SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Advances in perovskite technology are moving sensors and everyday gadgets closer to operating without batteries:

Researchers at University College London have developed a new type of solar cell capable of efficiently generating power from indoor light, a breakthrough that could reduce reliance on disposable batteries. By refining perovskite-based photovoltaics to capture artificial light more effectively, the team has opened the door to powering everyday devices in homes and offices.

Perovskite, a material already gaining traction in outdoor solar panels, can be tuned to absorb the specific wavelengths of artificial light. Despite this promise, the compound has long faced obstacles. Tiny defects in its crystal structure known as traps impede electron movement, reducing efficiency and accelerating degradation.

To address these issues, the team introduced rubidium chloride during fabrication. The chemical promoted more uniform crystal growth, reducing strain and minimizing defects. They also added two stabilizing compounds to prevent halide ions like iodide and bromide from clustering into separate phases, a problem that previously disrupted electrical flow. This combined strategy enhanced both performance and durability.

The resulting solar cell achieved a conversion efficiency of 37.6 percent under indoor lighting conditions of 1000 lux, roughly equivalent to a brightly lit office. According to the researchers, this sets a record for a device specifically tuned for indoor use with a bandgap of 1.75 electron volts. In practical terms, the cells are six times more efficient than the best comparable indoor technologies currently available on the market.

Durability was another key focus. Tests over 100 days showed that the newly engineered cells retained 92 percent of their initial performance, compared with 76 percent for the control devices.

Under a more rigorous test – 300 hours of continuous exposure to bright light at 55 degrees Celsius – the devices retained 76 percent of their capacity, while conventional samples fell below 50 percent.

upstart writes:

Current and former staffers have come forward:

Meta allegedly suppressed research that suggested kids were exposed to certain dangers when using its VR headsets, according to a report by The Washington Post. Current and former employees have presented documents to Congress that describe incidents in which children were groomed by adult predators in VR, but allege that internal reports were edited to omit the worst of these offenses. Meta has denied these allegations.

Two of these researchers claim they met with a German family in which a child younger than ten had been approached by strangers online while using a Meta VR headset. Some of these strangers allegedly sexually propositioned the child. When the employees issued the harrowing report, their boss allegedly ordered that the aforementioned claims be deleted. When the internal report was eventually published, it spoke of some parents being scared of this type of thing but didn't mention the above incident.

The trove of documents presented to Congress reportedly indicate guidance from Meta's legal team instructing researchers to avoid collecting data about children using VR devices. The memo suggests this is "due to regulatory concerns," likely referring to fallout from congressional hearings that took place in 2021.

The documents also include warnings from employees that children younger than 13 were bypassing age restrictions to use VR headsets. However, Meta has since lowered the minimum age down to ten.

Meta spokeswoman Dani Lever told The Post that the documents were "stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative" and that the company doesn't prohibit research about children under 13. "We stand by our research team's excellent work and are dismayed by these mischaracterizations of the team's efforts," she said.

The company didn't confirm or deny the events regarding the family in Germany, but said that if the anecdote was deleted from the official record it was to ensure compliance with a US federal law governing the handling of children's personal data or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from the EU.

That one prohibits companies from collecting personal information without consent, but the researchers maintain they received consent from the child's mother. They also say they received a signed contract from the mother at the start of the interview.

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee is scheduled to discuss these allegations at a hearing later in the week. This particular subcommittee examines laws and regulations regarding online safety.

Cannabis Might be Messing With Female Fertility

upstart writes:

New research shows that eggs and embryos exposed to THC are more likely to develop chromosomal abnormalities:

Cannabis could be risky for women becoming or hoping to become pregnant. New research out today finds evidence that the drug can negatively affect women's fertility.

Scientists in Canada examined the impacts of cannabis on eggs and embryos from women undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment. They found that greater levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) exposure were linked to several harmful changes, including eggs and embryos with the wrong number of chromosomes. Though it's unclear exactly how cannabis may affect pregnancy outcomes in the real world, the findings do support current recommendations to avoid its use during pregnancy, the researchers say.

