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from the seawater-is-more-than-just-salty-water dept.
There are many ways to generate electricity—batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams, to name a few examples... and now, there's rust.
New research conducted by scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University shows that thin films of rust—iron oxide—can generate electricity when saltwater flows over them. These films represent an entirely new way of generating electricity and could be used to develop new forms of sustainable power production.
Interactions between metal compounds and saltwater often generate electricity, but this is usually the result of a chemical reaction in which one or more compounds are converted to new compounds. Reactions like these are what is at work inside batteries.
In contrast, the phenomenon discovered by Tom Miller, Caltech professor of chemistry, and Franz Geiger, Dow Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern, does not involve chemical reactions, but rather converts the kinetic energy of flowing saltwater into electricity.
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-ultra-thin-layers-rust-electricity.html
More information: Mavis D. Boamah et al. Energy conversion via metal nanolayers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906601116
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:47PM (2 children)
I don't know what the current canon explanation is since they jettisoned all the "legacy" continuity, but in the Expanded Universe they explained that the Kessel Run is a route around a cluster of black holes, so measuring the trip in distance rather than time indicates that you skirted closer to the black holes. So instead of just having a faster ship, a shorter route indicates you "have more chest hair" since you flew it more dangerously.
Pretty sure this was a thing in the books easily 10+ years ago.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 31 2019, @06:51PM
Then the bragging should be about the pilot's chest hair rather than the ship, should it not?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 31 2019, @07:42PM
They even go into this pretty clearly in the Solo movie, showing him take a "shortcut" to avoid being blasted to bits.
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