On 13 February, a Russian rocket carried the antenna of the Icarus mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The Icarus on-board computer was thus joined by another key component of the orbiting animal tracking system. Using the system developed by scientists from the Max Planck Society in cooperation with the Russian space agency Roscosmos,…
Superconductivity: Footballs With No Resistance
Superconductors have long been confined to niche applications, due to the fact that the highest temperature at which even the best of these materials becomes resistance-free is minus 70 degrees Celsius. Nowadays they are mainly used in magnets for nuclear magnetic resonance tomographs, fusion devices and particle accelerators. Physicists from the Max Planck Institute for…
A Smart Grid Self-Organized Simply
To improve the management of fluctuations in the electricity supplied by solar and wind installations, the electricity network needs to work more intelligently in the future. Electricity suppliers aim to be able to regulate consumption on the basis of supply with the help of an intelligent electricity network, a smart grid. Intelligent electricity meters developed…