Researchers took one of the densest parts of an Earth-orbiting satellite, placed it in a plasma wind tunnel then proceeded to melt it into vapour. Their goal was to better understand how satellites burn up during reentry, to minimise the risk of endangering anyone on the ground. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-satellite-piece.html…
Tag: Wind
Upgrade Your Memory With A Surgically Implanted Brain Chip
Bloomberg reports on a five-year, $77 million project by America’s Department of Defense to create an implantable brain device that restores memory-generation capacity for people with traumatic brain injuries. A device has now been developed by Michael Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and the medical technology company Medtronic Plc, and successfully tested with funding from America’s…
Credit Scores Based On AI and Your Social Media Profile Could Usher In New Way For Banks To Discriminate
Credit scores have a long history of prejudice. “Most changes in how credit scores are calculated over the years — including the shift from human assessment to computer calculations, and most recently to artificial intelligence — have come out of a desire to make the scores more equitable, but credit companies have failed to remove bias, on the basis of race…
NASA Overcomes Military’s GPS Tweaks To Peer Inside Hurricanes
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A constellation of eight microsatellites has harvested data that — if folded into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) weather models — could have sharpened forecasts of several recent hurricanes, including Michael, a category-5 storm in October 2018. But progress was hard-won for scientists on NASA’s $157 million Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System…
America’s Renewable Energy Capacity Is Now Greater Than Coal
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The renewable energy sector had slightly more installed capacity than coal in April, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report. That means U.S. power plants can produce more energy from clean sources than coal for the first time in history, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit research group supporting sustainable…
X-ray study sheds more light into the nature of a gamma-ray pulsar
Using archival data from ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, astronomers have investigated one of gamma-ray radio-quiet pulsars known as PSR J1826−1256. The study, based on X-ray observations, sheds more light into the nature of this peculiar object and its pulsar wind nebula (PWN). Results of the research were presented in a paper published June 3 on arXiv.org. Source:…
Scottish Power To Build Vast Battery To Improve Wind Energy Supply
Scottish Power is to undertake the most ambitious battery power project in Europe in an attempt to unlock the potential of the UK’s wind and solar farms. From a report: The company will connect an industrial-scale battery, the size of half a football pitch, to the Whitelee onshore windfarm early next year to capture more power from its 215 turbines. The…
Bloomberg To Put $500 Million Into Closing All Remaining Coal Plants By 2030
In what marks the largest ever philanthropic effort to combat climate change, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pledging $500 million to close all of the nation’s remaining coal plants by 2030 and put the United States on track toward a 100% clean energy economy. The New York Times reports: The new campaign, called Beyond Carbon, is designed to…
Martian sands move in unearthly ways
Mars is a desert world, with sand dunes similar to those on Earth. But the processes that create them can be quite different from those on our planet, according to a new study from the University of Arizona. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/sand-dunes-deserts-mars-earth-hirise-mro-university-of-arizona-space…
Nuke Retirements Could Lead To 4 Billion Metric Tons of Extra CO2 Emissions, Says IEA
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report released today by the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns world leaders that — without support for new nuclear power or lifetime extensions for existing nuclear power plants — the world’s climate goals are at risk. “The lack of further lifetime extensions of existing nuclear plants and new projects could result…