"Collectively, this data presents compelling evidence that cannabis consumption may negatively impact female fertility," the researchers wrote in their paper, published Tuesday in Nature Communications.

Plenty of research has suggested that cannabis and THC, the primary ingredient responsible for the drug's "high," can harm men's fertility. But according to the researchers, there's been significantly less attention paid to how it might affect women's reproductive health—an increasingly relevant question given the drug's growing legalization in the U.S.

The scientists had earlier shown that THC and its byproducts can reach the ovarian follicles, the structures containing an egg that's eventually released during ovulation. This time, they wanted to get a closer look at THC's potential effects on a woman's eggs.

In the lab, they exposed immature oocytes, better known as eggs, collected during IVF treatment to THC and its byproducts (the eggs were deemed waste material, which the patients consented to being used for research). They also conducted a retrospective analysis of IVF patients, comparing women who tested positive for THC exposure in their follicular fluid to closely matched controls who tested negative for it.

After THC exposure in the lab, the team noticed an increase in the number of aneuploid eggs, or eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes. In the retrospective study, they found that IVF patients positive for THC had a lower embryo euploidy rate, or embryos with the correct number of chromosomes. High enough levels of THC also seemed to speed up the maturation of eggs.

Lead study researcher Cyntia Duval is a postdoctoral fellow at the CReATe Fertility Center in Toronto. She notes that their sample size of IVF patients (62 positive for THC) is too small to truly know if THC can lower a woman's odds of successful pregnancy. But the findings do suggest that cannabis can have real impacts on the health of a woman's eggs and embryos.

Duval and her team are still hoping to learn more about the harmful effects of THC and other cannabinoids on women's fertility. They're next planning to study how these compounds can affect an egg cell's epigenetics—how its genes are actually expressed. It's possible that some epigenetic changes in an egg caused by THC could then be passed along to a resulting embryo.

But she also points out that doctors and health organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, already advise women who are or are hoping to become pregnant to stop using cannabis and other recreational drugs. "Our study provides data, showing how cannabinoids can be associated with altered chromosomal segregation in oocytes and embryos," Duval said.

So while there might be some unanswered questions about THC and women's fertility, the take-home message appears clear: Women should avoid or at least try to reduce their cannabis use while pregnant or trying to conceive.

upstart writes:

Tiny11 Builder update lets users strip Copilot and other bloat from Windows 11:

Tiny11 developer NTDev has emerged from obscurity to announce a new version of the Tiny11 builder script. The tool is designed to create a "streamlined" Windows 11 installation image by removing various pieces of bloatware and unwanted apps that Microsoft has been bundling with the OS for years.

According to NTDev, the latest builder version simplifies the creation process and introduces the ability to remove some of the newest Windows additions, including the Copilot chatbot, the new Outlook client, and Teams.

The release also addresses previous issues with mounting / unmounting the Registry that affected earlier builds. Tiny11 has always aimed to make Windows 11 more compact, and the updated script improves on this by using Microsoft's "Recovery" Lzx compression instead of the older Fast (Xpress) method. NTDev notes, however, that the new compression requires more time and significantly more RAM.

Copilot, Outlook, and Teams have now joined a growing list of bloatware that the Tiny11 builder can strip from a Windows 11 installation image. The list primarily targets UWP apps, but also includes Edge and Xbox. The Xbox Identity Provider service remains intact, so the feature can be restored later if desired.

The Tiny11 builder has been rewritten as a PowerShell script, offering far more flexibility and power than the previous Batch-based version. Thanks to PowerShell, the latest script can reportedly support any Windows 11 release, in any language, and on any processor architecture. The package does not require any external tools except for oscdimg.exe, Microsoft's official utility for creating bootable Windows PE ISO images.

NTDev confirmed that the new Tiny11 builder has been tested on Windows 11 24H2, 25H2, and Canary Build 27934, ensuring broad compatibility under normal conditions. Additionally, a "Tiny11 Core Builder" version exists for creating a Windows image with only the bare minimum needed for testing environments, although the developer cautions that the "core" script is not intended for typical power users seeking to remove bloatware from Windows 11.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Powered by plutonium, running on pure stubbornness:

It is almost half a century since Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on a mission to study Jupiter, Saturn, and the atmosphere of Titan. It continues to send data back to Earth.

