Lifeboat Foundation

In the U.S., air travel accounts for about a third of all CO₂ emissions. A startup called ZeroAvia wants to clean things up in a big way.

ZeroAvia recently emerged from stealth with a zero-emission powertrain for small aircraft. It’s electric, but there are no big, bulky batteries involved. ZeroAvia opted for compressed hydrogen instead.

Continue reading “This Hydrogen-Powered Plane Can Fly 20 Passengers Up to 500 Miles” »

Imagine making the 2,710-mile trip from Philadelphia to Los Angeles using just one gallon of gas.

You might look silly doing it, but students from Université Laval, in Quebec, have theoretically made that outlandish trip possible with their prototype gasoline-powered car that gets 2,713.1 miles per gallon.

The Laval team took home the big prize at this year’s Shell Eco-marathon Americas, a competition in which university students design a prototype car using various fuels, from gasoline to hydrogen fuel cells, in an attempt to maximize efficiency on a Detroit, Michigan test track.

We’re only a handful of months away from the year 2020, and with the way parts look and tech acts, it finally feels like we’re entering the future. It’s a future crafted by sophisticated 3D printers and machining centers, using materials provided by global-reaching supply chains and connected to an exponential rate of new superpowered gadgets. Nowadays, there’s really no reason to think any manufacturing feat is impossible. If something doesn’t exist, it’s just that we haven’t figured it out yet.

And this futuristic techtopia brimming with potential wouldn’t be possible if not for engineers—those dedicated, uber-creative folks plotting such a course, continuously improving the world around through the super power of… math.

Mathematics has been the indispensable fuel to make the impossible possible since at least the ancient Egyptians more than four thousand years ago. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the world’s oldest monument to its power. Amazingly, its geometrical elegance was calculated on papyrus scrolls, most of which have turned to dust long ago. Yet the universal language of math still speaks through its dimensions. And it will continue to do so for time immemorial.

The invention is an improved piston engine, either two stroke or four stroke. In one, two stroke, one cylinder embodiment, the improvement comprises two springs connecting between the piston and the base of the piston. These springs are relatively relaxed when the crank is at top dead center. Then during the power/intake stroke, some of the fuel’s energy is delivered to the crankshaft and some is used to compress the springs. The stored energy in the springs is delivered to the crankshaft during the exhaust/compression stroke while the springs return to their relatively relaxed condition. As a result, energy is delivered to the crankshaft during both strokes of the cycle, and the engine runs smooth.

In one, four stroke, two cylinder embodiment, each cylinder has springs as described above, the cranks of each cylinder are aligned, and the cam sets one cylinder in the power stroke while the other is in the intake stroke. As a result, the engine runs smooth because energy is delivered to the crankshaft during all four strokes of the cycle, during two of the strokes by the burning fuel and during the other two by the release of energy in the springs. In both embodiments, a heavy crankshaft is not needed because of the more uniform power delivery.

A Texas-based startup has raised US$4.5 million in seed funding to develop and commercialize a remarkable electric motor technology. The father/son team claims the design can massively reduce the size and complexity of electric powertrains while also significantly boosting efficiency and doubling the torque output.

With these high profile missions to the moon and Mars, sci-fi is set to become a Bollywood staple. “The Indian audience, especially the youth segment, now constantly seeks newer themes and stories,” says Vikram Malhotra, CEO of Abundantia Entertainment, one of India’s biggest production companies. “There has been so much talk and discussion about India’s space programmes and the achievements of our scientists that even the common man now wants to know more about this fascinating world. And on the big screen.”

In 2014, India sent the Mars Orbiter Mission into space, and became the first country to send a satellite to orbit the planet at its first attempt – putting its much richer regional rival China in the shade as it became the first Asian nation to get to the red planet. The project was notable for being led by a team of female scientists; as is India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2 (from the Sanskrit for “moon craft”), which was launched last month and is due to land on the moon in early September. And as the country establishes itself as a space power, Indians have developed an appetite for sci-fi themes in its cinema.

The patriotic outburst that followed the Mars mission has fuelled the latest example of Indian space cinema: Mission Mangal (Sanskrit for Mars), a fictionalised account of the Orbiter Mission. Starring and produced by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, it is due for release on 15 August, India’s Independence Day. “I would follow the news about India’s space missions and feel proud of what we were achieving,” says Kumar. “But through Mission Mangal I guess you could say I have an insider’s perspective.”

Continue reading “One giant leap for Indian cinema: how Bollywood embraced sci-fi” »

Researchers have, for the first time, identified the sufficient and necessary conditions that the low-energy limit of quantum gravity theories must satisfy to preserve the main features of the Unruh effect.

To all whom it may concern Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a citizen of the United States, residing in the borough of Manhattan, in the city, county, and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy, of which the following is a specification, reference being bad to the drawing accom-’ panying and forming a part of the same.

Texas Copy of The Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York in 1901–1902. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to scale up the facility and add his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi’s radio based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project’s primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.

In an attempt to satisfy Tesla’s debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down to 16 acres (6.5 ha) but the original, 94 by 94 ft (29 by 29 m), brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day. Wiki.