Cells are the building blocks of all living things. Contained within the cell membrane is all the machinery and information required to sustain and create life, but a machine can’t work without materials. Cells require a constant flow of energy and nutrients across their membrane to stay alive, and this is facilitated by nanoscopic pores […]
Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase Earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. It led him to conclude that human-caused CO2 emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to […]
When you send electricity through a wire, it heats up and wastes energy – imagine your phone getting hot after watching videos or playing too many games. This happens because most materials have resistance, which pushes against the electricity. Around 8.5% of your electricity is wasted before it even reaches your house because of resistance. […]
For the past 60 years, the performance of computers has doubled every 18 months – your smartphone today has 100,000 times more computing power than the computer used to fly the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969! But this trend, known as Moore’s Law, is reaching the end of the line. The transistors […]
Can we unlock new space missions by designing better space power technologies? Can more radiation tolerant solar cells help us find evidence of extra-terrestrial life? Spacecraft are predominantly powered by photovoltaic systems. Traditional fuels are heavy and therefore costly and radioactive materials capable of powering spacecraft are in limited supply. Outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, […]
Our brain has a lot to say and not only when we think, speak and move. 86 billion or so neurons contained within a 1.4 kg organ are in a constant state of firing, sending inputs, receiving outputs and integrating information from all over our bodies, to shape how we view and interact with the […]