science

144 Articles

Two researchers, a white woman and dark-skinned man look at a large monitor with a crystal structure displayed in red and white blocks.

AI On The Hunt For Better Batteries

January 23, 2024 by 18 Comments

While certain dystopian visions of the future have humans power the grid for AIs, Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) set a machine learning system on the path of better solid state batteries instead.

Solid state batteries are the current darlings of battery research, promising a step-change in packaging size and safety among other advantages. While they have been working in the lab for some time now, we’re still yet to see any large-scale commercialization that could shake up the consumer electronics and electric vehicle spaces.

With a starting set of 32 million potential inorganic materials, the machine learning algorithm was able to select the 150 most promising candidates for further development in the lab. This smaller subset was then fed through a high-performance computing (HPC) algorithm to winnow the list down to 23. Eliminating previously explored compounds, the scientists were able to develop a promising Li/Na-ion solid state battery electrolyte that could reduce the needed Li in a battery by up to 70%.

For those of us who remember when energy materials research often consisted of digging through dusty old journal papers to find inorganic compounds of interest, this is a particularly exciting advancement. A couple more places technology can help in the sciences are robots doing the work in the lab or on the surgery table.

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37C3: You Think It’s Bad With Pluto? A History Of The Planets

December 30, 2023 by 28 Comments

Not every talk at the Chaos Communication Congress is about hacking computers. In this outstanding and educational talk, [Michael Büker] walks us through the history of our understanding of the planets.

The question “What is a planet?” is probably more about the astronomers doing the looking than the celestial bodies that they’re looking for. In the earliest days, the Sun and the Moon were counted in. They got kicked out soon, but then when we started being able to see asteroids, Ceres, Vesta, and Juno made the list. But by counting all the asteroids, the number got up above 1,200, and it got all too crazy.

Viewed in this longer context, the previously modern idea of having nine planets, which came about in the 1960s and lasted only until 2006, was a blip on the screen. And if you are still a Pluto-is-a-planet holdout, like we were, [Michael]’s argument that counting all the Trans-Neptunian Objects would lead to madness is pretty convincing. It sure would make it harder to build an orrery.

His conclusion is simple and straightforward and has the ring of truth: the solar system is full of bodies, and some are large, and some are small. Some are in regular orbits, and some are not. Which we call “planets” and which we don’t is really about our perception of them and trying to fit this multiplicity into simple classification schemas. What’s in a name, anyway?

Keeping Watch Over The Oceans With Data Buoys

December 28, 2023 by 12 Comments

When viewed from just the right position in space, you’d be hard-pressed to think that our home planet is anything but a water world. And in all the ways that count, you’d be right; there’s almost nothing that goes on on dry land that isn’t influenced by the oceans. No matter how far you are away from an ocean, what’s going on there really matters.

But how do we know what’s going on out there? The oceans are trackless voids, after all, and are deeply inhospitable to land mammals such as us. They also have a well-deserved reputation for eating anything that ventures into them at the wrong time and without the proper degree of seafarer’s luck, and they also tend to be places where the resources that run our modern technological society are in short supply.

Gathering data about the oceans is neither cheap nor easy, but it’s critically important to everything from predicting what the weather will be next week to understanding the big picture of what’s going on with the climate. And that requires a fleet of data buoys, outnumbering the largest of the world’s navies and operating around the clock, keeping track of wind, weather, and currents for us.

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Recycling Batteries With Bacteria

December 18, 2023 by 6 Comments

Vehicle battery recycling is going to be a big deal with all the electric cars hitting the roads. What if you could do it more effectively with the power of microbes? (via Electrek)

“Li-ion” vehicle batteries can be any of a number of different chemistries, with more complex cathode makeups, like NCM (LiNixMnyCo1-x-yO2), being understandably more complex to separate into their original constituents. Researchers and companies in the industry are hoping to find economically-viable ways to get these metals back for both the environmental and economic benefits a closed loop system could provide.

Researchers in the UK developed a method using two species of bacteria to precipitate Ni, Mn, and Co from the liquid leached from cathodes. Li remained in the liquid where it could be processed separately like that obtained in Li brine. Mn was precipitated first by S. oneidensis MR-1, and a following step removed Ni and Co with D. alaskensis G20. The researchers report that Ni and Co show promise for further separation via biological methods, but more research is required for this step.

If you’re looking for some more interesting ways bacteria can be harnessed for the energy system, checkout this microbial fuel cell, another using soil, and an enzyme derived from bacteria that can pull electricity from thin air.

Nanobots Self Replicate

December 9, 2023 by 11 Comments

Hey, what if you could have a factory that makes robots that is run by… robots? This is hardly an original thought, but we are a long way from having an assembly line of C3POs self-replicating. On the other hand, animals — including humans — self-replicate all the time using DNA. Now, scientists are making tiny nanorobots from DNA that can assemble more DNA, including copies of themselves.

Assembling 3D structures with DNA has deep implications. For example, it might be possible to build drugs in situ, delivering powerful toxins only to cancer cells. Another example would be putting DNA factories in diabetes patients to manufacture the insulin they can’t.

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Balloon To Fly During Solar Eclipse

November 14, 2023 by 9 Comments

The Great American Eclipse was a solar eclipse that passed nearly the entire continental United States back in 2017. While it might sound like a once-in-a-lifetime event to experience a total solar eclipse, the stars have aligned to bring another total solar eclipse to North America although with a slightly different path stretching from the west coast of Mexico and ending off the cost of Newfoundland in Canada. Plenty of people near the path of totality have already made plans to view the event, but [Stephen] and a team of volunteers have done a little bit of extra preparation and plan to launch a high-altitude balloon during the event.

The unmanned balloon will primarily be carrying a solar telescope with the required systems onboard to stream its images live during its flight. The balloon will make its way to the stratosphere, hopefully above any clouds that are common in New Brunswick during the early spring, flying up to 30,000 meters before returning its payload safely to Earth. The telescope will return magnified images of the solar eclipse live to viewers on the ground and has been in development for over two years at this point. The team believes it to be the first time a non-governmental organization has imaged an eclipse by balloon.

For those who have never experienced a total solar eclipse before, it’s definitely something worth traveling for if you’re not already in its path. For this one, Canadians will need to find themselves in the Maritimes or Newfoundland or head south to the eastern half of the United States with the Americans, while anyone in Mexico needs to be in the central part of the mainland. Eclipses happen in places other than North America too, and are generally rare enough that you’ll hear about a total eclipse well in advance. There’s more to eclipses than watching the moon’s shadow pass by, though. NASA expects changes in the ionosphere and is asking ham radio operators for help for the 2024 eclipse.

Building A Human-Sized Pop-Pop Boat

September 29, 2023 by 7 Comments

Pop-pop boats are a neat little science teaching tool that many children end up playing with at some point or other. They’re normally sized to float around a sink or bathtub. [Steve Mould] recently got the opportunity to board a much larger example,  sized for an actual human passenger.

The boat belongs to the The AHHAA Science Center in Estonia, along with a smaller model about half the size. Both are fired by propane gas burners to give them some real heat output into the water tank, far beyond what you’d get from little tea light candles. In the case of the larger boat, it uses a series of valves to allow the tank to be filled with water while the rear thrust pipes are closed.

At the larger scale, it’s more easy to visualize the flow out of the boat’s rear outlets. It’s by no means a fast way to get around on the water, with a top speed somewhat less than walking pace. It’s also very loud. Regardless, it’s amusing to see the pop-pop engine work even when scaled up to full size.

If you’re looking for an in-depth explanation of how pop-pop boats work, [Steve Mould] has covered that previously. Video after the break.

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