Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a first-of-its-kind self-healing gel that repairs and connects electronic circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development of flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy storage devices.

Although technology is moving toward lighter, flexible, foldable and rollable electronics, the existing circuits that power them are not built to flex freely and repeatedly self-repair cracks or breaks that can happen from normal wear and tear.

Until now, self-healing materials have relied on application of external stimuli such as light or heat to activate repair. The UT Austin “supergel” material has high conductivity (the degree to which a material conducts electricity) and strong mechanical and electrical self-healing properties.

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A new type of plastic removes the need for fossil fuels and toxic chemicals, replacing it with a simple mixture of hemp and water.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVA34lM3-OY&feature=youtu.be

Derek Muller of ‘Veritasium’ explores the impact of the Northeast blackout of 2003 and the innovations in energy that are essential to keeping the lights on. For more on the future of energy, check out Breakthrough’s ‘Energy on the Edge’ episode on the National Geographic Channel airing Sunday 11/29 at 9/8c.

Check Out Veritasium’s ‘How Long Will You Live’: http://bit.ly/21fLyDN

Continue reading “Veritasium Explores The Future of Energy — GE” »

A new method of mining asteroids for rocket fuel and water was successfully tested at White Sands Missile Range Nov. 13.

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Chinese technology company Huawei has announced that its latest prototype battery fills up with power 10 times quicker than the ones in current smartphones. Huawei has been showing off the technology at the 56th Battery Symposium in Japan this week, where a 3,000mAh pack reached a 48 percent charge in just 5 minutes.

The lithium-ion batteries inside smartphones, tablets, and other similar gadgets have two main sections: an anode and a cathode. Electrons move from one section to the other while our devices are in use, and then back in the opposite direction as they are recharged.

Continue reading “This new battery charges 10 times faster than the one in your smartphone” »

University of Washington engineers have developed a novel technology that uses a Wi-Fi router—a source of ubiquitous but untapped energy in indoor environments—to power devices.

The Power Over Wi-Fi (PoWiFi) system is one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year, according to Popular Science, which included it in the magazine’s annual “Best of What’s New” awards announced Wednesday.

The technology attracted attention earlier this year when researchers published an online paper showing how they harvested energy from Wi-Fi signals to power a simple temperature sensor, a low-resolution grayscale camera and a charger for a Jawbone activity tracking bracelet.

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There’s filtration and then there’s filtration. Engineers in the US have been working on the latter, coming up with a new markedly more energy-efficient way of taking the salt out of seawater, which could deliver huge advantages in terms of providing people with access to drinking water and help combat problems like drought.

The researchers have developed a material that allows high volumes of water to pass through extremely tiny holes called ‘nanopores’ while blocking salt and other contaminants. The material they’re using – a nanometre-thick sheet of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) riddled with these nanopore holes – is the most efficient of a number of thin-film membranes that the engineers modelled, filtering up to 70 percent more water than graphene.

“Even though we have a lot of water on this planet, there is very little that is drinkable,” said Narayana Aluru, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois and leader of the study. “If we could find a low-cost, efficient way to purify sea water, we would be making good strides in solving the water crisis.”

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ABSTRACT

According to Einstein, General Relativity contains the essence of Mach’s ideas. Mach’s principle can be summarized by stating that the inertia of a body is determined by the rest of the mass-energy content of the universe. Inertia here arises from mass-energy there. The latter, was a statement made by John Wheeler in his 1995 book, Gravitation and Inertia, coauthored by Ciufolini. Einstein believed that to be fully Machian, gravity would need a radiative component, an action-at-a-dis- tance character, so that gravitational influences on a body from far away could be felt immediately. In 1960’s, Hoyle and Narlikar (HN) developed such a theory which was a gravitational version of the Absorber theory derived by Wheeler-Feynman for classical electrodynamics and later expanded upon by Davies and Narlikar for quantum electrodynamics. The HN-field equation has the same type of mass fluctuation terms as in the Woodward Mach effect thruster theory. The force equation, used to predict the thrust in our device, can be derived from the mass fluctuation. We outline a new method for deriving the force equation. We present new experimental tests of the thruster to show that the thrust seen in our device is not due to either heating or Dean Drive effects. Successful replications have been performed by groups in Austria and Canada, but their work is still pending in the peer review literature.

Keywords:

Mach Effect Drive, Transient Mass Fluctuations, Mach’s Principle, Action at a Distance, Advanced Waves, Event Horizon.

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ABSTRACT

The Mach Effect Thruster (MET) is a propellant―less space drive which uses Mach’s principle to produce thrust in an accelerating material which is undergoing mass―energy fluctuations, [1] –[3]. Mach’s principle is a statement that the inertia of a body is the result of the gravitational interaction of the body with the rest of the mass-energy in the universe. The MET device uses electric power of 100 — 200 Watts to operate. The thrust produced by these devices, at the present time, are small on the order of a few micro-Newtons. We give a physical description of the MET device and apparatus for measuring thrusts. Next we explain the basic theory behind the device which involves gravitation and advanced waves to incorporate instantaneous action at a distance. The advanced wave concept is a means to conserve momentum of the system with the universe. There is no momentun violation in this theory. We briefly review absorber theory by summarizing Dirac, Wheeler-Feynman and Hoyle-Narlikar (HN). We show how Woodward’s mass fluctuation formula can be derived from first principles using the HN-theory which is a fully Machian version of Einstein’s relativity. HN-theory reduces to Einstein’s field equations in the limit of smooth fluid distribution of matter and a simple coordinate transformation.

Keywords:

Continue reading “Theory of a Mach Effect Thruster I” »