From Sugar To Ethanol Fuel With A Little Microbial Help

June 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 66 Comments

In these trying times it seems appropriate to work through some ‘what if ‘ scenarios, such as the local gas station suddenly not having any more gasoline to sell you, or said gas station ceasing to exist altogether. In that case it can be incredibly useful to be able to create your own gasoline alternative in the form of ethanol. As demonstrated by [Hyperspace Pirate] in a recent video this process is fairly straightforward once you have procured an appropriate feedstock, such as here sugar (sucrose).

Although baker’s yeast (Saccaromyces cerevisiae) is more commonly associated with the production of ethanol-laced drinks, there’s nothing that says that you cannot distill out the approximately 10-15% ethanol that results from a yeast feeding frenzy and resulting waste products.

How to do this distillation step is explained in the video, with the mixture heated and put through a self-made reflux column to deal with the fact that the water/ethanol mixture is an azeotropic mixture, meaning that a lot of water is expected to make its way out of the condenser along with ethanol without this measure to condense as much of the water vapor before it can make its way to the top of the column.

Ultimately the conversion rate of plain white sugar to ethanol is about 54%, with the rest turning into CO₂. With an appropriately converted combustion engine for running on 100% ethanol, it runs pretty well, though the final cost per liter of ethanol will heavily depend on your feedstock.

With the full costs of the electric heater of the distillation column taken into account – at 2.57 kWh/L – as well as the cost of the off-the-shelf sugar, [Hyperspace Pirate] with his Florida kWh cost of $0.12 paid around $2.62/L, or $9.91 per gallon. Even with how much prices at the gas pump have shot up recently, you’d pretty much need to find a free source of feedstock and otherwise optimize the process for it to make much sense, even in this economy.

That said, it’s crazy that the world of Mad Max doesn’t run on ethanol. If tomorrow a certain bubble were to implode and the global economy fell apart as a result, producing bioethanol would seem to be a highly marketable skill.

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How To Remove Bounce When Bouncy Objects Encounter Bounciness

June 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 7 Comments

We all love a good bit of bounce now and then, with everything from trampolines to bouncy castles and bouncy balls forming the staple of a wholesome childhood for many. That said, most of our bouncy experiences in day to day life concern bouncy objects that meet immovable or rigid objects, including said child having a blast in a bouncy castle. Where the physics get arguably more interesting and less intuitive is when you combine two objects that are both bouncy, with [Steve Mould] recently taking a look at the tuning of said bounciness to even kill the bounce completely.

Understanding how to achieve this tuning means understanding how the kinetic energy is stored in each flexible material, and how to dissipate it in a way that doesn’t result in the aforementioned bounciness. In the simple physical demonstration setup the addition or removal of weights to the lower sprung platform tunes the response to the bouncy ball that is dropped on top of it.

After going through the science behind bounciness and springiness using the practical application of this science in the context of golf balls and clubs, [Steve] introduces the simulation tool that he created. This allows you to tweak the parameters of such a double spring system, which may bring back some high school physics lessons for some.

In a system like that of a golf club and the ball, having undesirable oscillations (bouncing) reduces the final kinetic energy transferred to the ball. Although ‘bouncy’ is perhaps not the first thought that comes to mind when handling a golf ball or a club, ultimately they are just as bouncy as a bouncy ball or an electric switch, just on their own scales, with their own opportunities for optimization and analysis.

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Retro Gear And The Mystery Of Cables Melting Into Cases While In Storage

June 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 26 Comments

The phenomenon of cable-shaped indents in the plastic cases of retro systems is one that’s probably painfully familiar to many a collector of such systems. Although in these situations neither side got hot enough to cause any melting – especially while disconnected in storage – it still has that same melted appearance. The real cause here is not heat, but plasticizer migration, as detailed in a recent video by [Run Stop Restored] over on YouTube.

Plasticizers are an additive to many plastics that aim to make it more flexible (‘plastic’), as well as improve other characteristics of the base material, with PVC in particular relying on plasticizers to give it its desired properties for applications where PVC has to be flexible. Here the flexible cable insulation of these devices generally uses PVC, which over time can migrate to other polymers when brought into close contact for extended periods of time.