Although engineers reckon that the aging spacecraft might survive well into the 2030s before eventually passing out of range of the Deep Space Network, the spacecraft's cosmic ray subsystem was switched off in 2025. More of the probe's instruments are earmarked for termination as engineers eke out Voyager's power supply for a few more years.

On September 5, 1977, the power situation was a good deal healthier when the mission got underway. Launched just over two weeks after Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was scheduled to make flybys of Jupiter and Saturn. It skipped a visit to Pluto in favor of a closer look at the Saturnian moon Titan, which had an intriguing atmosphere.

The launch was the final one for the Titan IIIE rocket and was marred slightly by an earlier-than-expected second stage engine cutoff. NASA averted disaster by using a longer burn of the Centaur stage to compensate, and Voyager 1's mission to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond began.

Voyager 1's journey to the launchpad began with the "Grand Tour" concept of the 1960s, in which Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noted an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the 1970s, allowing a probe to swing by all the planets by using gravity assists.

Two missions were planned – one to be launched in 1977 to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, and another in 1979 to visit Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The concept gained support, but with costs spiraling and NASA also trying to develop the Space Shuttle, it was scaled back to visit two planets with two probes, derived from the Mariner program.

Indeed, the mission was known as the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn project until shortly before the 1977 launch, when the name "Voyager" was selected.

upstart writes:

A new study presents an innovative approach to CO2 removal that addresses two environmental crises at once:

Experts estimate that the global production and disposal of plastics emits nearly 2 billion tons of greenhouse gases per year. The vast majority of these materials end up in landfills, but what if we could repurpose some of that waste to remove planet-warming emissions from the atmosphere?

A team of researchers in Denmark has discovered a way to do just that. In a new study, published September 5 in the journal Science Advances, they transformed decomposed #1 plastic—also known as PET (polyethylene-terephthalate) plastic—into an efficient carbon capture material.

"The beauty of this method is that we solve a problem without creating a new one," lead author Margarita Poderyte, a chemistry PhD candidate at the University of Copenhagen, said in a release. "By turning waste into a raw material that can actively reduce greenhouse gases, we make an environmental issue part of the solution to the climate crisis."

As global temperatures rise, the need to mitigate planet-warming pollutants—such as carbon dioxide—is increasingly urgent. This has led scientists to develop ways to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere in addition to cutting emissions. At the same time, the growing amount of plastic waste in landfills, oceans, and pretty much everywhere else on Earth has led to a global microplastics crisis that threatens human and ecosystem health.

Poderyte and her colleagues hope their new approach to carbon capture can kill two birds with one stone. Through a chemical reaction known as aminolysis, they upcycled PET plastic—mainly used in plastic bottles and food packaging—into a CO2 sorbent called BAETA.

This material has a powdery structure that can be made into pellets that are very effective at grabbing CO2 molecules. One pound of BAETA can absorb up to 0.15 pounds of CO2, which is quite efficient compared to most current commercial systems.

BAETA is also more heat-resistant than other amine sorbents, remaining stable at temperatures up to 482 degrees Fahrenheit (250 degrees Celsius). However, it requires a greater thermal energy input to reach maximum CO2 absorption and to release the captured carbon for storage or conversion to other resources. This may lead to greater energy costs, but the researchers believe BAETA can provide a scalable, cost-effective carbon capture system.

Journal Reference:https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv5906

Original Submission

As per The Register, many frustrated users on Reddit and other forums, and my own experiences, accessing Ubuntu's software repositories was very difficult during the weekend. According to the Ubuntu status page, security.ubuntu.com and archive.ubuntu.com began experiencing an outage during the evening (for US time zones) of September 4. Following the initial major outage, both also experienced intermittent periods of maintenance and additional outages that persisted through the weekend. Despite Canonical indicating the outages had been resolved, many users including myself experienced very slow software updates or could not access the servers altogether. From The Register's article:

When is an outage not an outage? According to Canonical's forum, it's when a 36-minute server disruption creates a multi-day backlog that leaves users unable to install or update Ubuntu systems.

