Thursday Tech News
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on April 20, 2006 at 1:28:43 PM
Oregan State University creates biodiesel production reactor. Biodiesel and other renewable energy sources are the way to go. We need to stop our oil hungry society now.
Antimatter engine technology under review. Good stuff here.
Send something into space for $99.
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"This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people," said Goran Jovanovic, a chemical engineering professor at Oregon State University who developed the microreactor. The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly. By comparison, it takes more than a day to produce biodiesel with current technology.
Antimatter engine technology under review. Good stuff here.
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The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by producing gamma rays with much lower energy. Antimatter is sometimes called the mirror image of normal matter because while it looks just like ordinary matter, some properties are reversed. For example, normal electrons, the familiar particles that carry electric current in everything from cell phones to plasma TVs, have a negative electric charge. Anti-electrons have a positive charge, so scientists dubbed them "positrons".
Send something into space for $99.
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The company advertises "Space science at a 'bake sale' price", although the $99 per can is an introductory offer and will later rise to $199. And larger 5-kilogram (11-pound) canisters can be reserved for $1250. After the novelty of sending random objects into space wears off, Mealling believes educational projects like telescopes, biology experiments or Earth-imaging missions will be the CanSats' main cargo.