BLADES

Anakena site as it looks today after excavations and restoration. Credit: Andrea Seelenfreund, CC BY A team of archaeologists affiliated with several institutions in Chile reports evidence that early settlers on the island of Rapa Nui sailed to South America, interacted with people living there and then returned. In their study, published in PLOS ONE, the group analyzed plant material found on obsidian blades made by the early…

With each new season of Fortnite, you can count on there being at least some sort of mobility item added that helps you quickly move across the map in a unique and exciting way. With the arrival of chapter 5, season 1, players can now seek out and equip the brand-new Grapple Blade item. If you want all of the mobility of a Web-Slinger with the damage output of a Kinetic Blade, you’ll want to pick one of these up. Here’s where to find them and how they work. Where to get Grapple Blades and how they work Grapple Blades…

Canvus turns retired wind turbine blades into beautiful park benches, planters, and picnic tables for public spaces across the US. The US Department of Energy estimates that the average rate of wind turbine retirements will include up to 9,000 blades per year by 2026, and that number will only grow. So Rocky River, Ohio-based startup Canvus is keeping end-of-life wind turbine blades out of landfills by turning them into functional public art. Big wind turbine manufacturers such as Vestas, GE,…

A Swiss startup is using reclaimed wind turbine blades instead of metal beams as horizontal supports for solar panels. Solar panels, meet wind turbine blades Founded in 2022, Turn2Sun is based in Neuchâtel and calls its use of second-life wind turbine blades to support solar panels “Blade2Sun.” The company explains, “The strength of the blades enables structures with broad wingspan, covering large areas with minimal ground use, thanks to spaced-out foundations. This in turns lets you…

Credit: Delft University of Technology Dimitris Dermentzoglou, PhD student in Coastal Engineering, is investigating whether salt marshes can serve as a natural solution for coastal protection. It is why he mimics salt marsh vegetation at the TU Delft Waterlab. He hopes his research will yield a more sustainable alternative to the repeated raising of dikes. …

Denmark’s largest offshore wind farm to date will feature recyclable wind turbine blades made by Siemens Gamesa. In 2022, renewable energy giant RWE became the first commercial, large-scale offshore developer to install Siemens Gamesa’s recyclable wind turbine blade technology, RecyclableBlade, at its Kaskasi offshore wind farm in Germany. (The blades pictured above are at Kaskasi.) RecyclableBlades will also be installed on 44 out of 100 turbines at the Sofia wind farm, which RWE is building…

The first turbine blades for Vineyard Wind 1, the US’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, have arrived at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal in Massachusetts. The $3.5 billion offshore wind farm is going to feature 62 GE Haliade-X 13 megawatt (MW) turbines spaced one nautical mile apart. The first turbine blades – each 107 meters (351 feet) long – arrived at the Port of New Bedford (pictured above) from GE’s production site in Nazaire, France, on the heavy load vessel Rolldock…

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The White House is pressuring AI firms over safeguardingUS vice president Kamala Harris is meeting with AI leaders to cajole them to mitigate potential harms. (Bloomberg $)+ IBM estimates it could replace 7,800 jobs with AI. (WP $)+ A Cambridge Analytica-style scandal for AI is coming. (MIT Technology Review)2 The world’s first contraceptive vaccine is entering clinical trialsUnlike other forms of birth control,…

But when it’s time to decommission one, a wind turbine’s strength can become a weakness.  Because the blades are designed to be so durable, the materials used to build them can’t currently be recycled. And about 43 million tons of these blades will be decommissioned by 2050. The new work describes a way to recover the main components of wind turbine blades, breaking down the plastic that holds them together without destroying the material’s primary building blocks.  “We need sustainable energy, but we also have to…

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse teases a secret dimension for Miles and friends to visit. Seth McFarlane still has hopes for another season of The Orville. Plus, what’s coming on Syfy’s The Ark. To me, my spoilers!LureDeadline reports Corin Hardy (The Nun) is attached to direct Lure, a new supernatural horror film at Universal and Platinum Dunes. Though details on the plot are currently under wraps, the story is said to be based “on the haunting of the real-life King’s Tavern, the most haunted building in all of…