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In a tenth of a second.

We’ve just taken another step toward comprehending enormous magnetar explosions.

For the first time, a group of international researchers was able to measure oscillations in the brightness of a magnetar during its most violent moments.

This was a brutal moment in time indeed, as in less than a tenth of a second, the magnetar expelled energy equivalent to that created by the sun in 100,000 years!

Why you should know about magnetars (and why they’re scary) A magnetar is a rare form of neutron star distinguished by an extremely powerful magnetic field. Its field is about 1,000 times stronger than that of a regular neutron star — a trillion times greater than that of the Earth! We only know about 30 of these objects, since detecting them is a difficult task for our current technologies. While they are known to suffer violent eruptions, we know relatively little due to their unexpected nature and their short duration time of barely tenths of a second.

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Thanks to Ariane 5 rocket launching Webb on the right path.

After nearly 30 years of planning and thorough work, NASA finally got to launch its $10 billion next-generation space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), on Christmas day. JWST is now headed on a long six-month trip until it can begin its science mission and start to conduct routine science operations.

Now, it turns out that JWST might be traveling and collecting data for much longer than initially expected. JWST was forecast to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis revealed that the observatory should have enough fuel to “allow support of science operations in orbit for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime.”

The observatory should now have enough propellant to support science operations well past its 10-year science lifetime. The space agency said the precision of the Arianespace Ariane 5 launch resulted in less propellant being used than anticipated. A smooth mid-course correction maneuver after launch, which added approximately 45 mph to the craft’s speed, also helped conserve fuel.

A second correction burn occurred on December 27, speeding up Webb by 6.3 mph.

NASA said that from this point on, all scheduled deployments on Webb will be controlled by humans. This means their deployment, or even their order, could change. Webb at this point is a little over a day into a six-day process to unfold its sunshield.

German company Schaeffler has just revealed an innovative new drive system for electric bicycles that eschews traditional bike chains and belts for an entirely electrical-driven system. The new system is known as the Schaeffler Free Drive and marks the entry of one of the most divergent electric bicycle drivetrains we’ve seen in years.

The Free Drive, which was co-developed with electric bicycle drivetrain specialists Heinzmann, is based upon a generator installed at the bike’s bottom bracket.

The rider’s pedaling action powers the generator and converts the energy from mechanical to electrical energy.

The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and produces high power.

The miniaturized system powered by plasma—the state of matter composed of free-floating electrons and , or ions—measures little more than an inch in diameter and eliminates the walls around the plasma propellent to create innovative thruster configurations. Among these innovations are the cylindrical Hall thruster, first proposed and studied at PPPL, and a fully wall-less Hall thruster. Both configurations reduce channel erosion caused by plasma-wall interactions that limit the thruster lifetime—a key problem for conventional annular, or ring-shaped, Hall thrusters and especially for miniaturized low-power thrusters for applications on small satellites.

With hundreds of times more food per acre than regular farms.

Vertical farming is a revolutionary form of agriculture. As its name suggests, it’s a form of agriculture that is specifically designed to facilitate agricultural production inside vertical structures. These farms can be created inside old warehouses, used shipping containers, greenhouses, or other buildings, saving space and energy.

As a more sustainable method of farming, vertical farming tends to require much less energy than regular farming which is estimated to be 95% less water since the used water in farming can be recycled and reused.

Syngas is an important feedstock for modern chemical industries and can be directly used as fuel. Carbon monoxide (CO) is its main component. Direct conversion of widespread renewable biomass resources into CO can help to achieve sustainable development.

Conventionally, bio-syngas is mainly produced through thermal-chemical processes such as pyrolysis, steam reforming or aqueous reforming, which require high temperature and consume a lot of energy.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Wang Feng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. Wang Min from Dalian University of Technology, developed a new method to directly convert bio-polyols into CO.

After centuries of failure, there is finally a way to use solar power to desalinate salty water, produce pure water for home and farm use and have housing in the raw desert.

The key energy driver is the Suns River desalination modules linked with Aquastill’s Membrane distillation – the process in which pure water is separated from contaminated water (salt water, for example) by means of evaporation through a membrane. The combination of Suns River and Aquastill brings productivity up to 50 liters/m2 or the equivalent of 6 times the solar energy input.

The venture is currently in the design phase to expand the 400 square meter demonstration site to produce 80 Cubic meters of pure water per day, expanding food production by 100 times. The site is off the electric grid and uses only solar and wind energy, meaning it has a zero carbon footprint. The demonstration site has been in operation for over two years.

Clean energy sources generated a record 834 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, or about 21% of all electricity generated in the US in 2020, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported yesterday. That includes wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geothermal.

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Only natural gas (1.617 billion kWh) produced more electricity than clean energy in the US in 2020.