Canonical's status page shows that both security.ubuntu.com and archive.ubuntu.com experienced brief issues on September 5 and 7. The incidents appeared short-lived, ending with the reassuring "All components are Operational" message. Case closed, right?

Not exactly. While Canonical's servers came back online quickly, the real problems were just beginning. Users flooded the company's forums throughout the weekend, reporting failed installations and frozen updates. The brief server outages had created a processing backlog that left Ubuntu's repositories effectively broken for days.

"They say the outage was only 36 minutes, but two days later it still isn't working, a frustrated user told The Register yesterday.

Our source wasn't alone. A look at Canonical's forums indicated plenty of users encountering the same issue, prompting terse responses from Canonical representatives who eventaully shut down the discussion.

The Ubuntu Studio Project Leader, Erich Eickmeyer, posted: "We don't need a bunch of 'Can Confirm' and 'me too' posts. Instructions were given as to what needs to happen as 1) a workaround, and 2) what you need to do to get the repos working (you can't)."

There are a large number of Ubuntu mirrors, many of which seemed to function properly during the outage. Tools like mirrorselect can find the fastest mirror for a user, and GUI users can select a mirror from a dropdown list using the "Software & Updates" tool. However, it's still up to command line users to manually update their Apt sources file to the mirror.

The issue seems to be mostly resolved, though I have not been able to find an official explanation from Canonical about the reason for the extended inaccessibility and slowness of their servers. Transparency would be very welcome to this Ubuntu user, especially to provide authoritative information about whether the issues were due to an attack of some sort.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

JetBlue planes will start using Project Kuiper satellite Wi-Fi in 2027:

Amazon's new broadband satellite constellation just scored a big win.

The company announced on Thursday (Sept. 4) that JetBlue will start using Wi-Fi provided by Project Kuiper satellites on its flights in 2027. It's the first such commitment Amazon has received from an airline, a number of which have already signed up to use the services of a competitor — SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation.

[...] Project Kuiper is still in the early stages of construction; just 102 of its planned 3,200 satellites have reached low Earth orbit (LEO) to date.

But all 102 of those spacecraft have gone up in the past four months, on four separate rocket launches. And the company plans to move even faster going forward.

"We're continuing to accelerate our production, processing and deployment rates," Amazon representatives said in the same statement. "Our goal is to begin delivering service to our first customers later this year, and to roll out more widely as we add coverage and capacity to the network."

Amazon's Announcement

JetBlue's Announcement

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Congress and Trump may compromise on the SLS rocket by axing its costly upper stage:

There are myriad questions about how NASA's budget process will play out in the coming weeks, with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 looming.

For example, the Trump administration may seek to shut off dozens of science missions that are either already in space or in development. Although Congress has signaled a desire to keep these missions active, absent a confirmed budget, the White House has made plans to turn off the lights.

Some answers may be forthcoming this week, as the House Appropriations Committee will take up the Commerce, Justice, and Science budget bill on Wednesday morning. However great uncertainty remains about whether there will be a budget passed by October 1 (unlikely), a continuing resolution, or a government shutdown.

Behind the scenes, discussions are also taking place about NASA's Artemis Program in general and the future of the Space Launch System rocket specifically.

From the beginning, the second Trump administration has sought to cancel the costly, expendable rocket. Some officials wanted to end the rocket immediately,  but eventually the White House decided to push for cancellation after Artemis III. This seemed prudent because it allowed the United States the best possible chance to land humans back on the Moon before China got there, and then transition to a more affordable lunar program as quickly as possible.

Congress, particularly US Sen. Ted. Cruz, R-Texas, was not amenable. And so, in supplemental funding as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill," Cruz locked in billions of dollars to ensure that Artemis IV and Artemis V flew on the SLS rocket, with the promise of additional missions.

