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IPCC’s new interactive atlas reveals how climate change will shape weather around the world.
Circa 2016
Scientists and engineers since the 1940s have been toying with the idea of building self-replicating machines, or von Neumann machines, named for John von Neumann. With recent advances in 3D printing (including in zero gravity) and machine learning AI, it seems like self-replicating machines are much more feasible today. In the 21st century, a tantalizing possibility for this technology has emerged: sending a space probe out to a different star system, having it mine resources to make a copy of itself, and then launching that one to yet another star system, and on and on and on.
As a wild new episode of PBS’s YouTube series Space Time suggests, if we could send a von Neumann probe to another star system—likely Alpha Centauri, the closest to us at about 4.4 light years away—then that autonomous spaceship could land on a rocky planet, asteroid, or moon and start building a factory. (Of course, it’d probably need a nuclear fusion drive, something we still need to develop.)
Continue reading “Could We Explore the Entire Galaxy With Self-Replicating Robots?” »
Farmers reap double benefits with solar power in fields Solar panels generate electricity in the fields, helping both farmers and climate protection. DW visits a German solar farm — and looks at other places this combination is paying off. How widely can agrovoltaics spread? Fabian Karthaus grew u…
The model used to create the most optimistic scenario in the report, which limits warming to 1.5 ˚C, assumes the world will figure out ways to remove about 5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year by midcentury and 17 billion by 2100. (The scenario is known as SSP1-1.9, and those figures are based on an analysis of earlier data by Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and contributing author on the UN assessment.)
The UN’s long-awaited climate report, released on Monday, offered a stark reminder that removing massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential to prevent the gravest dangers of global warming. But it also underscored that the necessary technologies barely exist—and will be tremendously difficult to deploy.
Global temperatures will continue to rise through midcentury no matter what we do at this point, according to the first installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report. How much hotter it gets, however, will depend on how rapidly we cut emissions and how quickly we scale up ways of sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.
Wind farms certainly allow for the production of clean energy. Although they are 100% renewable, they still have problems. They have high costs, disfigure the landscape, produce noise pollution, and above all, have a heavy impact on fauna, and in particular on birds.
The Spanish startup Vortex Bladeless has developed a bladeless turbine that can revolutionize wind energy, especially at the household level, and become the alternative to solar panels. The design of the Spanish firm has already received the approval of Norway’s state energy company, Equinor.
Continue reading “Vortex Bladeless wind turbines generate electricity from the vibration” »
It’s the stuff of science fiction: Solar panels in space that beam power directly to Earth equipping the planet with clean renewable and affordable energy. Yet, it could soon be reality.
Caltech has just received $100 million in funding for their Space Solar Power Project (SSPP). The project is described by Caltech as: “Collecting solar power in space and transmitting the energy wirelessly to Earth through microwaves enables terrestrial power availability unaffected by weather or time of day. Solar power could be continuously available anywhere on earth.”
“This ambitious project is a transformative approach to large-scale solar energy harvesting for the Earth that overcomes this intermittency and the need for energy storage,” said SSPP researcher Harry Atwater in the Caltech press release on the matter.
Discussions about how and where we produce food are set to continue for a long time to come as businesses, governments and citizens try to find ways to create a sustainable system that meets the needs of everyone.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that some of the topics covered above are starting to generate interest among the investment community.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in June, Morgan Stanley’s global head of sustainability research, Jessica Alsford, highlighted this shift.
Energy storage ideas.
Mateo Jaramillo sees the future of renewable energy in thousands of iron pellets rusting away in a laboratory in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Jaramillo is chief executive of Form Energy, a company that recently announced what it says is a breakthrough in a global race: how to store renewable energy for long periods of time.
The aircraft, evocatively called Skydweller and built by a U.S.-Spanish aerospace firm Skydweller Aero, could help the Navy keep a watchful eye on the surrounding seas while escorting ships months at a time or act as a communications relay platform. The company was awarded a $5 million contract by the U.S. Navy to develop the aircraft.
To stay airborne for so long, the pilotless craft would have 2900sq ft of solar cells on its wings.
