.

It’s unclear what customers or applications might be earmarked for this node, but it’s possible it could be dedicated to IoT and other consumer devices that need to sip power. Typically, these applications use legacy nodes as it would be too expensive to use advanced processes for inexpensive devices, but TSMC is planning for the future since this effort won’t be realized until 2029 or so.

TSMC’s Dr. Kevin Zhang, senior vice president of business development and overseas Operations, says the company has already started building Greenfield, but he didn’t indicate where it’s located. He says the rapid deployment of the Greenfield fab is the first time the company has essentially skipped what we assume is a lengthy review process and put shovels in dirt already.

According to Zhang, TSMC’s move is part of its larger effort to build some resiliency into its global supply chain. That resiliency will be achieved both by building fabs outside of Taiwan and increasing capacity for nodes it thinks will be in demand in the future. Anandtech notes the company’s most advanced low-power node is currently N6e, which is a 6nm/7nm node that uses between 0.4V and 0.9V. For N4e, the company is reportedly looking to drop that all the way down to 0.4V, but it didn’t offer any additional details about its performance or attributes at the symposium.

Scientists use laser ablation technology to develop a deformable micro-supercapacitor. Professor Jin Kon Kim and Dr. Keon-Woo Kim from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), in collaboration with Dr. Chanwoo Yang and Researcher Seong Ju Park from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH), have achieved a significant breakthrough in developing a small-scale energy storage device capable of stretching, twisting, folding, and wrinkling. Their research has been published in the electronic engineering journal, npj Flexible Electronics.

The advent of wearable technology has brought with it a pressing need for energy storage solutions that can keep pace with the flexibility and stretchability of soft electronic devices.

Micro supercapacitors (MSCs) have emerged as a promising candidate for deformable energy storage, due to high-power density, rapid charging, and long cycle life.

Chemical and material engineering professor, Adnan Khan, has spent the past 15 years focusing his research on developing sustainable technologies aimed at decarbonizing our energy systems. “This is the most important challenge we face today. We owe this to our future generations,” he says.

Using NASA ’s MMS mission data, SwRI explores unusual substorm events in Earth’s magnetotail to better understand magnetic reconnection and its effects on the global magnetosphere.

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is investigating an unusual event in the Earth’s magnetotail, the elongated extension of the planet’s magnetosphere trailing away from the Sun. SwRI scientists are examining the nature of substorms, fleeting disturbances in the magnetotail that release energy and often cause aurorae, using data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission.

Wind energy is becoming an important strategic resource. Energy and supply chain shocks spurred countries around the world to boost their wind investments.

Scientific discovery doesn’t always require a high-tech laboratory or a hefty budget. Many people have a first-rate lab right in their own homes—their kitchen.