In a laboratory amid Northern Virgina’s sprawling data centers, a group of scientists is looking very far outside the box for a solution to overwhelmed power grids. They want to harness the sun’s rays and shoot a kilometer-wide laser — they prefer the term “power beam” — down from satellites in space to solar panels on Earth. The idea...
Six thousand years ago, one of the primary modes of transportation was the oxcart. By the time of America’s founding, the ride to the market or church wasn’t much different. Ancient Babylonians and early Americans both lit their dark homes with oil lamps. If you were a parent in medieval England, chances are you would...
The sci-fi-worthy machine soaring 120 feet tall in the hills outside Lynchburg had been all but left for dead — a $400 million experiment that collapsed as the energy economy shifted and the financial prospects for next-generation nuclear technology soured. The faux eight-story reactor in Lynchburg, built to mimic a nuclear plant but run on...
The Trump administration Friday finalized a repeal of decades-old regulation that said habitat destruction was a form of harm to endangered species. Overturning that interpretation of one of the country’s bedrock environmental laws could allow for mining, ranching and other development to expand into previously protected areas. Read more in the Washington Post here.
Scientists have been shooting particles into clouds since the 1940s, praying it will bring more rain and snow. While researchers agree that “cloud seeding” can work in a laboratory setting, many have doubted how much precipitation it can generate in the real world. But that hasn’t stopped Western states from blasting silver iodide into the...
Washington Post reporter Jake Spring writes on the recent decision to allow mining near the Boundary Waters Wilderness area in Minnesota. Read more in the Washington Post here.
Read the full piece here in The Washington Post.
Fifty years ago, when the grizzly bear was listed as a threatened species, the federal government intervened to save this iconic American animal. Its recovery is one of the nation’s signature conservation success stories: In 1975, there were at least 700 bears in the northern Rockies. Today, thanks in large part to the Endangered Species Act, there...
As President Donald Trump pledges to win the artificial intelligence race, send Americans to Mars and sustain U.S. military dominance, we would do well to remember a key reason the United States achieved its technological edge in the first place: federal investment in ambitious research and development. The U.S. is racing against its adversaries to...
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to grant California permission to set stronger climate rules for cars and SUVs — a move that President-elect Donald Trump could attempt to reverse — according to two people briefed on the matter. The EPA intends to issue California a waiver as soon as next week to enforce its rule aimed at banning...
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