Lifeboat Foundation

We’d need an astronomical amount of resources to construct a Dyson sphere, a giant theoretical shell that would harvest all of a given star’s energy, around the Sun.

In fact, as science journalist Jaime Green explores in her new book “The Possibility of Life,” we’d have to go as far as to demolish a Jupiter-sized planet to build such a megastructure, a concept first devised by physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960.

“If you wanted enough material to build such a thing, you’d essentially have to disassemble a planet, and not just a small one — more like Jupiter,” Green writes in her book.

Space lovers have an opportunity to watch two unique occurrences at the International Space Station this week, but you will have to stay up pretty late — or wake up very early — to see them live.

According to NASA, the cargo spacecraft carrying three tons of food, fuel and supplies to the ISS is for the Expedition 71 crew.

The unpiloted spacecraft – called Progress 88 – is scheduled to launch on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 2:43 p.m. local time.

A thin film of a topological magnet displays a large thermoelectric effect that doesn’t require an applied magnetic field—a behavior that could lead to new energy-harvesting devices.

Materials scientists and engineers would like to know precisely how electrons interact and move in new materials and how the devices made with them will behave. Will the electrical current flow easily within the material? Is there a temperature at which the material will become superconducting, enabling current to flow without a power source? How long will the quantum state of an electron spin be preserved in new electronic and quantum devices?

Lying between the microwave and infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, the terahertz (1 THz = 10¹² Hz) gap is being rapidly closed by development of new terahertz sources and detectors, with promising applications in spectroscopy, imaging, sensing, and communication.

These applications greatly benefit from terahertz sources delivering high-energy or high-average-power radiation. On the other hand, high-intensity or strong-field terahertz sources are essential to observe or exploit novel nonlinear terahertz-matter interactions, where the electric and/or magnetic field strengths play a key role.

The team of scientists, led by Dr. Chul Kang from Advanced Photonics Research Institute, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Korea, and Professor Ki-Yong Kim from Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, U.S., has created the world’s strongest terahertz fields of 260 megavolts per centimeter (MV/cm) or equivalent peak intensity of 9 × 10¹³ watts per square centimeter (W/cm²).

It’s a Saturday afternoon at a kids’ birthday party. Hordes of children are swarming between the spread of birthday treats and party games. Half-eaten cupcakes, biscuits and lollies litter the floor, and the kids seem to have gained superhuman speed and bounce-off-the-wall energy.

But is sugar to blame?

The belief that eating sugary foods and drinks leads to hyperactivity has steadfastly persisted for decades. And parents have curtailed their children’s intake accordingly.

Ledger, a French startup mostly known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has started shipping new wallets nearly 18 months after announcing the latest Ledger Stax devices.

The updated wallet features an E-Ink display and has been designed in partnership with Tony Fadell, one of the main designers behind the iPod. E-Ink technology is generally used for e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle or the Rakuten Kobo because the displays look good in daylight and don’t require a lot of power.

After fulfilling all preorders, the company will list the Ledger Stax on its website once it has more stock available. The reason the hardware wallet fell behind schedule is the company may have overpromised on the design front. The Ledger Stax features a curved E-Ink display. It said it has been more difficult than expected to produce curved E-Ink displays at scale.

Lithium-ion batteries have been at the forefront of energy storage technologies. However, the availability of lithium is limited. Consequently, the growing demand for energy-storage systems has led to the search for low-cost and more accessible materials for rechargeable batteries. Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are a promising candidate due to the virtually unlimited sodium (Na) resources in seawater and salt deposits.

Engineers hope to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel with a new, train-like system of reactors driven by the sun.