Another Battery Enhancement.

Unlike the Titanium Oxide Anode technology, this new Lithium Oxygen battery technology is an improvement in the storage capacity of the battery itself. Lithium Air Battery technology has always had potential. Coupled with the anode improvements provided by titanium oxide nano tubes, these technologies could be just the developments needed to make electric powered transportation competitive with fossil fuel power. Now, the question is, will the oil companies allow this technology to come to completion?

This question can be asked of all the new technological advances we read about every day. They all sound great, and they might all have the potential they appear to have, but most of them never reach the light of day. In my younger days there was a new 100 mile per gallon carburetor in the news every week or two. There was even a startup company in my home town that made the nightly news, but never produced more than a demonstration device. The oil companies were the ones most suspected of buying up these technologies to keep them off the market. I suspect a simpler explanation … for one reason or another they just did not work out. It sure will be wonderful if these two work out.

Another EM Drive Test by NASA

The EM Drive is a controversial reaction less thruster that appears to violate Newton’s laws of motion, creating thrust without expelling mass. This design did not originate with NASA, but they have recently become involved in testing this device. There most recent NASA test the conclusions still suggest that this device actually creates thrust.

This is yet another device that requires an esoteric explanation based upon the quantum sea of virtual photons being used to carry off the “reaction mass” normally required by a reaction motor. These are the same explanations used by other technologies that seem to violate “normal” physics. Whether these are like N Rays or actual discoveries of new physical principles, only time will tell.

Another Browser

Just saw news that a new browser called Vivaldi is in Beta release. This browser is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Sophisticated tab control seems to be its best new feature, with integrated email handling is part of the future design enhancements. While the mail handler is not yet ready for testing, the notes feature works just fine. Keeping notes and email within the browser could be a nice feature. This is probably going to be a browser worth watching. I’m certainly going to keep my eye on this one.

Another Tractor Beam

Another Star Trek technology may be on the horizon. UK engineers have used sound to move and position small beads in the air just like a Tractor Beam. Obviously this technology needs air to work and this could not work in the vacuum of space. But learning the wave forms that perform these feats using air, might later be applied to light, or plasma, or some other media to perform these same actions. Still, it is encouraging that such techniques are being investigated and expect all such investigations to be generally useful to our understanding.

Another Cold Fusion Announcement

Individually powered homes with a new version of Cold Fusion is in the news again. This is another case of a select few researchers who seem to have produced impossible results. So far these results have not been universally reproducible. The above referenced article concludes that there is still no science to this technology yet.

A negative proof is not proof. Edison failed to create a light bulb from over 1000 different test elements before he found the right combination. The soon to be extinct, incandescent light bulb of today is built from very different materials from the original Edison bulb, but the principles of operation are still the same. The new technology of Light Emitting Diodes is rapidly replacing both incandescent and florescent lighting technologies. Inventing this technology in Edison’s time would have been the true miracle. He simply lacked the infrastructure to build such a device. In much that same way we simply may not yet have the underlying technology necessary to accomplish cold fusion, just as Edison only had the tools to create an incandescent bulbs, but not those necessary for the invention of the LED. Even the technology for high temperature fusion is still just beyond our reach, with success just over the next hill. Some hills are currently just too steep.