A solar cell built without indium reached 31 percent efficiency across roughly 32 square inches, and the tin oxide layer that replaced the scarce metal costs about one percent as much
OCT 2, 2026
Tech Editor & Advisor
Hugo Rojas
Hugo is an engineer with strong technical expertise and deep knowledge of the space industry. Multilingual from an early age, his writing combines technical clarity with a strong interest in science and energy.
—Latest by Hugo Rojas
Moving without a permit, an oversized load struck 6 bridges in one eastbound run near Claremore, and the repair bill for those overpasses came to 491,700 dollars
OCT 2, 2026
Treated drinking water drained from a 110 year old Duluth reservoir for 15 hours reached Tischer Creek at chloramine levels far above what brook trout can tolerate, and the population needs at least eight years to recover
OCT 2, 2026
A container ship lost all power in 75 mile per hour winds off western Newfoundland and was driven onto a remote rocky shore, where all twenty of its crew were airlifted off after it grounded
OCT 2, 2026
At 5 of the world’s only rewetted peatland solar sites, one northern German bog was reflooded and fitted with panels, and the threatened bird count there beat the drained farmland next door
OCT 2, 2026
Wind turbine blades stretching 264 feet each left a northern Colorado factory on 36 modified flat cars bound for a Texas port, in what the railroads involved called the longest such move on American rail
OCT 2, 2026
DNA from 436 water bottles inside four North Sea wind farms confirmed five shark and ray species present, including a basking shark found in winter
OCT 1, 2026
Michel Siffre spent 205 days alone in a Texas cave with no clock, and his sleep stretched at times to a 48 hour cycle
OCT 1, 2026
A man of 81 ran 31 miles at a world record pace for men over 80, and his measured oxygen uptake proved the highest yet recorded in an octogenarian
OCT 1, 2026
Crews seeded four nets of sugar kelp between 139 turbines 11 miles off the Dutch coast, and the water between the blades came up as a harvest nine months later
OCT 1, 2026
A 443 foot container ship grounded within yards of a cabin on the Trondheimsfjord shore, and the shipping company says the same vessel had run aground twice in the previous two years
OCT 1, 2026
Lab tests on 50,000 discarded mattresses a day found their foam absorbed three times as much oil, and it chose oil over water nearly seven times more selectively than untreated foam
OCT 1, 2026
Three Texas solar farms kept 1,200 megawatts of panels nearly intact through the same hailstorm that wiped out thousands of panels at a neighboring site just miles away
SEP 30, 2026
Chinook salmon returned to 88 percent of their historic range on the Klamath River within two migration seasons after four dams came down, with sonar counting more than 21,000 fish
SEP 30, 2026
After 60 days lying at a 6 degree head down tilt around the clock, volunteers showed reduced deep sleep with no sign the sleeping brain adapted to the posture
SEP 30, 2026
Filling a solar panel with 22.6 percent efficient silicone oil instead of cured adhesive matched a conventional module, and the panel can be opened again without burning anything off
SEP 29, 2026
With about 6,100 gallons of fuel pumped off the hull over several days, a small cruise ship grounded on a Fijian reef was retired when a tropical cyclone ruled out refloating
SEP 29, 2026
Biologists sampled fur from 1,665 migratory bats like a travel diary, and the two species most often killed at wind turbines were moving north and south each autumn, not just south
SEP 29, 2026
From 660 pounds of recovered fiber and gel per metric ton, a plant near Treviso turns used diapers into materials the paper and cable industries buy
SEP 28, 2026
With 80 minutes spent trapped under the ice of a frozen mountain stream near Narvik and her heart stopped on arrival, a skier survived a core temperature of 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit, the lowest documented in an adult with accidental hypothermia
SEP 28, 2026
With 74 turbines running on a calm Tuesday near Kildare, one 490 foot tower collapsed into the Oklahoma grass while the other 73 kept turning
SEP 28, 2026
Across 13,000 fields in the US, artificial turf can hit 200 degrees on a 98 degree afternoon, running hotter underfoot than the asphalt lot right beside it
SEP 28, 2026
A tanker carrying 7,500 gallons of diesel overturned on a suburban Georgia road above a storm drain, and testing afterward found no contamination in the lake and river below
SEP 27, 2026
Scientists at an Arizona lab built a test solar panel from 50 percent recycled glass taken from retired modules, and it matched the power output of panels made entirely with new glass
SEP 27, 2026
Scientists pressed 40 percent mineral binder into waste sawdust boards that take more than 3 times as long to ignite as untreated spruce, and the used panel can be ground and recast into new ones
