Science
From mathematics and AI to medicine and psychology, The Optimist Daily features the latest news on discoveries, technological advances, and breakthroughs in the world of science. Our Science section is here to engage and enlighten you.
Give it one glass of salty water, and this lamp gives you light for 8 hours
This lamp runs on water and salt. And it can bring a lot of light to the rural communities of the Philippines, often not connected to the power grid. (This is not so strange by the way, knowing that the country is spread over more than 7000 islands.) Lipa Aisa Mijeno, an entrepreneur from the Read More...
Biofuels and the future of the transportation industry
This week, FedEx announced it has agreed to purchase 3 million gallons of low-carbon biofuel per year. In The Optimist Daily, we have featured many more and similar announcements by corporate giants before. This article looks at the challenges, the future and the quest for biofuels in the Read More...
Now opening: The neighborhood for testing driverless cars
Mcity is a cool lab to test self-driving cars in a neighborhood all their own. It’s a 32-acre simulated town with streets, intersections, traffic signs, buildings, and sidewalks, opened yesterday at the University of Michigan. Mcity also has robotic human dummies, designed to anticipate all Read More...
Australian energy giants say going off-grid is viable, sometimes even preferable
While Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott is raising eyebrows all over the world by insisting that coal is "good for humanity," a report from down under shows a different picture. A recent study has confirmed that "off-grid" distributed energy supply is a viable option for some regional and Read More...
The zero carbon house that couldn't
And here's another one where technology beats politics. In the UK, the Minister of Finance had infamously said homes need not be "zero carbon" as they were deemed too expensive. However, designers at the Cardiff University in Wales have now built a house that exports more power to the grid than it Read More...
Get ready for the ultimate slow space tourism experience
Space travel doesn't need to involve a rocket. All you need is a balloon. Get ready for the first tourist operators offering to take you to the stratosphere, sooner than you think. Just like the first photos from the Earth, taken from outer space, created a consciousness to take care of our planet, Read More...
Yeloha: Go solar on someone else’s roof
If you can turn your home into a hotel through renting it (Airbnb), you should be able to rent your energy generation capacity as well. What if you want to power your home with solar energy but your house catches mostly shade? You might work out a relationship with someone else who has solar, using Read More...
Why Japanese golf courses are turned into solar energy farms
Japan is known for its expensive, upper-crust golf clubs. But golf participation is down more than 40 percent from its high in the early 1990s. Now, the country is facing a severe over-development of golf courses. One solution: turning them into solar power plants. And so the multinational Kyocera Read More...
Self-driving cars won’t violate traffic rules; that’s a problem for cities
We have written before that the self-driven electric car will deeply transform transportation as we know it. But there are interesting side-effects that will not be good for everyone. Think about cities and states that depend on traffic fines for their revenue. Once the car is in charge, it’s a Read More...
Solar powered family car generates more energy than it uses
Now this is a car. It’s powered by solar energy only and still manages to seat four people while generating more energy over the course of a year than it uses to drive. Top speed: 125 km/h (77 mph). Range in its cloudy country of origin, the Netherlands: 1,000 km (621 miles). In sunny places: Read More...