An efficient, robust, and compact wind power plant with a 10 MW superconducting generator is being developed by partners from industry and science within the recently established EU project SUPRAPOWER. .
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What is normal to most people in winter has so far been impossible in physics: a minus temperature. On the Celsius scale minus temperatures are only surprising in summer. On the absolute temperature scale, which is used by physicists and is also called the Kelvin scale, it is not possible to go below zero – at least not in the sense of getting colder than zero kelvin.
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Italian nano-science researchers Francesco Giazotto and María José Martínez-Pérez have built a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that confirms a theory that describes the Josephson effect, whereby the application of a magnetic field applied to such a device can cause changes in the amount of heat that flows through it. They describe their device and how it works in a paper they've published in the journal Nature.
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Contributing geometric and topological analyses of micro-materials, University of Massachusetts Amherst mathematician Robert Kusner aided experimental physicists at the University of Colorado (UC) by successfully explaining the observed "beautiful and complex patterns revealed" in three-dimensional liquid crystal experiments. The work is expected to lead to creation of new materials that can be actively controlled.
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Utility companies can benefit considerably from the utilization of concentrating solar power (CSP) and available energy storage methods, a new study from the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has found.
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For all their promise, solar cells have frustrated scientists in one crucial regard – most are rigid. They must be deployed in stiff, often heavy, fixed panels, limiting their applications. So researchers have been trying to get photovoltaics to loosen up. The ideal: flexible, decal-like solar panels that can be peeled off like band-aids and stuck to virtually any surface, from papers to window panes.
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Using ESA's Cluster quartet of satellites as a space plasma microscope, scientists have zoomed in on the solar wind to reveal the finest detail yet, finding tiny turbulent swirls that could play a big role in heating it.
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Achieving a goal considered nearly impossible, JILA physicists have chilled a gas of molecules to very low temperatures by adapting the familiar process by which a hot cup of coffee cools.
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A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method for significantly increasing the heat transfer rate across two different materials. Results of the team's study, published in the journal Nature Materials, could enable new advances in cooling computer chips and lighting-emitting diode (LED) devices, collecting solar power, harvesting waste heat, and other applications.
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Purdue University officials are moving forward with plans for a thermal energy storage tank - but not in its original intended location. Last October, officials proposed a 5 million gallon, $16.8 million thermal energy storage tank to be located on ...
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