The – usually ABS – enclosures of e.g. Commodore tape drives as in this video demonstration thus get correspondingly inundated with the same type of plasticizers that ABS is also highly susceptible to. Since in storage the cables tend to be wrapped – tightly – around the device they’re attached to, this results in a solid contact which thus enables this gradual process to work its magic, whether it’s a Commodore datasette or a power supply brick.

Correspondingly the PVC insulation becomes brittle as it loses its plasticizer, with the process sped up by higher environmental temperatures. To prevent this, never wrap a PVC cable around a device, and keep it physically separated from susceptible plastics like ABS as much as reasonably possible. Along with a cool environment this should prevent plasticizer migration from ruining what used to be a pristine case.

This problem is particularly significant for retro gear from the 1980s and thereabouts, before phthalate-free plasticizer alternatives were developed, along with other changes such as more stable formulations that prevent this migration process. Adding a coating can also help, especially for protecting older gear, but flexible PVC in particular should be viewed with suspicion and treated carefully.

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Microsoft’s Topological Quantum Computing Claims Once Again In Question

June 30, 2026 by Maya Posch 15 Comments

A central problem with the arguably overhyped field of quantum computing remains the difficulty in objectively ascertaining performance and new developments, as much here relies on indirect measurements. Such is especially the case with topological quantum computing, with its use of Majorana fermions. For a few years now Microsoft’s quantum computing department (Azure Quantum) has made claims here of major progress, which have subsequently repeatedly been shot down in peer review. Their most recent attempt at said progress in topological quantum computing now got a blistering response (PDF) by Henry F. Legg in an article in Nature.

We previously reported on Microsoft’s attempts here in early 2025, when they claimed the detection of the crucial Majorana Zero Mode (MZM), before it faced the criticisms of peer review, including by Legg, which included academically vicious language by some researchers, including terms like ‘essentially fraudulent’.

This raises the awkward question of whether Microsoft’s quantum researchers are just too eager to confirm a discovery, or whether a more benign reason exists.

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The Terrifying 2011-Era Case Of Max Planck’s Retracted Papers

June 29, 2026 by Maya Posch 21 Comments

In the world of scientific publishing there are many reasons why a paper can be retracted, but generally there is an obvious and clearly communicated reason for doing so. Thus when [Yves Gingras] – a historian of physics – and [Mahdi Khelfaoui] – a colleague – noticed recently that two 1940s papers by [Max Planck] had been quite recently retracted, this resulted in an eyebrow-raising double-take, before naturally publishing their investigation’s findings on arXiv.

They first became aware of this courtesy of the site Retraction Watch and their list of ‘Retractions by Nobel Prize winners‘, which had the authors do a spit-take when they saw [Max Planck] listed. This page led them to a total of two database entries, as listed above. One is for a 1940 paper, the other for a 1942 paper, only five years before [Planck]’s death.

As for the provided reasons, both articles were struck with a generic ‘copyright violation’, which at the very least seems somewhat puzzling, and started both authors of this recent investigation on their journey. What they found was less of a nefarious plot and more of an accidental black hole that had formed when scientific journals began to digitize papers.

The original journal that [Planck]’s papers were published in was absorbed like so many into Springer Nature, where an automated system then tried to sort through all the papers, including the usual detecting of copyright issues. With these papers predating the era of convenient DOIs and the more standard forms of citing related works, said automated system appears to have become rather confused and hurt these papers in its confusion.

From the side of Springer Nature there has so far been no commentary on this, and as of writing the original papers are still listed as withdrawn. Although one can still read the original scanned papers via the Internet Archive, such as here the 1940 paper, it’s disturbing to see that automated systems have apparently been let loose on these veritable archives of scientific and academic history, heedless of the damage inflicted along the way.

Although after fifteen years these two retractions were finally noticed, the more harrowing question is probably just how many papers from potentially less well-known authors were quietly scuttled. If this can happen to [Planck]’s works, it would appear that nobody is safe, including legends like [Bohr], [Einstein] and so many others.

