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The British historian Lord Acton once observed, "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's a powerful sentiment, a warning against placing trust in dictators...but it might also be wrong. It's those with just a little power you have to watch out for. More »
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The Extreme Light Infrastructure is a new project that will build three incredibly powerful new lasers. Capable of creating energy pulses 20 times more powerful than anything before, these new lasers could help us probe the world of weird physics. More »
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The artificial leaf has been a target of solar research for years — an object that creates fuel sources out of sunlight, mimicking photosynthesis. But this solar energy breakthrough has always been thwarted by the need for rare components... until now. More »
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Enceladus is home to one of the solar system's most incredible hotspots, churning out 15.8 gigawatts of power. It's even more proof that there's a liquid ocean hiding beneath the ice...but scientists have no clue what's creating all that heat. More »
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This once-in-a-lifetime photo captures a blast that tears through 8,000 cubic yards of rock in an old phosphate mine. It's just one of the marvels captured in the best engineering photos of 2009. More »
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In the future, play-doh will be used to make electronics devices. That's the message of "Squishy Circuits," a project where students ran a motor and LEDs connected to a battery-powered roll of dough. More »
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Ever wonder what it would mean to upgrade your power outlets? I'm not talking about green energy. These two technologies will fundamentally change what we mean by "electricity." More »
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Super-popular Japanese masked-action show Kamen Rider Ryuki has gotten an American version, courtesy of the CW. Just like the old Power Rangers, it's got American actors mixed with Japanese stunts. We talked to the producers. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5170980&view=rss&microfeed=true The Hyperion Power Module Neighborhood Nuclear Reactor is the size of a hot tub and could provide power for your whole neighborhood! At least, that's what their website claims. Bill Christensen over at Technovelgy points out that other companies have claimed this before, and it came to nothing. But the desire for neighborhood nukes keeps coming back, probably because we've seen them in scifi before - most notably in Heinlein's Friday, where small "shipstones" provide enough energy for a whole space vessel. [via Technovelgy] More »
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Nuclear power is the other alternative energy - cleaner than biomass, and less retarded than ethanol. Sure there's that pesky problem of nuclear waste, but that's not stopping a union of European, Asian, and United States task forces from working on the next generation of nuclear power plants, that will look something like this on the inside (this is a Trigia research nuke power reactor, designed by Freeman Dyson). And here's the cool part. Many new, generation IV nuclear reactors will be virtually waste-free. Want to see some of the prototype generation IV nuke power plants? More »
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