Lifeboat Foundation

Fusion power may be a more realistic prospect than you think. As Motherboard reports, researchers at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that a new magnetic field setup more than tripled the energy output of the fusion reaction hotspot in experiments, “approaching” the level required for self-sustaining ignition in plasmas. The field was particularly effective at trapping heat within the hotspot, boosting the energy yield.

The hotspot’s creation involved blasting 200 lasers at a fusion fuel pellet made from hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium. The resulting X-rays made the pellet implode and thus produce the extremely high pressures and heat needed for fusion. The team achieved their feat by wrapping a coil around a pellet made using special metals.

The notion of using magnets to heat the fuel isn’t new. University of Rochester scientists found they could use magnetism to their advantage in 2012. The Lawrence Livermore study was far more effective, however, producing 40 percent heat and more than three times the energy.

LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) — Britain’s Rolls-Royce (RR.L) said it has successfully run an aircraft engine on hydrogen, a world aviation first that marks a major step towards proving the gas could be key to decarbonising air travel.

The ground test, using a converted Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A regional aircraft engine, used green hydrogen created by wind and tidal power, the British company said on Monday.

Rolls and its testing programme partner easyJet (EZJ.L) are seeking to prove that hydrogen can safely and efficiently deliver power for civil aero engines.

An annual APS video prize went to supercomputer simulations, control of chaotic Faraday waves, and studies of a large bubble in a bottle.

British engineer Rolls-Royce has successfully used hydrogen instead of conventional jet fuel to power a modern aircraft engine in a world first for the aviation industry, according to the company.

The ground test, which took place at a government test facility at Boscombe Down, used green hydrogen generated by wind and tidal power from the Orkney Islands in Scotland.

Rolls-Royce used a converted AE 2100-A turboprop engine that powers civil and military aircraft to conduct the test in partnership with easyJet.

The test is a stepping stone to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

In what can be considered a promising first step towards transforming the aviation industry to become carbon-neutral, a project led by Rolls Royce and easyJet has successfully tested a modern-day jet engine that runs solely on hydrogen.

The prototype for the experiment, which was conducted at a test facility at the Ministry of Defence Boscombe Down, U.K., was a commonly-used Rolls-Royce AE-2100A regional aircraft engine. The turbine was supplied with ‘green’ hydrogen, which was made by splitting water into its constituent components at European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkney Islands, U.K.

Continue reading “In a first, Rolls-Royce and easyJet successfully test a hydrogen-powered aircraft engine” »

The absence of the 21-centimeter hydrogen line allowed scientists to determine specific properties of the earliest galaxies in the universe.

An international group of astronomers, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, just shed new light on the cosmic dawn of the universe, a press statement reveals.

The cosmic dawn is a very early period of the universe, during which the first stars and galaxies formed. The researchers used data from India’s SARAS3 radio telescope to analyze this period of the cosmos and determine mass and energy output limits for the first stars and galaxies.

Tesla Semi carried 81,000 pounds for 500 miles on a single charge.

Just a few days before Tesla begins shipping the truck, Elon Musk has verified that Tesla Semi, the company’s Class 8 semi-truck, has successfully completed a crucial voyage.

Although there is no reason to question the outcome, it would be interesting to learn more about speed and energy usage. We are pretty interested in seeing some impartial vehicle tests.

Continue reading “For the first time, Tesla just completed a full load 500-mile trip with its Semi truck” »

Telecommunications have reshaped many aspects of our lives over the past few decades by providing incredibly convenient ways to share and access information. One of the most important enablers for this transformation has been the adoption and improvement of broadband technologies, which cram enormous amounts of data over wide frequency bands to achieve unprecedented transfer speeds. Today, most large cities have fiber optics-based networks that distribute high-speed internet directly to every home.

Unfortunately, it is not always feasible to deploy fiber optic links to remote locations and rural areas, due to the associated costs and civil engineering work required. Such places could benefit from a different approach to optical broadband communications: free-space optics. The main idea in free-space optical (FSO) communications is to set up aligned transmitter–receiver pairs where needed and use air as the medium to carry the signals.

While there are still many challenges to address in FSO systems (such as low energy efficiency, impact of weather, and high background noise), scientists worldwide are continuously trying out new ways of solving these issues and achieving higher data rates.

Boa, an open-source web server suitable for embedded applications that was discontinued since 2005 is now becoming a security threat because of the complex nature of how it was built into the internet of things (IoT) device supply chain. A recent report by tech major Microsoft said that hackers are exploiting vulnerabilities in the software to target organizations in the energy sector.

Microsoft researchers revealed in an analysis that a vulnerable open-source component in the Boa web server, is used widely in a range of routers and security cameras as well as popular software development kits (SDKs), a set of tools that allow developers to write or use an existing framework to develop applications for a given platform.

Despite the software being discontinued a nearly two decades ago, Microsoft reports that attackers are continuing their attempts to exploit the flaws of the Boa web servers which include a high-severity information disclosure bug (CVE-2021–33558) and another arbitrary file access flaw (CVE-2017–9833). An unauthenticated attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to obtain user credentials and leverage them for remote code execution.