Oct 25
A new battery technology may pave the way for cheap, long-lived power storage that can quickly pump electricity into the grid to compensate for fluctuating renewables like wind and solar. More »
Oct 24
A team of researchers promises it can increase wireless bandwidth by an order or magnitude, without any new hardware whatsoever. All that’s required, it claims, is a little extra math. More »
Oct 22
While the future of storage on your laptop is undoubtedly solid state, it’s more difficult to predict how the huge tranches of data in server farms will be housed in the future. Recent suggestions, though, predict the rebirth of an old technology: the humble casette tape. More »
Oct 19
Hidden away in sleepy northern England is an engineering company with a radical idea: it claims to be able to make gas, to run your car, out of air. Is this the solution to the global fuel crisis, or wild hyperbole? More »
Oct 09
When you were at high school, math was probably an uninspiring string of algebra you had to crunch through. Get to the cutting edge of computational fluid dynamics, though, and it all starts to look a hell of a lot more pretty. More »
Oct 05
Most battery advances concentrate on improving hardware, but researchers from the University of California San Diego have developed new algorithms that can cut lithium-ion battery charge times in half. More »
Sep 20
In the realm of awesome computer peripherals, I think the new MakerBot Replicator 2 desktop 3D printer is probably the most epic of all. After all, it’s a peripheral for your computer that you can actually use to make 3D objects you can hold in your hands. It’s like an action figure creation station.
The MakerBot Replicator 2 features a 100-micron layer resolution – about as thin as a sheet of paper. That means it’s able to produce true-to-life replicas, without those ridges you’re accustomed to seeing on cheap desktop 3D printers. Plus, you can build large objects of up to 410 cubic inches in volume, so you can print something measuring 11.2-inches by 6.0-inches by 6.1-inches.
The 3D printer is optimized to use MakerBot PLA Element, which is a renewable bio plastic, available in numerous colors. That material is popular for 3-D printing thanks to its strength and its ability to make large objects without cracking or warping.
The device also comes with new and updated software to make printing easier and faster, and it works with Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. The biggest downside to the Replicator 2 is the cost, at $2199(USD) it’s not exactly something we can all have at home.
Sep 10
This isn’t an alien spine. Nor is it some elaborate climbing frame. In fact it’s a new new synthetic material called NU-110—and it’s the highest surface area material ever made. More »
Sep 03
Standard pen ink is the surprise component in a flexible carbon fibre supercapacitor which can be bent in a full circle with barely any loss of performance. More »
Aug 20
Talk to the Antarctic Explorer Who’s Drilling Through Miles of Solid Ice [Q&A]
Posted in: Today's Chili
This November, a team from the British Antarctic Survey will spend three days boring through two miles of Antarctic ice sheet into a small sub-glacial lake in search of wildly new forms of live. They’ll be able to do so thanks to a unique hot water drill designed and built, in part, by Mechanical Engineer Andy Webb. More »
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