Lifeboat Foundation

Through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, aliens could be transmitting signals using the sun, but a quick scan for such signals has turned up nothing.

Dust is a common fact of life, and it’s more than just a daily nuisance—it can get into machinery and equipment, causing loss of efficiency or breakdowns.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin partnered with North Carolina-based company Smart Material Solutions Inc. to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The result is the ability to make many types of materials dust resistant, from spacecraft to solar panels to household windows.

The research is published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Chemistry have engineered silicon nanowires that can convert sunlight into electricity by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen gas, a greener alternative to fossil fuels.

Fifty years ago, scientists first demonstrated that liquid water can be split into oxygen and hydrogen gas using electricity produced by illuminating a semiconductor electrode. Although hydrogen generated using solar power is a promising form of clean energy, low efficiencies and high costs have hindered the introduction of commercial solar-powered hydrogen plants.

An economic feasibility analysis suggests that using a slurry of electrodes made from nanoparticles instead of a rigid solar panel design could substantially lower costs, making solar-produced hydrogen competitive with fossil fuels. However, most existing particle-based light-activated catalysts, also referred to as photocatalysts, can absorb only ultraviolet radiation, limiting their energy-conversion efficiency under solar illumination.

Residents of Cardiff’s Odet Court housing complex U.K. are benefiting from “world-first” technology that allows solar energy from a single rooftop system to be shared by multiple residences in the same building.

The new solar system setup can supply up to 75 percent of each apartment’s power requirements, benefiting the residents, Euronews reported on Saturday.

In January 2023, the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) is poised to launch into orbit a prototype, dubbed the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD), which will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth.

Space solar power provides a way to tap into the practically unlimited supply of solar energy in outer space, where the energy is constantly available without being subjected to the cycles of day and night, seasons, and cloud cover.

Continue reading “Caltech to Launch Space Solar Power Technology Demo into Orbit in January” »

Silicon, the standard semiconducting material used in a host of applications—computer central processing units (CPUs), semiconductor chips, detectors, and solar cells—is an abundant, naturally occurring material. However, it is expensive to mine and to purify.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space firm, Blue Origin, announced it has developed a method for producing solar cells and transmission wire using only lunar regolith.

Blue Origin famously filed a legal complaint against NASA after it snubbed its lunar lander design in favor of awarding SpaceX a contract for a modified Starship lander.

Whether or not Blue Origin puts a lander on the Moon, it might play a key role in sustaining lunar operations. Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company has revealed that it can produce solar cells and transmission wire using simulated Moon regolith. The firm’s Blue Alchemist technique uses molten electrolysis to separate the lunar soil’s aluminum, iron and silicon from bound oxygen to extract key materials. The process can build solar cells, cover glass and aluminum wire using only sunlight and the reactor’s silicon.

This approach would not only save explorers the trouble of importing material, but would be kinder to both the Moon and Earth. There are no carbon-based emissions, no chemicals and no need for water. The resulting solar cells can operate on the Moon for over a decade despite a “harsh” environment, Blue Origin claims.

As Ars Technica explains, Blue Origin is pitching this as a solution for NASA’s Artemis program and missions to Mars. The space agency could establish bases or other long-term installations while minimizing the environmental impact. While the concept of using regolith to build outposts isn’t new, earlier efforts have largely focused on habitats rather than the power supplying those off-world facilities.

The design facilitates efficient land use and can even save water lost to evaporation.

Sunstall, a California-based company, has launched a vertical solar panel, Sunzaun, which can be used in existing fields and arable lands without sacrificing them for clean green energy. The installation is much like conventional solar systems, just that the system uses bifacial solar modules, and the entire array stands like a boundary wall in the field.

As countries look to move away from fossil fuels, the interest in solar energy has increased in recent years. Countries in Europe facing harsh winters are also finding new ways of tapping into solar energy, such as installing solar panels at high altitudes… More.

Continue reading “Vertical solar panels could save farm land and transform agriculture” »