Increasing Photon Upconversion Efficiency With Structural Exciton Localization

June 25, 2026 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

In structures like photovoltaic cells there is only a limited spectrum of wavelengths that can perform useful work, with the remaining wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation effectively wasted. If the energy of such wavelengths could be coaxed into this useful spectrum, this could then correspondingly boost the performance of the devices, but doing so is not straightforward. Going from lower-energy photons to higher-energy photons is very inefficient, with a recent study by [Thilini Ishwara] et al. demonstrating a liquid triplet medium that has a conversion efficiency of about 8.2%.

Generally the absorption and emission of electromagnetic radiation involves a shift to a lower energy state, the Stokes shift, but the inverse anti-Stokes shift – the goal of photon upconversion – is decidedly less common, even if it finds uses today in for example industrial pigments that can absorb in the near-infrared and re-emit in the visible spectrum. This is practical in luminescent displays and anti-counterfeiting measures, where details like conversion efficiency aren’t paramount.

Unlike the Stokes shift, the mechanisms that underlie the anti-Stokes shift either require cooperation from the material’s lattice, or – in the case of organic molecules – what is termed triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA), also known as photochemical upconversion (PUC). This involves an absorbing species, a sensitizer and an emitting species, allowing for the summing of multiple lower-energy photons into a higher-energy photon, with this 2023 review article by [Jiale Feng] et al. providing a good primer.

In the study by [Ishwara] et al. this triplet medium is 9,10-bis(n-octyl-diisopropylsilylethynyl)anthracene (NODIPS-An), affixed to a nanostructured alumina scaffold (see top image). After characterizing the assembled device and taking internal losses due to e.g. reabsorption into account, the final conversion efficiency of 8.2% was established.

Of course, TTA isn’t the only way to do PUC, with SOMET (singlet oxygen mediated energy transfer) being an alternative approach, with [Roslyn Forecast] et al. comparing the two in a 2023 article. As noted in its conclusion SOMET is currently most suited to PUC to the red and infrared regions of the spectrum. For now research continues with no clear path to commercialization visible yet.

Bortle-1 Skies in the heart of darkest Texas.

“Telescope Rancher” Is The Coolest Job You Didn’t Know Existed

June 22, 2026 by Tyler August 37 Comments

McCulloch County, Texas, is smack dab in the middle of a very large state. We wouldn’t exactly call it the middle of nowhere, but given there’s so little light pollution it scores a 1 on the Bortle Scale, it’s not exactly the Big Apple, either. [Bray Falls] lives there, and has a job description we have become immediately jealous of: [Bray] is a telescope rancher.

Like the song goes, the stars really are big and bright at night deep in the heart of Texas. Not only is his ranch free of the light pollution that plagues more urban locations, central Texas is pretty dry, with only a few days of rain in any given month. That’s not great for agriculture, but it’s great for astronomy since it means the skies are most often cloud-free. Combine that with access to high-speed internet, and you have the makings of a telescope ranch.

Telescopes being let out of the barns for the night.
Image: Starfront Observatory

It’s brilliant in its simplicity: along with his own ‘scopes, [Bray]’s Starscope Observatory hosts hundreds of other people’s CCD equipped goto telescopes, all set up to be remote controlled over the information superhighway. On clear nights– which again, is most of them–the roofs roll off the telescope barns and observations can begin. Pad rental comes with tech support, too, so you don’t have to fly out to heart of darkest Texas if your mount gets jammed or you lose signal for any reason. That said, you should be sure to read the fine print before signing up, because said tech support probably doesn’t apply if you 3D printed your own ‘scope, or built your own mount.

That said, having gone to the effort of doing all that, would you really send your baby away to a farm upstate? Best reserve that for the old Celestron collecting dust in the corner. If you think we should be leaving these observations to the pros, be aware [Bray] has apparently discovered a very oddly-placed supernova remnant, 40 degrees off the galactic plane in Virgo. So this isn’t just a rewarding hobby; it’s still science, too.