Since the release of its budget proposal in May, which called for an end to the SLS rocket after Artemis III, the White House has largely been silent, offering no response to Congress. However that changed last week, when interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy addressed the issue on a podcast hosted by one of the agency's public relations officials, Gary Jordan:

Here is my one concern. If Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don't have a Moon program. It just, I don't think that exists. We have to bring the price down. And so I have to think about and work with members of Congress. What does Artemis IV, V, and VI look like? But to spend that much money in thinking about what we have to do to have a sustained presence, I think becomes very, very challenging.

And so what? What is the answer? I don't know, but those are things that I think about, because you look at what the private sector has done for access to space. For the private sector, again, you can, you can have a satellite and get it into space for, you know, a million, little over a million dollars, like that was unheard of 20 years ago. What's happening to drive the price down of these, of these vehicles. That's what we have to think about, because the $4 billion figure just is too massive to think we can be sustainable at that number.

upstart writes:

Brain scans reveal a common neural signature when people see red, green or yellow:

It's a late-night debate in college dorms across the world: Is my red the same as your red? Two neuroscientists weigh in on this classic "Intro to Philosophy" puzzler in research published September 8 in the Journal of Neuroscience. Their answer is a resounding maybe.

There were two possibilities when it comes to how brains perceive color, says Andreas Bartels of the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. Perhaps everyone's brain is unique, with bespoke snowflake patterns of nerve cells responding when a person sees red. Or it could be that seeing red kicks off a standard, predictable pattern of brain activity that doesn't vary much from person to person.

The answer is overwhelmingly the second option, the new study suggests. "There are commonalities across brains," Bartels says. Along with colleague Michael Bannert, Bartels first monitored the activity of nerve cells spread across visual brain areas as 15 people saw shades of reds, greens and yellows. The team then used those benchmarks to predict what color a person was looking at, based solely on the individual's pattern of brain activity.

The results show that neural reactions to colors are somewhat standard and don't seem to vary much from person to person. But these neuroanatomical findings can't answer the question of how it feels to see red, Bartels says. How brain activity creates subjective inner experiences is a much bigger and thornier question about consciousness, one that will no doubt continue to be debated for a long time.

Journal Reference: Michael M. Bannert and Andreas Bartels, Large-scale color biases in the retinotopic functional architecture are region specific and shared across human brains, J. Neuro Science, 8 September 2025, e2717202025; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2717-20.2025

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Microsoft software reselling dispute heads back to UK court:

Microsoft's tussle with UK-based reseller ValueLicensing over the sale of secondhand licenses returns to the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, with the Windows behemoth now claiming that selling pre-owned Office and Windows software is unlawful.

ValueLicensing's representatives say this week's trial - due to start tomorrow - will "address whether the entire pre-owned license market was lawful – with Microsoft arguing that it was not lawful to resell pre-owned Office and Windows software at all."

This stems from a May 2025 agreement that the scope of copyright issues now central to Microsoft's defense needs to be determined.

The case has the potential to blow a hole in the European reselling market. According to ValueLicensing, "if Microsoft's argument is correct, it would mean that the entire resale market in Europe should not exist."

The ValueLicensing case has rumbled on for years, beginning with allegations that Microsoft stifled the supply of pre-owned licenses by offering attractive subscription deals to public and private sector organizations in return for the surrender of perpetual licenses. ValueLicensing (and companies like it) operated a business model based on organizations selling their perpetual licenses and resellers selling them on to customers at a discount.

ValueLicensing alleged that Microsoft added clauses to customer contracts aimed at restricting the resale of perpetual licenses. In return for accepting those contracts, customers were given a discount.

Judging by the case so far [PDF], it appears that this practice was a policy at Microsoft.

According to ValueLicensing, Microsoft's allegedly anti-competitive antics and attempts to eliminate the secondhand software license market have cost it £270 million in lost profits.

Microsoft's argument [PDF] is that it owns the copyright to the non-program bits of Office – the graphical user interface, for example – to which rules around software reselling (the European Software Directive) do not apply.

ValueLicensing boss Jonathan Horley noted the timing of the copyright claim. "It's a remarkable coincidence that their defense against ValueLicensing has changed so dramatically from being a defense of 'we didn't do it' to a defense of 'the market should never have existed,'" he said.

