Delta_V

...Under a power purchase agreement, Aethero will draw electricity on demand from Star Catcher’s planned orbital energy grid. The arrangement is designed to let spacecraft access additional power when computing loads rise, without having to carry enough onboard generation and storage to cover those peaks...

...The company says it can harvest solar energy and beam concentrated power directly onto existing satellite solar panels, allowing spacecraft to generate up to 10 times more power on demand without installing specialized receivers...

...The company is preparing for its first in-space power-beaming demonstration later this year, with another mission already in development...

UK-based engineer Tom Stanton has successfully built a trebuchet that can send projectiles flying at supersonic speeds...

In the video, the projectile reached 776 mph (1,248 kph) or nine miles per hour faster than the speed of sound. The proof may be in the numbers but the loud crack and echo of the sonic boom did confirm that history was made that day.

On an infrared camera, a warm object normally stands out clearly against cooler surroundings. Researchers have now built a three-dimensional cloak that bends heat around an object, erasing its thermal outline while protecting the space inside from temperature extremes...

This approach could eventually improve heat control around microchips and sensitive electronic components. It may also help protect equipment in severe environments or reduce the thermal signatures used to locate people and machinery...

They printed a precise aluminum lattice in 3D to create highly conductive pathways through the cloak. Aluminum moves heat readily, allowing energy to travel quickly through selected regions. The remaining spaces were filled through mold casting with a rubbery material that transfers heat much more slowly.

Together, the materials created a controlled thermal route. Some sections accelerated heat flow while others restricted it, steering energy around the space occupied by the concealed object...

...In electronic systems, the cloak might redirect heat away from vulnerable components or prevent nearby heat sources from interfering with delicate devices.

It could also help protect equipment exposed to extreme temperatures. Security and defense applications are another possibility, including reducing the infrared signatures that allow thermal cameras to distinguish people or machinery from their surroundings...

...Concealing an object that produces its own heat presents a more difficult problem because that energy would continue building inside the protected region and could eventually reveal its location...

The researchers now plan to investigate smart, multifunctional cloaks capable of performing those active tasks. Such devices could eventually do more than hide a thermal signature by deliberately controlling where heat gathers, how it spreads, and where it leaves the protected region...

...The discovery expands how motors and actuation systems can be designed. Most electromagnetic motors today depend on magnets and copper coils. This new approach can create motion without magnets or rare earth metals, which could be valuable in a world where material resources are limited.

The design could also be lighter and simpler. Since the rotating component can be made from resin instead of metal, devices may become lighter and faster to respond. That could help in robotics, compact machines, and precision systems.

Because the motor does not depend on magnetic fields, it may also work well in places where magnetic noise causes problems, including medical equipment and data storage devices...

The Lebanese Armed Forces on Monday urged people displaced from the south of the country by Israeli military operations there not to return to their homes and await further instructions, following Sunday's announcement of a memorandum of understanding that could bring an end to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

"In light of recent developments in the region and with news circulating about reaching a ceasefire, the Army Command emphasizes the need for residents to postpone their return to the southern border villages and towns, and to adhere to the instructions of the deployed military units, in order to protect their safety from the danger of Israeli violations and attacks,"...

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday said that the Israel Defense Forces will not withdraw from areas it has seized in southern Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip regardless of a deal with Iran.

Qcells has begun manufacturing solar cells at its new facility in Cartersville, Georgia, bringing the company closer to operating what it says is the United States’ first and only fully vertically integrated solar manufacturing factory.

The company announced that the plant is now producing solar cells and expects all production lines to reach full capacity by the third quarter of 2026. Once fully operational, the facility will manufacture ingots, wafers, cells, and solar modules under one roof.

The start of cell production marks a significant milestone for domestic solar manufacturing, as most solar panels installed in the US still rely on imported components. Qcells said the Cartersville site will become the largest operating solar cell factory in US history...

Former Biden administration official Shuwanza Goff is joining Paramount Skydance as VP of U.S. government affairs...

Goff will be tasked with helping shape the company’s public policy and government affairs strategy, including engagement with federal and state policymakers and industry partners. She was previously a partner and chief strategy officer at lobbying firm Empire Consulting Group.

Goff served as the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs from 2023 to 2025 in the Biden administration. In that role, she drove the White House’s policy agenda and was the steward of key bipartisan relationships on Capitol Hill...

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has verified the core plasma physics assumptions for its upcoming ARC fusion power plant following a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Plasma Physics.

The research confirms the ARC reactor design aligns with known physics, allowing the company to shift its focus toward detailed hardware engineering...

According to the validated models, the ARC plant will produce approximately 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of fusion power to generate 400 megawatts (MW) of net electricity for the grid...

CFS engineers are using this simulation framework to optimize upcoming design iterations, adjusting dimensions like tokamak width and divertor length to refine reactor performance before manufacturing begins.

Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and four other members of the House of Representatives have asked the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate why a federal probe into a prison drugs-for-votes scheme was abandoned after the 2024 elections...

