Batteries are necessities of modern life, powering everything from cell phones to vehicles. Most batteries operate via chemical reactions that convert stored chemical energy into electrical energy. These electrochemical reactions are triggered when a load (e.g. a light bulb) is connected to a battery, causing electrons to flow. Though traditional batteries are ubiquitous and can … Read more
Power is the one thing a spacecraft can’t work without. Without the technology to reliably power, no long term space missions would be possible, thus our knowledge of the solar system would be only a fraction of what it is today. It might sound surprising, but there are currently only two practical options for providing … Read more
Lettuce, peas and radishes are just a few vegetables that are found in a summer garden. But did you know these same vegetables also can be grown in space? Crew members aboard the International Space Station have been growing such plants and vegetables for years in their “space garden.” A space station study is helping … Read more
The Earth intercepts a lot of solar power: 173 thousand terawatts. That’s ten thousand times more power than the planet’s population uses. So is it possible that one day the world could be completely reliant on solar energy? To answer that question, we first need to examine how solar panels convert solar energy to electrical … Read more
Tesla has grown rapidly over the past decade when it became the first American automotive company to go public since Ford in 1956. The attraction towards Tesla is undeniable. Their cars are slick, their acceleration is insane and perhaps most importantly, their brand represents a movement towards renewable energy. Tesla has attracted thousands of well-intentioned … Read more
San Francisco has been hit by a big earthquake at least once every hundred years going back as far as we know. So the people of San Francisco know that sometime in the next 100 years, they are likely to get shaken again by a big quake. But we can’t say exactly when the quake … Read more
Today about 4.2 billion people have access to a world of information never before seen. Such an extraordinary level of connectedness has revolutionized everything from science and technology to commerce and romance, and virtually every aspect of our lives. Above all the technological innovations in history, few have made as strong of an impact as … Read more
From snazzy banded agates to volcanic elephants, there are some pretty weird rocks out there. But the weirdest ones geologists find might be those that fall from space. One of them called the Hypatia stone, it might be, the strangest of them all. In fact, all signs currently suggest that this rock’s origin story is … Read more
While travelling in space, one of the hardest things to do is to stop or change direction. Without anything to push against or friction to slow things down, spacecraft need to do all the hard work of changing their speed or path by there thrusters. And sometimes they do that in ways you would never … Read more
Black holes are among the most fascinating objects in our universe and also the most mysterious. A black hole is a region in space where the force of gravity is so strong not even light the fastest known entity in our universe can escape. The boundary of A black hole is called the event horizon a point of no return beyond which … Read more
Although it might not seem obvious when you look at the night sky, but we live in a universe that is expanding faster by the instant. Every day, stars fall over the horizon of what we can see, as the space between us stretches faster than their light can reach us. And we can never know what exists past … Read more
Even though nobody else will be around to see it, scientists are fascinated by the end of the universe. It is kind of like the Big Bang there’s just something so interesting about knowing where your atoms came from and where they are ultimately going to go in billions of years. Right now, there are a few ideas about how everything … Read more
Whether it’s Star Trek, Stargate or Babylon 5 wormholes have been showing up in science fiction for a long time. They are just a super convenient tunnel to another part of the universe, a way for sci-fi writers to send their characters across huge distances in the blink of an eye. And it turns out that they are not … Read more
When people talk about black holes, there is one thing that pretty much always comes up is that Black holes get their name because the infinitely tiny, infinitely dense point in the centre has a gravitational pull so strong that even light can’t escape. The thing is, that might not always be true. For the past half-century — basically, … Read more
One of the most annoying nuisances of the modern world is heading out for something important and then getting stuck in a traffic jam. However, if You are proactive and plan your journey well ahead of time, situations involving those infuriating traffic jams can, in fact, be avoided. There are a number of tools that can provide a general idea about traffic conditions in … Read more