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Scientists turn water into shiny metal

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  With enough pressure, you can turn anything into metal, and water is no exception. However, scientists Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague managed to turn liquid water into a bronze-like metallic state without having to apply ungodly amounts of pressure, which makes the achievement all the more impressive. If squeezed together tightly enough, atoms and molecules can become so compacted in their lattice that they begin to share their outer electrons, allowing them to travel and basically conduct electricity as they would in a copper wire. Case in point, in 2020,  French scientists turned  the simplest gas in the universe, hydrogen, into a metal and fulfilled a prediction made in 1935 by Nobel Prize laureates Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington. Metal hydrogen is, in fact, a superconductor, meaning it conducts electricity with zero electrical resistance. To do so, the French researchers subjected hydrogen to a staggering 425 gigapascals of pressure — more than four million times

What are SMC's? How are they manufactured?

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  📢Time to Get Technical...📢 What are SMC's? How are they manufactured? Sheet molding compounds (SMC) are high-strength composite materials comprising primarily a thermosetting resin, filler(s), and fiber reinforcement (which is usually chopped). The thermosetting resin is typically based on unsaturated polyester, vinyl ester, phenolic, or a modified vinyl urethane. Typical fillers are calcium carbonate (reduced cost), clay (improved surface), alumina trihydrate (fire retardance), talc (improved temperature resistance), mica (improved weathering), and hollow glass microspheres (weight reduction, thermal insulation). SMC is a flow molding material and can therefore be used for manufacturing relatively complex-shaped parts, although the level of complexity reduces as the degree of aligned reinforcement is increased. This schematic summarizes how they are manufactured. The manufacturing of SMC’s is a continuous process that starts when a paste is spread uniformly in a carrier film (

Half of the Fortune 500 companies have lost the market

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52% of  #Fortune500  companies have disappeared since the start of the 21st century. 9 out of 10 most valuable companies (public-traded by  #marketcap ) are  #tech  companies #DigitalTransformation   #AI   #futureofwork   #success   #EmergingTech   #SocialMedia   #AutonomousVehicles #innovation Source: Dr.Joerg Storm  

World's fastest ground vehicle!

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  China's new high-speed maglev train rolls off the production line on Tuesday. It has a designed top speed of 600km per hour. Source David Chang

The first-ever 3D-printed steel bridge opens in Amsterdam

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The 12-meter long structure was developed by engineers at Imperial College London, in partnership with the Dutch Company MX3D. It was created by robotic arms using welding torches to deposit the structure of the bridge layer by layer. The construction took over four years, using about 4,500 kilograms of stainless steel.  “A 3D-printed metal structure large and strong enough to handle pedestrian traffic has never been constructed before,” Imperial co-contributor Professor Leroy Gardner, who was involved in the research, said in a statement. “We have tested and simulated the structure and its components throughout the printing process and upon its completion.” The bridge will be used by pedestrians to cross the capital’s Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal. Its performance will be regularly monitored by the researchers at Imperial College, who set up a network of sensors in different parts of the bridge. The data will also be made available to other researchers worldwide who also want to contr

Our universe might be a giant three-dimensional donut, really

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Imagine a universe where you could point a spaceship in one direction and eventually return to where you started. If our universe were a finite donut, then such movements would be possible and physicists could potentially measure its size. "We could say: Now we know the size of the universe," astrophysicist Thomas Buchert, of the University of Lyon, Astrophysical Research Center in France, told Live Science in an email.  Examining light from the very early universe, Buchert and a team of astrophysicists have deduced that our cosmos may be multiply connected, meaning that space is closed in on itself in all three dimensions like a three-dimensional donut. Such a universe would be finite, and according to their results, our entire cosmos might only be about three to four times larger than the limits of the observable universe, about 45 billion light-years away. A tasty problem Physicists use the language of Einstein's general relativity to explain the universe. That languag

UK consortium leads project to develop the next generation of hydrogen storage tanks for HGV and buses

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A consortium of UK companies, Ultima Forma, Lentus Composites and the National Composites Centre (NCC), have joined forces to develop a novel, high-pressure hydrogen storage tank aimed for use in HGV, bus and off-highway applications. Project HYSTOR has secured funding as part of the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s (APC) Automotive Transformation Fund. The project, led by Ultima Forma, brings together a novel electroformed integrated metallic liner overwrapped with composite that will bring weight reduction and other advantages over current solutions in the market today. The patented thin walled liner provides an impermeable hydrogen membrane onto which structural carbon fibre is wound by Lentus Composites using automated filament winding equipment. Steve Newbury, MD at Ultima Forma, said: “We are delighted to be working alongside Lentus and the NCC to bring to market improved storage solutions for high pressure hydrogen. Hydrogen propulsion systems are clearly identified as part of the U