A device on NASA’s Perseverance rover split carbon dioxide molecules into their component parts, creating about 10 minutes’ worth of breathable oxygen, ScienceNews reports. It was also enough oxygen to make tiny amounts of rocket fuel. The instrument, called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), is about the size of a toaster. Its job is to break oxygen atoms off carbon dioxide, the primary component of Mars’ atmosphere.
www.science-news.org/article/nasa-perseverance-rover-mars-oxygen-air
To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 31st birthday, NASA and the European Space Agency released an image today showing the ethereal AG Carinae, one of the brightest stars in our galaxy with a glowing gas-and-dust nebula that started forming around 10,000 years ago through an eruptive process, CNET reports.
https://www.cnet.com/news/hubble-snaps-stunning-image-of-monster-star-doing-something-weird/
Tesla chief Elon Musk has agreed with Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, who has said that bitcoin "incentivises" renewable energy, despite experts warning otherwise, the BBC reports. In a tweet on Wednesday, Dorsey said that "bitcoin incentivises renewable energy," to which Musk replied "True." The tweet comes after the release of a white paper from Dorsey's digital payment services firm Square and global asset management business ARK Invest entitled "Bitcoin as key to an abundant, clean energy future." Author and...
Researchers at Zhejiang University of Technology in China and Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S. have devised a strategy to restore inactive lithium in Li metal anodes, Tech Xplore reports. This strategy, outlined in a paper published in Nature Energy, is based on a chemical reaction known as iodine redox. "A fundamental solution for recovering dead lithium is urgently needed to stabilize lithium metal batteries," the researchers wrote. "We quantify the SEI (solid-electrolyte interphase) components and determine...
Adding polymer-munching enzymes could make biodegradable plastics compostable, reports Science News. “Biodegradability does not equal compostability,” says Ting Xu, a polymer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Most biodegradable plastics go to landfills, where the conditions are not right for them to break down. Ting's team added individual enzymes to two biodegradable plastics, including polylactic acid, commonly used in food packaging. They inserted the enzymes along with another ingredient, a degradable additive Xu developed,...
The Canadian government's Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act establishes a pathway toward that goal by 2050. But don’t hold your breath, University of Ottawa professor Ian Clark says in a Financial Post opinion column. It took a full decade to build 12.5 km of electric light rail in Ottawa. To electrify the rest of Canada’s transportation sector in three decades, as well as our industrial and domestic energy sectors, the new act starts by convening...
A chemist from Purdue University has found a way to synthesize a compound to fight a previously "undruggable" cancer protein, reports phys.org. Inspired by a rare compound found in a shrub native to North America, professor of chemistry Mingji Dai discovered a cost-effective and efficient way to synthesize it in the lab. Compound curcusone D has the potential to help combat a protein found in many cancers, including some forms of breast, brain, colorectal,...
The annual Lyrid shower kicks off the 2021 meteor season by peaking this week. With very little in the way of celestial spectator events since the Quadrantid meteor shower in early January, the Lyrids signal good times ahead for sky gazers. The Lyrids don't produce a lot of meteors, perhaps 10 to 15 per hour, but are more likely to include bright, dramatic fireballs than other major showers, CNET reports. The source of the Lyrids is...
Some day, scientists believe, DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics. Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a tool that can design more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than ever and in a fraction of the time, phys.org reports. In a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, researchers from Ohio State University unveiled...
NASA helicopter Ingenuity achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet at 12:31 a.m. Pacific this morning, CNET reports. "We've been talking for so long about our Wright brothers moment on Mars, and here it is," said Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung. "We can now say that humans have flown a rotorcraft on another planet." The rotor blades spun up to 2,537 rpm, about six times faster than an Earth-based craft. The flight attempt was delayed...
