Miles below the Earth’s surface, there’s enough thermal energy to power all of humanity for the foreseeable future. It’s called geothermal energy, and it’s poised to play an increasingly large role as a source of always available, renewable power. Now, there are a number of startups in the geothermal space, working to figure out how to access this heat in difficult to reach geographies, at a price point that makes sense. And it’s even gotten the attention of oil and gas industry giants, who are interested in greening their portfolios while sticking to their core competencies – extracting energy resources from deep within the Earth.
Category Archives: Technology
Analysis: How China Came To Dominate Rare Earth Minerals (WSJ Video)
Neodymium is critical to making the wheels of a Tesla spin or creating sound in Apple’s Airpods, and China dominates the mining and processing of this rare-earth mineral. So the U.S. and its allies are building their own supply chain. Photo illustration: Clément Bürge/WSJ
Science: Rise Of ‘Exascale Supercomputers’ (Video)
The next generation of computing is on the horizon, and several new machines may just smash all the records…with two nations neck and neck in a race to get there first.
The ENIAC was capable of about 400 FLOPS. FLOPS stands for floating-point operations per second, which basically tells us how many calculations the computer can do per second. This makes measuring FLOPS a way of calculating computing power. So, the ENIAC was sitting at 400 FLOPS in 1945, and in the ten years it was operational, it may have performed more calculations than all of humanity had up until that point in time—that was the kind of leap digital computing gave us. From that 400 FLOPS we upgraded to 10,000 FLOPS, and then a million, a billion, a trillion, a quadrillion FLOPS. That’s petascale computing, and that’s the level of today’s most powerful supercomputers. But what’s coming next is exascale computing. That’s zeroes. 1 quintillion operations per second. Exascale computers will be a thousand times better performing than the petascale machines we have now. Or, to put it another way, if you wanted to do the same number of calculations that an exascale computer can do in ONE second…you’d be doing math for over 31 billion years.
Medicine: ‘How Vaccines Actually Work’ (Video)
Vaccines are medicines that train the body to defend itself against future disease, and they have been saving human lives for hundreds of years. Vaccines are medicines that train the body to defend itself against future disease.
Naval Warfare: ‘Seawolf Class Submarines’ (Video)
The Seawolf class is a class of nuclear-powered fast attack submarines (SSN) in service with the United States Navy. The class was the intended successor to the Los Angeles class, and design work began in 1983. A fleet of 29 submarines was to be built over a ten-year period, but that was reduced to 12 submarines.
Future Driving: Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging
Cornell is pioneering an innovative approach for the wireless charging of electric vehicles, forklifts and other mobile machines, while they remain in motion.
Inside Views: ‘USS Gerald R. Ford’ Aircraft Carrier
As the world’s largest aircraft carrier in the world’s dominant navy, the USS Gerald R. Ford is gargantuan. The aircraft carrier took eight years to build, several more years to test, and is large enough to tower over the biggest building in plenty of large towns. Named for the 38th President of the United States, the Gerald Ford is the lead ship of the US navy. It clocks in at over 1,000ft or nearly three American football fields in length, and nearly 250 feet high. Contained in that massive space, the aircraft carrier also has a whopping 25 decks. The massive ship, which can house over 4,500 people and carry over 75 aircraft, is powered by two nuclear reactors, and fully-loaded, weighs in at over 100,000 tonnes. That makes her the largest warship ever constructed. The total building cost is estimated at over 17 billion dollars, including 5 billion spent on research alone. After several delays it came in at 22% over the intended budget.
E-Commerce: How China Reined In Ant & Alibaba
In less than six months, Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma’s Ant IPO, which could have been the world’s largest, was scuttled and his companies brought in line by regulators. The U.S. is also taking aim at big tech, but here’s how China moves faster. Photo illustration: Sharon Shi
Analysis: How Do Video Games, Smartphones & Computers Affect Brains
Smartphones, computers, gaming consoles or digital tablets are now givens in our daily lives. The electronic intrusion is causing controversy and collective hysteria. This documentary asks: Are we damaging our brains with all these screens? How will unprecedented exposure to screens impact humanity?
To find out, the filmmakers examine how science has been applied to distinguish between truth and falsehoods, and explore the suspected side-effects of screen exposure. The documentary travels through the US and Europe to meet and speak to researchers who are leaders in this field.
Design: Top 10 Electric Cars For 2021-2022 (Video)
It is hard to predict what the electric automotive future holds for us, but we say can one thing for sure: never again will the car designs be boring. To prove this statement, today we will cover the latest EV news and showcase the most prominent newcomers that not only have revolutionary propulsion systems, but also radical inside-out looks.
Boomers Daily 