Their request follows a ProPublica investigation that published earlier this month detailing how prosecutors had uncovered a drugs-for-votes scheme being run by a violent gang in Puerto Rican prisons and were deep into looking at whether now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón or her campaign were involved. In the days following President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, as prosecutors prepared the indictment, they were told by supervisors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico to exclude the voting-related charges against inmates and prison staff, four sources with knowledge of the investigation told ProPublica. Then, once Trump took office, they were told to abandon the probe into potential political ties entirely, the sources said.

In their letter, the members of Congress urged the inspector general to examine the Justice Department’s decision to not pursue charges related to election fraud “despite reported findings and evidence.” They added that the failure to further investigate contradicts the Trump administration’s “repeated emphasis on prioritizing election integrity and election security as federal enforcement priorities,” in addition to deeming drug traffickers threats to public safety and democratic institutions...

When people think about the Strait of Hormuz, they think about oil tankers, LNG carriers, naval escorts, insurance premiums, and the price of gasoline. They generally do not think about yellow piles of sulfur beside gas plants, phosphate fertilizer complexes, or the acid circuits that keep copper and nickel processing running. They should. The current sulfur price spike is not just another commodity-market twitch. It is a preview of a future in which the cheap sulfur system created by oil and gas cleanup is much smaller, while much of the demand for sulfur remains...

For roughly fifty years, sulfur has been cheap for a strange reason. Oil refineries and sour gas plants had to remove it anyway. Sulfur in fuels is a pollution problem. Regulations forced the oil and gas industry to take sulfur out of refined products and gas streams, and the industry recovered it as elemental sulfur. The sulfur was not the main product. It was the cleaned-up contaminant. That is a very different cost structure from opening a mine, building a roaster, managing residues, and producing sulfur deliberately...

The old low-price regime put sulfur in the $50 to $150 per ton range for long stretches. That world was built on fossil byproduct abundance. A managed transition world might put sulfur in the $250 to $350 per ton range. A structurally tighter oil and gas-light world could easily live in the $400 to $600 per ton range. Regional crises, shipping disruptions, export restrictions, or sudden HPAL nickel demand can push sulfur into the $800 to $1,200 per ton range. The point is not that every future year looks like a crisis. The point is that the old fossil byproduct floor is unlikely to be the future floor...

The logistics problem is the part that deserves more attention. Today’s model works because elemental sulfur moves better than sulfuric acid. A fertilizer producer can import sulfur, burn it on site, integrate the acid plant . . . and ship finished fertilizer...

That means the future sulfur constraint is geographical as much as chemical. The winners are likely to be integrated hubs with two or three of the required pieces in the same place. Phosphate rock plus sulfur access plus port logistics is powerful. Smelter acid plus local mining demand is powerful. Pyrite waste plus acid demand plus permits can be powerful. A lonely inland fertilizer plant that depends on imported acid is not powerful. It is exposed...

Policy makers should be paying attention because sulfur sits in the awkward space between agriculture, mining, trade, and decarbonization. Countries should map sulfur and sulfuric acid dependency. They should identify where smelter acid, pyrite, tailings recovery, phosphate fertilizer, and mineral processing can be linked in real industrial hubs. They should stress-test fertilizer and critical-mineral projects against sulfur prices far above the old fossil byproduct norm...

...Modern agriculture and mining were built in part on cheap sulfur from oil and gas. As the world moves away from oil and gas, sulfur does not disappear, but the cheap arrangement does. The future price of sulfur is unlikely to be the old $50 to $150 per ton world. It is more likely to sit structurally closer to today’s stressed market than most fertilizer, mining, and policy models assumed a few years ago. The sooner that is treated as a supply-chain design problem instead of a temporary commodity spike, the less painful the adjustment will be.

...Trump also suggested during the high-level meeting with Xi Jinping that the US, China and Russia should join forces to challenge the International Criminal Court, noting that their interests align.

The question of why the U.S. government began a war with Iran is unsettled. The ostensible reasons, blocking Iran from developing nuclear weapons and protecting Iranians’ human rights, are not enough. Iran’s agreement not to build a nuclear arms program was in force...

...a U.S. government that so easily tolerates human rights abuses within the United States and in certain allied nations would seemingly have little zeal to fight Iran on that account, unless there were other inducements.

Strategic considerations as to U.S. economic sustainability and U.S. economic and political power in the world very likely impelled nervous U.S. decision-makers to start a war...

...The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz might not be a strategic “mistake,” but rather a deliberate feature of the conflict...

...The argument is that the blockade of the straits is a deliberate move by Washington to choke off China’s energy “lifeline” and, in doing so, halt its geopolitical rise...

...“Because oil was and is so fundamental to nearly every industry, the ‘petrodollar’ became ubiquitous, and the dollar became the cornerstone of the global economy.” To preserve the petrodollar arrangement and predictability of the dollar’s value becomes a principal objective of this war...