Microsoft's contention is not without precedent. The Tom Kabinet judgment drew a line between the secondary market for software programs and e-books. Reselling a software program isn't a problem, while reselling something like an e-book is. Microsoft's argument for its software appears to be similar.

The tech giant is facing other actions before the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal. Alexander Wolfson has brought a similar claim against Microsoft, potentially worth billions, regarding the purchase of certain licenses for specific products. Dr Maria Luisa Stasi has brought another regarding the cost of running Microsoft software on platforms like AWS and GCP compared to Azure.

The Register asked Microsoft to comment and will update the article should the company respond.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Multiple undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea, hampering internet performance:

Microsoft was forced to reroute Azure traffic on Saturday, September 6, after two major submarine cable systems were severed in the Red Sea, triggering latency spikes and degraded performance for cloud users across South Asia and the Gulf. The company confirmed the disruption via Azure system status messages just before 06:00 UTC, saying customers whose traffic normally passes through the Middle East "may experience service disruptions."

Those reroutes currently remain in effect, with Microsoft noting that they expect "higher latency on some traffic" into September 7 as regional carriers continue to triage routes. Cloud operations outside the affected path remain unaffected, but workloads relying on Asia-Europe connectivity may still feel the impact.

The damage occurred on the SEA-ME-WE-4 and IMEWE cable systems, both of which run through the high-risk corridor near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The location and systems were first flagged by NetBlocks, which attributed the disruption to a "series of subsea cable outages" causing Internet slowdowns in Pakistan, India, and parts of the Gulf. Microsoft has not named the specific cables involved.

From a technical perspective, these aren't just any cables: They're two of the main long-haul systems connecting Asia to Europe, carrying traffic not only for consumer Internet but also hyperscalers like Google and Meta. Losing just one of these critical pathways can overload alternate routes, spike latency, and increase packet loss across various cloud-dependent applications, such as multiplayer gaming and large file downloads.

Microsoft engineers have rerouted traffic via alternative, longer paths while monitoring network telemetry. Repair ships for undersea cables are scarce, however, and the Red Sea remains a geopolitically sensitive area, making any physical repairs an inevitably slow process. Such repairs can take weeks because repair crews must precisely locate themselves above the damaged cable.

This isn't the first time that the Red Sea has caused headaches. In February 2024, multiple submarine cables, including AE-1, SEACOM, and EIG, were damaged by an unknown cause. Due to the sensitivity of the location, cable operators are currently unable to give a timeline for full repairs, but it was reported in July 2024 that repairs were completed on the AAE-1 cable. In January 2025, the same cable suffered a shunt fault off the coast of Qatar, which was resolved two weeks later.

As of now, Azure remains operational, but enterprises reliant on cross-region connectivity between Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East should brace for slower connections in the meantime.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Since there is apparently nothing these days that can't be improved by some AI. The Amazon fueled AI-company Fable Studio wants to re-create the chopped 43 minutes of Orson Welles movie "The Magnificent Ambersons". The recreation will be done from set images and other sources. The original was re-cut after RKO thought the movie was too long and that the ending was not happy enough. A new ending was created.

But it won't have any commercial re-release and is purely a noncommercial academic project, due to rights and ownership. Also it might not be Welles more famous work so there might not be anything more then a minor cult following and not any kind of commercial success. So they do it cause they can and "AI" something something.

https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/lost-ending-orson-welles-magnificent-ambersons-ai-remake-1235148945/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A spectacular glacial demise, 40 years in the making:

Nearly 40 years after breaking away from the Filchner – Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the A23a iceberg is finally beginning to melt and merge into the ocean for good. A23a ranks among the oldest and largest icebergs ever recorded and remains the biggest block of frozen freshwater on the planet.

Nicknamed the "megaberg," A23a weighed roughly one trillion tons earlier this year. Although it has since lost more than half its original mass, the iceberg still measures about 1,770 square kilometers in area and spans 60 kilometers at its widest point. Researchers have tracked its decline using satellite imagery from the European Copernicus observatory.

Recent data shows that A23a has begun to fragment into "smaller" pieces, some as large as 400 square kilometers. These chunks are further breaking apart into even smaller icebergs, many of which still pose navigational hazards for ships at sea.

