May 13, 2013
- Helion Energy Fusion Engine has received about $7 million in funds from DOE, the Department of Defense and NASA. The company hopes to raise another $2 million by next year, $35 million in 2015-17, and $200 million for its pilot plant stage.
The Fusion Engine is a cyclically operating fusion power plant...
May 6, 2013
- The University of NSW (New South Wales) researchers have come up with improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade. The breakthrough involves using hydrogen atoms to counter defects in silicon cells used in solar panels. As a consequence, poor quality silicon can be made to perform like high quality...
May 4, 2013
- A reader asked about what is happening with cold fusion. As usual the claims are big but as yet not validated. As usual the big impact of commercialization is expected in about 12 to 18 months.
I think various aspects of this relate to part of the Futurama episode Raging Bender.
Foreman: This could be the most one-sided fight since 1973 when Ali faced an 80-foot tall mechanical Joe Frazier. M-My memory's not what it used to be but I think the entire Earth was...
May 3, 2013
- Over 20% of the world's population still lives without electric lighting, and about 40% do not own a television. Despite increasing rhetoric on the need to improve access to clean-burning fuels and electricity globally, the number of households depending on solid fuels is increasing and the number of new electricity connections in sub-Saharan Africa is outpaced by population growth.
A new paper in Environmental Research Letters looks at achieving universal energy access.
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May 2, 2013
May 1, 2013
- Starship Congress is the interstellar summit that Icarus Interstellar is hosting this summer in Dallas, August 15-18. As an event, Starship Congress will play host and give voice to a wide variety of interstellar organizations and distinguished proponents from the interstellar community.
Day 1—Interstellar Now (Next 20 years)
Day 1 will examine what we can do today and for the next twenty years. The...
April 29, 2013
- Splitting Singlets
Solar cell efficiency is limited because light at wavelengths shorter than the cell's absorption threshold does not channel any of its excess energy into the generated electricity. Congreve et al. have developed a method to harvest the excess energy in carbon-based absorbers through a process termed “singlet fission.” In this process, high-energy photons propel two current carriers, rather than just one, by populating a singlet state that spontaneously...
April 27, 2013
- The ITER project gained final approval for the design of the most technically challenging component – the fusion reactor’s “blanket” that will handle the super-heated nuclear fuel.
Over the next few years about a million individual components of... - Volvo Cars tests of flywheel technology confirm fuel savings of up to 25 per cent in a S60 sedan.
Volvo Car Group has completed extensive testing of kinetic flywheel technology on public roads - and the results confirm that this is a light, cheap and very eco-efficient solution.
"The testing of this complete experimental system for kinetic energy recovery...
April 26, 2013
Some months back, the folks at DeVry University interviewed me as part of a series of articles they were doing to focus on the new careers of tomorrow.
