Upon completion of Mission 1, Astrolab’s FLEX will become the largest and most capable rover to ever travel the Moon, claims the company.
Venturi Astrolab.
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Tesla has open-sourced all of the design and engineering of the original Roadster, CEO Elon Musk announced today, and plenty of people are wondering if the timing of the release has anything to do with the next-gen Roadster that is now several years behind schedule.
Tesla has opened everything from Owner’s Manuals to Circuits and Connectors for the original Roadster, which was the automaker’s first project fifteen years ago in 2008.
The vehicle was essentially a fundraising campaign for Tesla as it fought to keep its doors open and transform the passenger vehicle industry. It almost bankrupted the company, but now, everything that was developed for Tesla’s initial EV project is available for anyone to take a look at.
For the first time, researchers have succeeded in selectively exciting a molecule using a combination of two extreme-ultraviolet light sources and causing the molecule to dissociate while tracking it over time. This is another step towards specific quantum mechanical control of chemical reactions, which could enable new, previously unknown reaction channels.
The interaction of light with matter, especially with molecules, plays an important role in many areas of nature, for example in biological processes such as photosynthesis. Technologies such as solar cells use this process as well.
On the Earth’s surface, mainly light in the visible, ultraviolet or infrared regime plays a role here. Extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) light—radiation with significantly more energy than visible light —is absorbed by the atmosphere and therefore does not reach the Earth’s surface. However, this XUV radiation can be produced and used in the laboratory to enable a selective excitation of electrons in molecules.
Tesla has started discounting new inventory Model Y and Model 3 vehicles again in an apparent new end-of-quarter delivery push.
While Tesla has historically often used price reductions as a way to create demand, but until recently, the automaker has refrained from straight discounts on vehicles.
That changed when Tesla started discounting new inventory vehicles earlier this year.
Ford said Tuesday it is cutting production capacity by roughly 43% to 20 gigawatt hours per year and reducing expected employment from 2,500 jobs to 1,700 jobs. The company declined to disclose how much less it would invest in the plant. Based on the reduced capacity, it would still be about a $2 billion investment.
The decision adds to a recent retreat from EVs by automakers globally. Demand for the vehicles is lower than expected due to higher costs and challenges with supply chains and battery technologies, among other issues.
Reductions at the Marshall, Michigan, plant are part of Ford’s plans announced last month to cut or delay about $12 billion in previously announced EV investments. The company will also postpone construction of another electric vehicle battery plant in Kentucky.
Humankind on the verge of evolutionary traps, a new study: …For the first time, scientists have used the concept of evolutionary traps on human societies at large.
For the first time, scientists have used the concept of evolutionary traps on human societies at large. They find that humankind risks getting stuck in 14 evolutionary dead ends, ranging from global climate tipping points to misaligned artificial intelligence, chemical pollution, and accelerating infectious diseases.
The evolution of humankind has been an extraordinary success story. But the Anthropocene—the proposed geological epoch shaped by us humans—is showing more and more cracks. Multiple global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, and conflicts have started to occur simultaneously in something which scientists refer to as a polycrisis.
The Tesla Cybertruck was spotted on the beach, driving through ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico just a week from deliveries.
Tesla claimed a while ago that the Cybertruck would be able to float. Although the truck did not completely enter the water in this instance, we have no idea if the automaker has prepared the pickup to travel through bodies of water.
Beach driving is popular, and all-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive vehicles are suitable for this kind of travel. Drivers also need to air down their tires in order to prevent their car or truck from digging into the sand, but a vehicle cannot be too heavy, either, as it will sink into the beach. The highest gross vehicle weight on most drive-on beaches is 10,000 pounds.
From Wi-Fi-connected home security systems to smart toilets, the so-called Internet of Things brings personalization and convenience to devices that help run homes. But with that comes tangled electrical cords or batteries that need to be replaced. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Energy Materials have brought solar panel technology indoors to power smart devices. They show which photovoltaic (PV) systems work best under cool white LEDs, a common type of indoor lighting.
Indoor lighting differs from sunlight. Light bulbs are dimmer than the sun. Sunlight includes ultraviolet, infrared and visible light, whereas indoor lights typically shine light from a narrower region of the spectrum. Scientists have found ways to harness power from sunlight, using PV solar panels, but those panels are not optimized for converting indoor light into electrical energy.
Some next-generation PV materials, including perovskite minerals and organic films, have been tested with indoor light, but it’s not clear which are the most efficient at converting non-natural light into electricity; many of the studies use various types of indoor lights to test PVs made from different materials. So, Uli Würfel and coworkers compared a range of different PV technologies under the same type of indoor lighting.
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Graphene’s atomically thin structure makes it impenetrable to a variety of elements, including protons. However, graphene’s edges, flaws, and functionalization can open up channels for proton diffusion. Temperature, humidity, and the existence of functional groups are some of the variables that affect the flow of protons in graphene.
