Lifeboat Foundation

Over at Picatinny Arsenal, the research and development facility and proving ground for the U.S. Army’s weaponry, engineers are developing a device that shoots lighting bolts along a laser beam to annihilate its target. That’s right: lighting bolts shot down laser beams. This story could easily end right here and still be the coolest thing we’ve written today, but for the scientifically curious we’ll continue.

The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) can be used to destroy anything that conducts electricity better than the air or ground surrounding it (unexploded ordnance seems a good candidate here). It works off of some pretty basic principles of physics, using a laser to carve an electromagnetic path through the air that accommodates a high-voltage beam. Create that path, crank up the voltage, and your target is toast.

It works like this: a high intensity, super-short duration (maybe two-trillionths of a second) laser pulse will actually use air like lens—surrounding air focuses the beam, keeping the laser pulse nice and tight rather than scattering it. If the pulse is strong enough, it actually creates an electromagnetic field around itself that’s so powerful it strips electrons from air molecules, essentially creating a channel of plasma through the air. Since air is composed of neutral particles (that act as insulators) and the plasma channel is a good conductor (relative to the un-ionized air around it) the path of the laser beam becomes a kind of filament.

Continue reading “Army Demonstrates a Weapon That Shoots Laser-Guided Lightning Bolts” »

Lightning strikes can more than double some mushroom crops, according to ongoing experiments that are jolting fungi with electricity.

Dear Colleagues.

ReWheel, Inc. was founded to save energy based on a simple truth that wasting energy is extremely not smart … as well as very damaging to our planet’s health.

Most of us are either scientists or believe in science. And that is how we know that we are losing the war against climate change. This war will not be won by any one technology but by our combined efforts. To protect our planet for our children and their children, and those who comes after, we need to act.

Continue reading “5,000 Years in The Making” »

“Astronauts at the international space station expecting a delivery on Monday that private company SpaceX launched a cargo capsule loaded with supplies from Cape Canaveral early this morning the shipment. The company’s seventeenth to the orbiting outpost includes a new instrument to measure CO two in the atmosphere. Then peers Rebecca hersher reports it will be attached. To the space station measuring how much carbon dioxide is. In the atmosphere is really fundamental for understanding how the climate is changing. But it’s difficult for one thing. The amount of co two varies each day and each season and each year and measurements have to be both global and extremely precise. The new instrument can do both. It’s designed to scan the earth measuring not only how much co two is entering the atmosphere. But how much of the greenhouse gas is being absorbed by plants and oceans the instrument is called the orbiting carbon observatory three two other versions. Have previously been launched. Overall. NASA says the ability to measure co two from space has already helped scientists better understand our climate and predict how it will change”

KQED Radio

Continue reading “SpaceX launches unpiloted cargo ship to space station” »

Conventional surveys can’t track migration after natural disasters in real time. But Facebook data may provide a crude estimate of those who flee.

A massive cyclone is set to batter India over the next few days, spurring the biggest evacuation in the country’s history.

The extremely severe cyclone, dubbed “Fani,” is pummeling the Bay of Bengal and is projected to make landfall by Thursday night with approximately 120 mph (190 km/h) winds, with gusts up to 130 mph (210 km/h), according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). Fani is also likely to bring “phenomenal” sea conditions in parts of the Bay of Bengal, according to the IMD.

More than 100 million people are in the path of the devastating cyclone, and nearly 900,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, the Associated Press reported. About 100,000 of those people are from the city of Puri, in the state of Odisha, which is home to the 858-year-old Jaganath Temple, the BBC reported. Officials fear that this ancient temple could be damaged by the cyclone.

Continue reading “Monster Cyclone in India Prompts the Biggest Evacuation in the Country’s History” »

Researchers are creating models of where people will move when climate shocks hit, but so far we’re just making educated guesses.

There is enough room in the world’s existing parks, forests, and abandoned land to plant 1.2 trillion additional trees, which would have the CO₂ storage capacity to cancel out a decade of carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new analysis by ecologist Thomas Crowther and colleagues at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university.

The research, presented at this year’s American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington, D.C., argues that planting additional trees is one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

Trees are “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change,” Crowther told The Independent. Combining forest inventory data from 1.2 million locations around the world and satellite images, the scientists estimate there are 3 trillion trees on Earth — seven times more than previous estimates. But they also found that there is abundant space to restore millions of acres of additional forests, not counting urban and agricultural land.

Continue reading “Planting 1.2 Trillion Trees Could Cancel Out a Decade of CO2 Emissions, Scientists Find” »

In series of talks, researchers describe major effort to address climate change through carbon-free power.