According to Andrew Meijers, a physical oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey, the changes underway in A23a can be described as nothing short of "dramatic." The megaberg is essentially nearing the end of its life, "rotting" from beneath as it drifts into waters that are simply too warm to sustain it. Constant melting is now unavoidable.

The process will continue in the weeks ahead, Meijers said, until A23a is no longer clearly identifiable. The iceberg originally calved from Antarctica's massive ice shelf in 1986, before "grounding" in the Weddell Sea, where it remained stuck on the seafloor for more than 30 years.

It finally broke free in 2020, carried by Antarctic currents into the South Atlantic Ocean. In March 2025, A23a briefly posed a threat to penguin and seal colonies after becoming stranded in shallow waters off South Georgia Island, though it moved on a couple of months later.

Together with parts of the Arctic ice pack, Antarctica's icebergs contain some of the planet's largest reserves of frozen freshwater. But they are melting slowly and inexorably, with profound consequences for human activity and natural habitats worldwide.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://carbuzz.com/mazda-6-stroke-hydrogen-combustion-engine/

This time, though, Mazda has outdone itself. The company just obtained a patent for a six stroke engine. What does it do with the extra strokes, you're wondering? It separates the hydrogen and carbon in gasoline so it can burn just the hydrogen, thus taking the carbon out of the system. Easy, right? No, not easy. And it gets even wilder from there.

It works like this: The engine makes hydrogen from gasoline using its own heat and a catalyst. It then burns that hydrogen and stores the carbon to be removed later. The result is that you can burn gasoline with zero CO2, at least most of the time.

The patent is called "fuel reforming system for vehicle," which does almost nothing to describe the magic going on here. Mazda's engineers describe it as a way to recover carbon, improve thermal efficiency, and give you a car that runs carbon-neutral.

The engine only stores small amounts of hydrogen, so it doesn't need complex tanks. If there isn't enough hydrogen ready for use, it can just run the old-fashioned way on gasoline until hydrogen is ready. It could save the internal combustion engine from eventual extinction, but there's just one problem. This is pretty much the most complex solution from Mazda we've ever seen. And that's saying something.

A normal engine works like this: In cycle one (aka the intake stroke), air is pulled in on a piston down stroke, and fuel is added. Cycle two (compression stroke) sees the piston move up, compressing the mix so that the spark plug can ignite it and push it down (the power stroke) through cycle three. Cycle four, the exhaust stroke, pushes out the exhaust gases as the piston moves up. And the process repeats from there.

This engine has those four, with some changes, and two extras. On the first cycle, air is pulled like normal. It can also open an exhaust valve to pull exhaust air in, for simpler EGR.

The next two cycles are standard – compression followed by power. Cycle four is called the re-compression stroke. In this cycle, the exhaust air is pushed out through a different valve. This valve routes the exhaust air through what's called a decomposer.

Mazda's decomposer is like a catalytic converter without expensive metals. Right in front of it is a fuel injector that squirts gasoline into the hot exhaust air.

The hot exhaust and fuel mixture enters the reformer and the carbon – pure carbon, it's not CO2 yet – sticks to the catalyst. Gasoline is a mix of hydrocarbons like octane (C8H18). The reformer separates and stores both.

A carbon recovery unit holds the carbon that comes out of the reaction. It would be emptied or removed when you go in for service. The carbon that comes out can be used in steel or for pigments (and other uses) or simply stored.

Cycle five, the re-expansion cycle, pulls the remaining air back into the cylinder. Then it's pushed out through the exhaust valve in cycle six, which is cycle four in a normal engine.

Mazda's patent includes some variations. Two of them use slightly different methods in the catalyst, and one uses a four-stroke cycle where the fourth is a "scavenging cycle" that has the intake, exhaust, and reformer valves all open at the same time. Think of it like an even more complex two-stroke engine.

The idea is amazing, and certainly interesting. But the implementation is a nightmare, and its actual efficiency is questionable. In other words, it's perfect for Mazda, so perhaps we'll see some sort of production version in the years to come.

Original Submission