SEP 27, 2026
A freediver walked 394 feet along a pool floor on one breath, and the 60 year old who set that record in Asker broke his own mark while fighting bronchitis
SEP 26, 2026
Inside a California wind farm holding 21 eagle pairs, surveyors found subadults filling 29 percent of breeding slots while pairs outside held just 3 percent
SEP 26, 2026
A fuel tanker left the highway above a restored salmon creek near Port Angeles and put close to 3,000 gallons of fuel in the water, and responders walking the banks confirmed losses of more than 2,100 fish
SEP 26, 2026
Golf ball sized hail shattered thousands of panels across a 3,300 acre Texas solar farm overnight, while nearby farms whose trackers had tilted their rows to 52 degrees came through with almost no broken glass
SEP 25, 2026
Zinc from 250 million scrap tires a year leaches into runoff as rubber mulch, and water that has run through tire rubber proved toxic to whole freshwater communities of algae, snails and fish
SEP 25, 2026
Paid volunteers lay in a Montreal cubicle behind frosted goggles for up to 6 days, and 14 out of 14 began seeing squirrels, patterns and whole moving scenes that were not there
SEP 25, 2026
A nearly 30 foot wind turbine blade made with a plant sugar resin was broken down in a methanol bath in about six hours, and its fiber and resin were recovered for reuse
SEP 24, 2026
An expedition ship carrying 124 people missed its first turn into a narrow Papua New Guinea harbor entrance in the dark and grounded on a coral reef about 525 feet off its planned track
SEP 24, 2026
Crushed retired solar panels floated on air bubbles in a bench tank gave up 97 percent of their silver without acid, and the concentrate that rose was far richer than ore from a working mine
SEP 24, 2026
Bacteria grew 8 grams of silk from a single liter of culture, and the protein that solved the yield problem came from a mussel, not a spider
SEP 23, 2026
Six volunteers sealed inside a windowless mock spacecraft in Moscow for 4 months had lost significant body fat by the halfway point, and their blood carried markers of fat breakdown and artery risk
SEP 23, 2026
Volunteers sealed inside a windowless Cologne habitat for 100 days walked back out on August 1, and what their sleep, cognition and microbiome did across those months has not been published yet
SEP 23, 2026
A buried crude oil pipeline off the Southern California coast was shoved as much as 100 feet out of place during a winter storm, and it did not start leaking until more than eight months later
SEP 23, 2026
One 170-foot wind turbine blade dissolved in a lab yielded new blade material, plexiglass, diaper absorbent and food grade potassium lactate that a chemist then ate as gummy bears
SEP 23, 2026
With 4,200 vehicles stacked across its decks, a car carrier rolled onto its side less than 40 minutes after leaving a Georgia port, and investigators found nothing broken on the ship
SEP 23, 2026
An aircraft carrier approaching one of the world’s busiest shipping chokepoints at night was still making 19 knots when its own plan called for 5, and investigators found the resulting collision with a bulk carrier was avoidable
SEP 23, 2026
At a 255,000 square foot plant in northwest Georgia, worn solar panels arrive by the truckload and are stripped for silver, copper and glass, with the recovered glass stockpiled for a factory next door
SEP 23, 2026
Upright panels in a Danish grain field at latitude 56 north let wheat and grass clover match open field yields, but nearby south tilted rows cut the harvest in their deeper shade
SEP 23, 2026
At a Spanish wind farm with 20 turbines above the Strait of Gibraltar, painting one blade black cut bird collisions by 74 percent, with songbirds and large waterbirds benefiting most
SEP 23, 2026
Cameras placed inside the storm drains of Gainesville, Florida recorded about 3,800 animal sightings from 35 species, and the alligators caught on film were swimming pond to pond beneath busy roads
SEP 22, 2026
Twin motorway tunnels under Sydney’s southern suburbs sat idle for two years with almost 90 percent of the tunnelling already finished, and crews have 275 yards of rock left to cut
SEP 22, 2026
A rocket sled on a New Mexico track hit 632 miles per hour and stopped in 1.4 seconds, and the force inside that stop flooded the rider’s eyes with blood
SEP 22, 2026
An inverter fire at 5 linked Victorian solar farms sent smoke over Raywood on a February evening, and a regulator ordered all five to stop generating power
SEP 22, 2026
At a Missouri plant, more than 2,800 shredded wind turbine blades have replaced coal and mined silica inside cement kilns, and the glass fiber locked into every blade ends up sealed into the cement for good
SEP 22, 2026
Harbor pilots at a Danish control room guided about 50 ships through the Kattegat from shore last year, and on those passages the rope ladder stayed coiled on the pilot boat
SEP 22, 2026
